| other side of the fence |
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not to mention the dog
after reading Hirata Toshiko after you left I excised and auctioned off all empty rooms ~ your white cat (real cat) and I now live guilt-free in a bedsit to spite you I spray-painted everything virgin white even our sagging four-poster ~ cat hysterical, got trampled on dicovered him yesterday demeowed and flattened out vet fluffed him up admitted he’d been your lover dyed cat matt black for free ~ I remeasure bed (real bed) on seed catalogue days ringed for your menses ~ any change will prove prima facie you're converting bed to a rack sold a mould of the imprint your body left on bed (still real) to a sex therapist who makes one-sided blow-up dolls ~ that cat seed you planted last spring came up marmalade ~ turned a nice profit in kittens we sold to tourists as tiger cubs row on row of smirking pussycat faces following the sun like synchronised pollyannas ~ corps de ballet stem-tail turns electronic sweeps of our bedsit have proven feline urine is effective bunyip repellent ~ your cat’s tenure is open-ended me and cat and bed (all authentic) are totally over it we don't hate you just suspect you were never real ~ our room’s too small for rebirthing poetry index Alibi Afterwoods he cradles her body, rests his head on her chest. Her legs secure him there, Heels in the small of his back. He waits while the lust ebbs, Becomes an incoming wave of love, Love as real as that scatter of islands and Those cockleshells out on the bay. When he senses her fading he grabs at her – Too late! she’s already gone... instantly elsewhere An act of absence. She’s done it before, Her body left, as if surety for her return, Her remains entrusted to his care. The responsibility almost overwhelms him. He tries to resettle on her body, on his coat, On this their ledge on Serelemar Cliff. Perhaps She’s gone on ahead to preview their tomorrow. Her eyes, open but empty, admit nothing. Perhaps she’s hard-wired with some secret Switch she’s thrown to STANDBY. He examines her remains with forensic care: Heartbeat, respiration, muscle tone... all normal. In this offshore breeze her flesh seems odourless. Aha! where is that dragonfly tattoo He noticed while undressing her. When, if, She returns he’ll check her thigh for that. His head rises, falls with her breathing. Breasts and skyline move in and out of focus. He must anchor her until she reanimates. poetry index Shortcut Your world has shrunk to this back lane, asphalt dark as day-old blood, a far street light to steer you home. One third along, you long to look back. Nemesis favours the flick knife. A dead leaf rasps in a concrete gutter, you push deeper through brittle silence. In fear-soaked spaces between steps you listen remembering what you did to him, not knowing he was one of them. A glint of steel, there to the left – no, only an old coke bottle. You're between paling fences – one slits moonlight, the other chops up your shadow. Will they somewhere ahead meet up, make this lane a dead-end. Backyards witness private obscenities, foul things are buried here, never deep enough. Miasma fogs the lane, sticks walls of your lungs together, you gag on a smell like your mother's stewed cabbage. You risk a glance behind — still clear, or have they skirted ahead? Dry lips. Face tight as a knife grip. Unbidden, your legs start to run. poetry index night life this box is called bedroom not sleeproom as in diningroom only the bed is guaranteed not a skerrick of light and night just... isn’t happening it’s a black hole bloated to indolence with sucked-up sound — to get it started I stir its soupiness with my index finger it takes time to subdue the inertia of a dead-in-the–water world get it spinning like a centrifuge to make our cartesian co-ordinates accelerate squarely away from the top-left corner where walls and ceiling usually meet above my chest of drawers and that corner itself is racing through space don’t you know… time elongates itself and we ride in the comet tail of our hurtling world while stellar winds scream at the gods but not for the woman asleep in my bed her slice of night’s too thin to accommodate a cyclotron her hair doesn’t flare as it would if washed in Stellarcare the body inside her nightie isn’t nymph-luminous as it would be with Lunarglow Cream she lays there an affront to my physics doggedly sucking in air breathing it out dirtied a gas