Inferno (2006)

& when you finally touch down
____________________-in hell
____________(no red carpet)
_________the coffee’s gonna need to be strong.
Hungover-horny & (shit!) your sunglasses
_______-left at home in a jacket pocket.
Of all the things to be without...
Sterling Morrison, Joey Ramone & Ray Charles
smarter men than you (on this score)
____-look godlike standing round in shades
______(still!)
The future’s so bright, etc.
It's funny, Lucifer’s looking a lot
like Danny Tenaglia these days.
Guess he’s always hoarded the killer tunes.
______________________-Had them all
back at the tree, in snaketime. Brokered ever since.
So here’s the rub:
there’s drugs everywhere
but no painkillers
or sleepers.
_____-Figure pretty quick that you won’t
be sleeping ‘til… who knows…
Judgement?
____-But by then your bender will’ve
gathered such momentum that
you’ll’ve forgotten everything
important – even what they say
about the wicked. Anyway, it’s true. And
_____________-they're out of ice.


A version of this poem was published in mad swirl, October 2009.

Notes: Sterling Morrison played guitar in The Velvet Underground.

Danny Tenaglia is a New York-based DJ known for his marathon stints behind the decks (20 hour sets are not unusual for him). Check out this YouTube clip if you'd like to see what he looks like.

Below: In the Inferno by Mehmet Urgut (from deviantart)

let it all (2006)

can this? will it? no?

stop asking. feel good. top up your body.

too long! you look great! yahaha!

I will not carry (2006)

I will not carry
bad blood
because it corrodes,
spreads, leaves us exposed
with too many entrances
and exits.

I will not carry
awkward, bulky items
like red carpets
(for off-chance dignitaries)
or restless dogs
or heavy corpses.

In fact
I have decided
to carry nothing at all.

I'll find water on my way,
and the words left to say

(I have no pocket
for a script).


As published in The Cartier Street Review, February 2009.

Nightpiece #2 (2006)

8pm café closure
aluminium chairs dragged like
teeth on concrete
& stacked

Tram asks do I have tuff nuts
though ‘tuff’... isn't

If you want to be tough
don’t hang in the lightreach
of $2 & souvenir shops
(one is called ‘Australia the Gift’ –
if I wasn’t tough oh-so already
this in itself might see me over the line)

These boys are tough as, they think,
chem dispensers flicking raw deals
(budget lighting) –
but are they mountainbike couriers /
ambulance drivers?
have they ever really had to weave
through anger
at speed?
(Um... yeah, probably.)

Anyone can get supply-chained:
just ask Ouroboros,
giving directions from
the recycling bin, &
the brown old clocktower’s face
has been dealt the same hand –

Boys, show me your pokerface!
whose deal has fallen through?

7Eleven is open yet again
(I fold)

Carfree (2006)

For Bridget

We named her (she was a she)
but her name’s not important now;
none of the forms ask for it

and now that we’re close to selling,
the ad placed

her body
keeping fresh under tarp

realise
it wasn’t a car that was needed after all,
but the momentum
(which, maybe, she embodied)

Figure we won’t miss
dumbing bodiless behind the wheel
driving ego’s other city

and we'll show our support
for free public transport
by walking everywhere

Today for instance
we could walk upriver,
pick a random spot, unpack
easels, handmade wooden birds,
paint the afternoon


Below: Bridget

Partings (2006)

1.

My grandma leaves a cavernous voicemail message, hesitant,
gnawing at silence
like she’s hauled before an expectant room
(we ready ourselves for messages) /
________________________(how we ready ourselves for leaving)
Her antique receiver
clatters, cuts


2.

Amped, jumpy
hopscotching a crowd
Touch-txting
Eyes on timetable

Smote /
_____left to sulk out in the

It’s cold, let’s
Erect a pyramid (or a graph)
Let’s behavioural addictions

Would you mind taking a photo of us?

3.

Felafel Kitchen oranges like a Dutch
home game

Garden salad songs

Once ate here every day
for 3 wks

“When the war broke out, the first
problem was food”
(Our wild oats)

This war's a strange one,
________Sci-Fi /
___blister packs unpierced
but empty inside

In the park
flushed toddler cries herself happy
for a life of random


4.

Yeah it’s yonks
Yay! we’re all trimmed, & eating well, new careers

Gotta go / I'm afraid

Sorry, but
saying goodbye is when
I get sociable

Domestic (2006)

1.

