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.

Absence (2006)

Since you left I’ve traded cruise control
for working on the case (Wittgenstein: “the world
is everything that is the case”).

It’s not so hard,
keeping out of trouble. Got friends queuing to keep me out of it.

Cruising St Kilda streets for a skanky dayglo fixup
is not an option, except in fiction. I don’t need a fix;
need a reinvention.

I could head to some seedy basement bookstore,
look at pink
for an hour. But even that I’d see as morbid infidelity.

Fact is, you don’t get these strings attached from talk alone. You have to do something
with your body, like what we’ve done down in the bunker,
while bombs whistled & jolted above. Once you’ve repaired one
another it’s all over,
and the strings begin. And let's face it,

I love your strings.

veil somehow (1998)

Here and there who and each....... veil somehow................ to hear
........................... would speak........ slowly
..........strangely right...................... is the other................................ knows my body
like a word...... which we don't understand......................... next to................ the city
........................................ clothes on..... fabric.... tongues................... and shellshock
over................... the................... grey sky................... mystery................ that is taking up
the air.

....................................... Residue............................ clusters of others'.............. faces
............................. windows steamed... up................. rolling up...... in the parking lot
........ while an old man........... standing................... sings................ for breakfast.... and
rain.... song..... along the side........... of supermarket............ trolley traffic... coming
and going...... squeaking..... clouds up there............... moving slowly........ first drops
............. old man standing....... and where are................ we..... running.................. to
the bus........... get away...... from rain.......... singing old man........... foggy windows
....... supermarket..... grey sky........ mystery.

......................... Small children......... like them.............. I don't sometimes
............. I guess I do............ there is no................ difference...... we argue... it's
raining.............. now........... a.......................... lot................................... too much
heating too hot..... on this bus................... every bus......... you know me better
...... when I'm... not.................... in this............. place.............. on a............. bus
state... of mind... it's
....... just that...... no it is......... only that..... a..... good reason......... to not
be
......... myself don't you know...... here and there...... I'm not myself... yet it
does
...... veil somehow......... make sense.... to hear this..... somehow......... would speak
slowly but I am........... shut in the rain.... rain is fast.... I'm shut......... don't ask me
that.......... yes, and shellshock.......... what grey mystery........ taking up the air.

.................... Rain down windows......... it's always rain.................. down
windows
................ as................ far as I see..... when it's rain... it's down windows... not that either
........................... what you want me to............... speak to you... okay... concrete and rain
and........ buses and kids.......... and mothers........ and this is what I'm seeing so I'm saying
sorry
look, I don't know......... is it? ............. well you speak something.......... some other way
I'm
.................. looking............. out the window......... if you want to talk, .......... talk..... but only
if you listen........ I'm listening..... looking.... thinking....... what's the problem I'm not
myself

...... Veil somehow..... cover......... over.... somehow you don't know....... this is
how I am
.. when I'm shut.......... what's shut got to do with.......... it....... the rain.......... this place
state..... of mind....... is a.... veil somehow.......... in between....... home and the city.

Counting fingers............ understanding the grey... sky........ you've got to... make time for
........... rain.... not for rain......... for me... got to veil.... somehow......... don't disagree
about................. the sky.............. strangely right................ like a word
............. we don't understand.................... the
sky......... veil somehow....................... can't cover.......... the sky........... somehow veil
to hear............... the word............. that is taking............. up the air........ from small children
and buses
and an old man singing....................... for breakfast... and rain down................ windows.


As published in Voiceworks, Issue # 32, 1998

powerup (2006)

Got to grab this
powerup / needed
for the next
level

to defeat
the bigboss /

then drive deep
south get away
become invisible
, etc.

My reflexes
primed
need this
powerup real
bad / need

the heavier
firepower
'gainst this
world need the
higher leap. I'm

feeling lucky
let me ride
the rising bubble
reach those higher
platforms. Need

to pick up some
more chiming gold
need a health
pack need

an antenna
to pick up signals /
broadcast into
my bloodstream.
Once I hit the

highscore
can forget lost lives
can sleep dead forever
in secret level /
pixel heaven.

the Kirstie Alley dream (2005)

I

You never used to be like this. Honey,
you've been hacked into. You got the grey in spades but

where
oh
where is the incandescence ?

