Green Turns Yellow

the day is vodka clear, how can
a tree have endless leaves
and know to let them go
so they rain on the fridge outside
the furniture shop

twirling, twirling
until it hurts to watch
& I must find something else to do.
But the tree continues.
And her shift at the factory.

Full Circle: Two Poems

A Sort Of Prayer, A Sort Of Poem

Grace is Grace because her face says so.
They let her choose her name.
It took almost forever.
(They were her parents. Still are.)
It took dolls-heads full of human speech.
Took them beyond crawlspace,
into the not-so-silent thought.
Took teddy-bear vibrato, mashed
pillows, a discarded balloon
of utterance of utter nonsense
-all those baby kisses they told
each others skin led to this,
the first fingernails of language
so she could choose oranges
over green, the shaped mouth,
the sound of a piece of the giant-
sized jigsaw puzzling out
of a world, her own
sign to seperate her eyes
from its mirror,
wherein her tongue tip.

*

Who Is Fiscus?

In his dementia he forgets.
Has sewn on a blood-sized hat
& let no man come between them.

If he had grandchildren...
Perhaps, once.

Yes,
one day someone too small
to find again
gave him a picture...

they were wearing his features;
it all looked better on them.

The picture though,
that was perfect,

pinned to a corner of
his cardigan-stained mind

he cannot face.

Matty Likes Morphine

The band, not the fruit.
Their lead singer died on stage
in Europe -heart attack-
so the story goes,
on without him, his absence is
this story & I used to stand
on the side of the road, next to
the creek with its night-huddled ducks,
its downriver geese, amid the rice fields
surrounding my borrowed room,
Cheonan this was, & sing, softly-
taxi, taxi,
hotel, hotel,
I got the whiskey baby,
I got the whiskey,
I got the cigarettes,
waiting for a ride that was lit.

Paris Is

Paris is, a Greek God
fucked-up on valium.
Paris. I don't remember.
Plastered, I aimed for fountains,
you for aqueducts,
(aesthetics are everything
when you're in Paris.)
Oh God: my watch.
She (Paris) has thighs of alabaster.
Jealous, privileged cunt
-I would marry Paris
to the past, a weld like butter
and croissant. But.
Paris looms. begs and urges (without
her own specific voice.)
Would that we had met in Paris
and I'd dumped the pair of ye',
been dumped. Perhaps then some peace.
The gods always are pissed off.

First Food

is finest.
After milk anyway.
Well before meat.

That's a whole herd of nourishment
you're trying to avoid
as you wade out dear,

even the Irish know it, love it
-in parts-
warts & all: the way

to eat life.

Let's evoke our past lives:
you be my neighbour,
inky & sleek,

salt-tongued of course;
noded & noduled (though
I don't know the difference)

& me the deep-sprung devourer
from over the channel-
sans fins.

The Unreal

End of the world weather,
Sunday afternoon.
A truck idles in it, armed
with an air-horn akin
to the last trumpet.

Off to the right, out the window
below the thunder, the tops
of roadwork machinery

-clumps of orange & yellow
hemmed in by too-green trees,
the sky's constant damage.

Jazz fails to cut it.

Best leave the phone alone,
music to the elements

'perchance have you happened to see
a soul
out there on the collapsing street
engaged in unnecessary risk?',

you ask yourself.


Not one.


We are left to recall
the inclement joy of Gene Kelly
who danced when the world was young.

Insomnigothic

Late at night when all the hooves are put away
& animals move, if at all, unshod
or night-eyed in the prayer of hunt
familiar with moon ghosts whispering from limbs, trees

or move unconscious with a regularity
that can not be taught, the rib-cage pulse,
the shucking off of innate terror with a toss
of feather, scale, skin or membrane

-these exquisite external organs breathing
right down to the extremities-
the story left to tell, apart from
all this involuntary action in repose

-or repose in action if an owl
upon an updraft- would appear to be
peaceful, larger than the sum
of the parts of the mistaken photographs

unspooling without narrative & only vaguely threaded
with a self some would go so far as to suggest
ws arbitary, except in the darkest corner everywhere
whole lives have been lived, &, it follows.

