Another Visitation

a broken door scores
his rage at forgotten names
and sleepless haze

the sink
his civilisation lost
and deserted
an order too far invisible
manifest in round flat
concave silver sharp
incomprehensible
and dazed

crusted insects smeared across
crack'n'blackened deco tiles

microwave mummified from within
exploded eggs and year-old beans
overflowed milo and molten meat
trailblazing ants stealing
for new colonies - or rats
scraping loudly in toxic cupboards
of chemical waste and home-brew
exterminator

a history of papers
stories never read
collecting grime on tabloid verse
stacked and sticky
wrapped in string with alzheimer's bows
a feeble shuffle and
resolute NO to any hand but hers

Hot Chips and a Coke

In this time of food phobia
eating hot chips
is a schoolboy delight
Carrying fries in a paper cup
wrapped in a grease-stained bag
I can feel the glares
stretched out from
my peers and people
twice my age
Are they silently
chastising me
for being so irresponsible -
raising my cholesterol -
anything that feels oily probably is -
as my doctor says
Or are they hungering
after my tasty bonanza
rebuking my flippant disregard
for their shoulder-to-steel
journey north to their
meat-and-three-vege wife husband kids
Don't worry I'm heading there too
Just stopped on the way to smell
the smoking oil and crackling fat
Don't I care that
I'm staring death in the face
sneers one boney man
in a suit with a
NY Marathon backpack

At least I don't smoke or base jump

People from the North Shore
who wear suits
don't eat hot chips
and drink coke
on trains

They might steal a snort on a furtive break
or claim they need a caffeine-hit-fast-fill
on the weekend with mates
but on the train in peak hour -
you watch them -
they don't -

but they wish they could -
occasionally...

it would bring back
all the freedom and escape
of after-school hours
waiting for the bus
eating chips
in pulled-down ties
shrugged-shirts ruffled-hair
jumping and laughing
stealing a smoke

Ah how the acid in coke
dissolves the chip grease
so sweetly

The Breakfast Rat

The breakfast rat
sniffed Sanitarium crackers
and turned up his rat nose
at the milk-sodden tax haven -
glue-glugg-like-mud -
stick his rat-faced jaw together with
tarry-milk-wheat-mud like viscous sludge -
he knew better than this

They don't eat the bodies of the
rat babies like the three squeals
of an illustrious Shanghai banquet
but shake out flower water milk
like good children
soft and low
gentle and prudent
as puritans in the suburbs
tending babes and leather books
while the world outside burns

Christmas Meditations '06

When did the gods stop pissing & shitting
when did they stop fucking bulls on Attic plains
when did Dionysiac lust leave the heavens for
Hades and when did we forget that god was a human shame
Aphrodite's heaving breast seduced Adonis
as she was pressed by Ares
Saturn chewed his children till their
heads popped in Goya's oil
and almighty God shafted his bolt like
some petty despot punishing and
destroying his people from Eden to Gomorra.
How did a wine-sodden merchant-kicking Christ
transcend those who created him?

Observations Waiting for Trains

or the Alain de Botton and David Ogilvy shuffle

[Travelling to work Monday from Kings Cross to Edgecliff Station]

Understanding money can make a difference
Best before anything
In New Zealand, the daily grind is a perfectly
brewed espresso
Win the $100,000 ride

[Monday Lunch heading to Bondi Junction]

Maths made easy
LG has an air conditioner for
everyone. well, almost.
The new Marie Claire cook book in store now
Nokia Music. Drag. Drop. Your way.
Connecting People
Fresh not frozen grilled not fried - warning
can be seriously addictive
Like a bigger home with a smaller mortgage?
Best before anything else
Best before anything else

[Travelling back from Martin Place after a meeting on Monday afternoon]

Varekai: Cirque du soleil
Nokia Music. Drag. Drop. Your way.
Give to the Christmas bowl
Loves your bum
Miss C accessories
The next generation doesn't stop here
I like to go faster
Good thinking


[Late Monday evening at Edgecliff Station - heading home to The Cross]

Understanding money can make a difference
i groove. i watch. i capture. all thanks to one little card.
For every guide dog, we train 30 cane users.
Loves your Bum
Discover Australia's East coast.
Best before anything else
Understanding money can make a difference
i groove. i watch. i capture. all thanks to one little card.
The next generation turns travel time into download time

Prayer to Unswerving Junk God

time stamp: 8:01:11 AM

SUBJECT:

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Ashlee check this.
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Bank of Queensland security alert - NM94K_09.
Extra incomings for Christmas!
Extra incomings for Christmas!
Ismael check this.
Job in International Auto Broker Company for Australia (New Zealand) residents
download speeds
Bethany check this.
Dave's Opinion I've been using Firefox since the day that it was first publicly released, and I've made it my primary browser, setting aside Opera, and eschuing Microsoft Internet Explorer, entirely.
Casey check this.
learn apart
late backward
Job in International Auto Broker Company for Australia (New Zealand) residents
You want cheap viagra ?
Buy One Salsa, Get One FREE!
Austin check this.
By "going off" I mean "vibrating madly on the coffee table.
Fay check this.
org as a great community service.
emergence saying

time stamp: 8:55:34 AM

A Fierce Power

I watch him stagger and grow
burst forward
drop down
regather
with nimble-ing fingers clutch
at detritus
uncovered on his way

