beware of failure

beware of failure
failure is a lean black glove
clutching at the heart
it folds us into ourselves
in the gloomy crush
of morbid introspection

its stink starts to creep
into all the things you touch
the faces which you see
the voice with which you speak
hate curls from the wound
like a thin white wire of smoke

those so confident
smiling, laughing in their luck
are cool and at ease
above the mincing machine
slicing up the hearts
mowing down all us poor fucks

beware of failure
which enters by a thin door
oh, but in my house
a black cat has come to stay
and i suppose i'll ope the door
in case some more
purr in from off the motorway

rising smoke

reading the poem that won the prize
a pleasant feeling brushes my mind
like popping candy in the neurons
and an inner warm glow assures me
that I am in the hands of a master

I grip it for a while in my hand
then put it down and get on with my life

dissolutely flick down through Twitter
let out the cat let it back in again

there must be something left unsaid
if only I could forget all those words
i just read—

out on the compost heap I rake up
the poems into drifts dozens deep
and set fire to the verbiage pile
the smoke rising in a tall tower
a message to the sky, a rocket ship

but even this act of surrender
is a theatre, a dishonesty
for there never is a final act
the show is endlessly revolving
playwright, actor, audience—all in me!

meditation on darwinism

evolution co-exists with conservation
evolution aims to conserve itself

the most ancient thing which can be conserved
is also the simplest

even destruction may only be obtained
at the cost of preservation elsewhere

in the very end, all has been preserved
and all has been destroyed at least once

this is an example of divine līlā (play)

alonely union

the dark part
 of Taurus
kneads open the oval
 lemon gate
the agate
 pillow lava—
this is what they call
 "following the path
of union"

opening wide
 the African Elephant
eloping with an anteater
the terrible frieze
 a grey massif
 a carpeted concrete pile
vertices of iron—
this is what they call
 "practicing eternity"

an eucrite verandah
pachyderm pale centre
 we must overcome
all barnacles
in the dry dock
there is no afterlife like this
being home is so called—
 "only the one and alonely"

Poem written near Mt Turallo

up in the trees
where the yellow cracked turbidites
slide in cubes down
 a crevised road

there i get out and
 let air into my chest
perfumed by the highest leaf

over the terraced horizons
 i spy through the trunks
the distant valley where i live

its blotched hills with half cleared
 patches - familiar marks,
distressed with human work

standing on this road, this cut
i can feel the pain
 in the wild terrain

nested here, even in
 a reserve, we cut it
we, the disease
we, the doctor
we, the cure

loading rocks into my car
illegally, wrapped in blankets
 to decorate the garden

what i seek to capture is how
before the rod of time
 broke this place

there was no reason to remember
 a beauty

Accidentals (2008 collection) - a new recording

Accompanied by wildlife..

a newer wasteland

in the dark wasteland of the night
i sit by the luminous blue light
of the screen and scry out
into a universe not made to be seen

the bladder emptied into a deck of hearts
and the madman on the golden toilet
will turn the cities into plasticine
and all our lives will meld like in a dream

the paradox of the pointed pointlessness
seems to grow like an ugly vest
washed too much on the hottest setting
but still the one we fit into best

walking in the bush, the family
at a hideout high in the treeline
find others who have fleed the jamboree
and drink the poisoned lake for tea

they say to me "what shall we do?
the world has gone to crap!"
and i wish that i could answer back
but the wasteland has got into me too

lets just hope the worst will soon be over
and some of us will float back up
and those that don't will be the heroes
their tombs will be the new ground zeros

their lives will start a century
of songs and mournful poetry
and living ours we'll think back often
wishing we could join them