Backs up
What backup(?)
No joy
Brought up on Tetris
We have watered domestics
Just no verifiable drama, just ratcheting tension
Serrated like a row of calm-day flags
On a public building like ours
Hi-tensile webs, these rooms are full
Though always white
No colour for the walls
Something for a weekend (we could grow gold)
Add another project

2.

Not an easy read -
busy; too much for a hangover

Keeping up with personal email
means opening everything once?

The morning wants me to
make an appointment with Jo...

Handwriting all over the /
Um yeah she’s a counselling psych.
Here’s her card if you like

Where’s my reply?

Apartment block wired with arguments
fusing shorter & shorter

You visit the bathroom
to cry behind the exhaust fan

Alc. is a savage fucker /
Prize dilemma

Grate my knuckles with the cheese

3.

Morning birds’ misheard lyrics
Earth coursing with basslines
Some _______ bliss here
(My) little bleak little futile
Run bath of paracetamol
Settings / Control Panel
Set the controls for
____ththe heart of the sun


"Set the controls for the heart of the sun" = Pink Floyd, from 'A Saucerful of Secrets'

MWF '06

The Writers’ Festival =
a queue for coffee

Welcome to fawning, 2006
Many dying great masturbators in the one
Mingling room, begging to join them (one last dance?)
Feted, decorated (nod nod)
Aren’t we all so widescreen ? /
______Hi-def ?

Oh!
One of my friends met Tim Flannery
Without realising it at first
(she has a great laugh)

Another we saw her
9:45am unslept at Flinders St,
About to catch a train to bed
Having ‘picked up’ & landed at
Sofitel (wowee zowee)
No doubt we’re talking one of the greats

Quick plug (2006)

Glitch Bar,
PiO post-gig
drinking red
sells life as
a plagiarist's joke

Intros us to
t-necked
local jazzman,
oversize specs
("I don't play, just
call the shots")

Has night going
on Brunswick St
Thursdays
the souvlaki bar
next to Bar Open
“just head up the stairs
that’s where we’ll be”

Takes a parting pull
on choc brown rolly,
piffs it into glass circle
of the ashtray without
stubbing, its head
glowing amber like
recumbent prophet
burnt by visions

“None of that slow
Miles Davis stuff”
just unruly
stuff to be smalldosed

Tell him we might
see him there
you never know
“we might”

Portrait of Ledong Qui (2006)

Fuelling the party
is a man from Manchuria
with lampshade hat –
in his worker’s bag
a bottle of 60% baijiu
with Chinese characters
partying on the label;
one shareable shot glass;
a fishbowl jar of aniseed beans
soaked grey like fishbowl pebbles;
and a bag of sunflower seeds
which he says are to be eaten
“like a bird” eats, and remaining true
to his word, leaves seedhusks
strewn to mark his perching –
41 amongst late-twentysomethings,
dignified in specs,
wise old man of the East
(he laughs at this!) –
he in turn fuelled by
poetry, philosophy, psych-jazz –
he in turn
turned by great turnings.

He crashes at ours, contributes $2
to the cab, leaves a note marked 9:15am
saying thankyou, and that
the day has greatness to be had.

Note: 'baijiu' = a variety of Chinese white liquor, usually between 40-60% proof, in this case distilled from sorghum.

As published in Mascara #1, April 2007

Cut (2006)

You cut
on the fault.

Your eyes lash.

Fillet.

Green-raw
sected
flowerstem.

I leave pens
in hotspots
and you leave
knives.

The fish
with deep red gills
are the fresh.

For eating, not
selling.

Filler?

No sugar-
coat.

Splicer.

The film, you,
the un-
cut.

sad somehow the girl (2006)

sad somehow the girl
who jogs my block
smile bent out like a coathanger
& wild patches of acne
body rope-taut
life has thinned her early

it’s like i recognise
the way she’s running
away from home
same time every night
recognise scales & mirror
in her eyes, hopeful of change

if there were a way
to cry with her


As published in Clockwise Cat, July 2009.

Overload Poetry Festival

Poetry in Public

On Saturday the 5th of August, I read my poem A Taste of Cindy (see below) at the Atrium, Federation Square, Melbourne, as part of the Overload Poetry Festival.

Thanks so much to everyone who made it down, and to everyone who sent their best wishes! All the encouragement made a big difference.