Used to be unstable nucleus of uranium 235
& now look

you’re dunking
artificial sweetener in your eye.

Don’t play green, jellybean. (I’ve seen every frame of footage.)

And this party food is small. Place is dead. This isn’t like you.

These aren’t the lips I used to know -
stickier,
chapped and unresponsive. They are so lonely.

I dream inertia, dreams where I’m submerged in the office as usual, casting bubbles with my mouth, but you no longer take your place at my workstation, treading water over my out tray; can’t even offer me dreamt lassitude.

(Not impressed.)


II

“Let’s be logical.” That’s cute, but we don’t even start being logical. The bedroom remains impassive. It is a clearance sale. It is a shingle beach. And other tributes to this malfunctioning frost-engine.

Look at us now, waiting in the data for a research methodology.

How long did it take before you started using again? I’m not about to point my finger at the drugs, I know the problems pre-dated. Believe me, I know. Like a mother.

Don’t straighten your make-up, re-calibrate your clothes. Won’t make one iota. The trajectory of my questioning is keyed. Headed for your swerves, skids, fishtails… i.e. your brain’s most lizardly sanctuaries, most manipulative little hatchlings.

I don’t mean to talk down to you. Just don’t ask me for change. Or if you do, make it like that Meek stencil (“Keep your coins, I want CHANGE”), with full-blown political statement backlighting your plight.

Guess you wanted to control, nudge my faders, split my cables. Got ransacked by you. Control is never harmlessly itself, but it’s always impeccably presented. You were always dressed up like a Superpower.

That's where you score – on the street?

The subtext of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is that bright rainbows of designer drugs could invade our schools, and look what’s happened. Not that I blame you.


III

Looking for a challenge? Sure you are.

You’re forever high, scratching away
asphalt skies

lost so much time freezeframed

Sometimes I go digging through dusty old record crates,
the vinyl warped by sixteen summers.
Within the raw & wildest cuts,
trace your sexual genealogy.

I argue with old songs.

[lot of your opinions I don’t think are just.]

But can still catch the beery bittersweet.

A rare connectivity when we first. As if we could face the sun, head the moon.

When we forked, I didn’t mince; said, “I can dream without you.”

blackberries

fractal

slowmotion into

tzatziki

copies

And then later in my dream you are Kirstie Alley. You go public about the length of time you've gone without sexual relations: 4.5 years, because, you say, you didn’t want “fat sex.”


IV

You never reached 'no', never refused anything. Although you never could abide inflatables; didn’t do prosthetics. Would've shared tapas and boutique piss with the Menem government in Buenos Aires. If you could.

Your credo: stereoscopy, South Yarra style;
more credible than scientology at least (the Kirstie Alley dream is a haunter).

Each year, a blood-direct original, a surprise movie comes to light us. Flash back to you in '02. Scooped awards, bagged the white lies, banked them. Economy of one-liners: one line never satisfies. Now you’ve still got a little pollen dust above your lip, hanging like a plaque, saying, “This was my success”. This was your secret.

But this is (or was) our home, and this is your captain speaking. Kirstie Alley has written a book called How to Lose Your Ass and Regain Your Life. I’m not recommending it. But it promises to be an opus in the metamorphic tradition. It would make Kafka cough, Ovid ovulate. It might make you sing again.


V

The bridge was not designed to carry large pedestrian crowds. And we are like this.





Notes

* Uranium-235 is an isotope of uranium that differs from the element's other common isotope, uranium-238, by its ability to cause a rapidly expanding fission chain reaction. (wikipedia entry)

* Carlos Menem was president of Argentina from 1989 to 1999. (wikipedia entry)

* Kirstie Alley really has written a book entitled How to Lose Your Ass and Regain Your Life. She is a scientologist, and is probably best known for her performances in the TV series Cheers and the Look Who's Talking series of films. Alley has become an anti-obesity campaigner, and is a spokesperson for the Jenny Craig weight-loss program. Recently she admitted to not having had sex for four and a half years, because she didn't want to have "fat sex".

