Thursday, November 12, 2009
Song for a Neglected God
When God left the
church at five
he took his golden revolver and
headed for the meadows
for target practice.
At about
ten, he headed
home
to his wife
and children
passing
in his car
a row of willows.
Wednesday, October 07, 2009
10 Years in Amsterdam
Three thousand mornings. Three thousand revolutions.
The faster you spin, the stiller the light.
After the storm, breakfast.
“Drink up. You need the vitamins”
This love is deep
shit.
I give her what she wants.
No-one gets hurt.
Friday, October 02, 2009
Song for a Neglected God
When God left the church
at five
He took his golden revolver
And headed
For the meadows
For target practice.
At about
ten, He headed home
to his wife
and children
passing
a row of willows
in his car.
Thursday, October 01, 2009
Preset Wash
Sharon, let go of the child. It’s finished. It’s really finished.
The mornings in the laundry, gone,
Piled-up and discarded, a thin film of softener
Inside the dispenser. Leave it! Let your heart stop. Let the pegs
snap and fly off the line when you pull at the clothes.
A funny, funny story but how does it end? It doesn’t, does it.
Behind the air a coolness that wasn’t there before. Just wasn’t.
Christ, not now. I haven’t had a good one. A thumping
good one, and then.
And then? OK.
Monday, September 07, 2009
Let it live!
In my country, we prefer the tender hardships of spring and its barely-feathered birds to lofty goals.
Truth is waiting for dawn beside a candle. The window is filthy and neglected. But this doesn’t matter to the one keeping vigil.
In my country, we don’t question an emotional man.
There isn’t a dark shadow on the capsized boat.
Practically not saying hello is unknown in my country.
We only borrow that which can be given back many times over.
There are leaves, - yes, many leaves - on the trees in my country. The branches are free not to choose to bear fruit.
We don’t believe in the goodwill of the conqueror.
In my country, we give thanks.
René Char
Friday, September 04, 2009
Six Boxes
The boxes have arrived and I have put them on the kitchen floor.
I open the first and before I pull back the last flap, I imagine how soon I will be already slightly familiar with the contents that I have never seen. I pause and let that future recede a few seconds. And then I lift out the small bolts of silk. Their circus-like sheen and rattan smell turn the kitchen into a souk. The evening draws back to an afternoon I spent years ago wandering around a warehouse on vacation. Already then, I noticed how outmoded anything exotic really is. I saw Nathalie walk towards me, having finally found me among the packed acreage of rice bags, dried fish and cartons of plastic utensils. She told me that she was looking forward to dinner. I try to remember where we ate. Is this something we can keep? But there is nothing there now. Thinking back is like being alone in a cinema with a too many embellishments: velvet curtains, chandeliers, volute carvings in the armrests.
The second box is on the tip of my tongue. Of course, an illusion, a trick. Prestidigitation. Let me draw it for you. The line is not solid, but marbled like from a piece of charcoal. This makes it gritty. Here we go. It looks like a face: dirty, hot and wet. This must have been when we played soccer in the yard with a tennis ball. My teeth tingled with the taste of chewed sand. I spat and coughed as it snaked down my throat. We were three-nil ahead. I think at that time we said “our favor” . This is the driftwood theory. Not embellishments but sediments: dirt collecting in the lines around your eyes. Pools of mud running from your sideburns.
Box number three. It’s such a distinctive box: no longer an ordinal but a cardinal number. I could have started here, or at anytime. It doesn’t matter. It is an epic box: in medias res. Like something from the Greeks or Romans. Let’s get to the point: Dido was never going to get Aeneas, so why bother. When you climbed the steps of the amphitheatre, the sound came from all around us. But then, this is just an exception to the relentless logic, the irresistible sequence of things. The starting point is now, and the universe expands equally outwards from wherever you are.
I have put the fourth box on the table, and scratched the veneer. Christ! And when I lifted it up, the staple has caught the needlepoint place mat and picked a hole in it. Naturally, I turned the box over to inspect the damage and its breakable contents broke in an avalanche onto the floor. A heap of porcelain figurines gesticulating their maimed stumps. The jagged noise scared the cat who sought solace among the knick-knacks on the bookshelves. Why not, the attachable schnook pencil eraser has spun into the washing-up, sending a greasy wave across the bench onto my shirt. Where else?
The fifth box is the oldest. It’s not creepy. It contains just one object: the sixth box. So why the fifth box? If you look at the sixth box you will notice that it was one of six boxes: not these six boxes, but another six boxes. And where are the five other boxes? Well, they were supposed to have been in the fifth box with the sixth box. Their sixth box, which is now ours.
Wednesday, September 02, 2009
The Lark
The sky’s final ember and the day’s first heat,
It remains crimped in the dawn and sings about the agitated earth,
Carillion-master of its breath and free on its way.
Fascinating, we kill it filled with wonder.
René Char
On the tympanum of a Romanesque church
This is the house for the abandoned of God.
Bent backed and blue-stoned.
The hopeless greed of the dark,
Endlessly pursued
In its love, in its skeleton.
The truth of secret tears,
The greatest offering of winter sleep.
René Char
Thursday, June 18, 2009
Personal
It was a two-dimensional bubblegum bubble shivering outwards
in a viscosity of glass, backlit by a sun so huge
everything was in X-ray. The infinitely larger world
of my nails and skin could never be fathomed by these beings.
This is what a global pandemic looks like at close range:
Atomized feeling of fever and pain: an inward distance
beyond ourselves: the quiet colony of refugees in a corner of our anatomy.
The great internal cavity: unknown, no longer inhabitable.
Wednesday, June 17, 2009
Plums in Honey
What has become of the dating game? Let’s see:
Ernesto revels in his love-beads as Angela bakes her treasured lemon-cake.
The entire den is subdued. Leo warns of his rising ire
but we’re not talking about Pompeii.
The Pimpernels have consumed their third packet of Student Feed
in this era of wasabi-coated peas.
Bernard slips out with Pat for a joint. Pat comes back
showered in a Roman triumph of soap-stone cones.
Poetry is the object here, but are we really motivated?
Bernard lounges on the porch dreaming of a steak and beer night
alone in the Ardennes, the two children asleep.
Leo names them in a cheap move to bring down the house.
This morning Eve saw a small group,
cupping their hands at the edge of the pool.
A fourth stood back playing a button accordion.
He sang of perspiring empires and nights
beneath the Mario Plaza. We got jealous.
So jealous, in fact, that text messages flew around the room
with no lines of sight. When you’ve nothing to say
sing it, when you’ve nothing to think …
… and so on. Plums in honey. That sort of thing.
Otherwise, there’s shopping with the Bin Ladens in the Via Barbuino.
At least we can tag along, unlike the no-show Pope.
I promised mum, yes Joan, mum, with her crook knee and mean tortellini.
Here she is. We had a date at the fiftieth.
The years only leave us with speculation.
They are our touch judges. Our concreters.
Filling the gaps where our bodies had been. The olive oil skin, the acacias,
the footprints on the beach like a Bolivian heiress.
Wednesday, May 13, 2009
If
We will never return home. We will no longer strive: we will no longer die in some far-off paradise. The sky has rotted right through to its furthest strut. Not one glance can penetrate it. The earth has become a bone yard without devotion.
René Char
Sunday, May 10, 2009
May, Amstel
When the wind shows up
the trees applaud
but the river gets pricklier.
Sunday, May 03, 2009
Elms
There’s a blizzard of elm seed along the canals,
piling up in shop fronts and tourist photos; cottoning into recesses, eddying
into a Brownian motion over an Amsterdam
trapped in its own snow dome.
Friday, May 01, 2009
Personal
It was a two-dimensional gum bubble shivering outwards
in a viscosity of glass backlit by a sun so huge
everything was in X-ray. The infinitely larger world
of my nails and skin could never be fathomed by these beings.
This is what a global pandemic looks like at close range:
atomized feelings of fever and pain: an inward distance
beyond ourselves: the quiet colony of refugees in a corner of our anatomy.
The great internal cavity, our very own unknown territory.
Friday, April 24, 2009
World
The weight of thoughts, of rocks.
Dreams and mountains
don’t even balance out.
We live in another world.
Maybe the one in-between.
Philippe Jacottet
Friday, October 10, 2008
Contracted Thus
Today is
curtains. Drapes,
valances, cornice boxes. Mafias
wrap bodies in them. Fresh
kills. Shower
curtains are better for
arterial work. Eyelets
peaking through
swags and tails. A theatre
called the world.
