Bob Dylan's Excremerit

"You can't go through life without reading some kind of book."
  - Bob Dylan, Rolling Stone Magazine, 2012

God I heard you
 your lousy voice
I knew it was you
just like the voice
dronin' in my mind
comin' outa amplifiers
jukeboxes, cafeterias,
1966
a young voice
an old voice
a ghost rider with his
 pen dipped in poison
the poisoned barb of bath.
it got accommodated
by society
and slowly compromised
and I don't care
if it can be said more
flowery than that.
it is what it is.

now the tide
has gone down
we pick over debris
who said what
Lennon, McCartney
Dylan, Morrison,
Joplin, Pound -
the tide it turns out
rising again
reanimating matter
rearranging it
carting it away
transfiguring a new idol
 to civilisation

you blew away
your mind
blowing in the wind
rainy day women
it slipped away
between 66-68
that kid died
a new guy grew
an turned into you
 Hendrix and the others
couldn't pull that stunt
 to walk again
upon the earth
like Judas
unmascara-d
playd fuckin' loud
for one more
cup of coffee
and a thousand telephones that don't ring

like an old
Italian poet
with Spanish boots
a Petrarch or Baudelaire
his early intrigues and instruments
golds and spices
lifted
from the 13th century
into 1963
like a spider sewing
the spiral outward
from the central spokes
of a wagon wheel
a cowboy hat
spinning in the dust

gathered up
45s, spinning vinyl
scratched folk tunes
the Remixer, the Artist
the Singer of Songs
the Post Poet Incarnate
that's who we made you
but not who you are
the voice inside
a generation's mind
truth speaks
in a drawl and it's not You
I know
it's not You

mirror poem

carrier signal

/c!ick

   as
   this  logos
   only goes one way
   thru the diode of the brain

   the mechanics of an unbending mind -- to become

   time fouled shoals of thought
   pockmarked excreta to be
   picked apart
   at sea

beside   

a warm bum   

on a black obelisk   

the coursing round of seaweed and dry planks - undone   

back on the beach   

oill's well in   

N.S.W.   

   it
   init.
   like a plane
   or an antenna on a

   pilot in the cockpit looks at his watch - 11 o'clock

   plane locked into a
   deep descent
   down
   to

init   

as a stylus   

plucks a vinyl   

groove wave reanimate   

the song which must be heard once more   

a long dead sigh   

at the end   

biting   

dust   

   hat
   t-woo
   a watermark
   left on the high

   tar stained planks and curlicue shells grasping - only

   tide stretched planks
   water board a
   walk of
   evil

hit   

it so   

he makes   

a noise like that   

the low swivel squeal of a narwhal - again   

sidling through oceans'   

salt heavy   

waves   

art   

   the
   gusty sea
   the gutsy sea
   overcurling & uncoiling

   girt by purple hued foam fingers - flotsam

   articulate and inarticulate
   taxa are by definition
   orders

so   

also the   

rubber mould   

of a comforting glove   

the inside and outside are the same - pain   

becomes pleasure but   

it is defined   

the same   

   the sun
   also..

/c!lick


CONTACT WAS LOST WITH THE PILOT FOLLOWING AN ELECTRICAL MALFUNCTION IN THE ONBOARD COMMUNICATIONS...THREE HOLES WERE FOUND DRILLED IN THE FUSELAGE...SUGGESTS THE PLANE CRASHED INTO THE SEA NEAR BYRON BAY AT APPROXIMATELY 11.20AM... A SMALL OIL SLICK WAS OBSERVED IN THE REGION... IT IS BELIEVED THE PILOT WAS LOW ON OXYGEN... B.P.125/96 H.R 160.. ANALYSIS OF THE BLACK BOX RECORDING INDICATES THE DECEASED WAS SINGING AT TIME OF DEATH...

lophophore

Overwhelmingly numb sensation kuje soeekwakjubg tjroug wire frame, needles
Sparks falling out of broken ceilings
Abrupt displacia
Lost sense of poetry
Gluemoan home
Strange itches
loudness
inarticulata
argon gorgon
lophophore
a little
bivalve
in myonia

the idea
encapsulated
in a mussel shell
is the ideal Form:
'i am safe inside' with the whole  macabre of  emotion
            realised in evolution

i wonder wherelse it surfaces
maybe in some rimpool at
the end of the surf shop -- roman scutum -- la almeja pequena -- or a pippa somewhere..