* A photograph of the stencil artwork by 'Meek' is shown below. More of Meek's work can be seen on the streets and alleys of Melbourne, or else go here:

PHARMAKONYMPH (2005)

lack me
seck me
fick me
kuck me
dock me

am so dropdead
am so advertised
am so wealthy nation
am so irretrievable
am so credit card
am so hotly contested

want my perfect scent
want my perfect artificial
want my perfect distance
want my perfect orgasmic
want my perfect photoshopped

I drive a Mercedes Benzodiazepene
I vac mounds of snow
I give deepthroat finger
I believe every airbrushed
I assume form of the new blackmail

wanna be on top of your lust
wanna be a work of ass
wanna be the Vague cover girl
wanna be a superstarvation
wanna be your mantis

see me advanced
see me undress rehearsal
see me make you stutterflutter
see me as you choke & divulge
see me fly
see me wasp


Note: in Greek, the word 'pharmakon' can mean both 'poison' and 'remedy'.

Poem commencing with a line from a Mambo commercial (2003)

A short taxi ride from the truth
we receive a phone call...

lottery! numbers!
We. Are. The. Money.

Mouths lock open,
we die maybe three times,

hot tears of confusion
sprint over our cheeks -

but then you and I had always known
we were destined to be loaded,

and we know what is required of us,
transient us -

poised to become
frontpage drug abusers,

the paparazzi blinding us white
whenever we hatch from the hotel room -

we're kissing ourselves relentless,
tongues lashing -

now we're rising idols,
lit up large above the easy city,

naked,
ablaze.

The Breaking (2002)

That night:
the shatter & melt

glass filled with ice
slipped from my hand.

I mean, I was
just flaking in a booth, dimlit bar,
3 friends,
drugs between us making mistakes

&
didn't want to know
your whereabouts
how you were captured
what painkillers stomached
what beds caught you
when you fell.

I fell till 10am,
riding cabs, throwing money;
crashed some dirty recovery...

glued to a girl,
dosed up & vodka'd,
flapping mothlike at the lights,
kamikaze.

Played dumb, played
dead

& in her eyes,
death that pretty young thing,
saw a way in.

An earlier version of this poem was published in Page Seventeen, issue #3, April 2006.

Purpose (2005)

I (can) try to tell you why
I’m (out) on the street
in the intense (flashing) inane
under a (scathing) weather
darting forked tongues (which)
can’t integrate (into) my mood
thinking do I (really) want to be
confined to a place (that) collects
itself (only) as suburbs of
(decorative) leafy-dream fallacy
thinking (do) I really want
to carve (out) and protect a space
to freefall into familiar clichés(?)

(But) the question then becomes
whether to leave everything (behind)
(i.e.) become ascetic wandering
among mysteries of (love and) chaos
or (go) backwards into the body
(to) drug and kidnap senses
disordered (until) they push
the size and speed of the (signal)
(towards) de-iced present
the present I have (to)
(show or pass) you in a word
but nobody can say exactly (where)
(can) guess exactly which

the great singing voices of the dead (2005)

Down in the
blood corridors and
down in my flesh
I’ve been writing you...

Morning eyes remind me
how much of you remains untouched—
how many discoveries remain.

As the day spins, songs climb out
of hibernation suddenly,
from wherever they'd been waiting—
and you sing your way inside them,
inhabit them wildly
like bodies that belong to you.

Our mouths wide, flooding the chorus,
as they thread and intersect with us—
the great singers of the dead,
soul-singers and blues-singers
sharing this weakness for living—
how these bodies feel good together,
how we are glad to be weak.

don't be alarmed (2005)

you played straight into our hands

toylike in your confused flesh & blood

a testament

to willingness

head down eyes switched off

useful

who were you to think you were
born to

to die close to happiness?

you weren’t the first

so ready to succumb

workload-drowned

flywing fragile

family to feed

we let you
believe

flashed the money

bled the life from you

was it troubling not
at all

clear conscience

you came and went without a sound

to zero

what’s the problem don’t be
alarmed

what you wanted

what do you know?

