My Man's Heart Runs

My man’s heart runs with beating blood
the colour of Southern sorrow

strung veins straining with a love
for men with no tomorrow

Rinsed through with bellowed
blues

soaked with soaring
sighs

My man’s heart runs with beating blood
the colour of Southern cries.

The Other Morning

I dreamt some benevolent being leant over my head

and as it swooped to kiss my brow

the alarm sounded

Concentric Circles

we work in concentric
circles

round and back the way we
came

curled, one within the
other, clicked in together on
different scales, made with different
radii, lined where different lines lie but otherwise we find we are
identically the same

you and I share the same fundamental, mathematical
name

we are concentric
circles

round and back the way we
came

What Do We Do

what do we do
when the ones we look to
have buried
their eyes
in their
hands

Bourke St 27/11/2009

I am looking out the window onto a cool and leafy world - Bourke St is fizzing in a coat of post-heat spittle, sweating out the grime of the thousand footfalls that befell her today. She hushes, swishes, pushes trams through her weary body, walked over, walked over, endlessly, always. And I sit in a pocket of her torso breast height, most likely, wishing the particularly woeful walkers well, and meaning it, before some smarmy smartarse parading through my scene sparks my wrath, my all-seeing, all-searing censure. It's these villains who break my alliance with the man on the street, these who turn me into a tyrant, triggering my desire for fire, or maybe I'll send a flood?

Who could be my Noah?

I'll need a good swimmer, a good rower. Someone who can weather a storm, a real goer. Maybe the Sudanese man out the front of the Red Violin, I'm sure he's seen worse times than these. Yeah, him. Definitely not the stumbling stiletto'd staggerer, styled to the nines in the finest Supre` had to offer. Arks get rickety, and she's finding it tricky enough trying to stand on land. No, she's not my man. I think I'll stick with the one from Sudan.

Right, so, what's my plan?

Tell him what I'm feeling? Make him understand the situation? The way things are? And ask him if he's willing to be my star? My chosen one? No one'd turn it down, surely. Not once they hear abut my plans for Bourke, no way. They'd set to work on an ark straight away, they'd get all the animals picked and they'd pray for my guidance, my mercy, and maybe the sparing of their friends and their family. And I'd grant that, for sure! I mean, what are gods for?

Kamikaze

I was once a boy but now
I am the living death

nearing pure obliteration
gearing towards that

last

explosive

breath

I will go
and take others with me

blow their worlds apart
change the course of history

I will take the road
from the earth up to the stars

see

I was once a boy but now
I am a kamikaze

Shampoo

I bought a certain shampoo because it smelled like something I'd
forgotten - showers at the Eltham
pool - my fellow small girls
sharing sweet shampoo - the mothers
half-wet from helping us lather our heads - bulky bosoms
bustling round the room - wedding-ringed hands
briskly towelling us
dry - dripping ponytails
on the bus back - uniforms sopping
at the neck - hope
and health
and the holy road
home.
I bought the shampoo because it smelled like
home
and I used it
in spite of the parabens and petrochemicals on the label.

Pitterpatter

Oh my pitterpatter friend Grief
you little baby bother, with your iddybiddy
feet, you live inside each of my
brothers, give us all a papery leaf
from your book and take our mothers from
our fathers, make stewing cauldrons of the
meek, lifting love out of our
lovers. Grief

you useless eunuch

I could mistake you for no
other.

Passing the Treasury

3 men run by me
Proper men, men
with maths and
cars, and careers
and stocks, men
with mechanics and
wives and an idea
of how locks work

these men have
taken a break from
work for an 0 H and S
sponsored relief
from R S I
sweat, real man
sweat, running down
their shiny heads
dripping into their
Oakley-glassered eyes

and one of them breaks
off, jogging toward the
office to the rhythm of
friendly goodbyes

“Bye Frank!”, “Seeya Frank!”

imagine if I were one of those math-car-career-man-Frank-goodbying
guys

Untitled #10

There are mornings when I wake up and the curtain is drawn in such a way that I can just see a small square of sky. The buildings huddled like bumbling titans around my apartment are eliminated from view, and for all I know they could have been eliminated, fantastically, in the night. All I have to do to go with this notion is believe it; feel it drum through me, the thrill of being the last one alive after the apocalypse. On these mornings when I’ve got this view of the bare sky just right I am careful to move very little. I lie as still as I can and I focus, focus, focus on that patch and let the remnants of the dream state guide me to some possible answers for where I ‘am’. The trams become sighing vessels on a vast sea, moaning through the ocean like great whales in search of food or company. Yes, I am in the middle of the sea. My apartment is lost at sea and the sea is licking up its concrete walls like an ancient beast.

