| The Naked Signalman |
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The Wind's Tattoo She tucks her knees behind his, pulls his bottom into her lap, reaches around with her free hand to enfold his sleeping bulk. And again she's back on the Harley they sold seven years ago for a down payment on the flat. Wind whips their jeans into pennons, streams her hair like a brumby's tail. Oil, leather, eucalypt scents – she hugs him hard while the engine throbs through frames of steel and bones. Their road goes on forever. He stirs then settles. She reads his back, straining for three-inch focus: the eagle has spread its shoulder-blade wings, Mum wrinkles around a bicep. Faded dragons breathe fire down a flank. Her fingertips follow the braille of flowers, lovers, bikie brothers, a frog haiku? public witness she'd read before she gave her name to her space. In the milk of dawn, his leather jacket sags over the back of a chair: –Ace Deliveries– She hugs her man as hard as she can. Through the open window a breeze brings the anthem of bikes beating north. First prize, Grenfell Henry Lawson, 2004 poetry competition
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Long on Souls Death, is that you knocking? Ah, not time yet, just checking the address. Well, come in anyway and rest you must be wearied to the bone, poor wretch. For you no respite from wrestling souls that can't accept you've been ordained to win. So, tell me, Death, do you trade in souls not spoken for by either God or Satan? As procurer for those hoarders do you ever deal, on the side? Might we negotiate a futures contract, the term unspecified? My wasting body, wasteland soul are paltry bargain chips. This is no ambit claim: First, that you hold secretNow, in return I offer: From this decrepit body take Let's shake on that, then I'll see you to the door... we'll only meet once more, but best not hold your breath: I'll not die before my death. poetry index
Eating Winter Mandarins Moonlight frosts the paddock you cross to the neighbour's orchard – a grid of shadows pendant with gifts, a burnt-gold in this thief light. They rustle off trees, plop into your sugar bag. You lug your swag home, behind white breath, bare feet crunching a track through stubble. You swear to your Fagin father no tell-tale peel was left at the scene. By the open fire you salivate while on the kitchen table he builds a pyramid nearly as big as those in the green grocer's shop. Winter sneaks in between vertical slabs of the wall. He takes the very top mandarin, tosses it to you. Chilled fruit, heady, as only the stolen can be. You bare the white-veined flesh, suck its sunshine into your body. The peel is a net of scent-pot pores, but tossed in the fire it splutters, chars into gargoyles to people your ember city. The citrus air hangs sweet and uncertain as sin and one mandarin is never enough. He wants you to beg for seconds – it's a test. Your god-fearing mother won't eat of the fruit, just as your father knows. His shrug ends the ritual tempting. As she withdraws, her pursed lips repudiate all devils. You massage your feet, listen to the spit-hiss of seed while he smirks, knowing she'll pray for you tonight. Commended Woorilla Poetry Prize, 2003
Highly Commended NZ Poetry Society competition, 2004 Published NZPS 2004 anthology, 'The Enormous Picture' poetry index
Rock Sand Water He lies on his favourite fishing rock, watches purple jitters inside his eyelids, measures his breath in wave-breaks, thinks of sun cancer, smiles at the irony. He rolls a pebble around in his hand attending to its pebbleness. Spray sprinkles him while he listens to the tidal requiem of surf, to each unique break, fret and death. Every nine seconds a wave, miles long, wrecks itself on rock and sand, its passing unremarked. His wife is a rock whose granite angularity mocks his pebble's roundness. He is sand ground down by her expectations. Now, talcum soft, unable to support her, he goes fishing and lets her think he's still pounding concrete looking for work. The sea counsels release, fussily accepts his offering of rod and reel. Mourners will recount how he loved to fish, knew these rocks like the back of his hand, how the insurance set her up for life. Blood-warm waves cleanse his body, tease it down the rock face. When he feels at one with the pebble he lets his clawed fingers open. poetry index