poem found in a bin

poetry happens most in the absence of itself

if the thought intrudes-
"i am a poet" or
"i am writing a poem"
then the work is destroyed

poets destroy more poems than they create

poets pollute as they create

wake up poets!

yours is old news!

take out the cord of meaning
from your mess of ink

post it online
freed of matter

it walks..
it talks..

the temple of icthus

in a cold dilema
i churn
my teeth clatter
 my thoughts burn

whosoever printed this
 excrescence
has form

but her subtle temper
 must recognise all
who float there

kerosene windows
stained on her
vast
 interior intimate

a piscean choir
(in the dark)
 voicing a passion

it is rising from the deep
archaen roots
of Parnassus

free the tongue

the poet's tongue
must be free
from complicity
 in anti-liberty

no sooner set up
words to cure the bull
by inventing a
 copy writing tool

than sunk the idea
like a raving fool
on a new patent copyright
 ducking stool

now each page
with a little 'c'
marks the bards' descent
 to bastardry

why wonder why?

when we skewer the butterfly
 the butterfly
don't fly



This poem is written in defence of my casting off the shackles of copyright- indeed every word here is released into the winds of the public domain forever.

bios

prosody fought back
with a barb and a pin
and stuck it write in

like the trembling clime
and this eggshell earth
slipping from our grasp

the hot wind blows
through a desolation
unknown to us

the rust and ruin
of the totality
of extinguished desire

βραδέως, βαθέως καὶ κακῶς

Slowly, Deeply, Badly

I dug
that great old fern before
 somewhere in the late Pleistocene

remind me fern
 from what are we here?

tell me -
 before you waste, waste away

"O Man
 despot of the Anthropocene

your mother is a corpse
 cremate her on the bed she lies

in your bones
 her wisdom is encoded

is it noon?

Kronos lifts slowly
 the dice laden hand

not one of us
 disembarks alive"

ediacara

I light on the page
the stone page - a dull buff slab
and admire the pattern there
the traces of old intelligence
presssd leaf hard into a palm frond
(an frog = amphiborian)
those bitter ediacara days
were bellsweather of cambarian genesis
 you crawl out from under a rock
 and are crushed immediately punctured
 by the back hand of (r)evolution

translate that antient tongue
and it sounds like something like-
plasmosis egregious fidgit smearl
the trilobyte dial in a research laboratory
flickering - lobed antennae prehistoric
space vehicles their particular designs
 long out of fashion
badly parked and mysteriously
in the empty playground
bonnet up, half smashed
one is eating another one
was it a plant? was it a fish?


the fine sand brushes off
my skin like Aristophanes lantern
cold and pliant rolls of wiggly pinkish rubber
a giant storm front rolling over the tundra
of snowball earth
its oceans formless unwound clouds
a goddess large and multiformulae
pinching earwigs in molasses
perfectiform classic shapes
just like in class, the slight bob
of nugigerulous forms, heads, noses
ears, but never eyes -
though some might have had five eyes

we take but we also give

building a huge house - or is it a ship?
made out of timber beams, a little room just here
for you and me
and the baby three
mankind constructs his fire-stair into the sky
spirular in form, part gold, part airy matter
the code for many future things
is being transcribed today - it is only ever
transcription, never creation
blessed it is to be the transcriptor
blessed it is to understand the code
to unwind it and wind it up again
on this pink little finger
blessed.

losog Bron gone

a cup of tea waits
like a patient
before the fire

a clutter box
perched on a cold hill
full of noises

familiar groans
shake
the shady tree

its unique objects
before my eyes
are reorganised

but nowhere
do i see
the shadow of the tree

one molecule thin
it is smeared
across a lifetime

stanzas from the post Jennings bible

i long to taste and understand
the open plains like the back
of a lover's hand. the map groove
i run my eye along like some
song of forgiven tears run dry
          two hundred million years.

exploring all the green nooks and
crannies i untie your serpentine belt
and imagine the lava tumbling down
my breath catching on crysolite showers
as we pan for sapphires and diamond
          between your laughter.

i read, divining though ancient fog
landlocked reefs the car revolving
on over the ploughed landforms
by giant hands you grip and shake
fatter minds than mine
          still, post-man, go on.

i step out of the landrover in
khaki shorts bearded and white limbed
resiliently March across the lithology
oceans of wine mixed with time
loud is the laugh as she slams the door
          never never forever shut.