1st Spring Poem

Susie Asado in the parking lot.
Never to snow again!
Mobile phones ring louder
these slowly lengthening days.
The lights have come on.
Not in here, where it's always bright
yet at the same time unilluminated.
Nothing as crass as that.
Lack of vision as a constant.
The grey sky so grey that greyness grazes
unendingly. Something of stone in it.
What used to be called a parka
where I'm from in the chair next to me
inhabited by either a student or
a babaganoosh disguised as such makes
a parka-ruffling sound as she or he or it
or they flip pages, conk out,
put their chin upon the table with
an audible whoosh, like pastrami
being vacuumed, but more immature,
so higher.
Then their cheek.
The world enters us all equally,
too generous to be trusted.

Encyclical

West of here the world ends.
As it does everywhere, sooner or later.
At least here it's picturesque.
The rowers stroke for sunset and know
its hopeless- though exhaustion's
an end in itself, and so is getting wet;
moisture makes us hopeful,
in touch with our insides
and the possibility of touching others,
before we grow old and dark
and can't be bothered to forget.

Waking

Shattered by the mind's nocturne,
with the poise of strewn branches
-you could almost sag like that.
A table, of imitation wood, bereft
of sentiment.
Parchment, nosegay, linguistic niceties:
from where amongst all the vehicular spume,
the oxidisation and other overriding
principles that guide like tram wires?

God, for cherry blossom!

Or,
that strawberry shampoo you used to wear.
Somehow the ancient scribes knew
this was how lists began.

The Philippines, xmas eve.

Immense poverty: a starting point we've all skipped.
The tourist: I know it's wrong but I'm glad to be here.
Except: the urchins tap on the taxi window.
Facades: the photo's one wants. the faces turned away from.
The enticing aesthetics of ruin: as I go so goes the world.
The taxi passes a jeepney & the western models on the billboards in the grime.
The maids: say 'good morning sir' at my friend's house.
The teacher: how can an 18 yr old be so self assured?
Yet: her paintings are of isolation. her poem drips with confused passions/imagery.
The maids: are going home for xmas. walk with neighbouring maids.
The shopgirl: is the first time I've ever used that word.
where I buy cigarettes. is one time grumpy one time delightful smile.
The ambassador's house: a few doors down in this 'gated community.' ambassador of what? who cares. am bass. a door.
The celebration: fatty fish. sweet fatty sausages. lamb chops, pork chops.
crabs & prawns, lamps & candles.
The celebration: immense poverty we pass in a taxi. on the way to the airport. 'merry xmas sir'.

Our Quiet Achievements

You wake up in Alice
or almost there
'the animals of Coober Pedy
who rarely see a woman'
are probably a myth.
Wake alone to a Balmain view
and know its always been like this
-but not forever,
even in Europe or Mexico
there are beaches with babes crying
painted mime artists
statuesque to sell piss
-add execs know The Secret
Of Movement, a young woman
on a towel or at a train station
is not there for you saying
'all ages are contemperaneous
in the mind'
-we're all believers in fascism
and love if you go deep enough,
even the dawn breaking sex worker
with Parkinsons, the drunk
Fijian architect.
The Yugoslavian taxi driver
who came here to play soccer
has been beaten three times.
His english is violent.
He likes my choice in beer.

Song

A fumbling exchange in a dark booth
is what I truly want
-an unruly tumbling of fingers

the light catching moisture on her
protruding tooth. What light there is
it emerges from our mutual desire

& the muted barstaff are discreet, discreet
-polishing glasses for future lone drinkers.

Walking To Work

A merchant of war
banks lazily over Suwon
sans afterburners
-a military wind pushes him south

swipes at the shrubs
laid out on the footpath;
well-tended youngsters
yet to know topiary.

Perhaps the squids in that tank
dream, wall-eyed, of waves above
them serving up food: deep tidal shoals,
their frothy napkins...

Imagine mustering the luck
to outgrow your surroundings,
become giant; darkening cities,
taking sea-going fools whole

(their bony vessels.) Captured
only on camera. Thousands of
extras circling 'til climax.
It's re-run seen late at night

just prior to the pilot switching you off.

John's Cross

In love with your sadness
you lock the door,
leave the house.
Neighbours have gardens
all the colours of clowns,
sweet scents you nose out,
perfumes allude to.

It all turns back
to that.

Sunset will come, unaware
of its audience.
You're not waiting. There are maps
unfolding each step, drivers eyes
to consider,
treetops.
The sway you urge yourself to feel.
Life turns inward so easily. A slip
of a girl you almost knew,
as though completely.
Her barefooted smile.