The short report: great event, great turnout, some very talented poets, plenty of wows, laughs and surprises! I'm sure those who witnessed it will agree that it was plenty of fun.

Featured poets for the event were Grant Caldwell, Lee Kofman & Justin Beal (WA), all of whom captivated the crowd. I was one of eight Victorian Writers' Centre poets who took part, along with poets from Prahran Mission. As expected, the audience was treated to a diversity of voices and styles.

The Overload Poetry Festival has much more in store, so check the program here if you haven't already:

http://www.overloadpoetry.com/festival-program/

The Doris Leadbetter Poetry Cup.

It turns out that I'll actually be appearing in another festival event: The Doris Leadbetter Poetry Cup.

When: Saturday 19 August, 7pm
Where: New Ballroom, Trades Hall, corner of Lygon & Victoria streets
Cost: $7 on the door
What: Approximately 40 poets will each have 1 minute to "prove themselves" to the judges and audience, battling it out for the $2,000 cash prize.
Why: Er... why not?
Expect: short, snappy, high-shutter-speed poetry, and much performative nuttiness.
Full info here: http://www.overloadpoetry.com/festival-program/190806/190806-1900/

I'll also be taking part in live readings down the track, including one to launch the next issue of local experimental writing/art magazine Unusual Work (date TBC), and one for the Victorian Writers' Centre's Christmas Party on 5 December. More details on those later...

Love,
Stu

Below: Reading A Taste of Cindy at Fed Square (photo by Monica Barratt).

Saturday, Brunswick St (2006)

For my partner in crime!


Today
the two of us flow,

cruising, inspired,
the dayglo & drab of the street,

our dialogue torn
from pages of hipster fiction —

humming café
lights us up,

we tell the kitchen
to keep us guessing,

& heads turn for our meals as they arrive,
drifting to the table like carnival floats.

Our knives and forks groove
to P-Funk & Aretha,

then cocktails
for our encore:

one Tequila Mockingbird,
one Test Tube Baby!

We hit the street again hallucinating,
the scene sugarcoated like lovable anime;

we sway through smoke & laughter
spreading from streetside tables,

point at the dead poets for sale
in $1 boxes.

We could sift
through rarities forever,

lose the afternoon
in clouds of patchouli...

today we're in love
with our shop-window reflections,

every t-shirt slogan
tells a perfect private joke,

and even the death-bitten guy
who asks us for change is shining;

he smiles every step
to the bottleshop.


As published in The Paradise Anthology (February 2008)

Misogynist's Song (2006)

You are mine. You are mine like:

1. The glower of a spotlight

is

a finger pointed down.

2. My keys in my hand

and

the purpose of hands.

3. An open palm can

hide

{ confidential information }

4. Our buildings are titans

selling

every little(-)loved thing in the world

(and) 5. blood is the body’s river.

The true(!). The true thing is:

no one gives a damn about your ‘music’

"That's just what I use the word to mean."

The one who could hurt me most (la la la)

(la la la) will never be you

(but what am I?)

I am telling the truth.

(lusts / I am not mine).

I’m bound to lose.

Nightpiece (2006)

I know I’ve spoken of this before,
(I’m waiting between work & a movie / tight on coffee)
but the city night
is crying
(with light)
satellites spark the sky
trams queue Swanston
trees skeletal violet, underlit
“something else”
sushi train from $2.50
pollens by Christian Dior
7 Eleven’s vortex white
black icecream


As published in Clockwise Cat, July 2009.

Here I sit (2006)

my fingers sentient

fiddling with words

taking large gulps of
caffeine in my throat.


A fool’s alchemy:

the extraction of tears
from oceans

all tears having been shed

all oceans dead

and alchemy a lie
for liars

(mystics, poets,
lovers).

It's over (2006)

and
I say nothing

(smoking gun)

or at least nothing from
the list (of things
never to be said again),

all our trusty
workarounds (e.g.):

“Leave me
alone to smoke
my cigarette!”

It’s ok,
we don’t have to be sexy
(any more).

Friends, correct?

Page 198 of 198:
I was (I am!) chasing down Smith St –

you
(had) a hand in this,

I thought,

so do I (in this),

this payment,

Badge of Honour,

well-thumbed anthology of
ways (to get fixed).

It’s over and I’m
mixing up tenses (still);

I chose (I’ve chosen)
the colour blue to
remember you

(storing liquid maps) .