Portrait D'Une Femme (1998)

("You preferred it to the usual thing:
One dull man, dulling and uxorious,
One average mind - with one thought less, each year." - Ezra Pound)

starting with ski-jump nose
she lined herself out /
----------------------in pixels
with colours (dabs of red, pinks, fleshes), contours,
profile moulded on like papier
maché, makeshift mountain range. map of she. Ezra
keys in the variables and they are
fulsome, somehow stiff, a breathtaking
sphinx of presence, feigned orgasm /
-------------------------------------picturesque illusion. scopophilia, she is taking part /
-----------------------------------------taking her apart,
-------------------------------------turning her over.
masculine camera train'd, where to
trace the borders of beauty /
-----------------------------fix her
eyes to subway tunnel surveillance, figures
of 'lifestyle', 'hysteria', 'tragic' dance
in on her. does she blush. Ezra the troubador
peddling from a market stall on a rainy day.
Ezra touching her up. she's fragile, who knows.
her mixtures her default setting, sat
solemn in pagoda with haiku epiphanies
passing her by. express freight-train batters past platform,
mannequins dive for cover, petals on a
wet black bowery boy. she peels petals from her
countenance, makes all portraits imperfect
while Ezra spins in grave. she dodges
and weaves the headings, the subheadings,
her info can't be passed on, she's pierced
and pinned, persona non grata /
----------------butterfly, lovely, a convenient exit lit up green /
------------------------------------------------------------------projects photomural of forest.

Invisible Fire (1998)

For Dan, who found it...

We're screaming over top of the freeway in his tired car, and he's making it swerve out and shake. It's 7 in the morning and no sleep, and the freeway's so crazily big under the sun... Winds forcing in through the gap he's left in his window.

I'm prying myself awake to keep him awake alert, his mouth's still rushing on about night that spun into day, where it disappeared, where the night really hit! The rave was the planet we visited before this one, planet of pixel colours and sugartalk.

The sugar's still rushing out of him, mouth expanding bright... and the pulse, pulse, pulse, pulse is still there fast with us. Hear it in the wind distorting. Hear it in the lane-markers shooting under the wheels. Hear it in the sun-glow.

"It's all made out of invisible fire!" he shouts out, all revelatory and caught-up, and it's all about light rippling and patterns forced through on us, and the illusion of houses, and mutli-colour shopping centres, and rippling greengrass standing up roadside.

Breaking through under bridges that stretch all the way, cross-horizon. Head blurred but all is sharp - all is sharp and dangerous today; sleep cries out hours away.

He's looking to tell me all he's got, all he's collected in flight - can't keep his eyes nailed to the road on this morning, and he says to imagine what it's like in the US, with all those spaghetti junctions and fat immense highways. And in his shooting-star car, I can imagine; in the scorching daylight, I can imagine.

We go fast, go where we want to be. Our faces dry and red-spotted but we're too beautiful to look, and I'm not sure he knows his hands have the wheel... We are guided by invisible fire.

the now (2005)

quando l'amor divino mosse di prima quelle cose belle *

(Dante, Inferno, Canto I, XLII)



[in a club with writhing lampshades]

a first for you: being opened to see, be

[all light and movement tilted, stretched in order to reach closer]

a first for you and I, of many: allowing words to pass naked between

[once naked, our resemblances observed]

we mirror in quietude, fragility, peaceseeking, truthmaking

[quietude: the lake so tranquil that even a fallen feather would shatter]



[emergence: these hours when the seed somehow begins to explore, beyond itself]

to surrender and be guided, without design or hand

[fire lit -uncontained- continues to this moment, then beyond]

altitude is attained: no dropping from this point, never coming down

[the drugs don't work, they just make you work]

I know I'll see your face again, star-encrusted dreamface of thee



[ascension: all is dream]

our other sleeping selves: rugged-up rulebound / drugged-up doublecrossed

[see us carefree like never]

before we could turn any further, we are met by the future

[waved on by the seraphim, pilots of otherworldly lamplighting above]

sure signals, uninterrupted messages, no mixed signs

["You know Monica, this is very intense."]



in(present)tense

[my fingers unpuppetstrung comb through cascading hair: your hair]

disbelief, that of a spectator to oneself in dream

[our ease of touching]

as if we were paired before, in other translucent waters

[it's now and we kiss. we kiss now. here, we, kissing the now.]




* Translation: "... when divine love first moved these things of beauty..."