converter bartering oxygen concentrations with niggardly night this temptation to poke her to yell those neutrinos are bombarding our box again wake up you dozy cow and hang on for the ride of your life poetry index The Rabbit-Proof Fence I arrive at the derelict fence, immediately Feel I’m intruding, as if in a gutted cathedral. The fence runs gunbarrel-straight north-south, Defying desolation, splitting the world in half. Away to my left an ochre outcrop is screaming. My watery body shrivels before the sun’s thirst. To the south a sand drift has bridged the fence, Its rabbit-proof netting burrowed underground. In a conical sandpit trap beside my left boot Sickle jaws of an antlion pull an insect under. Fence posts, bleached grey, step down and away To hazy horizons. No hint of their green heritage. Spasmodically, the antlion tosses up sand Resetting pit walls to their angle of repose. Ancient scrubland stretches west and east as if seeking distant oceans. This is Martu country. I conjure black stick figures. They shimmer-dance. Disjointed bodies. Juddering spears point at me. The withdrawing sun sucks up colours, elongates fence shadows. The desert is draining westward. A soft breeze hisses through spinifex stubble. Taut fence wires release music of the spheres. The antlion has gone and I should return to camp But I linger on, tippling wilderness. poetry index Two Cupboards The wooden cupboard on the left held rations of love in white sheets some thin as Irish linen handkerchiefs, others in snowy slabs thick as triple-folded double-damask tablecloths, and all sizes in between. The identical cupboard on the right held guilt in one-size-fits-all sinpacks bound in animal skins, black as bible covers. Each day before opening one or the other Mother sort guidance through prayer and the Word. The same brass key fitted both locks. Tom never carped at Judgements to wrap him in lovecloth or strap him under a sinpack that drove him to his knees. Mother loved Tom, asked God to keep him free from temptation at tuck shops and toilet blocks, from wickedness leaked by bedroom walls. Tom loved Mother but she died anyway, went to join God, left the cupboards and key to her Tom. Those cupboards became his cross. They followed him into each home and hotel, every marriage and miscarriage, into every brothel and barrack block. Each night the doors swung open, stuff got out. Neither shrink nor priest could wedge those cupboards shut. On a whim Tom hung a sinpack high in his mulberry tree. He ate its fruit bitter-red, before it could ripen to black. He gave his dog a chenille love-quilt but the wily mongrel chose bare boards to shiver his dreams away. Somewhere along the lithium highway Tom abandoned the cupboards, left them there, beside the A4, face-to-face, banging doors like wooden angel wings, while love and guilt spilled out and neutralised each other, and Tom searched heaven for Mother. poetry index Bar Code My wife was over in biscuits & I was somewhere in juices & this tin without a label rumbled by sort of tiredly shiny but clean except for glue marks that proved it once was something. The floor wasn't sloped yet it kept on rolling on, real slow-like, as if searching for its shelf or having a bit of a wander. I had to run to keep up as it passed below each row; finished in fruit and veges where it clearly didn't belong. I hefted, smelled and shook it: kind of an alien non-smell, suspiciously unsloshy, about the weight of a hand grenade, but bare as a monkey's bum in a shop where everything's branded, sorted, shelved, confessed to the world in small print. I offered the checkout money but it seems the system couldn't price an uncoded mystery so I stole it, your Honour. 2nd FreeXpresSion 2000 Literary Competition
Published FreeXpresSion, 2000 Magazine poetry index The Watchers He's out there, watching me, like always, tripping between our several points of view. I wonder if we've now symbiotic twins or have we settled for a half-life each. When young I tried to pin him down by naming: Conscience, God... various dead things, but he was undeterred by recognition, titles slid off his head like holy water. Some see-saw days, a mirror plane our fulcrum, he'd play at counterpoise and so prescribe limits on our ecstacy and angst – the sum of our emotions always zero. I'm his life's research project. But I'll laugh last – my consciousness has fouled his experiments, he'll never know what he might have