You told me (too),
“Never turn your back
on the ocean”,

but (what if)
the ocean is you...?

Thankyou (2006)

(This is the 100th post to be added to A Collection of Thoughs, so I thought it was time to "take on my own voice" as a way of saying thankyou...)

Thankyou to everyone who has ever: ignored me, criticised me, argued with me, encouraged me (you gave me courage), loved me, made me laugh, made me not laugh, held me, rejected me, indulged me, assassinated me, told me to give up (not enough of you have done this!), made me doubt my own coherence, made me doubt my own appearance (in the world), made me realise that "what you have is yours to find, not to hold", made me realise that quoting yourself is an act of unassailable self-indulgence, shown me something I could not see for myself, shown me that words are probably the most powerful thing within reach, shown me that words are not probably the most powerful thing within reach, shown me that words are the most powerful thing within reach, attempted to explain how things work in the 'real world', blinded me with politics and sighted me with science, danced with me, sung with me, screamed with me, marched with me, cooked with me, fucked themselves up with me, understood me, overstood me, stood on the same step with me, let me be Wordy(!), let me be nerdy(!!!), proved to me that money is less than nothing, resurrected my faith in the simplicity of flux, allowed me to walk in beauty (not like she, but still like the night), allowed me to be quiet, fostered the opening / unlocking / unhinging / singeing of my mind, listened to me speak, (and) spoken to me listen. Thankyou. I could write a list of names, but it would never be complete. Thankfully (most thankfully of all), there is always someone else.

Love (all ways), Stu


"She walks in beauty like the night" = Lord Byron

How to be hungry (2006)

Take your phone and throw it in the river.

Unplug from everything.

Return each thing you love to its birthplace.

Enter someone else's pain, then steal it.

Zen: this road is you, this weather is you.

Look food in the eye before you eat it.

Respect fear as an accomplished adversary.

Walk city streets for days and nights.

Speak to the strangest of the strangers.

Listen closely for the announcement they make.

____-They say, "Lies have taken office."

____-They say, "Decorate the streets with truth."

Birds (2006)

When she
stopped speaking for a year

only birds
unlocked her throat.

I remember kissing her hair,
whispering, “Sister,

the words you lack
are only birds.”

And at last,
breathing a cloud

of dust into the morning,
she broke her silence:

“Only birds who nested
in the trees of Eden.

When Adam was a poet
he couldn’t sleep –

all of sleep and night were driven
coiling through the rocks!

Dwelling in the young clay
of his body, mind silent,

he had begun
living out the bargain,

tending garden
with eye & tongue

(repeating the birds'
melodic names).”

Then her speaking
died again.

Tears came
like ancient trees falling,

and her birds were climbing,
naming the sky.

A Taste of Cindy (2006)

Crack of dawn
Cindy's movin' on
Talkin' Cindy to everyone
'Til she's had her fun

– The Jesus & Mary Chain, ‘Taste of Cindy’

Cindy I loved you as much as I love gambling my life away
I bet your favourite flowers are still gardenias
And lilies of the valley and $50 notes and $20 notes

Cindy I built temples on your tongue
My ribs knew your ribs
You fucked me on a dead mattress
Your legs pale in summer
And we made a cloud of stupidity that first night
Serenading you with a sixpack as we cruised St Kilda beach
We got scribbled
We painted the rocks with water

Cindy I remember you
Cindy lifting off
Wacked on valium toes exposed
Single doona on a double bed
Getting stoned watching TV
And drinking Absolut Citron that I’d lifted from the bottleshop
While you stalled the shop guy with your ‘speed humps’
As I called them
Only to cop a mouthful of your door for my trouble

Cindy I got in line for you
We were lovers with the scents of others
There must’ve been so many names I missed
Of suckers young and old swimming silent from your mouth

Cindy you declared you loved porn ‘as much as the next guy’
We’d laugh at the lamest lines and recite them Shakespearean
While going at it in the laundromat
And I used to dream you short-haired with silk tie
Dressing gown completely open
Uncrossing and crossing everything

Cindy you were let go from every job within minutes
I can still see the slow ghost of you
Scanning items in the express checkout
Then screaming down the defenceless old dear
Who was sure she’d been overcharged for cotton buds
That was one of those times you led me back again rattling your tin
Back to your flat with fridge in the bedroom and no running water
Except hard rain through the broken windows