Shopping Wraiths After an hour he's still there stashed on the end of a shopping mall bench. No bother and quite tidy except for grey tufts evading his cap, flat like those once favoured by Welsh miners in movies. His polo shirt and purple shorts are a last desperate shout. Interlocked hands are half eclipsed between the moons of his knees, arched eyebrows brace his face in lasting surprise. His head swings side to side but not one shopper is caught in the grope of his limpet gaze. His bench is an island enveloped by a sea of fish-eyed shoppers. Suddenly, I realise I've found a truly invisible man. Now I've got the knack of it I discover the other invisibles each neatly parked on his own bench all the way up to the end of the mall. They sit, semi-comatose, hunched over like semicolons, of no obvious utility, and yet they lend the shopping mall form – focal points in the ritual flow. A spry lady, inside a grey tracksuit, flits up and claims the flat-cap man. He unravels to a question mark, smiles, rests a hand on the side of the trolley while she steers it into the street. 2nd FAW Wollondilly poetry competition, 2002
Published FreeXpresSion, November 2002 Published Moving On With Giggles and Dreams, 2002 poetry index
Elegy for the Straight Line Champion of the rational, your reign, so long and rigid, once seemed endless. The autocracy of line since pharoahs' time defined heroic pyramids, your level and plumb line penned humankind in streets, boxed their skyline. But errant art, uncertain science, trod higgledy-piggledy stepping-stones, turned on you, denied you could measure a heart's delight, a breaking wave or feral cloud, the scented fold of lover's rose. Vale, old wand of Euclid, you no longer set mankind apart. So ends the rule of rule. The passing bell is rung by fractal hands. 1st prize, FAW Lismore poetry competition, 2003
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Cutting Out the Cheque she wears a spray of smiles and a sequined top calls me her gallant because I booked a table we get on the brave side of ten-dollar chardonnay guaranteed to make us fit in like non-poets we toast my winning poem Witness weigh it against waiter smiles bach background menu prices I cost my lisbon prawns at eight words each, her char-grilled fish goes fourteen lines per yellow-fin my lover's wine-whetted lips inform the cooing maitre dee about my Witness triumph; he's greatly impressed but forgets to ask for a copy a pubescent cashier drops my endorsed witness cheque into her till then turns us on like a pair of pavlovian parrots we did and yes, we will real soon (as I sell another poem). poetry index
Whistlestop peeling paint falls from railway crossing gates into sticky bitumen in blue shade of the gatekeeper’s porch a mother drowses summer sun drives mating black snakes back to the rockery a blue heeler limps from the withered gum to tank-stand shadow baby in plastic pants slides from her mother’s lap clambers on to the track quivering rails run north and south as if to ring the world with metal the baby teeters on the end of a sleeper set in blue metal. she watches the light growing out of the north whistling at her the train slams through the village then races away devouring rails dumped on her bottom baby watches it disappear into mirage a quilt of air settles over the gatekeeper’s hut a car honks at the gates Commended Maroochy Competition 1999
Commended FAW Hunter Competition, 2000 poetry index
The Lemon Gum Tree Her pregnant belly rests on the tree trunk as she reaches on tip-toe to trace filigree squiggles that run blue pink salmon cream down new flesh of the gum. When they first made love in its lemon scent, the tree wore a shield of crusty bark over sap-tides flowing between filter leaves and feeder roots. Now the bark lays around their feet like broken moulds of mother roundness, already decomposing for return to earth. He wonders if their child, pressed between mother and tree, can sense the summer sap flowing, feel warmth of sunshine that wraps the trio in a single halo. On a day such as this, they will bring their child to meet the tree. poetry index
city sentences invasion — rolling stones perforate the walls to pulp the brain heat sink cycles of slight and seduction anneal the feral heart two million alien aspirations taunt the id reduction — twenty dollars in my sock stolen bread in my pocket a tap drips... drips... rusty fear into a porcelain sink how long before I can’t care? internment — this city guts me her right angles quarter me I’m bird snared under wired sky fossil embedded in her concrete stratum mummification — ground floor squat redevelopment site I’m carapacing I don't think am I? poetry index