been if he hadn't been watching me. poetry index Soldiers not dancing I’m sorting old photographs of unlikely warriors. Their boyish grins beg recognition I can’t muster. I add their faces to the heap I’ll later burn. Now this snap doesn’t belong –my daughters dancing like sprites in a rock pool on a Sydney beach– it was sent to me in Vietnam. They’re high-stepping over clear water, wet legs silvered by native sunlight; their bathers aren't camouflage green. None of the soldiers were dancing. The girls escaped silver nitrate fix and flowered into motherhood. As I strike the match my heart chars with the smell of a monk’s immolation. Highly Comm. Wannabee Poetry Competition, 1999
Highly Comm.FreeXpresSion 2000 Literary Comp, 2000 Highly Commended Forest FAW Literary Comp, 2000 poetry index witness after viewing an exhibit by Ken Unsworth,
Art Gallery of NSW, 1998
[a room deep in a state institution] one wooden straight-backed chair: empty floating at eye level every surface fiercely burning black smoke bleeding from the fire endlessly... another wooden straight-backed chair: empty not burning facing the burning chair pinned to the floor by spotlights endlessly... [doorway to the state institution room] from a sanctuary of shadows: i watch one chair witnessing an other chair burning... poetry index Ravens Beyond my bedroom window wings folding on wings rasp like undertakers' arms in synthetic sleeves. This is the fourth night and my misguided mate proffers broth and potions instead of incantations or a shotgun defence. First fuzz of dawn confirms four silhouetted sentinels, the carrion watch, on a dead branch of the hoop pine. She says they're only birds and that is where they live. I tremble at such innocence, but I'm too weak to wield the weighty sword of reason. Their cark... cark... summons rheumy night into their eyepits. A fluttering of feathers – I cling to my bedclothes. They settle under their cloaks for one more day in the game. poetry index Bed sitting with Bed chin on chest head scooped out still hurting bad too tired to climb out of pain twenty six red pills got two by twos when nurse maud not checking my swallows hard to remember the master plan where pills are hid how many is enough worst bit's leaving Bed can’t stand dead without Bed Bed is for curling ups in sweet little-deaths blanket over head and no thinking oh no ah Bed just Bed and mum love mum of course dad dead can't love him mum's got pension won't worry long as her friends don't know and there's no mess do reds cause chucking up hard to think of everything too tired now tomorrow maybe soon for sure poetry index Village Nativity This year Jesus is black in our village plaza nativity scene. Maybe He’s been tanning for years and I haven’t noticed. Mary is still white (there are limits) and borderline anorexic with Barbie hips that deny easy delivery. Her focus is stage right and high over my head. Three Osama-bin-Laden look-alikes seem to have taken the crib hostage; they frown and glare out at us infidels – well, only me at this early hour. No plaza security evident. And only a two-foot picket fence to restrain them. It’s painted a warm suburban green, and the “Keep Out” sign faces my way. Away to the left rear there’s this old Joe, off-white, about twice Mary’s age. He seems superfluous to the scene. Perhaps it’s his job to teach the sheep to kneel. The manger-manager has a nice eye for a mortice joint, but he’s gone and forgotten the angels, not even a fallen one in the straw. I hate it when they leave the angels out. poetry index Picking Friends The vintner's nubile daughter, rises from our mattress in the winery’s loft, says: This harvest had to end but we can still be friends. Friends! how bland a label. From among our loving sheets I watched her silhouette against a dawn already teasing this last day of picking. Today she will decant our love leave me bitter dregs wretched lees of friendship, stale sediment of passion. And how will she put down our love, long in the tasting, yet to mature from ferment? With sniff-spitting ritual, and a proprietary label: Vintage 04-robust young pretender? How can I toast you as friend, remembering that curve from your neck to mouth, that bouquet of fruity sex the full-bodied bloom ... Please, anything but friend. poetry index Home, 2pm Thursday after reading Hirata Toshiko it’s 2pm on a thursday in autumn and has been so for months dark forces have purloined earth’s angular