Driving/Seasonal Workers

The miles -wings.

Vineyards unfold light,
drop light parcels.

Towards night bedouins gather
their tent-flaps around them,
spit into small fires.

Headlights candle darkness.

In the distance
a terrible collective dream of strawberries.

My Secret Life

My secret life is larger than
all the flowers cheering, the church pews
that seperate the whites from the coloureds,
from ripe majesty, blousy leaves
of nectarine an abandoned language reveals

or the shepherd who for so long was building
his hut between dimensions.

I can come out of it whenever I want.
Or summoned.
The boss likes disco, neckties
and other sorts of trivia
I dream of too often

thrashing my pillow boat, the staves
of which shudder with the weight
of petals- 'Old Man Pyjamas in
the young mans head' -as he puts it.

His riding crop is one of many; he buys one
ech time he saddles up Pontiff & vanishes
in gold-dust, pollen. He believes 'a man
shapes his own destiny.'
In autumn I attend the circus and eye-off all the slaves.

Kang-Won Loves Yae-Jin

rain all weekend
a soft sad music

lights on
on waking

oddly filling the kettle
from the tap in the kitchen

when all one has to do
is lean out the window

like Kang-Wans calm answer
to the younger twin's assertion

and my 'really?' in response.
"Yes."

His large toby-jug face
sure in such knowledge

the day she was absent
with her dancing smile.

Breakfast Poem

What is bread-fruit, this burnt
banana? And Levenworth, is that
a risen prison?
Questions insinuate themselves
like nosey people wandering
around in search of an umbrella
before the rain. Even the rain
is automated. It appears
on the screen in the future
a yellow swirl above this green
peninsula and I think "I may
well be alive at that moment,
tomorrow,or the next day."
Actually I think 'probably' not
'may well be' but I don't say that,
I don't want to push my luck.
And automated's such an old-
fashioned word, even though
it was new not so long ago.
And old-fashioned's a drink I
don't know the interior of.
But I know how to drink it:
a sky and me on the patio in a cloud
of fruit flies with Miss Stillwagon,
who I imagine sexily demure;
first name Linda I once heard-
a bank teller, she is the staff of life.

Homebrew

Swirls, updrafts, the tick & hum
for the maintenance of staples-
cold milk & beer.

Piles of Yellow Pages as though
there's something else worth buying.

Someone's hung a sign saying
Caution: Wet Paint
round his neck while sleeping.

He wakes now,
half here;
full of odd moral conceits
& long gone people...

hazed, burly,

capable of drying out.

A poem without trees

would be nice. Nor sussuration
of the woman's pants whose
just walked past me amongst
the litter-flap of so much
information, leaves.

& then there's glass.
It sharpens light near
the rolling bottle cap
-someone's party leavings.
Well,the moon was full
the other night.

It 'briefly conquered darkness.'
But now, beneath this vacant blue
the smell of sewage comes off
the ocean and without meaning
to I see I've mentioned everything.

In Praise Of Light

Here is where you touched me
amongst traffic.
It scalds.

Shopping along narrow avenues
we bought nothing
and managed not to lose each other
in the market crowd.

Yet now, years later,
it is the flavours, aromas
that remain for me to taste,
and the bright colours you wore
are swallowed by
what has gone since,
and much that I've imagined.

Footscray manchester, North Fitzroy

Ocean, Buttermilk, Frost.
Sheets of colour stacked up flatly
in the catalogue.
One of many. The bright detritus
spewed along the hall mapping snails-
their threads of need hungry
angelic traceries through the shed
hair and grit the world
can't quite let go of.
How much it would discard sans gravity.
Some hold the floorboards
with old rain, bleed their brightness out.
Others flap to fringes of rooms
where ghost winds read them lightly,
never tiring of all these things to touch:
see the garish salmon-pink chaise-longue
from Franco Cozzo's warehouse
against that wall,
showing-off for nothing, so plump
and ostentatious
no wonder she has slipped from it
to cradle her spare limbs.
Unfold the crisp lines of cotton
to throw a pretty shroud.

