meditation on mt budawang

there was a beat sermon
had upon a mountain
but Budawang beneath its closed lid
bears an unlamented mystery still
unearthed flint and bone
is so much story left untold
because it was unasked -
but now those mouths are sealed forever (shit!)

the earth under us is our script
so pick it up where others left
- it is all the same poem washed

beneath the fortress of uncles
where little spirits sniff at us
with forked tongues
or blue painted ones
under antiseptic eucalypt
an unread library tipped on its end

cured fauna creating words
in Bakelite shells and crinoids' stem
worm cast and feathery graptolite
sealed into sandstone leaves forever
the mark of every little scribbler
counts for something or nothing

to press mind
against ancient beaches
is to implant a new mythology

***

each piece of jaw is a hollow key
to some lost alphabet
one early example to set the type
turned up among the siftings
“The Clyde to Braidwood”
seen “beauteous and wild”

as proof this eulogy
touches the sublime
a young scrivener moth
carving its place into the trees
ignites cacophony
inside the sarcophagi

***

I needed some supple thought
influenced by the atmosphere
to lift me outta here
left in limbo
thoughts akimbo
everything comes to nought

a land without antiquities
this barren field of Australie
rich with unfound legend now bears
a delinquent's insignia
chiselled into timbre
- the touch of civilisation

if only those kids knew
how many had already had it off
at that rocky place
and spun their myths
out of that same hot kiss
it would explain the tears they grew

and the sweat
from having to invent the seventh note
on the organ all over again
sucking carboniferous air
inflaming new lungs
with the salty afterburn of success

we are like two fish
flailing at the crusts
of the antient incontinent
in our quest to release the power
that ropes us together
we spark the mystery -