Turning to me -

his eureka moments devoured
like a Columbus or Polo -
awareness of possibilities with
each new touch -

he smiles

a wireless touch that
activates pulsing deep
within me
transfixing - driving me
through all barriers -
sleep - hunger - pain

he smiles cries out flaps his
arms trying to fly

A fierce power resides in these small conjurations

Electric Time Tricks

My devices have their own rhythm
controlling me one on one
each taking turn to speed me up and shut me down
counting my haphazard stutter through the day
for their own electro-entertainment

Morning is worst

My alarm clock kicks ten beats too soon
heaving me into light
stumbling I run into the
deviously calibrated DVD player that -
conspiring with the microwave -
rips twenty minutes from my day
like a well-practised street thief
so I bolt - thinking
I have irresponsibly lost time
somewhere between the
bedroom and the toaster

In my haze I hear laughter I cannot place

Getting High

They’re building the city up –
steel rods soaring on the end of a crane
jackhammers thumping –
That’s what they’re thinking –
They’re building the city up
that’s what keeps them going when they dream who they are –
They do it first for their families
and then so they can shout the next round
but they have to be someone too –
They're building the city up
To her they’re just hurting her head
That’s what her heroin mind
shouts through the morning haze
She screams back at them to shut up
first blindly as she passes the pugilist's cafe
then straight at them
when bearings are zeroed
from outside the Silver Screen
She could be twenty-five or forty
She doesn’t care about anything except the noise
Soon she’ll have more on her mind
but the noise is cutting through
everything just now
She shoves her hands deep down
the back of her black bicycle shorts
and screams that she’ll show them her arse!
If they don’t shut up she’ll show them her arse and they can kiss it!
The workmen laugh and look at each other
with that expression that says ‘not another one’ –
these poor suburban boys
have been learning a few things
since they started working ‘The Cross’
One shouts ‘go on then, you slut’ down at her
She just screams more obscenities and
starts asking cafe customers
for a cigarette then a light
Some people laugh
some half-laugh embarrassed
others bury their faces
in their café lattes and cappuccinos
After a while standing with her leg cocked on a bollard
smoking her fag and howling at the sky
it’s time to make for the methadone clinic
The workmen pound more steel into their leviathan
more caffeine goes round
and the world keeps getting higher.

Empowerment

I feel empowered by poetry
It fills my meagre wit with
surging bolts from Parnassus
A muscular swell as I
swoop my pen over scraps of
naked paper
Perhaps it suits
my short attention span
perhaps it’s the free-flowing form
the creative girth
the motion of the wave
pitching and throwing
reader and creator
together or off-course
as line crashes into line
idea into idea
And maybe
it’s that treasure-find moment
when everything stops
and you read
something forever true
All this empowers me
keeps me writing
re-working to
crystallise that perfect jewel

Pretty Pictures

I leave pretty pictures for others to paint.
Don't get me wrong,
nothing delights me more,
than to lie with a girl on a rock,
watching a stream tumble
over cool granite,
while kookaburras swell
the cathedral gums above.

Yet, in my Windmill times, I like to delve
more darkly
sucking on sour rather than sweet.
Turning to Gleeson,
not frolicking with McCubbin.
Looking for spiders
under the dunny seat!

One Tree

Into a football stadium they put him,
my father, his mother, his people.
I don't know how he felt
because I never asked.
There is often an aching vacuum,
never breached,
between those who've
tumbled through
war and holocaust
and their children who
have always known peace.

What I know is this -
That he led his mother to safety
through a hole in the wall
used by young boys to watch
football games for free.
At nine years old he preserved his family tree.
I've seen this tree -
drawn by my grandmother
with forty-four limbs cut off,
names circled and marked
Auschwitz.

From here to the Cross

Long sleek cars
filed in against gutters
tan-leathered, gilt-edged.
Short skirts bent at the waist,
Prada on show for the
village cafe.

Prancing boys muscle
past breeders and feeders
on street corners,
glarey tops shouting ironic slogans
at latte guzzling home buyers
craving to get in.

Dogs shit, owners scrape,
filling plastic bags,
dropping them into bins.
Couples stop in sunlight
and stare at boat-filled harbour glimpses
or sparkling cityscapes
before stepping over used syringes
and half-filled condoms.

A broken-down man shakes himself
out of fever-filled dreams,
rolls up the edge of a cardboard mattress
for a buried smoke
and asks a Zegna suit,
cupla coins for a hot cuppa, mate.
The suit walks on.

A red-dressed lawyer
and her banker man
edge into a street table,
parking their bugaboo pram,
and order an evening spring coffee
enjoying their special time
without the nanny.

This is my world-weary show.
A sometimes-good-time adventure
wonderland wearyland world,
where gutter and stars churn
day and night
but rarely
come together.

A couple,
driven by circumstance
to get out,
close the car doors,
and head away,
Somewhere,
Anywhere they can start again.