Cindy you were all money
If you were the Empress of China you’d still shop at Target
You once won five grand on a scratchie
Then lived on strawberries for a month
You drew red texta hearts on naked mannequins
Who you’d rescued from shopsoiled obscurity
And this was your greatest act of charity

Cindy I’m sorry we couldn’t see it through
For growing older while time froze you in its eye
But I’m staying in this lane even if it’s slower
I saw you death-defy too many times
Intent on dying Cindy-style

Whether spreading the love in underpaid pics
Or riding a Hills Hoist through the thick of a thunderstorm
You were always the naked one
Cindy you were the laughing one

Below: reading A Taste of Cindy at Federation Square, Melbourne (photo by Monica Barratt).

Beauty (2005)

A haiku septet for Monica, on her 26th Birthday


Understand: beauty
is more than an appearance;
it is a freedom.


It is the process
of the smiling surrender—
gently letting go.


To fly is to love
like the stem loves the flower,
flies her face (a flag).


Our souls are seamless
like branch blending into leaf
or leaf into space.


You are beautiful
in your flowering, whether
awake or asleep.


Kiss me with your sleep,
and when you wake, embrace me,
hold me with your songs.


When day is opened,
like coloured birds from a tree,
our music takes flight.

What the street saxophonist said to the unsung reveller (2006)

Here under the bridge
I’m a maker
of trailing sad notes

while the hot night we have tonight
is a taker
and temptress;

and you and I both know her,
how the wind will blow her
sporeslike across the night…

Here’s your chance to cut loose
like a monk disrobed,
go undetected,
hide yourself in numbers.

So wish it,
have somewhere to be,
launch a new career for the evening,
go naked to the waist
(do I mean up or down?)

Though you and I both know
how you’ll end in the gutter,
swimming through the stars; until
you're coughing up the dead thoughts
like a backlog of voicemail.

You’ll be sunken paralytic
swearing your lungs out,
my sad notes
spattering you like tired bullets,

and you will claw at the world
as if it did all of this to you.

Melbourne weather (2006)

again dressed down by you
sky grey enough to be black
I should have figured
you were in one of your moods

if you were a true work of art
you wouldn’t date
major leaguers
for how could they appreciate
your taste in irony?

only the likes of us could love you
in spite of ourselves
living in rooms below you

yes make us look stupid
we're so accurate with our hates
though not masochists really

Today more than ever (2006)

------------------------------------------------------------tale of the tribe

-------------------------cave art of the Paleolithic

for poets to come forward as voices
--participants in the larger

-------------------------------------to invite more of the world to enter -------(the poem)

-------------------------------------------------illicit tongue

------------------poets taking many
-----------------------------simultaneous positions
---------to approach, enquire into

---------------------------"it is language that thinks"
-----------------------------language as instrument of vision

------------------poet as endangered species

---------the wider human fate

-----------------today more than ever -------(is the reason)

----------------------the only time allowed to us ----------------------(on earth)

------------------------------------------sense of dangers & repressions still persisting
-----------------------------------an even darker
------------------------------------------------------fatal voice

-----------------our book is bounded
---------our book is open

------------------------------------------------------------------------(a strange fear of freedom)

Happiness (2006)

I went & listened
to a talk
by Khentrul Rinpoche
(a Tibetan Buddhist master)

He apologised for his English
cracked jokes
laughed until everyone was laughing

He said that when we speak or act
our intention
is the most important thing to consider

He assured us that happiness
is not something to be bought,
found or attained -
it is something to be given...

... and whether they be
family, strangers, worms,
lovers, or hungry ghosts,
we should always try
to make others happy.

Then, sensing our disappointment
at all of this,
he cracked a few more jokes, laughed
til the hungry ghosts were laughing.

Inscriptions (2006)

Why don’t you cover me with words?

Write ‘BEGIN’ on my forehead
as a message to the mirror, to my kindred
and my punishers –
I am ready.

I can imagine ‘A-G-O-N-Y’
across the knuckles of my left hand,
‘E-C-S-T-A’ across the knuckles of my right
(ecstasy is always truncated). The ‘S’
delayed on to my left buttock
and the ‘Y’ given to my right,
so that at a time of my choosing, you,
while clasping my right hand behind me,
will see me abandoned
and complete.

Write ‘SOUL’ somewhere on my body,
‘BODY’ somewhere on my soul…

‘COMPASS’ along my cock,
making preparations for compassion,
because desire remains
to be navigated
(our body of water).