Byron Bay, a perspective At Mullum we’d catch the train to the 1940 Lismore show. But miles from The Bay we’d lock train windows against the reek of Anderson’s Meat. We’d shutter our compartment to repel Byron Bay riff-raff who'd try to get in. Pig trotters: one shilling a bag at Anderson’s where porkers pinned under rope nets, smelling their death, squealed, jostled in faeces. When an on-shore breeze next muffles the surf turn Bay FM off, and listen listen hear the pigs? Or take a walk west from Main Beach, to where the whaling wharf fingered the sea. If the light is right you’ll see sharks churn a pink froth from the blubber and blood dropped by the black-booted men carving whales with long-handled knives while kids gawk at a penis, protruding in death. Beautiful Byron – did the flensing ever stop? Picture faithful Rover, Bluey, Spot being lead down the wharf to visiting ships. Now see the kids return, a Judas threepence in their pocket, sixpence in a seller’s market if more than one ship. In the town that sold its dogs the ethos survives – old dogs are priced out of town. Byron Bay, you were our red light district, the sieve that attracted scum away from us. Hamburg had its Reeperbahn, Sydney its Cross, you were ours and you made us feel respectable, even grateful, till tarted-up and milking the tourists, you grew indecently rich. Now, we pray for you, Byron Bay, you splendid old whore in plastic drawers. poetry index
Transcendence Bobby Barker Jnr of Carter & Barker wheels out his Heritage Softail Classic mittens white pen-pusher fingers lengthens his thighs into leggings laces on kicking-arse boots studs up the brotherhood jacket. Bobby darkvaders his short-back-n-sides. That old tingle comes on again – they’re out there & he’s in here transforming behind the visor key-choke leg-stroke life-burst power-up and his hog is all of a tremble Big-Bobby throws his leathered leg over covers its chrome-black curves mates with his pulsing beast thrum… thrum… thrum... he teases her up to an earth-drum roar thrum-thrumm… thrum-thrumm… Big-b rolls off with a swaying ass exhausts on those who never will get it flings his freedom back in their face concusses down the street bounces a challenge off concrete and glass bared-teeth-howl in a dog-mean wind going hell for leather he's out of here poetry index
Four Pairs of Socks 1 The Glenwood High Band jackhammers his teenage chest. The aphrodisiac of danger dries his mouth, and clear across the gym he scopes a blonde who’s wearing white bobby sox. 2 He promises his bride a moat filled with a thousand crocodiles to protect the castle he’ll build her. Sunday afternoons in bed, they play pass-the-bottle with six-dollar Chablis, explore love’s borders while she wears her white bed socks. 3 Glenwood Mayor & Country Club President. Who better than him to protect Glenwood Heights from drugs, greenies, graffiti, to secure a haven for ranking ladies who wear pleated skirts and white tennis socks? 4 A bench in Glenwood Plaza. Invisible, except to pigeons, stray dogs, security cameras – he waves on the off-chance somebody knows who he is. Wipes his chin, that might be her, the one passing by in white support stockings. poetry index
Blue Heron Soft grey lazy day, light rain upon the ground, reflective, receptive, ah, Blue Heron – come on down. Timid, but with purpose, crossing dangerous ground, now hunting in the pultenaea, on long yellow legs, in sinewy slow motion, to rhythms of the stalking dance. Long throat extends, pulses at the scent of prey, now still, frozen blue-grey elegance, fierce eyes focussed, silent, breath suspended ... An elongating strike of grey, the spoils held aloft, a shuddering gobble of the throat, a shaking down of feathers, then beautiful blue death goes easing down the slope. Soft grey lazy day. Highly Commended and published Logan City Literary Festival, 1997;
Published 'Moving On With Giggles and Dreams', 2002 poetry index
The Tarted-Up House Nobody stops the old man from tearing his house to bits – not the village policeman, nor the daughter who'll inherit whatever is left. Not stickybeaks posted like border guards along front-garden beds of weeds and wilting snapdragons. Not neighbours who peek over wooden palings, heads sprouting through choko vines. The old man rips aluminium strips from walls of his house, lets them fall to clang, writhe, litter his lawn. Some spectators wince as if impaled, others breathe, ooh, between fingers. The realtor bloke looks ready to cry. Whispers from spectators: like a wooden barge in a silver lake; like a snake shedding its skin. The man prises and climbs up and down, moving his ladder around his house, peeling it. His daughter says he'd been away in the city getting a hip replaced when the home-cladding salesman sold his wife, no maintenance for life. She died last Saturday night. The old man toils into afternoon heat, new watchers replace those that leave. None speak to him, or cross to his land. A boy says, He's the Mad Marauder and mimes playing video games. The council building inspector leaves, the court order still in his pocket. Stripped, it sits squarely on fat stumps. Reflections from sloughed metal make the house shimmy, as if alive. Some, thinking it has to do with his wife, look away when his wrinkled hands stroke newly-exposed planks. For a while he and his weatherboard stand in stillness of autumn sunset, then he goes inside and makes tea. Commended Max Harris Literary Awards, 2001