His Blue Period

dusk. from the plains below
the stink of hides as animals
gather at the water to drink,
senses alert, the water a delight.
the sun hidden by that mountain to the west.
he adds a daub of mud-red clay
to the hoofprint of a hunted ox,
wildebeest -some sort of creature
felled by their cunning,
their down-wind stealth.
the blue on the water looks like the sky.
clouds ripple past.
it took a while to get the fire
up to strength but he added was needed,
branch & stump from his stockpile until
they all could feast
& now the others are cavorting,
a riot of howls that keep the darkness out.
full-bellied they'll be good for nothing all morning,
rutting or at one another's throat.
he'll have to wake to see they're still alive.
meanwhile he has this rock walls faint declension to consider-
she gestures charcoal but he's unsure,
is blood or moonlessness ever that complete?
hovering thus he hungers for the shape
of something other than his fingers with which
to tell the story.
his shadow,he sees, is acquiesing so he concedes the point,
adds a little finger-print of last nights warmth
to the trailing hindleg, then to the spear
he is yet to make the sound for.

Excuse me for a minute

--Prometheus at the door,selling firewood.
Strange, so hot a night.

His elbows are distended like a Dali,& indeed
you could hang a work from each,

have him wandering 'long Elizabeth or Swanson
advertising cut-price jewellery,
some sandwich-board idiot-savant.

How he lugged it all up here's beyond me.

And what to burn first.

The Great Design

It's all one, Munchkin-
architecture and dishcloths.
Imported beasts of formidable pedigree
quickly end up with disgruntled insides-
the same laws still apply to them, mostly;
why nudge forward at the lights?
The sable and mink of their paintjobs
can barely disguise the tinted-windowed
souls within.
Imagine a nation sans flags. Or a tree.
It's that simple -plant an idea,
let it flap in whatever breeze is coming
off the disputed ocean.
Sundays the two old couples
take a tour of the neighbourhood
on their cast iron bikes
-the men pedalling like Clydesdales,
their wives side-saddle behind them,
I could almost believe the world
cups an ear...

Oh god of the rainless
cloud and pigeonwing
let me survive the stopsigns,
don't let me die 'til she's a doctor.

A Simicly

'It's a beautiful day but I don't believe it'
someone should say as they emerge
over their particular breakfast

far from that instant ago
when while sleeping
they made themselves laugh.

What was the joke? Their lover
has forsaken them and works
the worst sort of ritual

seasons are as brief as song.
Things happen to the body while
we're busy looking elsewhere

-none of them worth mentioning.
None of them worthy
of the noble, sometimes disgusting

cast of our mind (at least
as we imagine it).
Awakenings our riot-shield...

The joke was verbal, thus absurd,
lost. The eggs runny. Who would have
thought we'd make something of this.

Later

On the way to the station it comes back, like meaning,
that great upheaval. The trees let through the partially
designed wreck; eyes of brine, age dishonored. The opening
of a filing cabinet wherein dusty righteousness, the prolonged
carnage of the invisible. So many dark sermons
in the light, hearing brought on by its density.

The stations on the underground stretch on to infinity.
Vision's ribbed by concrete pillars shuttering by,
further framed by the glass. If I was on the train
the glittering schoolkids, sleeping young lovers nodding
in unison some continuous promise, permed ladies
clucking food, footwear and prices would become
a new pressure, puzzle of immediate concern...
not particularly important.

You were gone so long I came to look for you. Idea
as motion. The endless stairs regular as clockwork,
opposite of my pulse. At least (at last) it wasn't
a phonecall. All those meanings shuttling back & forth
through the banal language of darkness, credit them
self-awareness, reflection; have the man selling
winter gloves in the aisle shouting a brilliant truth.

Love Poem

If it bleeds we'll eat it. If it
comes out at night,a chalice of its eyes,
we'll know where to find it
by the glow of our saliva.
Our dogs harmonize greed,& make it
a throbbing ritual we must chase-
I wanted you in a forest thick
with buildings,astride a busted elevator
-people still got on/got off. We move
ourselves. Most often at night.
We walk out -& there's a kitchen!,&
we know the word for it
but we don't need it.
We forget why we emerged
from the endless branches of sleep.
Some ambulance sends us back to bed
to watch the shadows mount
you/our partner/and then release
the vagaries of desire so exactly
we are forced to do whatevers next
(a forlorn dream of you breathing
in a field we've never seen
where each knot of grass has been
pierced with sunlights footprint.)

Tomorrow,in the morning,
let's buy a picture of it
to replace the real,disquietening thing.