Whispering to embers
I’ve stood in the open
and dared lightning to strike,
screamed down thunder
to remember a fight.
I’ve whispered to embers
to turn to fire and burn,
stared through past windows
and wanted to yearn.
I’ve cried at your stories
and laughed at my own,
built temples to decadence
while I’d none to call home.
I’ve swallowed my youth
from a bottle of time,
I wanted the story
but drowned in the rhyme.
Tuscany
I’ve had enough.
I’m going to take my family to Tuscany,
where we’ll suckle on the Tyrrhenian nipple,
and bloat ourselves on the blood of the sangiovese,
then simply lie back in the sun. And never get up.
Selling Sydney
Walking from the train station
to the office through
the quiet city streets.
Echoes of history.
I walk past terraced houses
that have stood together
for over one hundred years.
Feel the stories
dripping from the bricks,
stories of loves & struggles
fixed in history.
New buildings.
Cathedrals of consumerism.
Shopping centres. Office blocks.
Apartments, high rise.
Selling history according to corp.
My office building
looms
grey.
Like a rain cloud
solidified and fallen.
I step off the street
and into the open plan
designed for efficiency.
And put aside my history.
This Now
Science
is funny.
Calculations and
medications and
meditations and
salutations to
God
only knows
what future.
The only truth is
now.
Feel your second
complete.
Words.
Words. Words.
Married to each other. Married.
Sent into the world Sent
like blind children. blind.
Thrown to the wolves. Thrown.
Ripped apart. Ripped.
Stripped from bone. Stripped.
Stray pieces of meat Stray.
left to rot in the sun. Left.
After the vultures Vultures
have finished picking. finished.
Her Empty House
Everyday
the same.
Awake.
Drive to
work
drive
home.
@ home
she locks the door
and cries.
The children are gone.
The meaning is lost.
Locked in
her empty house.
The Skepticism of Dreaming
We’ve lost the legends that forged our ambitions,
lost faerie tales in a child’s forgotten mind,
let children grow into organised structures
and denied the opium of the fathers behind.
Avalon lies in delicate pages,
recounted by historians as based in no fact,
and Heaven is dying a cancerous death
with each innocent ending on a battle raged tract.
The kamikaze has been stifled, the dragon’s breath held,
Kublai Khan merely fell in Japan,
scientific probes and punctures have removed all enigma,
and left tales of the failures of man.
We are left to dream only terrestrial dreams,
of houses built on compliant foundations,
secured by mortgages secured by safe jobs,
and paid for by mute indignation.
Silvia, the Years Pass like Rainbows
The years pass like rainbows,
with each colour
clearly defined
and yet blinding into
the whole.
It is you who is the
cause of my sun,
you who clears my sky,
you who gives me the words
in which I fly.
Four Bullets
Four bullets and he is taken,
a day in the life that changed the world.
Four bullets from the shaky chamber of
a nowhere man and history explodes.
Four bullets and we can no longer imagine
there’s nothing to live or die for.
Four bullets anonymously manufactured
that still ricochet today.
An Anonymous Unit, Southern Inner Sydney
The remnants of a roast chicken lay strewn
on its ripped open foil bag packaging
on the dining table,
along side a too full ashtray
and too many beer bottles.
Our hero lays back,
bloated,
excess he’s taken unprepared.
The midnight TV flickers blue,
advertisements of telephone sex.
The phone rings, he’s stirred,
wrong number, they always are.
While he’s up he gets another beer,
turns off the TV,
and soaks in the silence.
Our hero lays back,
sated,
excess, he’s raping, unaware.
Gathering Tchotchkes
Tip-toeing through life,
gathering tchotchkes,
and trying to calculate
the appropriate amount of tax to pay,
wondering whether the neighbours
noticed
anything,
and if it doesn’t rain on Sunday
we should do
something,
but if it does rain we’ll
stay home,
and if it doesn’t rain
we’ll probably stay home too,
it’s a nice house,
look at its beautiful
mortgage,
360 months,
principal & interest,
the gardens are level
and the trees are trimmed,
controlled growth,
automatic garage door
makes life so much easier.