Pagent

these lilies blow through the room

throw their bodies

upward

arms

lifted

gymnasts

joined

by

joy

Autumn

Globe-child

translucent as a freshly peeled Gogol
egg

God sealed a deal in
you

had the golden season crown its leaves with
you and crack

the trees with
wonder.

We are all asunder at your Autumn
atoms

baby

we are beyond measure in your
depth.

Reprieve

Oh, Noam,
how we struggle and
strive

how we search and we
dive

for reprieve

you didn't find it
in flannel pockets

will you find it
up a pressed shirt sleeve?

Orb

The arcade light looks like
a bulbous moon
reflecting in the windows
of our blooming worlds.

Antonia, reading, behind the register,
is turned to a swooning
lover, drifting, dreamily,
upon a lagoon.

Denham, the crooning master
of some lunatic
ceremony.

And me, beneath that
orb-like balloon,
I am the scribe of its dictated
testimony.

Untitled #9

the baby was struck by
beauty

Sunday Morning

Sunday morning

and all of last night's debaucherous
creatures come yawning from their
warm, sun-soaked winter bedrooms, some
alone, some in pairs, dopily fawning on
one another with heavy hungover
smiles and the residue of sex trawling
small-ly behind them.

Almost twelve

and all of these formerly bed-ridden
babies of the dawn need breakfast, lots
of coffee, strawberry jam on a
scone, balls of marscapone for their
waffles, all the comforts a glorious
cafe-foray brings after an evening of
forgetting these things.

Instead of Dying

gentle James
says through his frames
that he wants
to be lost
at sea.

*

I ring with the dark things

I Have Been Running

I have been running
these three
mornings

I have been running
because I need to be
recreated

I have been running
I have needed the
slap the
sting of
waking the
rip from the
womb of
sleep

I have been running
I have needed the cold
tubes of my frozen
veins to

flood
with
blood

my white
hands to
mottle with
purple and
blue

I have been running
I have needed my face to
flush and
forehead to
gush with
sweat

the oily
water of
stagnation and
regret

I have been running
I have been running
I have been running

Untitled #6

My heart is lined with trees but my soul is the city. It fills my body and forms my words. It is the breath blown into me; cold, smoggy, sly, necessary. The city has spread its sediment along my bones. And though my tree-heart cleans the veins that branch through this vessel, the city's terrible, glorious soot will choke me, lovingly, in the end. And it's an end I accept. An end that I fear and covet. Because death is fearful. Because death is right.

Miss Dior (was what I wore)

This sting
is the bittersweet ring of orange,
cinnamon, myrrh, all
things that purr with the pain of love in
loss, all syrups that gloss the matt fact of
lack, all strains of sublime in the
grind.
And while I wind
between its fingers, sing
with the hymn of its
whim, the bittersweet scent is all that
lingers, in bittersweet memory of
him.

Untitled #4

Last night I lay on my bedroom floor
dead. Dead, my head half in the tomb's core
ready for prayers and embalming and all of the awful,
necessary, awful mourning,
when a shard of musical light shone in between the slits in my wall
and hit my ears and tore
my chest and wore
me like a glove and ordered
my blood to beat! Slowly, but still! I had been so sure
I would be no more
but the blues restored
me to life and swore
I'd continue in spite of it all.

The Bare Bones of the Rabbit

inhabit my room, low
and behold their chalklike whiteness placed in the mighty reverence of a Tschaikowsky-guarded tomb, though
there’s no
jaw
or
really any other morsel of the body, no
torso, no
legs, no
paws, and it’s
also missing part of its
head, but what’s left is
cherished, saved from
perishing by a nature-loving
man, a gentle mischief-maker, skull-taker and
relisher of life, who bestowed
this deathly gift upon the
White Wave of Strife.

(My Marvellous) Miraculous Medal (Montage)

Every anniversary
they pinned the coin of Christ on me
and prayed
I'd stay
the course.

Marble Jesuses

scrape together like a
set of marble Jesuses
crucified by
love

steakheart

static carves the
steak of my heart

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 Australia License.

Genevieve's Shoes

these shoes are Genevieve’s shoes these
shoes Genevieve chose to use she
goes wherever she chooses she’s chosen
leather these shoes are Genevieve’s shoes

HUGE HANDS

His hands are INSANELY
huge, there is NO
pretending otherwise! I TRY
to avoid looking at them in particular but he is a WILD
gesticulator and those hands are THRUSTING
like two very well-equipped hips. I SWEAR
he is more hand than man! Look at THEM!
Look at him touch one to his lips! I SWEAR
he just ran one through his hair to track my eye-line and see if I was STARING!