Curtains.
Wednesday, September 24, 2008
‘contracted thus’
Today is curtains. Drapes, valances, cornice boxes. Mafias wrap bodies in them. Fresh kills. Arterial work’s better with shower curtains. Eyelets peaking through swags and tails. A theatre called the world. Curtains.
Tuesday, September 23, 2008
Now, Voyager
The brown weather crouches on the business park as Tom
boards the Toyota for the flight home.
His plane leaps at six, and the microwave background
rustles the water contents in his salmon salad,
his peas and his tossed spears of asparagus.
It’s a highway dry time until the bourgeoning futures
slap him awake at terminal 2, and the luggage berth.
Tuesday, September 16, 2008
Now, Voyager
The brown weather crouches on the business park
as Tom boards the Toyota for the flight home.
His plane leaps at six and the microwave background
rustles the water contents in his salmon salad,
peas and tossed spears of asparagus.
It’s a highway dry time until the bourgeoning futures
slap him awake at terminal 2 and the luggage berth.
Thursday, September 11, 2008
Kincaid
That was the one with Kincaid.
Bent over her milkshake at the Albuquerque.
A knitted white top with pink buttons
up to a pleat in her neck. Her name was Jenny.
Her small beagle never strayed
far from her chipped blue toenails. Kincaid
observed her from the cashier’s desk
and wondered if this was luck.
The little nose packed tight around the nostrils
and cheeks with no time for abuse.
They grappled with the idea of a couple
through Hell’s Kitchen. A Dixieland
Promenade like the Sweetheart’s Wrap
towards the street stalls on Broadway.
This was Kincaid’s last Summer Sunday
in Manhattan. He knew Jenny
wouldn’t come with him to London.
They took turns at leading, down to Bryant Park
and spent an hour reading. They walked back
to Kincaid’s and gave the dog
some water. Jenny put on her favorite CD,
and screamed the lyrics to Kincaid.
Her asked her once more. (What did he say?)
Once more. She stopped and tip-toed to Kincaid
and held him so tight he could smell her
in Piccadilly Circus.
Wednesday, September 10, 2008
Moving
Grey spills traced back and pinned
high on a bark collage. Janet gave me that
and a lettuce of mulberry nudes
from an evening class. Paperclip
bellies for the kids who have gone. Pumpkin seed
roads winding into a grove of feathers.
A Bicentenary transfer scraped from a windscreen.
Bled to a gossamer. I hardly see
Captain Cook commanding the sailor
to stop firing on the natives. Drawn back
from an instinct to chuck out the lot,
Janet piled-up the cardboard boxes
in the carport and let us rummage through.
A card missing a deck winked at me
up and down: a time killer
for a Sunday up north I suppose.
The blankets that smelt like milk
and the exercise book with one letter
in it. I took some of it home and ordered it
across the rug. It told a story with meaning if you looked
long enough. Tomorrow, I’ll chuck it out.
Tuesday, September 09, 2008
Alone
I dropped off the car at the garage
for a check-up before our trip
to Belgium. I waited in the forecourt
for ten minutes when a mechanic
showed up at the garage door.
He had a single glove
in the back pocket of his overalls.
His hands were knobbed
and folded in a chamois. I saw
two gold rings on his left hand.
He pointed at the empty space
for my car. The flaps of his front pockets
were stained with ink.
I gave him the keys along with the papers,
and my mobile number, just in case.
The Witch of Brabizante
The reflection in her pink skin made my eyes water. The large head
rolled around its neck
like a satellite dish
at SETI.
Her legs plunged into the wallflower skirt
like an underwater ledge. The acres of hair
suggested
an arable brain.
Her lips were a puncture hole
in a rubber mattress; the air
rushing out was more toxic
than Tutankhamen,
richer
than a fly strip
at a piggery. A rubber pompom of subjects
dotted her I and pitted
glib pronouncements
with evacuated fricatives. The baste
ladled tongue
lapped at shores
where language competed
with sea wrack. A gothic
carbonara
scraped from a skillet
in Arcimboldo’s kitchen.
Teeth crowded forward
like the charioteers
of the Elgin Marbles. A skyline
from Jerome Bosch
was her smile.
Lasagna
The pressed and hung pasta strips
clicked on the sill
in front of Mum’s herb patch.
The date palm housed a parliament
of poultry for the one cat poised
at the edge of the corrugated guttering.
Mum was turning the Wintergreen couch
she planted to lay a mosaic of porcelain shards:
a pink and gold-leafed rim jostled
against a half-moon of Liz’s pottery assignment.
The shattered floor was slippery
when Mum hosed it down. She stacked
a row of pots there and put a fan in one.
When the lasagna was cooking, Mum
turned towards the window
to listen to the fan’s unstoppable buzz
as the evening came on.
Monday, September 08, 2008
Silvio
All hail the senior statesman
lounging at the Bar Rouge!
Hail his calamari suit,
his Brahms ringtone, his fried onion shoes!
Beneath the porticos of his steely eyes,
within the heart of his pearly whites,
the words form music, a Grosse Fugue,
a Motown hit with leather roots.
His touch is chocolate,
his nails are finely ground.
The sun and moon glow
in his Gulfstream hair.
He whispers like a breeze
in an orange grove;
he lathers his image:
a sculptor of steam.
This gypsy archangel who dreams at the mike;
he bolts and creaks like the Palatine.
He kisses a sorbet of mothers and wives;
a marmoreal scene of back story pals,
of mullet-cut thoughts and dredged intentions.
All hail the knight with the crew-cut smile!
Saturday, September 06, 2008
Silvio
All hail the senior statesman lounging at the Bar Rouge!
Hail hail his calamari suit, his Brahms ringtone, his fried onion shoes!
Beneath the porticos of his steely eyes, within the heart of his pearly whites,
the words form music, a Grosse Fugue, a Motown hit with leather roots.
His touch is chocolate, his nails are finely ground.
The sun and moon glow in his Gulfstream hair.
He whispers like a breeze in an orange grove; he lathers his image as he builds up steam.
This gypsy archangel who dreams at the mike; he bolts and creaks like the Palatine.
He kisses a sorbet of mothers and wives; the marmoreal scenes of back story pals,
of mullet-cut thoughts and dredged intentions. All hail the knight with the crew-cut smile!
Wednesday, September 03, 2008
Achieving Enlightenment
Just around the corner, a calamity. You cannot see it yet. But just wait.
Have a stiff drink, I would. Quick.
It’s coming soon. Bigger than a repossession.
Faster than old age.
Just a bit further. Then a rebuttal. Still a little while, then it’s all a joke.
We’ll all be laughing.
We’ll all be thankful that it wasn’t us (even though it will be).
Yes, you’ve built your house on sand after all, and the bricks were secondhand.
And you think it isn’t fair? But that’s the point:
it isn’t. You won’t squirm your way out of this. No more waffling.
Take it on the chin. In the neck. Up the tail pipe.
There it is. Goodbye now. Just one question though.
What’s it like? After all the promises? All the hopes? To come to this?
What no insurance covers.
Where angels fear to tread. Where the waters part; the tsunami rushes in;
the earth opens up;
the buck stops. Where it all totals up. Rounded to the tenth.
Adapted for the small screen.
We need to tell the tale. To warn others. To come clean. To paint it black.
To conform to legislation.
To lay down a few rules. For the unlucky few. Those toiling day and night.
Writhing in their hammocks.
Counting all the stars. Slapping off the bugs. Eating curds and whey.
You are not the first.
You are not the last. You are not the piggy in the middle.
It’s not that cut and dried. It’s not that simple. It’s not a bit part.
Although you’re not the star.
Someone’s got to do it. Every job’s important. Every day its due.
When you wake up tomorrow morning, the sun will still be there.
Your head may ache a little.
But the coffee will be stale. You’ll be left behind alone with just one thought.
An applet in your brain;
a unique and sole obsession; a stubborn little itch.
It will take you by the hand and lead you out the door.
It will do your shopping for you. And tune your TV too. You will see it everywhere.
But it really lives in you.
So quickly have that drink. A don’t forget to stretch. Here it finally comes.
(But is it all that bad?)
Monday, August 25, 2008
Untold Story
The men and boys entered
the van like molecules in
a nostril
becoming a scent.
Something there, thoughts
heaving like gypsies,
crouching at the edge of
the pit. Matted
hair, teeth, bone, and sweat.