What will you scrawl across my eyes?
Ciphers? Coordinates? Keys?
Will I ever be able to read them?

What should the inscriptions say
inside my ear –
what sin
that you could not say there?


Previous versions of this poem were published in Unusual Work #4, November 2006 (in 'abridged' form), and in POAM #309, April 2007.

You can hear a performance of this poem at the beginning of this radio interview (which is available for download as an mp3).

haiku (2006)

Punt Road
flooding rain
headlights cast comet-tails

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.

For Richard (2006)

(with last line by Clark Coolidge)


We are the liquid poem

_____the blood lit with beautiful hazards

_____a loose tooth through turbulence

_____our raw / our overcooked eyes

(everyone rise)

cashed (2006)

was cashed up dangling fifties hundreds over the bar lights shallow red amber faces chronic firelike my good friend Greg conjuring joints sparking up / smoked up loose inspired selecting fancy cocktails from fancy menu talking up at ease with tongue letting it flick & lash bringing the punchline in to land timing it tight being real sophists drawing attention dwarfing our usual shrunken selves spying work of art women thinking they’re spies like us / my good friend Greg on the phone hooked up to the apparatus trying to hook us trying for 350 for cut 400 for pure pure-ish wallet prepped in position are we good we’re good to go yeah Johnny will be here in 20 what a guy


A previous version of this poem was published in hutt 2.5.

You can hear a performance of this poem towards the end of this radio interview (which is available for download as an mp3).

Advice (2002)

do not fear
what lies ahead,
do not sweat
the small numbers
which advertise the truth.
do not visit
the dealer; he is
a misfit, buying
a way out of time
no faster, no slower.
do not consume
just one more coffee
before the descent;
just drop life down
like a wind abating.
do not enter those
burning rooms again
until you have slept,
your runner has fallen,
your mirror has wept.


As published in Clockwise Cat, July 2009.

Numbers (2006)

Don't like knowing
your numbers,

don’t like you knowing
mine

because these are
symptoms of paranoia,

are what remain
after the gloves come off,

salary packages brandished
like talons / guitar riffs,

brawling plastered in pokie joints
with our catch-all misconception,

our woozy pride
hiding behind America.

Let's makebelieve we're mystics
of the unconquered zero,

knowing what we know:
the market won't

fellate us all, because
what is here is here in

heads (heads ragged
with voices),

cooked entropy /
six-figure figurines:

check our numbers
trading futures on the screen.

Below: Andreas Gursky, Chicago Board of Trade II

(source: http://www.artnet.com/artwork/51398/andreas-gursky-chicago-board-of-trade-ii.html)

I go through days quiet (2006)

I go through days quiet

question everything

esp. food & language

(what is food anyway?)

type more words than I speak

despise all ringtones

try to arbitrate disputes amongst mad friends

(by appealing to possibilities of egolessness)

hunt down missing shreds of laughter

//

my favourite poems tend to house collectible jokes

like O'Hara letting himself go

with the wind, out of traffic

"Lana Turner we love you get up"

I like to let go

like this or like

Daredevil swinging blind on the nightsky

- anything to dodge being a passenger -

letting go the easiest, the hardest thing

(helps if you don't question every single shift of sky)

"try not to run away from yourself" she said

but I run til I feel elevated

I run til I am rain

I go through days quiet

Charisma (2006)

When was the last time you faked charisma?

Were you wasted?

Profiling your interests for a dating site?

(“wild parties, latin dancing, balloon sculpture”)

Sometimes making a fake is a waste, like breaking a lake or trying to pick up in a pickup.

Sometimes language is a loser and dejected hacks are behind everything...

*

The way we are a couple of days after getting loved up on pills is the opposite of charisma:

our faces deserted, all but the most animal entertainment fails;

all is lost (until found again).

‘Suicide Tuesday’: my manager wears charisma like headdress feathers of an Indian Chief that I see reflected on my monitor while he peers, arms folded, behind me.

(If I was born again as an officeworker I’d hope to be blind; who needs the protesting eyes, carcinogens, under-appreciation, murderous décor?)

Figure that only some freak emergency can save me; daydream that somewhere, in another corner of hyperspace (hmm... why not in a gym?), disaster has dropped: trampling hordes / malfunctioning alarms / charisma leaking everywhere


As published in bambikino 9, November 2008.