Or maybe I’ve just been alone for too long.

Tone-Deaf Crow

tone-deaf crow
at my window
bleating like a battered
sheep
calling like a
crowd

deep and low
how you harrow
beating on my shattered
sleep
falling like the
proud

The West

Hums
low, electronic

shipping container drums and dust and waste and rust and
industry removed

dense and sprawling

the core cut out, the core-hole yawning like a homeless
cat, my homely heart holding up its mangy body
dangling a morsel to tempt it to lead me
stroking its belly, feeling its neediness, willing to make it wait until it concedes that we’re

just the same

we’re hungry, and coreless
the Knight of the North East and the Cat of the North West.

Untitled #2

The
glunk
thunk
thud
of
blood
in
my
body
when
ghosts
clunk
their
bodies
beside
me.

The Floating World

The
floating
world
is
life
living
for
love
of
death.

Saturday Morning (Stone Mouth)

I move into the stone mouth and
wait
while little wiry Wing Chung boys fill the lift

fold myself inside

glide up the building’s body like a
flow of fluid through a vein, a shiver up a spine, a thought to a brain

level 3 is mine and so I exit the
frame,

little wiry Wing Chung chittering sealed behind rising
doors.

Bless their fragile fighting
bodies. Bless their breathing
pores.

And now I’m alone and the stone mouth is waiting for me to clean its
floors.

I’m alone and the stone mouth is silently waiting for me to clean its
floors.

The stone mouth is silently, steadily waiting for me to clean its
floors.

John Maus

I’m electric, I’m listening to shiny
shiny stars in a golden gaping
vacuum, every deep dark black little
pocket of the pauses between the
beats seeps through my ears and throbbing
body with the rhythm of a solar system, such
heavenly bodily mapping-out and
precision, glorious straits of glowing
ocean, such perfect grouping, neat
division, holy trios of incision, this
way, this way, that way, slicing, coral
reefs of chocolate icing, metal moving in one
motion, John Maus, you have my devotion.

Illegal Deep-Sea Diver (Preserved)

I view
through a bullet
proof layer of
Perspex
Tombed-in
by bullshit,
proof of a
complex bureaucratic hypocrisy
and wait
for some paint
to redeem me.

Untitled #1

I could swallow my tongue with the fear of
here, swear
by the son
of the father, close
up my horror-stung
soul like a bowl
with a fish
who has wished
to be
buried.

Grandma Gasping

I try to tell you of my
good grandmother gasping like a
fish
terrified of death, wishing she was
dead, dead without the
lead-up, dead without the
dread.
Clare, there,
gasping like a
whale, wailing
like a whimpering baby, failed
by life, by chance, by
justice, failed
by her body, left
up to us, betrayed and jailed
by her body, left
for dead by health and hope and
just there, my
Clare, gasping
gasp, gasp, gasp, gasp, gasping for

air.

And I try to tell you and I upset you and you tell me to

STOP

and I’m shocked and embarrassed and sorry and angry and I don’t know who is in the wrong.

Aegeus

A 37 year old Colac man died yesterday when he rushed into his burning house to save his three children, unaware they had already been rescued.
The Age – 21/2/10

One Foot in the Cathedral

Fuck it! I said to
myself. He was mine
once, I have every
right to go to his
house! Even if he’s moved
on! Even if his new wife and children are
there! Even if they’re having lunch at the
table! Even if they’re talking about
me! We certainly never had lunch
together! Certainly not at the table,
anyway! We just kind of did our own thing for
lunch! I need to see this new-family-lunch-spectacle for
myself! Just so I know I made the right decision to move
out! Even though I know I made the right decision to move
out! Without a
doubt! I just want to see what all this new-family-lunch-shit is all
about!

So I bee-lined for the front
door, I’d catch him out with his new
whore! His four-score and twenty mongrel
children! I swore I’d tell them all what I
thought! I’d put an end to the
evil!

And setting one foot inside the Cathedral

getting ready to
roar

I heard the hush of solemn
prayer, I felt the calm and
saw the amber of his angel
chorus, the aura of all who were
there.

(And so I tip-toed out the
door and hurried down the
stair.)

Dayle's Skin in My Carpet

I live in the dead boy’s
room

he had his bed by my
wall

He broke his leg, I can tell by
the letters, demanding he pay
for the loan of the
crutches, demanding he pay
for the
fall

I walk barefoot on his
floor

I sit and I type where he
stood

I lie on the carpet that
holds

his hair and his skin in its
folds.

her -

oh!

Species

I am the
species


shaped
just like the
type

curled
holed
filled
sealed

readied
setted
goed