A crushed feather marks
the page. Charactery of flight:
chiseled dollops
of whipped-cream over
an illuminated glacier of light
with three-volume wind. Paper
struts being solidly
ambivalent as scripture. Stories shout
like cones of smoke blowing
from the men; while the boys breathe
like bats curled to sleep in the pavilion
of your ear.
Friday, August 22, 2008
At Lella’s Farm
In the pen
the young colt
pranced to a hand
at the rail. He snuffed its palm
where the sugar cubes
had been. They stood
there, not waiting. The damaged
wind drew back to its drip
feed in the hills. One of them whistled
for the hand’s
owner to come back
to the pickup. The colt snorted
and arched into a coiled
spring. The pickup’s engine
shivered a reflective calamity.
Further up, a white cloth
was clacking like a freight train.
They were off, all of them. A point
at the source of the dust column.
We heard the colt
alone in its skin, a wet
envelope, a waving sheer wall.
An Attempt at Meaning
Bernard, have you read
that line of Eliot’s:
- and I quote –
Men can do nothing
without the make-believe
of a beginning? Was Deronda’s
imminent voyage to Palestine
make-believe? Beginnings
(and ends, too) conjure
a geometric world
we refuse to inhabit.
And spatial is not geometric:
that depth on which we tread water
is more like a mirror. A vision-field
sprinkled with scabs
and caesuras where time
stares into that tragedy called life.
Too deep? How about a little
less strings and more
tympanum? There you go,
marching off with that little
back pack whose contents
I once contributed to.
So, I admit (albeit vicariously)
that there is a before
and - therefore - an after.
Bloody geometry!
Shame on us, Bernard!
We are not that special,
are we? Now, in this scheme,
is a central point. Someone else
will take its place one day.
But not now.
Thursday, August 21, 2008
Lilies of the Field
He passed me the plates and they dripped
all over the wooden floor. The story
he was telling me was about some delivery
that had gone wrong. Like a pie bird or a torn
piece of Kleenex. The lorry
backed up about ten feet. It had a strange
ring to it, like a quacking mouse in the children’s
tale. We saw a parade of nuns along the road
when Sidney Poitier popped-up in his pink
Yank tank. That’s who he called his friend
from Ghana, except his friend had dreadlocks
and drove an off-white Twingo.
Friday, August 15, 2008
Surfing Home
The time left to us varies in value like a Bermuda call option.
Early exercise is precisely what is meant
and not a long evening at the bar de la plage.
There’s no getting out of it.
Overeating implies a tab on the room,
a provisioning for the end,
like a an Egyptian prince
stocking up for the Underworld
at 2 a.m., the minibar
cleaned-out. He flies home and gets his
jellaba from the cleaners and considers how
utterly surfless the Mediterranean is.
Somewhere between America and Europe
an accountancy principle whips-up a wave in his
Zinfandel. Here is the divide
between what my life is worth now
and what it may be worth tomorrow.
A peak and a trough. The crowd
spills onto the luggage belt.
It splashes over clothes and books,
and recedes, carrying all along with it…
Surfing Home
The time left to us varies in value like a Bermuda call option.
Early exercise is precisely what is meant
and not a long evening at the bar de la plage.
There’s no getting out of it.
Overeating implies a tab on the room,
a provisioning for the end,
like an Egyptian prince
stocking up for the Underworld
at 2 a.m., the minibar
cleaned-out. He flies home and gets his
jellaba from the cleaners and considers how
utterly surfless the Mediterranean is.
Somewhere between America and Europe
an accountancy principle whips-up a wave
in his Zinfandel. Here is the divide
between what my life is worth now
and what it may be worth tomorrow.
A peak and a trough. The crowd
spills onto the luggage belt.
It splashes over clothes and books,
and recedes, carrying all along with it…
Thursday, August 14, 2008
Surfing Home
The time left to us varies in value
like a Bermuda call option.
Early exercise is precisely what is meant
and not a long evening at the bar de la plage.
There’s no getting out of it.
Over eating implies a tab on the room,
a provisioning for the end,
like a an Egyptian prince stocking up
for the Underworld
at 2 a.m., having cleaned-out
the minibar. When he flies home
to Alexandria, he recovers his jellaba
from the cleaners and considers
how utterly surfless the Mediterranean is.
Somewhere between America and Europe
an accountancy principle whips-up
a wave in his Zinfandel. Here is the divide
between what my life is worth now
and what it may be worth tomorrow.
A peak and a trough. The crowd
spills onto the luggage belt.
It splashes over clothes and books,
and recedes, carrying all along with it…
Wednesday, August 13, 2008
My Previous Dogs
High-up at the vertical limit of sight, caught on a flake of rusty guttering
hidden in the leaves of a Californian walnut,
pressed in the middle of a waffling summer (despite this weather), diphthonged
at a flange in the upper-register,
flayed at a paint-crackled curl in the canvas
alone in an attic like a cork on a gene pool. But who now has attics?
Who can see further than the term of their years,
past the landfall of mornings when you’ve just woken up
from the Valium of three am? Derek and Brendan
are laying the sprinklers, piling up the lawn down the side passage.
Who can afford professional gardeners, standing here
in the graves of my previous dogs? Without a network
of skills and friends and capacious fridges that pack
air into zip-locks, the afternoons
would drag their ballast of marine-life an entire octave along the guitar,
into slack-key, hitting a pitch too high for humans.
Tuesday, August 12, 2008
Plums in Honey
What has become of the dating game? Let’s see:
Ernesto revels in his love-beads as Angela bakes her treasured lemon-cake.
The entire den is subdued. Leo warns of his rising ire
but we’re not talking about Pompeii.
The Pimpernels have consumed their third packet of Student Feed
in this era of wasabi-coated peas.
Bernard slips out with Pat for a joint. Pat comes back
showered in a Roman triumph of soap-stone cones.
Poetry is the object here, but are we really motivated?
Bernard lounges on the porch dreaming of a steak and beer night
alone in the Ardennes, the two children asleep.
Leo names them in cheap move to bring down the house.
This morning Eve saw a small group,
cupping their hands at the edge of the pool.
A fourth stood away off playing a button accordion.
He sang of perspiring empires and nights
beneath the Mario Plaza. We got jealous.
So jealous, in fact, that text messages flew around the room
with no subject lines. When you’ve nothing to say
sing it, when you’ve nothing to think …
… and so on. Plums in honey. That sort of thing.
Otherwise, there’s shopping with the Bin Ladens in the Via Barbuino.
At least we can tag along, unlike the no-show Pope.
I promised mum, yes Joan, mum, with her crook knee and mean tortellini.
Here she is. We had a date at the fiftieth.
The years only leave us with speculation.
They are our touch judges. Our concreters.
Filling the gaps where our bodies had been. The olive oil skin, the acacias,
the footprints on the beach like a Bolivian heiress.
Monday, July 28, 2008
Termini
The surface of the loading dock had been milled
by a century
of pallet-laden forks.
The ballast
emerged in a loose,
slippery flour. I could feel its
granular drift beneath my shoes.
Nails and washers were compacted in
the sediment. An iron
cross-beam poised its hesitant
threat, rushing us
molecule by molecule.
Sunday, July 06, 2008
The Elder
He wore a white suit
and parted his hair from behind
with a pillow.
Thursday, April 17, 2008
Trespassing in Ohio
The surface of the loading dock
had been milled by a century
of pallet-laden forks. The ballast
emerged in a loose,
slippery flour. I could feel its
granular drift beneath my shoes.
Nails and washers compacted in
the sediment. An iron
cross-beam poised its hesitant
threat, rushing us
molecule by molecule.
Monday, April 14, 2008
Summer
The mother did not so much walk
slowly, stopping to admire
a flower
or nothing at all, but rather
made each step
an event. Visits had become
this simple. Enjoying the sun.
Drinking tea. The daughter. The children. Together
quietly. Words returned to their objects.
The breeze in the leaves.
The afternoons getting longer. The lawn.
Thursday, April 10, 2008
Trespassing in Ohio
The surface of the loading dock
had been milled by a century
of pallets and forks. The ballast
emerged in a loose
and slippery flour. I could feel it
grainy and drifting beneath my shoes.
Nails and washers compacted in
the sediment. A metal
cross-beam poised its hesitant
threat, rushing us
molecule by molecule.
Tuesday, April 08, 2008
The kaolin bowl
Jonquils pose along
a clay notch
where the craquelure
winds
through an overgrown
creek blocked
with driftwood.