I wonder if the neighbours
noticed.
anything?
Racing
We’re all racing towards
the last second,
the last breath.
Up ahead
a row of brake lights,
another one of
life’s traffic jams.
And no escape.
You got on to the motorway
to save some time!
And now you are stopped.
Physically. Stopped.
Mentally. Stopped.
Still racing towards
the last second,
the last breath.
You should have taken
the scenic route.
Death does not always come at the end
Some people die
long before
their last breath.
Ordinary people
who offer no
new word.
Death is caused
by
a lack of life.
The Cerebral Haemorrhage of Suburban Life
A cacophony of lawn mowers
shatters a serene Sunday morning,
the rattling of empty beer bottles
being moved from last night’s dinner table.
A tyre burning nausea.
The cerebral haemorrhage of suburban life.
The nine to five, t.v. guide,
pigeon holed mind control.
Sitting Watching
I have just stepped off the train.
I pushed with the others to get out
of the station and
managed to break free of the pack and
secured a bench on the footpath.
I sit.
I should keep moving with them,
keep moving towards my workplace but
this morning something tells me to
STOP.
In front of me a sea of suits
ebbs and flows down the street,
seaweed shades of grey and black,
murky and churned.
Their faces hold no expression
and yet they move with determination.
They move or are moved?
They are drawn.
They know they should be somewhere,
by a certain time.
So their legs do the action
that they don’t realise
their brains are ordering.
The street cleaners are at work,
they look angry.
They follow the flow of suits
like you would walking your dog,
with a plastic bag and ‘pooper scooper’.
The sound of metal chairs
being dropped on concrete.
Umbrellas opened.
The coffee shops.
Traffic behind me plays the soundtrack.
Engines, horns, screaming ‘hurry up, there is
somewhere I have to be by a certain time.”
Above,
tall buildings impose their authority,
like sentinels.
Still more and
more suits float by.
I should be in there.
I should. But
this morning something told me to
STOP.
Some of the sharks in the sea
are looking at me.
A thousand mobile phones,
with ears attached,
turn to look at me, because
I stopped.
I didn’t think much of it at the time,
I just stopped,
but I’m starting to realise
that something is
terribly wrong.
Because the sharks dared to look,
now some of the smaller fish are looking.
The sharks had a scowl,
but the smaller fish look
puzzled.
“What are you doing?”
“Get up!”
“You can’t stop.”
“You’re going to be late.”
“There is somewhere you must be
by a certain time.”
I get up but
I cannot merge with the flow.
I swim against the rip.
The suits fret.
I am a leaf and
they are a line of ants.
I have broken the line.
The drones look to the leaders,
“what do we do?”
I have caused some to almost
come to a complete
STOP.
Almost.
As a consequence they
have to jog 2or3steps
to get back into line.
Back into the inaudible rhythm.
Thump, thump, thump, thump.
I made it to the other side of their channel and
am now standing, facing the wrong direction.
New drones look at me,
scared that I am going
to step into their path.
Their minds are calculating,
they look to their
left and right,
“if he steps in I can side-step
this way and not lose rhythm.”
I should jump in and
go with them.
I can’t.
They keep coming but
are thinning out.
Then there are none.
The waves have stopped.
The street is death like.
I should have gone with them. Now
I can’t.
I light a cigarette and think.
What have I done?”
I step into a coffee shop.
They stare at my clothes.
Suit and tie.
They look up at their clock and
back to me.
I ask for coffee,
the lady asks
“is that to take away?”
I say
“no, I’ll have it here.”
The silence deafens and
she stares,
“what have you done?”
I take my coffee and
sit.
“What am I doing?”
People are scurrying again.
Carrying folders.
They look at me and
at my table.
Shouldn’t I have
a folder in front of me,
what am I doing?
The coffee tastes strange.
Forbidden.
The street keeps
working
around me.
England
England.
How have you left me?
Naked and bullet riddled.
And why?
Because I loved you?
Because I was born into you?
Because I was you?
But not now.
Take back your rose heart,
your bulldog stance
and empire tales.
I seek a new language.
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