We are never here (2005)

We are never
never here

though there have
been rare exceptions

like Buddha Shakyamuni —

he was here
and made momentous decision

to remain
as evidence —

to let us know
how he was here.

And Emily Dickinson
was here

though faintly drawn

always dying
and yet

collected

like a clutch
of fallen leaves

to be
scattered wide

some damp with rain
and earth

and some dry ones
taking the air

returning to us
only now

settling on paths
to sound our passing:

we who are never
never here.

For the dead (2006)

advice for the dead?

suggest they stop watching

everywhere
always

(devilled panoptic)

thirsting for our young air

&

get back to (somnolence)
where they once belonged

don’t overexert
searching for our bodies

which to them, strangely, are ghosts
wrung from the light

of broken headlamps

Apartments (2006)

Now Available:

these apartments look mint after
coffee, come-hither

stretched out of function

maximum sunlight

beatific baby squeezing
fists in buggy

you could be active in one,
silhouette a window

*

Over-caffeinated, your projects push
out across the city views

overkeen

tackled by suited
agent’s faux-mild eye

what not to say

*

switch to night, window
matrices,
lights coded on and off

city angels leave calling cards

digital angels find and replace
memory:

the Malay hotel with flamingos
guarding the entrance

highrises stand over
your first dizzy upward eyes

the lives of strangers
find and replace you

*

you didn’t paint people in
towers like these
as a four-year-old;

though these are perhaps like that
uppermost panel of blue sky
in a kid’s painting

augmenting
petalled sun,
thought-shaped clouds

3 miniatures (2006)

Are you sure you want to permanently
delete these messages? They

came in peace, blind

candling

across the night

to beg but a shred of mercy

*

In the job interview you’re like

an apple halved
showing white

How you enjoy the sound of
other people’s voices! you

limply unscroll

somehow catch a splinter
of Paris:

Montmartre, cobbles slick with rain

*

I am an artist,
a painter!

when I paint sea

sea is not
immobile in the landscape!

oh no no

waves devour the shore,
arguing against our deaths!

Give me a cigarette!

Somehow I'm reading poetry at Melbourne Central Station (2006)

Somehow I'm reading poetry at Melbourne Central Station,
somehow I’m reading Pablo Neruda,
despite the fact they’re piping some screeching overwrought Whitney ballad
over the loudspeakers (she’s giving birth in every chorus),
despite all these desk jockeys tied up in suits,
all these ‘ironic’ ringtones (you’d show them irony, Señor Neruda,
oh yes you would with your knowing lover’s fist),
and the auto-announcement calmly advising my train’s been both cancelled and delayed (???);
if I was dead I sure as hell wouldn’t have to deal with this…
would I?
Dig my nose deeper into the spine so the book becomes a shield
(occurs to me that I’m using a sword as a shield)

It pains me, Señor Neruda,
that from your wine-and-thunder songs the world distracts me so –
but look around, can you fucking believe this?
Lend me your transforming eye so I can shift all this
to some semblance of humanity / some disfigurement of love,
this limbo of canned passengers / schooldicks shoving / graveyard announcements –
I’m ready to smash the safety glass, launch the fire alarm,
and yet doggedly, stubbornly, somehow
I'm reading poetry at Melbourne Central Station.