Monday, April 07, 2008
The kaolin pit
Jonquils pose on
the ceramic chine where the
craquelure winds
through an overgrown creek,
dammed with driftwood:
‘ums’ and ‘you knows’
snagged like doubts.
Sunday, April 06, 2008
The Porcelain Doll
Jonquils pose on
a ceramic sky
where the craquelure winds
through a hedge
catching driftwood:
‘ums’ and ‘you knows’
snagged like doubts in the final look.
Thursday, April 03, 2008
The A1 motorway, exit 110
A crumbling hard shoulder
fringed with hairy grama, bell-shaped spikelets
lining the fringes
of the visible world. Spirals
and scribbles from green to toe-deep
rhizome. Sprays of rabbit’s foot and clumps of maiden grass,
Carex blood
corkscrews, God’s toothbrush, a bull elephant’s
dental floss, dreadlocks
of the Great Dane,
Variegata of wands and brushes, matted tea-parties,
Beatle-browed mops, butter yellow
from Summer, burnt copper
tangles curling a dense groundcover,
drooping hints
of wild oats, inflorescences
accented towards grey, battered
by a tidy warmth of ghosts, pink
at the shins.
Monday, March 31, 2008
A History of Grit
In every nook and cranny
of this coral polyp, the Pacific
serifs a rash of semi-colons; and; and;
a purple-tube sponge strums
a power chord in the counterpoint
of the mote-filtered light.
Its warty fingers designing
brief rococos; photons
from a billion year
cluster that settle
quietly in the roar of the East Australian current…
Sunday, December 30, 2007
Jack Kerouac
Don’t be the man
counting cars
at the edge of the strip mall.
Don’t collect all
the free bars of soap
from every hotel
on the continent.
Avoid lavender bath sets
from bargain outlets. Don’t
rise to the occasion
when your country needs you
least. Don’t dismiss
the invisible
hand of the market, especially
when it scours
the square at dusk;
and gleaners comb
the clutter of crates
for thyme and asparagus.
Don’t be
the man
coming home
at the verge
of the new estate. Don’t forget
the supplementary
guides to all the wilderness trails
winding through
those long ago
scents
only a dog follows. Open
the window,
put your ass
to the wind.
Sunday, December 23, 2007
Déjeuner sur l’herbe
Between me and God lies a
picnic blanket.
Between now and my death lies
an Olympic pool
of drinking water.
Take these two premises
with their gated film-set
privacy
and the road to Damascus
becomes mined
with water-melon stalls.
Like this morning,
I’m boiling
in my flak-jacket, sitting
in John’s Range Rover.
Up ahead
the Syrian guard
will surely
bum me
for a frozen Snickers
(plural noun, single candy)
from the cooler
I put
on the back seat.
Saturday, December 22, 2007
The Square
I’ve been living here for six months now;
in this room with its little stack of coasters
beside the skirting board near the door.
I don’t know who left them. I used them once
when Cindy and Tom stopped by. When was that?
Last week, the apple trees lining the vacant lot
were transplanted to the traffic island. I think
it was Tom who dealt them when he popped
the bottle of green wine he brought with him.
Cindy didn’t notice. There are still green rings
on the floor where she sat. I can’t yet make out
what they are building on the vacant lot.
Souvenir reproductions of Mexico City.
I always keep Garibaldi Place on top. In it
you can see a mariachi band
with fairy lights and people strolling.
Lovers go there to kiss and dream about
starting a family. About the wedding cake
in the shape of a famous match.
The small marzipan heroes frozen
in icing. The chocolate goal posts. The marshmallow
couple waving frantically from a border
of M&Ms. The evening is humid, a couple
of skateboarders are smacking down apples
in the eye of the traffic.
Tuesday, December 11, 2007
Summing Up Our Marriage
A silkworm skin spreading its fissured indecision through
rain. The streets were loud with its relentless lacquer;
tensing its shy crossbow towards the breaking of Summer: a shot
caught in the curtains. The bed where a green music beat up its
solidly etched warnings waved in light. She slept as I washed up.
Monday, December 03, 2007
St Vinnie's
now to set the table and bring the family together
to help each other and prepare the food and to share
how each one of us feels about the moon and the rain
and where the children once went that was so long ago
so ancient and clear tonight that it sits at the centre
like a burning log or a bright cold embrace that we
feel wet on our skin so intimate that we dare not look up
but still are working together still labouring towards that moment
when the mystery is solved and we can go back to bed
disturbed enough to mean that we are still alive after
such a long time when it switched over at that moment we played
and cried in the snow but it could still be all of it to come
all of this still ahead waving us on to where we might remember ...
Tuesday, November 27, 2007
‘Isolated Elements Swimming in the Same Direction for the Purposes of Understanding’
Listen! Those notes are as tight
“as peas in a pod”… When I indicate
a left turn, I catch her
stovepipes
in the rear view mirror.
In nothing flat,
a rental in Spain
slips from the vendor’s lips. His scuba
cheeks ply the coastal shelves
with a coral blast. Poke me
if he does it again! Glissando
of modern condominiums. I
flossed with a tulip
when she stopped
and mumbled a Caribbean shiver
straight from the watershed
in the traffic. I winched
intensity like a soccer coach. We see
that shambled octave
mopping up the macadam.
But if I bump up the font an entire pixel,
…would that be better? A blind
corner irons out its kinks
in less time than a sunfish
slips
through Perspex.
Monday, November 26, 2007
Browning’s Lost “Giottino”
Out of my stock of natural delights: the bong’s soda water…
A sprung meniscus that crackles around the baptismal font.
It has paving, as well as drainage. It answers to laudanum. Any
variance to the hovel sciences that gives its sack
of damns: the post-violet shades co-opting rank
outlets. I say, “I’ve been ballasted with peppercorns.” (It dries
like love, the silk option, alienated with a full spread. On every
device.) My pockets were sewn closed. A conga line
of denim and nucleotides, famished. Evergreen…
Couldn’t stop. Tone values were massed in. A verdigris
curl at the nails; Mary painted from a plague corpse. Surfboard
encaustics. God the motherfucker. He acted to ensure
a predictive stippling: a slapped-on technology plugged-in
to a ball-park figure like Saint Anthony, outraged
in a hypertensive suit. An encomium to that plastic quality
then unknown. A purer hue skips the theater flats, quietly
along the estuary of Masaccio’s Peter. She’s there too,
in the medallion. A side of beef bays in my sleep. I wait
for his shadow, the thalidomide on a skateboard. A wild riff
stretches the baseline of consecutive ordinals, cardinals.
Give me simplicity. Give me a plumb larynx, straight as a line,
sluiced in a ventricle soup, with gel and sideburns. A twig
on my linen bringing a paler parentheses, like a close-out set,
conjures Ba on her traffic island. I adopted His amplitude.
A glazed mule that tunnels the vanishing point.
Sunday, November 25, 2007
The Sales Rep
I drag my suitcase to the checkout and queue behind a distressed sales rep.
I focus on his ears - funnily enough, they seem to have come unstuck from his head. If
the doorman opens the door again, the strong midday wind will carry them away.
They will be free. Like two Siamese butterflies separated in the operating theatre
of the Amazon. I see them flapping into the canopy, avoiding the giant tree snakes
and ball-scratching monkeys. Meanwhile, the sales rep will have become lost in a world
of silence. The only indication that something’s amiss is the intense humidity
spreading out from his armpits. His first reaction is to check his phone for messages.
I admit to raiding the minibar. I sign the official paper that says I agree with paying for alcohol
and chips. I tip the doorman wavering in the warm breeze. I begin to sink, imperceptibly
at first. Then, more rapidly, as the horizon rises in a river of grass. Panicking, I quickly
grab a mangrove root and pull myself onto the muddy pockmarked bank. I’ve lost
my shoes. Someone is blocking the sun. It’s the doorman reaching into the taxi to hand me back
my sunglasses. (I see myself reflected in their polarized shells, an old man, a throwback,
an extra pair of incisors rippling under my cheeks, a continuous brow wreathing tendrils of dark
through to grey). A large flower opens up ahead and exudes a pornographic stench as I
hit the ramp leading onto the motorway. The landscape changes into a benzene morass
of many colours. Numerous small tufts of dried grass shiver in the wind that fluffs up
mists of salt where the invisible surf drones behind dunes of torn plastic and discarded
white goods. On the hard shoulder, I notice a small band of suited men and women
playing with electronic devices, jogging in a tight formation, sweating like basted calves.