Poem written on opening of the new supercomputer 'raijin' at the ANU

the supercomputer
 is squared and black
with neon openings

her warm dark body
 shades the room
we move in and out of her

step inside and she is hot
 steaming like the tropics
cyclones droning all around


her flesh of mesh
 and flickers of data entice us
to slide open her drawers

green diodes blink
 like dispassionate thoughts
in a lover's eyes

as cool water pumps
 between her hot circuits
mollifying her temper

you see
the lucid and banal can coexist
even in this

she digests the weather reports
 over and over
like a grandfather

if you ask
 you might find out
whole countries in her

we attend the fire
but her brain it seems
 is not meat for us

 in the furnace of the future
she might consume
 all the furniture 

old goat

chewing poemry like a cow
that old goat
might make a nice juice
on the plate herself, you say

a incidental hierarchy
from the lowest amoeba
up to the highest poetaster

we only eat the lower orders
out of respect

but my ethical dilemma is this:

when you mince those words
savoured fresh from the lip
is that the only quip
that saves you from the roasting fire?

an australian yarn

miss Gillard
traffic'd in intellect
was deposed by the
great imposter Rudd!

the dichotomy being
Rudd is Gillard undress'd
& re-adorned in plebeian
largesse with crankypants

meanwhile Abboat throw spoon
at both - an oaf! lick
youR Master's shoe
and behove or shove ooff-

in minisculia is multitudia
as sao is AUSTRALIA
hello? you wake up now?
country is run by remote cow

emergency measure
now we must endure
to ensure no more
arrive, be sure

probably *maybe

i believe..

i believe that i know
so:

here listen to past times
longago
men o woman o wisdom
say to me
"long ago long ago
past time
we did see
a great sun
shining clearly
over the sea

"and it fell
into the sea
like an egg yolk
from a celestial chicken
and boiled all the
ocean there
the flotsam came
later and washed
overus

"and great past
times past times
before that
i heard a dream
piped from afar
ay, it blew.."

/*cutout static remote
control changed channel
nuclear test fallout
bespattered plutonium
there hydrostatic discharge
microwaves soh-nic boom!*/

"..we the old ones
knew before there
was knowledge there
after is always such
knowing. believe.
the facies where the head
meets the feet
is where all is meet..

"boiled away brains
become one
with time and
fastfood asking questions
subsides into deep
throb of deep time
where we sleep
and wait
foreverafter.

/*microphone click off .ssklik
expanding cytoplasm ina
cut glass prism obsidian
scalpel metred obsession
the g'nome of reason
fast explodium*/

thank we for the present, the riches are all in our hands
&here today

flecktrum

society incised into

the bloated middle class succour mums

ambivalent to newish trends

and an elite mob

structured to risk take securities

bank bonds and play unfathomably

with invented instruments

divesting the erstwhile future

of unplucked bounties

*

sucked down

the plog-hole

ridiculed mental amusements

like st vitus' dance

st antony's fire. on phenomelogical

grounds. rendered useless

i bring the object of my reflection

closer and closer to me

until i splash into it

and drown

in wonderment

*

why does this dream

seem so important today?

my investment in it

might mature oneday into

an olivine pinprick

deep in

golf club gold hole a

prism behind the marble curtain

all new invented ways to stick the dick in

the masculine phenomenon

*

an inversion - something persian?

