bud (2007)

Have history with you
makes it hard to be
with you when I am. It’s
so beautiful outside, but
outside of what? Hey
now the sun is mighty
loud. Birds call me out,
heavy on the roofs.
Disciplined gardens.
Sidestepping trenches
& amber barrier mesh.
Just another castle
under construction.
Slick & unimpressive. As
if some new wild epoch
could bud in the suburbs.

optional (2007)

which hut? /
train passes overhead /
options fly / day party:
sun as DJ / the clouds
the wider painting /
meditate with
confidence, sleep with
confidence / world
comes more as an
abstract / how to
put these / two
birds talk on a wire /
together / hut them?

repackaging 'evil' (2007)

on the track to the city
a snake says, ‘trust me’,
and what could be
simpler? it’s just an
advertisement, but
clearly everyone
is implicated

/ way the ads burst
volumed at our outer
skin to nudge the inner
what big hoofs more
than a little tampering
with our brittle
___________/ forever
surrounded by cranes
fishing for significance
they hold our dossiers
as if ‘connect’ means my
brand is your brand but
i can’t get no, no no no


Note: "i can’t get no, no no no" - The Rolling Stones, 'Satisfaction'.

As published in Snorkel #9, April 2009.

audio

If you'd like to hear me reading Self-portrait (with wires, city & no clothes), click here to download the .wav file. The file is optimised for playback via QuickTime. Other players (e.g. Windows Media Player) may require a codec to play the file. For some reason I think the audio has been ever-so-slightly sped up, so that my voice sounds higher than normal (as if I'd just inhaled a balloon full of helium!)

The poem was originally published in Verandah 22, and this reading was recorded for the Images & Texts on the Verandah exhibit at Deakin University.

ear tells me

"When I write, words or phrases come to me. I don’t go to them or start with a plan. I start with scraps and pieces and something comes. I never know. I never sit down intentionally to say something. It comes to me. But as I work more on a poem a meaning is established and then I must continue until I feel it's done or undone. To an almost alarming extent -- alarming for me -- sound creates meaning. Sound is the core. If a line doesn't sound right, and I do always have single lines or single words in mind, if a line doesn't have some sort of rhythm to it, if my ear tells me it's wrong, I have to get rid of it, or change it, and a new meaning may come then."

- Susan Howe (pictured), from The Difficulties (1989).

desist (2007)

(after Stan Brakhage's desistfilm)

the night (is it night?) is
_____-____________-teeth,
_sitting round dumbing stuff
________-we have cool haircuts
_______-if this is the 50s,
_____both sexes thrown in dark room
__________-music loud enough that we can’t

____music through a glass, a fly

_boredom sits
______-reading your shoe
__________________tugging our own hairs

_surface-bound
_-sit round dumbing stuff
__________starting cigarettes
____________stacking a house of books,
__his shortlived match sculptures

_later run out
screaming deaf into treescraped
__ horizons, bracken
__________________-slow our fire
_________descend to
__________________________magnified touch

_at some point back in the room
caught ourselves paused
__-dancing it was kindergarten
______________plus an ashtray

____________________our flesh blur
___________________________strung
__________________________refused that kiss________


As published in Sein und Werden 'cinematique', Spring 2009 (print edition).

Note: A poor quality copy of Stan Brakhage's early work desistfilm can be viewed here. There is sound, but you'll need to turn up the volume. I recommend tracking down a copy of the Criterion DVD By Brakhage: An Anthology in order to approach his films through a medium closer to the one they were intended for (i.e. a cinema).

notes on status (2007)

Today you toddle off
elaborately inane, to where your profile

fills out like a bin-liner caught by the
wind.

– John Forbes, ‘Colonial Aubade’


ha survive in a corporate office
without actually working (just
live there, haunt the espresso
machine)

see brother, la revolution begins on every page, in
every line

in gel caps /
in the deepest blues

only to find that
nothing beards us like a lack
of ritual responsibilities

a life of not being able to
pop a balloon with a stick of celery

(not the place itself but your slim scared imaginings of)

like spring racing ‘carnival’,
fashions in the field yet
another vocabulary for
status to shake around in...

deep in the bowels of
some corporate tent or other
you realise luxury is irresistible,
has its own set of ‘classique’ emotions

& one day, with a dab of brio and your lucky haircut,
you could have your very own war

(thief!)

perfectionism (2007)

make all these minor adjustments what does it matter no one
turns up except other
DSMIV entrants other tangled wizards
their pet tangents
_____________-brands of solipsism software variety the
_______________price of life
_______________________-me making my
_______________________-minor adjustments
beginning to believe technology's a blind alley though we too are
technologies writing ourselves blind / written out /
the trees still living seem hunched in doubt
______________________________hey!
_________________________________turn up the light or
________________________________________is that as
____________________________high as it goes?

mondays (2007)

monday nights catching up with the
boys operating system updates new
Radiohead all these burnt offerings
leap druglike from hand to hand behind
raised boot of the car not mine i’m not
'the driver' i have no poison file me
under monk the
___tv jokes bounce off me like sponges

though dead soldiers pile
til the bussie busies us
with his pisa-phallus of
_____________empties

look at us the weary
tribesmen surrounding
a table fire built from
mobiles, keys, sunnies
_(dancefloor handbags?)

damn pokie pub twittering
machines money travels
thrilling nowhere adventures
___________ of a 10c piece

because suspicious of everything
while counting down your stardom
rain on your parade since mine's
already soaked i really dropped the
room make mental note to email you
__________another long apology

as 4 blooded men we agree
PCs are distraction files
& files of nectar for the
dumb-bum bumble bee got
tissues? only 1 sting til the
____drowse of the next life

we make our exit as something
heroic but this too collapses
__eaten under the idiot lights

watch out if not for nuggets
of bottle glass we could
walk barefoot as bronze
kids in a holiday eden
engrossed in our triple
____________scoops

at this intersection of
stressors taxi honks
when cut off & therein
how language, as
threat, first
_________pounced?