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Mandarin A field that looks down on Cape Byron is stage for a play where mandarin tree, teased by winter’s south-easterlies, juggles gold baubles stuffed with summer and sunshine and whiffs of the great Pacific. Wanting to share such bewitchment I invite a soul mate there. The gravel verge on Tunnel Road is the proper place for viewing the tree but my friend breaches the wire fence, walks right up to it. I’m aghast, fearing its mystery, ephemeral as the tooth fairy, will be lost in a harvest of data and I in some long exegesis. But no, she returns cursing the farmers friends she plucks from her opshop jeans. Oh come Spring, come and undress the Mandarin, so images of my fantasies can be safely embedded in memory. poetry index
Schoolkids Going Home Nymphs and cubs under backpacks flicker along our paling fence. Their blue serge invests a lattice of elm-tree shade, laughter sprinkles the footpath. It's the schoolkids going home. They are blossoms that ride full tide from school to downstream homes past billabongs of unseen others, they swirl through their pastoral. Sometimes they loiter by our front fence embroider their chatter with yes... me too's spill innocent secrets on wide-eyed friends, speak things that can only be said in the space between school and home. When the schoolkids sing themselves home they can tease the concrete to tears, but none can hold them, prolong their song, not Cat, Wind or Currawong; not me. Each afternoon at three, Cat feigns sleep in my garden chair. (I don't know when she started that.) She has the gift of listening from behind shuttered eyes while she curls into their song. Wind is in love with them, waits in my garden each afternoon, plays with autumn leaves until he can tousle the schoolkids going home. Wind sweeps busyness from their path, pulls leaves from Currawong's tree so winter sun warms their way. To old Currawong they are evensong and, perched on an elm-tree branch, he watches them scramble along the ground, foresees the day when they'll fly. Currawong knows about seasons and wonders why, on their side the fence, it's always Spring and they never age. I wish a pathway from the school passed by my graveyard plot so that I might forever hear the schoolkids going home. Commended FAW Hunter Competition, 2000
2nd Armidale Festival of Words and Music, 2000 1st Moocooboola FAW Literary Comp, 2000 poetry index
Swamp Oaks Wind through swamp oaks springs from a bitter place I've tried to sweeten and warm with distractions. As a boy, alone on Tyagarah Swamp, I chanced on a tumbled-down shack in a stand of oaks — adzed house timbers strewn as if by a giant's hand. Stone fireplace, mouldy lemon tree, and near the water two weeping willows shading a caved-in well. The wind sprang from the marsh and found me, keened a story I tried to block out, wailed loneliness and swamp death. It iced my guts. I picked a lemon, planted my feet, sucked hard but something clawed at my old mind. I broke and ran, legs thrashing ferns, heart pounding until I collapsed on a far sunlit slope. That memory survives the filter of years. When wind sings my name in those stringy leaves I answer up, admit to knowing fear. Swamp oaks bind my path along the river's bank. They know, never let me forget. poetry index
City Cleaner Dawn draws night's bandage back from city lesions. A street cleaner puts away his bass broom, scuttles down a subway ramp. Reptilian train — sway, lean into the curve of bowels, burst into itchy sunlight. On stairs from station to street he swims against a waterfall of scented morning flesh. He keeps to the wall, wins his way up. Suddenly she's there, on the top step, haloed in unbruised light, beyond beauty. He grips the handrail. Her wisp of smile asks right of way but he's bliss-bound, leg-less. Her smile broadens into a blessing before she swerves past leaving him a step short of sunshine. Commended FAW Far North Coast Lit Comp, 1998
2nd Eaglehawk (Bendigo) Lit Comp, 2002 poetry index
Lay Communion After Benediction is uttered we troop into the street, on the cant from church to gutter the chaste and chastened meet— rainbow sash display chickens come home to roost pray their devils away give our numbers a boost ’d get a god of their own the usual family roast mixed marriages have shown believe in the Holy Ghost ‘s not a religious traitor leaves her door on the latch thank us for it later easily man of the match thought Father John was gay wear thicker petticoats bums on seats I say come here in their leaky boats keep their women in black might start a holy war always sits in the back and He’ll take care of the poor curse on their liberal ways women in rotary clubs corner the market in gays never get used to the snubs ask who fathered her kid won’t say sorry, that’s sure earn an honest quid now and for evermore poetry index