'The Drugs Don't Work' by The Verve, lyrics by Richard Ashcroft, (c) 1997 Hut Recordings

Nightsight (2003)

Nah, see, I need the extra...
(craving excess to

blot memory)
... my friend, my so-called friend,
took the money, the knife's still
in me -

(ran skywards with the
money)

I want to find a home for tonight,
to crashland -
what's your smile look like
from a pillow, bobbing over me?

(the amateur crackwhore plays,
temptation, the ride, enlargement,
camera-flash, catwalk behind the
eyes)

Deep down, baby, we're all sin,
guilt & ugly, & I want to show you
that, shower you, spend my loose change,

smoke another baseball
bat, turn you over, & over

I'm seeing things, ghosts patrol
this room, our eyes are
fucked

(grimace
under fire, under power, scales
loaded, cash-fucking you, we
deprave, we slave down)

24 Hours on Poetry (2002)

I

Poetry: why?

A methodology of complaint.

Dirge for smashed flowers?

Rain droplet tilting a mirror up to all these
pushing colours of life?

Your lounge room window... or maybe no windows in
the future you wake in?

Flow.

A why or a wherefore? I mean, this task
of shadowcatching is underappreciated &
abused, like only the dead & the deaf
are abused.

Envy. Of foreparents fighting wars on behalf
of someone, anyone.

No city views from here.
Foresight; undersight, oversight;
wondersight, loversight. Oversite,
undersite; coversight,
thundersite...

Commercial-free.

Une raison de vivre; une liason de vivre.

Mes frères, mes soeurs; mes pères, mes mères!

Mon frère, ma soeur; mon père, ma mère!

Choissez va famille!

Play. I will watch.


II

Poetry: what is?

Magnum of pinpricks for the sleep-deprived.

Help me to tell you a pretty nothing.

If I lose you, take this string, tie it
around your scarred ankle, tread the wet
floating leaves to the exit.

Quit looking for the Minotaur. He left.

I tell my girlfriend she reminds me of my
sister. I don't have a sister.

Sit-down comedy for populism-challenged
agèd fustics.

I don't care. But I do.

Are you drinking wine? I like wine,
the evening dreams like a baby, the hangover
is fossicking bag for torch, the fog.

Dark jewel, the surface understands no
light.

Disjointed chemicals.

Breakfast.

I think we're busy. We don't sleep
much.

What is poetry made out of?

A Billboard Said 'Yes' (1998)

A billboard said 'Yes'
but I was seeing 'No'.

An ambulance sirens its way through anxious
traffic. Spread of paralysis.

Looking to the objects on the ground,
I linger over a blister pack, emptied of capsules:
a monthly course of medication disappeared,
placed on tongue, down throat.
All out of.

Sitting streetside on steps, she says to him,
'What about that other money you were getting?'
Him shrugging shoulders, head swivels away, breathes.
His beanie, jeans ripped, scratches back of neck;
she cigarette between lipstick, tracksuit and boyvoice.

A billboard said 'Yes';
I walk past them, picturing the timestamp on my train ticket.

Man stands on concrete stage, sprays words of God out at moving targets;
I cover half my face to be sure I take nothing in.

Streetcorner: town's renowned drunk sat, dancing-eyes,
with baby-bloated Koori woman.
They talk about Princess Di. Flinders St station opposite,
smells of trains.

A girl I know up ahead. Here she is, far gone and out-of-it,
searching for anyone anything.
Her liquefied body: cling, latch on to. Then here I am: solid,
catchable, acquiesce. She breaks in. My meagre space. Her head
sprouting many arms.

A billboard said 'Yes',
and I wanted to jump up into it,
freeze smiling up there with a message.


Versions of this poem was published in Voiceworks Issue 32 ('Distance'), 1998, and in The Words We Found (an anthology celebrating 21 years of Voiceworks).

Tug of War (1996)

Your eyes fried eggs
Dripping with fat
And the bruised red plum of your head
With bulging cheeks, balloons being blown

And from your crisp bacon lips:
'You hit me, you bastard!
How could you hit a woman?'

