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.