Jamie aka Janus scuttles back from peopled streets slams his door against sunshine opens a bag of pretzels boots his system up in the murk of the sanctum fug his aesthete's face floats in martian-green glow above a chattering keyboard hunched over he hacks the world hourlessly scales code mountain because it is there and they said it was impossible he leaves his calling card deep in ASIO files – Janus was Here – then shreds their canteen price list a mouse hand as his wand a wanking hand for that second window he eats the last potato chip reverts to his nails "Footy and girls in my day," says Dad. "At least he's made some internet friends – Shay, Karl and Marx I think that's who he said." Commended, Forest FAW inaugoral poetry competition, 2000
Won FAW Eastwood/Hills poetry competition, 2004 poetry index
After Setting Rabbit Traps Perhaps he spent nights like this, that guy who said war's mainly waiting. Did he too lie on a leaf-litter bed, defeated by bloody raindrops, infiltrating his poncho? Did he, like me, remember long-ago nights when rain drummed the farmhouse roof, sent me burrowing deep in eiderdown, hoping the rabbits'd stay underground, safe from traps I'd set at their burrow, or on well-used track, among fresh droppings? On such nights I questioned: why set traps at all? Dad in work again, didn't need the meat, and mostly skins got fly-blown, still stretched on the shed. Not like they'd over-run the valley. Was it simply: we had traps and the rabbits were there? Send her down, Huey! Spare the kittens, save me From milky does with elastic necks, Me wringing them wrong, Getting pissed on. Amen. Must remember – a bag to bring the dead ones home. First light. Tropical rain still plops down. With luck they'll all stay underground… no, something at that tunnel stirs the milky light. There, shadow moving. Footfalls on sandy track. Whump! Whump! Booby-traps! Ours? Theirs? Girlish screams. Move in! Finish them off! Body count. Medevac. Piss and vomit. A bag to bring the dead ones home. Won Australian Peace Bell Poetry Prize, 2003
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ric rules street rules, sophisticated as lying, evolved empirically — ric's inheritance to kick-start his life. sacred skateboard wheels spun dust on non-bro's, legendary street wounds grew disappointing scars, he sprayed his name on the town then bashed the fool who called it art, he gleefully splurged a million last chances ric's mind was bonsai'd by not knowing his place and an addiction to magazine muscles for bashing heads and rutting and running where escape is in and lost equals out fitting in is everything the coin of belonging, won on gangdom rungs, was not lightly spent looking round the corner old hands knew when they saw a man busy slithering up the hierarchy of crime prison place, less space, but managing the same pack and universal rules of capricious cruelty unfettered by leprous hope and choice, ruminating on the lore, a fingernail to gnaw, ric rests replete Equal 1st, Mt Isa poetry competition, 1997
Published Mt Isa 1997 Lit Comp Anthology Published North Coast Poets Anthology, 1998 poetry index
Moonrise On our back verandah all the family has gathered for a full moon ritual. The house has been turned off, shut down. At our back fence eucalypts are assembling; their ethereal crowns find form against a tinge of mellow light. What do you see? – our game of finding castles and dragons in campfire embers – Nothing, my lie smuggled into the gloom. A ridge of silhouetted footwear shapes our verandah’s edge. Smells of jasmine and fetid feet invest the interregnum. What do you see? – but I don’t want this emerging world to be anything but itself. Trellis shadows crosshash our newfound bodies. The rising moon steps down limbs of our garden hoop pine; its bushy end-knobs harbour lorikeets paired in colourless sleep. And all this is a kind of coming: we are baptised, reborn, made whole by wash of a moon that absolves every tree, bird, boot and family. poetry index
A Show of Mutiny written for opening of John Hagan's