Beyond the flat isthmus, the tide is coming in. Its obscure waters swirl on the floor
of the taxi, tickling my toes through caked socks. I punch open the back window
and clamber onto the roof. Soon I am surfing through choppy waters, the taxi is
prowling the shallows like a manta ray. I begin to wonder how the driver can breathe
when a quick-tacking flotilla of suitcases floats into the tidal zone
like guests at a cocktail party. A small carry-on trolley glides up alongside me
with a tray of canapés. I’m feeling a little hungry, so I grab one as it floats by. I notice
I’m holding an ear filled with beeswax and sesame seeds and a just lick
of duck liver. A voice booms overhead (stout, chill, bright)
calling me to the gate to take my flight. Ahead, I see the same earless man
from the hotel. His phone makes him smile. His phone is a drum beat that speaks
its own language: “My heart against your heart, I hear the sound of unison. A soaring, red sound.”
The Village of the Mad
It was once a bustling market village. But now it’s a ghost town. There’s a man standing beneath an awning, waiting for the rain to stop. He’s waiting in below freezing temperatures. He’s waiting, but there isn’t the vaguest hint of rain.
A farmer is searching for his horse. He’s rummaging through a basket of eggs. Someone has just stolen his horse. It’s market day today. There are thousands of eggs in thousands of baskets. The thief has clearly chosen a good day to steal horses.
In a whitewashed cottage, a man and woman begin to have sex. She asks him if he would still fuck her if she were his father. He stops, thinks about it and tells her that that would be impossible because, one, she is a woman, and, two, no-one can have two fathers. “You’re worried about it too, aren’t you?” she says. Perturbed, the man storms out of the whitewashed cottage.
He comes across a man in a business suit. The man in the business suit tells him that, nowadays, queens don’t exist. “Let’s not argue about it. They don’t!” he says, fucking off, telling him to fuck off!
After Henri Michaux
At Wijk aan Zee
Three sisters carry buckets down to the sand where the seagulls flap and bully at the shore.
The youngest shouts and throws her bucket up.
The mother loses her place on the page.
The seagulls regroup and stand in packs.
The girls point at the wet in the sand.
A shore-break dazzles and rushes forward.
A gasp, and a hand is buried.
A jet ski plods over a song.
A moon is vaguer by the minute.
A Formal Partition
Guru of insecurity –
the poet has only a mortgaged satisfaction. A smut
quenched incessantly.
after René Char
Tuesday, September 11, 2007
The Ballad of Jennifer Rollins
This one’s old. It dribbles its Cornflakes.
It mixes up slippers and buys lottery tickets.
But the story’s new. And it starts at the gate
in front of the house of Jennifer Rollins.
Saturday morning and the breakfast plates
are left wabi sabi on the kitchen table.
A cell phone plays “My Favorite Things”
in the pocket of the jacket of Jennifer Rollins.
The cell phone sings, and buzzes and jumps.
It flashes and winks in Jennifer’s pocket.
The cell phone hides, and peeks, and rings.
Calling “Come on, Jen!” out of the denim jacket.
The cell phone pauses, then starts again.
But Jennifer’s not wearing her denim jacket.
It’s Spring again. It’s the first warm day.
The jacket is hanging in Jennifer’s closet.
The day’s got dogs, a sun and cars.
It’s dried out the lawns by eight o’clock.
It’s emptied the bars down by the docks.
Jennifer won’t need any denim jacket.
The sea’s gone hazy. The garbage stinks.
The ice-cream vendor’s made love to his wife.
The body of evidence is overwhelming.
Jennifer won’t need any jacket at all.
In front of the house, beside the gate,
under the trees, next to her bike,
Jenny is quiet, and cool in the shade.
She cannot hear her cell phone playing.
Jennifer’s smiling, she’s looking up,
She cannot smell the rotting garbage.
A breeze whistles through her small pink ears.
And the grass is staining her shirt.
Sunday, September 09, 2007
A Coo-Gee Autobiography
In the street where I was born,
on a hill overlooking the sea;
the story begins, small at first,
wound up like a garden hose;
wet as a snail, raw as a chop,
it then rolls out, and down the hill,
towards the sea, and through the waves,
a first page curls, an then one more,
and then another
chapter after salty chapter,
wraps into an old newspaper,
oil and vinegar, mayonnaise and mustard,
French and German, steamed and battered.
Column after salacious column,
revealing secrets, implying fear,
swaying opinion. Above the sea,
on the hill, a lonely voice,
in the street where I was born,
sings a song, dumb as hell,
it fills our ears with soft ice-cream,
and builds a house with chocolate chips.
It crumbles when the story ends
and shines like snot along our sleeves.
Wednesday, September 05, 2007
A Sabbatical Minute (Give or Take)
For a minute, take a sabbatical minute
in the middle of the day.
Now you can sit back
and eat that apple someone left
on the table this morning.
If they ask you
“where is it?”,
point to your belly, and say
how you enjoyed it
during your sabbatical minute
(and perhaps
for little while after too).
Tuesday, August 28, 2007
The A1, exit 110
A crumbling hard shoulder fringed with hairy grama,
bell-shaped spikelets lining the fringes of the visible world,
spirals and scribbles from green to toe-deep rhizome.
Sprays of rabbit’s foot or clumps of Maiden Grass:
Carex blood corkscrews. God’s toothbrush, a bull
elephant’s dental floss, dreadlocks of the Great Dane,
Variegata of wands and brushes, matted tea-parties,
Beatle-browed mops, butter yellow from Summer; burnt
copper tangles, curling a dense groundcover, drooping
hints of wild oats, inflorescences accented towards grey,
battered by a tidy warmth of ghosts, pink at the shins.
Friday, August 24, 2007
Jack Kerouac
Don’t be
the man
counting cars
at the edge
of the strip mall. Don’t collect
all the complimentary
bars of soap from all
the hotels on the continent.
Avoid lavender scents
from bargain outlets.
Don’t rise to the occasion
when the country needs you
least. Don’t dismiss
the invisible hand
of the market, especially
when they hose down
and gleaners comb
the clutter of crates
for thyme and asparagus.
Don’t be
the man
coming home
at the edge
of the new estate. Don’t forget
the supplementary
guides to all
the wilderness trails
winding through
long ago
scents that only
a dog follows. Open
the window
and put your ass
to the wind.
End of the Affair
Our holiday in Cancun
was downgraded
to a tropical depression.
Wednesday, August 22, 2007
The Square
I’ve been living here for six months now,
in this room with its little stack of coasters
by the skirting board near the door.
I don’t know who left them. I used them once
when Cindy and Tom stopped by. When was that?
Last week, the apple trees lining the vacant lot
were transplanted to the traffic island. I think
it was Tom who dealt them when he popped
the bottle of green wine he brought with him.
Cindy didn’t notice. There are still green rings
on the floor where she sat. I can’t yet make out
what they are building on the vacant lot.
Souvenir reproductions of Mexico City.
I always keep Garibaldi Place on top. In it
you can see a mariachi band
with fairy lights and people strolling.
Lovers go there to kiss and dream
about starting a family. About the wedding
cake in the shape of a famous match.
The small marzipan heroes frozen
in icing. The chocolate goal posts. The marshmallow
couple waving frantically from a border
of M&Ms. The evening is humid, a couple
of skateboarders are smacking down apples
in the eye of the traffic.
Tuesday, August 21, 2007
Dead Nature
Evidence of Martha
these last few months
and the slow
drift into an Indian Summer.
I’m obsessed with the peaches
in the bowl
on her table in the lounge room.
In the horoscope
I saw an artist’s gaze.
A fighting gape
like Vincent’s
or a old duffa’s blare
like Rembrandt’s in the dock
of the Bankrupt Court.
Either suits me fine.
Evidence of Crystal
rising out of the bath
and I could take her
from behind
like Ingres.
The French call it
Dead Nature. A cracked
lobster or a spiral
of dried lemon rind
spotting the reflecting grapes
with yellow. Silly thing,
I left the keys
on the easel, so
no chance of getting
the two Eskimo pies
I promised.