But I would never hit you
Your eyes glazed over
With the glimmer of supermarket shelves,
The watermelon of your gut

'He started it!'
You wept carbonated tears, pointed me out
And the onlookers in their plastic wrappers
Caught sight of my guilty trousers

And you pushed me against the glass
Of the chemist which sells tampons
And condoms and babywear

So I held up my pistol-ended arms in defeat
And broke free of your insistent grip (an immense vine of sticky tape)
Then walked off, shaking my head
My pulse the flashing red man

Only when I reach the outdoors
With its evenly spaced, soothing rubbish bins
Does the red man turn green
And I realise I am walking home
To where an ashtray languishes
Waiting to be emptied


An earlier version of this poem was published in Farrago, Volume 75, Edition 5, June 5 1996.

Untitled (1995)

I trample over your bodies
I cast you in daydreams without remorse
I change your forms to suit my wishes
Then I laugh at how strange you've become


As published in Farrago, Volume 74, Edition 6, Tuesday 6th June 1995.

Bed of Memories (1995)

Even though you 'had to' let me fall,
I think I still take a place in your mind.
On spring days you come home and then you find
That there is no one else there at all.
The angels in your head curve your sweet lies;
You can't wait to make them do things to you -
Motions you dream up through a haze of blue.
I force my way through, your image dies,
You have no choice but to dream of me.
So we dance together atop your bed,
I'm the bright star in the back of your head.
As you close your eyes at night you see.

During the day you will be in doubt,
But on your ceiling, seek me out.


As published in Farrago, Volume 74, Edition 6, Tuesday 6th June 1995.

song (2002)

Failure of me
to see in
far enough
out enough
with you enough

I get caught
on the sharp of words,
get caught out
by loaded definitions -
just you try defining me!

It's so, so
fucking hard
to say
anything
at all

The phone hates me,
my lover loves me,
she drives me
to the beach
to believe me

Feel the sand,
let the wind
land on me -
it's night, the headlights
open doors

Crash the water
over here,
I'll catch the water
between my hands,
a drop.

trust (2002)

I think you are when
your hand is in me, I am
your pocket, don't drop these
words I am delicate,
these words my package now,
drop them because you need
them /
your ears clean now
with all the water, and like
an ocean wave I tilt,
hit the floor pane of glass, why
didn't you tell me you were
slowing, turning into a picture
cherished from childhood, the eyes
match, but see from different
shelters, & all of those easy
fingers,
you could lie.

the scene (2002)

We have drunk the soma; we have become immortals, we have gone to the light; we have found the gods. - The Rig Veda


In this room we get darkened & allow the drugs to move us. Here we touch into another region. There, we will meet, but everything will have shifted. Even our names. I am waiting for the shift, the beat is my entrance. I am waiting.

I am waiting. I am waiting for the drugs to move me. I am waiting for them to obscure and purify. I find a friend: we wait together. Waiting can be long. We talk about waiting. We talk about nothing. This, this is nothing.

This, this is nothing. We have swallowed angels. Waiting for them to glide to our brain. Play the harp. The melody. Don't let me down now. My friend has joined the dance. The dance: our disappearing. We are re-shaped in air. Folding the darkness.

Folding the darkness. Drugs running now, all ways as entrances. Find the music's central firing. Faces leap in the glow. I take the rhythm. This is not holy. (This is fury of futures.) Mistake myself for no one. No one dreaming on. I have entered now. Am moving towards. All moving towards. Flow is here. We are the outer reaches. Extension of the flow.

Extension of the flow. Spectre-dance of futures, dream with us. We dream you, you dream us. Beneath us is a beat. Our foundation. We are founders. Here, with the city hidden, we are founders. Everything will happen.

Everything will happen. Bring the rhythm closer, so we can see one another. We see one another now. Bring the rhythm closer.

Bring the rhythm closer. The fragile one has entered the building. Love has entered. Here we protect each other. I see friends everywhere inside the dance. They see back at me. We release. We arrive finally. Bullshit burnt away.

Bullshit burnt away. We travel. This is us perhaps, maybe this is what we are. See the scene around us.

See the scene around us.

Vague (1998)

She (exotic, an original) was probably out & about
rock-climbing or playing flute in her band;
I was home with cheese toast reading Wittgenstein.

I couldn't remember what her job was
or which college she was at -
I'd put too many braincells to the flame
like a Nazi bonfiring History.

Whether vital stats were that important remained unclear
like the night I smoked that green opportunity
last week, & just didn't matter.