exhiition of Bounty paintings, Lismore, 1998 a horseshoe of wooden floor reflections circumscribe the kraal of whisperers italian arias from height of history surf down an oval wall of windows each a narrative pane lit by the inner eye enlightening in mutiny of colours yet bound as one by churn of turner skies history unfurling left to right a kaleidoscope transports through adventure-terror-drowning-beauty-paradise in gentlest hue then sea-brutal blue of jealousy-treachery-flogging-betrayal heroes enframed by colour tamed or rioting in catholic decor of massacre-endurance-hangings and love from death's dominion from deepest dark now back goosepimpled spent and led as reluctant children from their carousel to supper and to bed where ghosts of hagan bounty may yet run again poetry index
porcelain & steel that noisy suck and surge of my blood pumping round pounding for attention tv let me down again none of the channels showed what I ought to be thinking or was it being secretive there's lots of that these days dad's old blades are stainless steel here watch my wrist – real blood see & lots more where that comes from but stay cool just testing you'll know when I'm dead serious this bath's like bed on a good night a warm & sleepy place to crash to take time off from thinking – the mop and ajax are handy I dislike people –hating makes me too tired– who I've got nothing against dogs are different but do they count do we count them I mean & why does emptiness hurt & how can nothing ache I'd love to see that emily's face no mess mum'll be pleased white porcelain & blue steel no big deal Won Mt Isa poetry competition, 2001
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Kashmiri Blue This girl won’t buy, the Farsi can tell. Still, he must honour the rites of selling as surely as her Mother must haggle, as she now does, at the fruit stall next door. The cloth-seller guesses the girl’s thirteen, soon to disappear like a moon eclipsed by purdah shadow, to look out on life through a burka grill. The Farsi sighs. She declines coffee and sweets, as she should. He holds to the light the length of Kashmiri Blue she’s been stroking. As she fingers the weave, gauze-like shadows stipple her brown skin blue. The cloth hangs from his arm like a curtain: it filters the glare from Baluchi sky, softens mountain edges, ennobles her adobe home. He waits while she rediscovers her village then smiles as enchantment fires her eyes and the cloth undulates to the oooh of her breath. Her cheeks flush when she sees the water boy – no qamiz, shalwar rolled above his knees. The Farsi knows how that boy’s muscles ridge up as he hauls on the well rope, how quicksilver spills down those careless legs when they stumble with buckets of water. When Mother comes he folds the girls’s world back in the Shangri-la of Kashmiri Blue then stores the bolt where she’ll find it again, if it doesn’t sell in the meantime. poetry index
Pensioner Discount Curvature of spine inclines the lady to buy the specials on lower shelves. Tea bags with strings, half a loaf of white. Her rouged face roosts under straw shaped as hat, trimmed with crimson cherries. Cheddar cheese, six medium eggs. Ernie’s last gift, a rhinestone peacock, struts the grey range of her button-up blouse. Frozen apple pie, a thing of custard. She accosts a young man, handsome and tall enough to reach down from higher shelves Four packs of Excalibur condoms. When he’s gone she tosses them back, checks out somebody's unattended trolley, purloins Those Ginger snaps the parson likes. Her smile is cocked ready to shoot any staff or shoppers with unguarded eyes. Yogurt, all bran, prunes. At the express checkout her ten items trundle along to the checkout boy. Eyes averted, he supplies the semi-privacy of plastic bags and mumbles, Sorry, still no pensioner discount. The queue grows while she explores for notes, mines coins from the pit of her purse, checks their provenance, surrenders them as if they were family heirlooms. No change. She easily beats the boy to, Have a Nice Day, grins as he mumbles, You too, Ms Harrington. Then she checks out for the day. poetry index
The Silent Service She’s scraping dirty dinner plates, guiding scraps to the slops bucket on the lower level of her trolley. She’s stacking used plates by size carefully, quietly, layer by layer building up white china towers. She’s bending her knees to start her laden trolley rolling through thick pile of the RSL carpet. She’s wheeling the wobbly stacks into the kitchen to be washed, ready for tables she’ll later set. She’s picking up a dropped fork with a straight back that suggests she might once have met a queen. She’s moving with seemly grace while breathing in fetid residuals of two hundred midday meals. She’s wiping a vacated table, with earnest attention to smears from a child’s chocolate pudding. She’s like the restaurant fittings, essential but somehow set apart, invisible in her honest industry. I wish she could somehow know I did see her that day and I loved her. LAST POEM
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