Thursday, August 16, 2007
A Pinch
No, I didn’t go
to the kitchen
and pick up
my husband
and two children and
place them in
the mixing bowl
next to the cheese
and red onions,
No, the wolves
weren’t I repeat
weren’t as hungry as
the onions in
the mixing bowl
next to the cheese
No, the two hungry
no two starving no two
hungry-as-wolves
children were
picked up, no
not my husband not
this time, no
not anytime
soon No, YES
maybe
the vital
ingredients in
the bowl, the onions, cheese,
Papa and kids,
hungry or not,
picked up,
or not,
perhaps in
the bowl, or next
to it,
enmeshed, mixed
entwined, kneaded, ground,
absorbed, leavened,
sifted, mashed and YES
maybe, in that
there was, or not
only, but with that
Dad and Progeny
Trifle
Mr. Me and Pit
and Pat
Jelly and Custard,
My Tart and Cream and Sugar
Mélange, the vital,
real
family values
not just
not
what wasn’t there,
lying around
in the kitchen. But something
else.
Tuesday, August 14, 2007
Pop Lyric
Break out the toothpicks, girls
the olives are rolling away
to where the house of cards
reveals its hand
on the glittered sand, and a weatherboard
folie breathes its
lamb chop cloud
over salted paddocks.
Thursday, August 09, 2007
The Jesus of Morteau
Is the world’s fattest. A bulging packet of meat.
Hung for weeks - cured
or smoked - in the rafters
during winter. Tied up
with string, wound with wood,
labeled in metal.
Best at Christmas,
with a hamper, and a bottle
of yellow wine. Some Klaus
chocolates: pralines
or a tablette filled
with liqueur.
Tuesday, August 07, 2007
George
committed suicide in seventy two.
Left a note saying he was bored. Wished us luck.
Living in Spain for many years.
Lord Henry Wotton in Dorian Gray.
Mr. Freeze in Batman on TV.
Married both sisters (Magda and Zsa Zsa).
Overdosed on barbiturates in a hotel room.
Left a note saying he’d lived long enough.
Left Majorca just days before.
The voice of Shere Khan in the Jungle Book
Checked-into a hotel at Castelldefels.
Married Benita Hume. She looked for excitement.
She died of bone cancer in sixty seven.
Told David Niven he would kill himself one day.
Called Catalonia “this sweet cesspool”.
Born in Saint Petersburg. Although he was British.
He was the Saint before Roger Moore.
Tuesday, June 19, 2007
Ghost Rider
After 10 kilometres I realize:
I’m a ghost rider. 5.00AM on Sunday
drunk again. The paddocks look
greener now I’m driving south
instead of north. Home is receding
driving home, and falling asleep
means staying awake. I’m backing out
of my future
head-on, until I exit
this motorway, or
this life. Whichever end.
Sunday, June 17, 2007
The Origin of Christianity
There was never one person named Jesus. There were two: Je and Sus. Sus was the charismatic one, the one whom people loved and listened to. He had flair and a way with words. Children adored him. But Sus had some moral shortcomings: a chequered past in the circus, and rumours of a wife and daughter abandoned in the country. How could an entire religion be built on such imperfection, despite his being a Messiah?
Je on the other hand was squeaky clean and morally impeccable. He prayed every morning, washed-up after breakfast and obeyed his mother. The very characteristics Sus was missing. But Je was dull, vocally monotone, and he always won the argument. But still, he was also a Messiah (although no-one remembers him submitting his application).
When the apostles came together for a drink on the evening after Sus’ ascension to heaven, they were utterly crestfallen when considering the coming media war with the Phariseen moral majority, not to mention the belittling jokes on street corners about paternity suits, or the wise-ass graffiti. A poor pillar on which to build the religion that would conquer the Roman Empire.
After a few straight shots of drip-stoned water, Peter came up with the idea of the composite character: Je-Sus. Je’s moral traits would be merged with Sus’ charisma and depth, airbrushing out Sus’ turpitude as well as Je’s cheerlessness.
“Je who?”, Magdalene said.
“You know, Je. The Messiah from Ashdod”, said Peter.
The apostles shrugged. No-one knew him in Jerusalem.
“That’s good! That’s good that no-one knows him! We can co-opt the morally good things, work them into the narrative, and if anyone finds out that we are talking about Je, not Sus, we can say that Je is, in fact, Sus, because his full name is Jesus! And if anyone brings up the dodgy bits out of Sus’ past, then we can say that the Sus they are talking about is another Sus, not our JE- Sus. It’s perfect!”
The apostles agreed, and celebrated with a few more snorts of 2BC drip-stone.
Thursday, June 14, 2007
Song for the End of Lisbon
In the new machine, the days
run from west to east
and time soaks up that first hard drink
we’ve had this afternoon on the street.
The old machine may still complain but
we’ll keep it on the fridge
when closing times and herbal teas
are options in this heat.
The final name we give ourselves
is playing near the swings.
A pen becomes a space-time ship
in its final weeks.
We woke at five on the beach today
And the kids had buried our feet.
At the night the waves still tickle our toes.
And laughter fills the deep.
Saturday, June 09, 2007
What Louise and I did
We laid the four brown bodies on the grass. Their
eyes were as opaque as the sun. They
looked like statuettes laid out for auction. Louise
turned back to get the camera. I
noted the date and place. The driver
crouched and doused his head. The rain
started and everything became fuzzy. A hard light
rumbled through the gorge. The aureoles
of salt on my T-shirt dissolved.
Louise
turned back. I pulled at my T-shirt.
The grass
was as opaque as the sun.
No date
or place. The driver hummed with salt.
He crouched
like a statuette in that gorge.
Their brown eyes
tasted like salt. His head
was fuzzy.
Everything
rumbled. The light
was noted…
The four bodies were doused in light.
It happened
when
the light dissolved
when
the rain started
when
the driver crouched …
Their four brown bodies were sunning by the pool.
Their Ray Bans were as opaque as the leaves.
They were statuesque. They were ready for action.
Louise turned for the camera.
I noted the scene and take.
The dolly crouched and pulled back from the head.
The train started and everyone became funny.
Hard to gage the light as we rumbled through the tunnel.
The entrance dissolved: a shrinking aureole.
Friday, May 25, 2007
Song for the End of a Day
Lead me through the open sky.
A swallow hangs beneath my belt.
A blue field sweeps to a snow-capped peak.
And night-time wets its stubbly bed.
A brown arm hovers in the warmth.
A stray cloud billows off the ridge.
I’ll hold the leaf above your lips.
I’ll hide the ocean in your sleep.
Tuesday, August 15, 2006
13 July 2006
I know I'll get home late. It's certain now. I knew it by the time
I got over the bridge and I saw three pigeons drinking from a puddle
left from the water-truck. (Pigeons are the only birds that can suck against gravity.)
I stopped by them, not scaring them, letting them drink. I stood quietly, but
I knew I was late because they scared. I must have moved, or just thought
about moving. A nervous almost movement. Pigeons can feel these things. I couldn't
keep the quiet inside me. I was halfway across the bridge before I moved. Before I
saw them clatter away. One came right at me. So close I smelt it. Like stale asphalt.
Last week down at the beach I was eating dinner with Nathalie when I saw
a sick pigeon waddle across the road. I wanted it to fly, but it couldn't. It disappeared
beneath a car and I heard a snap. What makes that noise when they get crushed?
Nathalie said it was the bones, but I thought it was the liquid tension snapping
like rubber. Like when you burst the bubbles in bubble wrap. When you can't stop
doing it. I started to skip when I got over the bridge. The traffic was wet with warm
water that's used to cool the bridge down so it won't buckle. So it can open
and close. Nathalie thinks I'm not going to make it, but she can't always be right.
I've caught up with myself since I'm moving fast. There's the short-cut
through the strip mall, and I can climb over the fence to cut across the reserve.
So why am I standing here on the corner? It's six, and I'm late. Nathalie
must be telling mum everything, and mum's looking at the clock. I'm
hot and can feel the moisture sticking to my dress. It has formed a dark line
beneath my breasts. I'll text her, that cheat. I'll tell her what I'm doing now. She's
not invited. im on my wy hme nat / im hot & im evaprting.
Thursday, July 27, 2006
6 June 1987
It's like a worn gravel; a white gravely dust, stretching on to where
the grass begins at the foot of the mound. The bank sweeps down
to a scribble of water plants, and it smells. That's what's left
of where I need to run. I'm focussing on my breath, and the pain trail
branching into my left and right lungs; a sharp strap edging along the hip.
I stop here and look back, and see figures bobbing out of the mirage.
Sweat stings my eyes. There's a promise here somewhere, it's waiting
in the distance. It's shaped like an oil stain and hides its scent
beneath the dried clay. I'm off again; I see people appear, screaming
left and right, with banners and cars out over the incline. I know
it will soon quieten down and there won't be much more to it: this vague
track that tastes like cement. I feel it through the hairs on my arms.