Because in another corner
of the city schoolboys chatted, waited outside the
sliding doors for their executive powerdressing
girlfriends, & skaters chewed chewy.

Still, I was fucked if I
could remember her phonenumber.

Ashtray (1998)

I chose you to be my lover by pulling
a name out of a hat - but the folded square
of paper was blank.

Another twist: I was the one
who called the end to our so-called
relationship. I put the words in your
mouth like dropping a cassette in its slot
and you just sat back silent and
listened to yourself playing back.

I am a cut-and-paste artiste:
I assembled the words from
our past conversations.

I cremated every gift you gave me -
now they're all disguised in my ashtray,
rising on the water level
in the rain.

Slowly (1998)

So we'll pole-vault over all the oncoming traffic? But it chases
us away and still the eyes walk the wire, the faces drop off in
the midst of conversation, revealing a gap. And nothing's happened

yet, though these eyes are full of water waiting for the peak
of a drought to become the bursted heads of hoses. Still these lovers
tearing the apples, juicy teeth, choking on seeds and cores.

And all we need is for someone to throw the lifesaving hoop
and watch its red and white stripes spinning, roulette wheel on
waves, spinning to fast pink and if we could place our bets

please when the silver ball lands in its groove and we have
found this love. Then we might be pouring ourselves into bed,
everything has been circled in red ink and we've mislaid the

obvious questions, spent the appearances, we're losing our touch, or
is it just the time of the night, the wine and the slowing, the slowness
of my taking a nonplussed arm out from beneath your head?

Drive-thru (1998)

The radio sniffling some song out, and
its candy glare seduces us, drawing
conversation to the fringes, as cigarette
ash rains from the wound-down windows,
the car idling like a lover's sleeping face.

Queuing up in the drive-thru we feel itchy,
as if we're watching lottery balls land
while chewing our tickets; like a mobile
chirping at the back of the theatre, we're
crying out to be muted, forgotten, satisfied.

We bin the cups & wraps, waste more cigarettes,
then drive... through a streak of green lights
that flick to late amber, past sullen drivers
tapping fingers on steering wheels,
windscreens snatching warped ghosts.

And the zebra crossings stripe under us,
as the radio station goes off the air, and
we are handed over to the silence, as a
speed camera gets another dumb picture,
its diamond flash dribbles off the car.


A previous version of this poem was published in Mascara #1, April 2007.

Kiss (1996)

My unloved arm snoozes under your head
Dreaming of pins and needles

Then awake with a start
Squinting like a newborn
It sits up and surveys itself

And in your pearl-frame mirror
I kiss you on my arm
Tasting through its field of static
As you sleep


An earlier version of this poem was published in Farrago, Volume 75, Edition 5, June 5 1996.

D......... (2003)

I am unwashed clothes,
stubble, heap of pizza boxes,
lost phonenumbers,
averted appointments,
missed boats.

I am clinical depression,
I am Aropax, paroxetine,
30mg per day, to be taken
in the morning preferably
with food.

I am binge drinking,
overeating, middle finger
wedged in throat, toilet
bowl, 1pm wakeup,
evasion & chicanery.

I am duckling ugly,
book of changes,
Jude the Obscure,
rebel without cause,
"know it's over / still I cling"

I am wasting my life, killing
my life.


(This was found scribbled on a piece of paper with other notes about job interviews that never happened on June 11, 2003)

RED PORSCHE DREAM TREATMENT (2001)

For Yarni


Getting down to the real method,
feeling the engine like purring amphetamine,
vibration coursing through the driver's seat,
senses dissolving the world inside/outside of
a red Porsche, where the dream hides me.

At a traffic light,
in the rear-view the deserted drugface reflected,
ate the green light & left the secure world -
turned flaming butterfly, hysterical,
an allergy, all scorching red & wheels.

Left the road & climbed across
the spine of a hill, horizon beckoning like a hand -
& one thunderstorm, one siren
all the signs I need to believe
world's end lies up ahead.

In the back my two brethren, fading hitchhikers,
bathing in sweat, being stripped of the foliage of memory -
& again shaking off the urge to slow,
I tell them, "Either we're dancers or we're salad;
if we die, we die hot... we'll be lightning stinging the dawn."