Downfall

A waggle-faced pepper-man
Stole the game,
But his knees were cut,
Today.

Out of his war britches
Fell the cowboy,
As the people woke,
Today.

Hallelujah, cried those who,
Long silenced,
Found their song,
Today.

But the question hangs
Over people's play,
What motives moved,
Today?

Imaginings 1

Unable to catch back the black hand,
The cold hand, the slap hand
The touching hand that drags
Across your lost face,
Staring-blind, unforgiving.

On Reading of Messines

As the mandrills pock-egged and gnarled
Came tumbling through the
Gloomy view
I sat and rubbed the ghoul's
Whitening thigh
What frozen way do you count this waste
Strewn like a beggar's wage
By men too full of pride and plenty

An imperial house of idiots
Let loose their toy chest
And usurped the world
Of thinking men
A crushed and breaking
Squelch that turned their heads

All right I say
From up above and down below
The covens cry of hungry feet
And and swollen mouths
With nothing left to walk with
But our thousand crimes

Could you speak in any softer tone
When all the air
Is sliced from your jaunty belly
With a lion's claw
Red hot in no-man's land

And the sky above
Black-streaked with iron
Like screaming babies
Never faced again
My sunken mud-faced mate
No face no guts no legs

And crawling from the docks
The bastards could never know
How could we even start to say
What a time we had
And what we
Left behind

Youth

Tweed patches dissolve from my mind
As I watch the clock spin like a yo-yo,
Decorated with Coca Cola and Fanta labels
From my childhood.

Flash, flash go the images of
Cricket matches on the front lawn
And stick fights in the park,
Charging down the street on
New bikes and skateboards,
Footballs over the fence and
Running from dogs driven mad.

Yet, where there were sprinklers in the sunshine,
Now everything is pin-striped and cold.

Tell my son to enjoy his time.
Tell my child to take risks.
Tell him this,
And smile for me.

The Mentor

To pay for the mortgage
I dance with the devil,
Up on his goat-legs he jives
As I learn the dark arts
To connive and turn off cold
My moral pump.

I've seen the philanthropist
Spin from caressing babes
To spitting out
Blackened lies barbed
With cross intentions,
Thrilled in his mauling grope.

Lick-spittle and suck, he says,
Come learn the way.
Don't judge my actions,
Judge my greater aims.
Have I confused you
With my Machiavellian call?

Embrace this as the law, my friend
Drink it in and say, I live!
For nothing deserves
To survive unless
It has fought and won,
He sniggers off to one side.

But he knows I've seen -
Don't be a fool he shouts
This pathetic angst
Isn't worth the time
It takes you away from
Bruising more bones.

There is no god
And no judgement book
And all things are equal
And nothing wrong
When everything ends
At a gravedigger's farm.

View from a Desk

Casting a glass eye round
For approval
He feels winks fall
On his polished page.
Nothing simple and beautiful
Is easy.
He knows that,
Like a childhood pledge.

Yet bells toll hollow success
As heroes morph
From hungry piglets.
He consents to pride
On a Monumental scale
As his capital heaves
On the back of swooning ego.
All puffed puffery.

Back-slapping, boob boys
Chase themselves
Back to sports sheds
And bar rooms,
Telling stories
Of cut-edged risk
And shoulder charged
Confrontation.

Keep it up, Keep it up
If you drop the pace
The team goes down
We're ALL connected,
You know -
For No man's an island
Unto himself -
Any drop will collapse the stage.

In this false cry,
Reason is drowned,
What else can there be,
But complicity.

Pericles Rising

And by the example of our Declaration
Make everybody want to be a nation.

They are our wards we think to some extent
For the time being and with their consent,
To teach them how Democracy is meant.

Robert Frost 1942


From a swollen earth,
Wrought-cracked and splitting,
Rose Hellen’s dream.
The Mighty stretched out,
Dry and fraught,
Fingering their empires
To city states,
Gold like a phoenix claw,
Pierced upward through wilting flesh.
And the Mighty recoiled,
Snapping back each hand,
One by one by one,
Shrieking and lashing tongues.

A revolt of grime and blood
Burst from pierced arteries
To fill the ravines.
And Pericles kept rising.

As each new city severed
The chord to its mother,
New cracks were filled in the earth.
As each new city found a song,
The land began to glisten,
Woven as a brutal tapestry.
Each song new.
Each song unique.

As time marched on
Kingdoms dissolved
Leaving just their name,
Echoes of a hollow scream
As a new world was born.
And Pericles kept rising.

And the new way spoke
Of freedom and truth
In the place of
Darkness and tyranny,
And Pericles kept rising.

While his monstrous head grew
To caste its shadow
Over free peoples,
And Pericles kept rising.

Until he was high enough
To roar of danger
Beyond the horizon,
And Pericles kept rising.

O great leader save us!
They cried.
Without seeing an enemy,
And Pericles kept rising.

Then he bent down
Sweeping his hand across the land,
Taking up his flock
Crying: “I have created all this for you.
Follow me, to your war.
It is inevitable.”
And they followed.