Monday, July 17, 2006
Alright Now
I'm feeling pretty wretched now. The garbage bins have rolled
down the street and the mail's jammed up in the box.
This morning I made an effort: I screwed the lid back on the sugar
before I went out for a run. But I was wobbling by the afternoon.
At three I convinced Sandra to a game of scrabble, but I
gave up as soon as she sat down at the coffee table.
Now I have to clean up the letters she threw across the room.
It's starting to be night time. And I still haven't switched on
the lounge room light. I could probably watch the television
or read a thick book. I've got lots of books: adventure, novels,
popular science. This morning I read about DNA on the toilet.
Despite all this, I got the shopping done. I finally bought a mug
to replace the big chipped one Mum gave me when I left home.
I'll mow the grass tomorrow, and I'll stand here at the same time
smelling the cut-grass. That'll be something. Whenever I hear that,
there's always someone laughing. It's that show on the TV next door.
I wonder what it would look like? To pile up all the shoes
I've ever owned in an empty depot down by the river. I would look
for that brown pair Mum bought me in primary school.
They were non-regulation so I tried to polish them black. Each day,
the brown leather would re-emerge like the shoes' true self.
It's a dream. They've demolished those old warehouses. The whole
wharf area has been re-developed. I thought about buying one
of those new split levels. But it's like a lot of things: you know,
an investment decision. One thing's certain. I'll check the use-by date
before stocking up on smoked mussels. I'll wait a few more minutes ...
I could get Bernie to massage my calves. He could use that new oil
I bought at the church markets. Lavender. That would stop the ache
that's making me nauseous. It's all connected up, I suppose. But it
could be the other way round. I'd better get back inside
and finish the painting. When I find out the true reasons, the causes,
the pattern of the whole, I'll start a fire. Damp or not.
Thursday, July 06, 2006
Breathless
"We are unutterably wrong; we are unlovable and unworthy
of any care or attention, only deserving criticism
and negative reactions from others. There is no help for us ,
no possibility of improvement because of a sense
of unalterable deficiency lodged deep inside
the self. We are conspicuous in our weakness, quite transparent,
our badness visible for all to see. We compare ourselves
with others who seem immeasurably superior."
Friday, June 23, 2006
In the Amstel Station, Amsterdam - November 2005
The Geography of the House
(for Christopher Isherwood)
Seated after breakfast
In this white-tiled cabin
Arabs call the House where
Everybody goes,
Even melancholics
Raise a cheer to Mrs.
Nature for the primal
Pleasure She bestows.
Sex is but a dream to
Seventy-and-over,
But a joy proposed un-
-til we start to shave:
Mouth-delight depends on
Virtue in the cook, but
This She guarantees from
Cradle unto grave.
Lifted off the potty,
Infants from their mothers
Hear their first impartial
Words of worldly praise:
Hence, to start the morning
With a satisfactory
Dump is a good omen
All our adult days.
Revelation came to
Luther in a privy
(Crosswords have been solved there)
Rodin was no fool
When he cast his Thinker,
Cogitating deeply,
Crouched in the position
Of a man at stool.
All the arts derive from
This ur-act of making,
Private to the artist:
Makers' lives are spent
Striving in their chosen
Medium to produce a
De-narcissus-ized en-
During excrement.
Freud did not invent the
Constipated miser:
Banks have letter boxes
Built in their façade
Marked For Night Deposits,
Stocks are firm or liquid,
Currencies of nations
Either soft or hard.
Global Mother, keep our
Bowels of compassion
Open through our lifetime,
Purge our minds as well:
Grant us a kind ending,
Not a second childhood,
Petulant, weak-sphinctered,
In a cheap hotel.
Keep us in our station:
When we get pound-notish,
When we seem about to
Take up Higher Thought,
Send us some deflating
Image like the pained ex-
-pression on a Major
Prophet taken short.
(Orthodoxy ought to
Bless our modern plumbing:
Swift and St. Augustine
Lived in centuries
When a stench of sewage
Made a strong debating
Point for Manichees.)
Mind and Body run on
Different timetables:
Not until our morning
Visit here can we
Leave the dead concerns of
Yesterday behind us,
Face with all our courage
What is now to be.
W.H. Auden
Wednesday, June 21, 2006
In the Louvre Museum - June 2006
The day was warm; he was heated with walking, and he repeatedly passed his handkerchief over his forehead, with a somewhat wearied gesture. And yet he was evidently not a man to whom fatigue was familiar; long, lean, and muscular, he suggested the sort of vigor that is commonly known as "toughness."
Henry James
Friday, May 05, 2006
Violet Crumble
There's a nut and Sigmund Freud
sitting hand in hand
in deckchairs at the Berghof
where the paper kites will land.
O ring around the dollars,
the Luftwaffe dunks for apples.
Two blokes, dead ringers for Lurch,
drop the ministers on the tables.
Trudy's here, pure lassitude.
The bald spot's in the hot tub.
She's forgotten her pair of Adidas.
Three generals command a quick rub.
O please come back, Frida!
She bites a violet crumble.
Her mouth's now sombrely choc-a-bloc.
Whatever is it she mumbles?
after Heinrich Heine's "Im Abendrot"
Im Abendrot
Wir sind durch Not und Freude
Gegangen Hand in Hand,
Vom Wandern ruhen wir beide
Nun überm stillen Land.
Rings sich die Täler neigen,
Es dunkelt schon die Luft,
Zwei Lerchen nur noch steigen
Nachträumend in den Duft.
Tritt her und laß sie schwirren,
Bald ist es Schlafenszeit,
Daß wir uns nicht verirren
In dieser Einsamkeit.
O weiter, stiller Friede!
So tief im Abendrot ,
Wie sind wir wandermüde -
Ist das etwa der Tod?
Tuesday, April 04, 2006
Leave-Taking Of The Wind
Fields of mimosa are bivouacked on the village hillside.
In the distance, at picking time,
you will have an extremely sweet-smelling encounter with a girl
whose arms have been occupied
the entire day with these fragile branches. Just like a lamp
whose halo of light is perfume,
she will leave, her back to the setting sun.
It would be a sacrilege to talk to her.
Little sandal brushing the grass, let her pass.
Perhaps you will be able to discern
the ghost
of the night's dampness on her lips.
after the French of René Char
Wednesday, March 22, 2006
Don't Call Me
Debra the suicide bomber
sits on the low wall by the monkey bars
eating a mojito
baguette.
Tuesday, March 07, 2006
"This from a city of parks and whores?"
Thursdays you'll usually find me at Kavarna.com. By then
the bagels would have mounted up nicely
--- they've got a blind guy who sorts them,
after a fashion,
while listening to talking books; The Bride
Stripped Bare
was on the other day; embarrassing
doesn't begin to describe it
--- anyway, I just have to gesture with my stick
as I come by the counter
and the bagel-de-jour is plopped on the plate for me.
These days, they say, I've got a bit slow, so
if you do want to talk about some of the old stuff,
it's a good idea to send me a postcard first
with a title, maybe a couple of questions, and a
line diagram outline, like that thumb-print on your throat.
Bernard Lane
Wednesday, February 01, 2006
Dennis
Taking out the wildlife leaves the picture
undaunting.
Helplessly, little creatures let themselves
blister
within the packaging. A pliant green Styrofoam
wash
scratched with seagulls fills every quadrant,
every caesura.
Melanie and Andrea primping their skirts
on the floor
quibble through the separators. Today was
a great aunt
Sunday. A lavender water morning. A eucalypt
dilly dally.
A tiger insincerity embossing a pastel lozenge
quickly.
And both of them sense how deliciously hopeless
a run
across the road to meet Dennis is. At least
he's left
with lanes and spatula-strokes and stretched
hands.
Monday, January 30, 2006
On Girl Beach
what’s that
on the cusp thing?
like a page
before it has a foreground
and a background and a middle ground ( ) between
the middle ground
and the foreground. like
bits of sentences
just heady
for cohesiveness
( ) and the background. where the earthworms
dry-out ( ).
that makes a little snap.
change
is in your pockets. taking sand
for your body. workmen do things
with buckets ( )
and large sandwiches. sand
-wiches. sand-castles. you’re a
beginner
- it’s a word thing. what’s it
like when you die?
before you die? when you’re dying? dying
for it?