velocity it’s crazy like some deity hit PAUSE like we’re spinning at X radians per second then — whiplash shamans claim it’s a sign of something or other christians explain it’s a pagan advertising stunt but I suspect it was you at first folk resented the freeze on heavenly bodies now we’ve adapted distracted by heady prospects of an endless football season life goes on we’re never really late or early but without saturdays we’re unconfessed so we all try to be good spare a thought for roosters & sunsets & tides dairy cows a fall that never does dead rose-heads hanging on... poetry index feathers in landscape format uncle eric’s painting had a three-duck flight descending at 30 degrees
to the horizontal and targetting a church in the suggested village in the lower right corner
of his composition but after uncle eric died mother being churchified cropped the village from
his painting then rotated it to portrait format so the ducks started at the base of a cloud
column on the left and ascended at 60 degrees to the horizontal in a traditional and an
altogether uplifting iconography
an aberrant feather poetry index Serelemar Bay Our ferry at the mainland wharf is wooden and old as my maiden aunt. A woman – straw hat, red sarong – sprouts from a patch of plastic shopping bags that I help carry on board. We sit, a rickety table between us, her provisions at our feet, while the ferry fusses free, slides out into the Bay, today ironed flat, starched with sunshine. Her face is adrift in blue shadow. A diesel throbs. Vibrations surge through the boat’s frame, into my bones, unerringly find my resonant crotch. I see her blush; she feels it too. She looks to starboard, I to port – toy islands sport evergreen tutus hemmed by oyster-stippled rock. A vein in her neck is pulsing. We are seized, synced to each other and the pistons pounding down below. Skewered to our seats, we can’t get off at any stop, not Green Isle, not Lesbos or Eratoville. We are doomed to sail forever a tremble short of ecstasy. Endless chaste coitus – it’s morphing into something... weird, like... love? for a mate one metre, a world away? This dear, accidental lock-step lover, this woman, this siren singing our song... poetry index Seahole I float naked in this seahole I’ve created and re-occupy at whim. How heroic to belong to a primeval source, part of the vastness. My native land drifts over there in its own seahole, gives up its grit. Was this hole here, waiting, before I entered it, a fluid cast with glass-slipper fit? Does ocean have memory, keep a liquid diary of drowned ships, sailors, lovers? I ponder my body: mainly water, yet I cannot merge with the sea. Is there an amnion here that separates us, manifests otherness in mother-sea’s body? Sea is like huge love where I flounder safely before returning to the coddling mould. When you went I sensed the hole your body left in air, the little silences your voice once filled. Right now, do you float close by some foreign shore and gently stir the fluid ties between us? poetry index Fire Wood Speak truth, are you dead? If not Why this barren disguise ere Autumn has slowed your sap? The old ones say a tree Beaten with flat of an axe Flowers, fruits, throws its seed But I can't wait a season. My woodpile's spent, Winter comes on whitely and I must know right now, If you be dead or dying. Over there, gross progeny Of my father's father's enemies Bate us with the hated flag, Chant liturgies to unnatural gods, Bear their hatchets boastfully As if they already know. My axe is readied for a first strike. Proud people sing old glory songs, Shiver in their skins, look to me. Wretched tree, bear witness now – Green wood or burning wood? Highly Commended, 2001 Peace Bell Poetry Prize
poetry index Affairs of the Heart 1. Arrhythmia I am aware 2. Angiogram I float over ripples 3. The Angioplasty Team are gardeners taking kinks poetry index Another Budgie When his image in the cheval glass became cadaver-with-budgie the man took this as a sign he'd outlived himself. He took care of his budgie then walked to the beach where gossiping wavelets teased the ebb tide. He was knee-deep when he took a last look back and was surprised to see his footprints in sand. There could be no doubt he'd really been here just moments ago. He walked home turned on the gas which lit first time so he put on the kettle made tea or coffee checked the classifieds for another budgie. poetry index poetry index |