Thursday, January 05, 2006
'Isolated Elements Swimming in the Same Direction for the Purposes of Understanding'
Listen! Those notes are as tight
as peas in a pod. When I indicate
a left turn, I catch her
stovepipes in the rear view mirror.
In nothing flat, a rental in Spain
slips from the vendor's lips. His scuba
cheeks ply the coastal shelves
with a coral blast. Poke me
if he does it again! Glissando
of modern condominiums.
I flossed with a tulip
when she reached the stop
and mumbled a Caribbean shiver
straight from the watershed
in the traffic. I winched
intensity like a soccer coach.
Here we see that shambled
octave mopping up the macadam.
If I bump up the font an entire
pixel, is that better? A blind
corner irons out its kinks
in less time than a sunfish
slips through Perspex.
Wednesday, January 04, 2006
Bake Off!
It's simple, really.
Snow cakes evolved from a layer
Of parmesan melt-wrapped onto the spoon
Left in the dishwasher for a week. Cologne's
drawing power draws from its
Draughtsmen's glib expertise at the tweezers.
But all's reducible, now. Back to the icicles
Of non-sequiturs flaying the horse's rump
At the edge of the cave. And the page's
Penchant for snow cakes seems anachronistic.
Another German town under the Revolution
Was Mainz. Let them eat snow cakes, really.
Last week, a shopper found a toothless grin
Baked in a brioche of self-denial.
A windy absence at the centre of history.
But truth gets chewier as the tumbrel
Approaches the scaffold. Editor notes
That cooking delights in prose.
A snow cake needs an egg, an idea, some flour,
A territory, and an ex-lover's
Toothbrush flying its frayed surrender.
Friday, December 30, 2005
Winter 2005 in the New Hospitals, France.
The cheap toboggan slopes fuelled a rise in retail exhaustion
in December. Tagged as a foundry of physical limits,
our old Hospitals notched up a milky season. A torrential
deviation into the subsidence-free valleys. We managed
the appliqué of weekends and plotted the stations of mealtimes.
A business more than shrill romance, sheltered between
our imminent return to the tonic and the pork barrel
of meeting Susanne. It was time at a pinch: ironclad
in its own baste. A loft built on its unknown cachet, furnished
our first Sunday together. The redolent inventiveness
spawned thirteen positions that pooled to a short buy.
Susanne asked, "What's the ROI on my ass?" I felt
strapped to conjure a Christian Brother article:
that 'scullery delight never stops a clean pot'. Here
the logic gets a bit meshed. A sucked all-sorts clings
like a limpet to my sleeve, a sure sign of powder.
I missed her lathered Bonjour coming-to
on the sofa. A buggy of light air toasted our nutty
tinge and reduced the fruity sediment of growth.
We avoided the patrician backhander with a vision
caste well within the bell curve of its creamy incline:
the fret board cynosure of mulled-wine and disinfectant.
Wednesday, December 28, 2005
Chunked Investigation
The torchlight defined an axle through the dust.
I cleared the baggage, and stood at the sheer drop
of neutrality. A cup had arraigned its fingers
on the shift. And we pleaded the evidence within
our respective spheres. Bright tonal clusters hammered
the quarry. We saw her face pucker-up against
the inner wall. Her eye sockets brimmed a leeched form
search engine. I put our tongues out
to taste the light drizzle. A wasp cone mumbled
its forthright mud consonant where my boot flexed.
This is that brainchild. Its membranes become a crisp
mathematics before I can talk. The ghost
in the answering machine. A syntactic history
bagged and tagged. There is the map of her hand;
its arborescence descends into the suburbs.
Her magical nail: the polish off the particle stream.
Thursday, November 03, 2005
Aspirin
Night, as the world goes
belly-up, a full moon
buzzes in my window.
Thursday, October 20, 2005
Time
Time - it is strange - it is strangely beautiful too
never to know what it is
and yet how much that lives in us is older
than we are, how much of it will outlive us
as a new-born child can look as though it is looking
at something inside itself, something it was given
to bring along with it
as Rembrandt looks in the last self-portraits
as though he can see where he is going
into a distance beyond our eyes
from the Dutch of Rutger Kopland
translated by James Brockway
Wednesday, September 21, 2005
The Tropics of New York
Bananas ripe and green, and ginger root
Cocoa in pods and alligator pears,
And tangerines and mangoes and grape fruit,
Fit for the highest prize at parish fairs,
Sat in the window, bringing memories
of fruit-trees laden by low-singing rills,
And dewy dawns, and mystical skies
In benediction over nun-like hills.
My eyes grow dim, and I could no more gaze;
A wave of longing through my body swept,
And, hungry for the old, familiar ways
I turned aside and bowed my head and wept.
by Claude McKay
Thursday, August 18, 2005
Der Nachbar
Fremde Geige, gehst du mir nach?
In wieviel Städten schon sprach
deine einsame Nacht zu meiner?
Spielen dich hunderte? Spielt dich einer?
Giebt es in allen großen Städten
solche, die sich ohne dich
schon in den den Flüssen verloren hätten?
Und warum trifft es immer mich?
Warum bin ich immer der Nachbar derer,
die ich bange zwingend zu singen
und zu sagen: Das Leben ist schwerer
als die Schwere von allen Dingen.
Rainer Maria Rilke, 1902/03, Paris
The Neighbour
Stray violin, are you following me?
In how many cities has your lonely night
Already spoken to mine?
Have hundreds played you? Does anyone play you?
Are there really those in every city
Who would have gone missing
If it weren't for you?
And why do I always end up here,
Sharing a room with someone
I pity; someone who is forced to sing
And to say : Life is harder
than the hardness in all things?
My translation
Wednesday, August 17, 2005
Before The Spit Dries
Sammy, tesoro, go to the shop for mama
and buy a loafaslicebread, come on
take two dollars from my purse, there
on a cupboard next to your father, in nomine padre
filio e spirito santo. Okay? Look at me Sammy
Sammy? No forget, tesoro, also two packetaciga...
No, make two cartonacigarette. Marlboro. No forget.
And come back quick, eh? And no buy sweets.
Make you sick. Come back quick, Sammy. You hear?
Back (TOOGH!) before the spit dries.
Tuesday, August 09, 2005
Black Land
Rest from your trip. Beneath the golden eye
the kingdom stretches forth forever. On the plain
of calm and solitude the wind drifts off to sleep.
Upriver, between desert walls,
the god's ship draws near. A thousand banners
flutter on the masts, ablaze with sun.
Rower priests sing ancient anthems
to the lord of death, as they pierce
the mud, the swollen waves.
This light, the peace of this long day,
are yours, traveler, if the vast earth
of eternal wheat cries out to you by your own name.
Salvador Espriu, English translation - Magda Bogin 1989
Friday, June 17, 2005
On The Scent
I. Sounds Like Dinner
Rectangle scratchings
are amplifying those sections of carpet
in the sunlight. Or
a radio desultorily weaves
brown, tan and grey curls
of polyester...This loom unravels
on the last pages
of the down-turned novel.
A denouement of hunger
towards the kitchen. Your hand on the ice tray.
Your body against the light. A slip
over the story. Unfinished. Leaving
a bread-trail of pages.
II. Death Toll
The space before me was a road,
an overlay of lichen, a plateau where trees
were flattened to the height of a man. Behind,
a foolscap page with the signs
of a traceless murder: eraser-hairs, abrasive valleys
and rifts of pen depressions.
The telephone number was a key,
untouched by arithmetic. A convention of wanting
to speak. A blotter filled with marginalia:
curly-headed boys with tails and horns,
a Cheshire-Cat smile of missing teeth, an aerial
making ripples in the paper.
Thursday, June 16, 2005
Subway Poem
What is a subway poem?
I sometimes write subway poems. This is one of them.
Would you like to know what a subway poem is? I assume the answer is 'Yes'. Well then, here is a subway poem.
A subway poem is a poem written in the subway during a single journey.
A subway poem has as many lines as your journey has stations, minus one.
The first line is composed in your head between the first two stations of your journey (counting the station of departure).
It is written down on paper when the train pulls into station two.
The second line is composed in your head between stations two and three of your journey.
It is written down on paper when the train pulls into station three. And so on.
You cannot write when the train is in motion.
You cannot compose when the train has stopped.
The last line is written on the platform of your last station.
If your journey requires several train changes, then your poem will have several verses or more.
If, unluckily, your train stops between stations, that's always a tough call when writing your subway poem.
after the French of Jacques Jouet
Friday, June 10, 2005