falafel deepfried icecream

camel hoofs might talk

on the all night box

delivering another round of newscast

unto the upper stratosphere

women's group of hair and

fingernails their tripping

into the soft skin of grapes, molasses

red wine and cheeses

*

a poor man's canute groat

goat came tobermory into

the infundibulum

don't please me send him away

they say, and blown him up

in an indescribable way pieces

of blood and schists mixd

in the sandstone doorway

to jaisalmer

and tears away in a hummbug

yesterday

like a gadfly, a speck, or nothing at all

*

gross stocks and trysts

thru a preamble to the descent

into decency - this is humanity

wiped clean off the dashboard

with a little antisemitic spray

frog golf buggies sand dunes

- they were just blown away -

all clapped out, a winked

think like thunder

on the distant lake brewery

of tomorrow's warcast

die

new year poem

the capacity he had to land knob end always up amused her
would its heat ever attain the melting point of lead?
in the chill quiet they stay alloyed together. brief spell
of rain marks the end of another year. (if
you roll the count forward as you progress, the year never ends)
the playful rascat's grating meow gets the door opened
i am holding a last few soiled eggs to my chest, reaching
out with one hand for the latch; but they slip and fall
so spills my wife's wages over the floor. i am too spent to
kneel down. This is the end of me for sure. the final sermon. Arcadia.
she might be there; the sticky one. I am bewitched by it.
she might be there - and yet hold the key. I am always looking
for it, even in dreams. The silken caress. The sauce has run out
and yet there is still food on the plate to eat. I am lonely.

prefecture

past passive pent dangle below steroid belt shaft fusewire snap spink

full expanse of long low voice open excommunication

the diary page dirtily unfolds an old ash trail

fallen microbially into the crease crack

that old life - heavens forbid! - go

knome leave the past alone

the brightest daggers fall

in the future's shattered

rainbow o'clock fast fist

cuckoo blow below ovoid

snilf

The Tea Shop Has Closed

everywhere around the placemat
a great scourge is unfolding
the tea shops are all closing
this is unquestionably a postmalthusian snafu

where has the tea lady gone?
in the march of our great success and profit
was the tea lady left behind?
she has been eaten by the great unquenchable appetite

everywhere there is a running scrambling
upward scrambling teaspoon piping hot
up the slippery greasy heaving teapot
of our great inviolable economy

that old shrewd mannequin, Wisdom
a crumbling bisqui in its hand
absentmindedly sipping tea
nodding, thinking unfashionable nothings

Canberra 2013

a centennial year poem

a crass grass ridden place
hidden behind civic sheen
empty streets laden
in publicservant

its conceit
that it counts, somehow
brown nosed cow
far away from the real game

choked by cloying carefully composted
conservatrite bullshite
dry in yr face death winds blowing
off the Monaroo plain

the frost circles widen
around the roundabout parade
public carrion birds circling the hill
circling inwards for the kill

a compromise stillborn
grown into a classless tasteless suburbinane sprawl;
a junked-up townie wasteland;
a white commodore drawl-ville

come visit the inhuman theme park toy town!
see the horse tradin in political unobtanium!
do smell the stigma martyr and pistil!
aboutfarce the subsidised pageant of national propagandorum!

chalk topped hills canter into summer fires
but a fillip inverts the entire scenario into
a cemented dangerous cancerous cantanker
and cold as a fuck in snow is Canberra

the great mind spasm

(to be set to music) 0. youse asked me to show youse where i had come from.. swen i answered in alphabettagammi two shoes. fart ensemble my arse.. premises evacuating inside virginia

eyes dilating... premises alighting on fire trees.. beautiful slaves running in and out of villages plasticine space people sucking on grogans.. listerine sphynxes parting waters .. oval weavils making snatches of conversation with bellybuttons..

 ...the message infects brains around the ring systems 9..kinds of cheeses in my pocket.. fill up with cuppa soup.  bring home the children.. practice spacewalking at home to unveil possible wormholes

1.it has all been said already, written down in ancient texts, which no-one can be bothered to read. that is why it may be said again and seem new. but there is nothing ever truly new

2.there is a whole lot that can't be said too, of course, waiting to be said. or just that words don't make the right shapes to fit the meaning, like poorly cut clothes. so sometimes it is best to say nothing.

3.fast forward and life is like a thought occurring in the brain of the great being whom we inhabit - who is even so just the same being as ourselves, watching countless lives blossom and close before their very eyes every second

4. a blink contains a thousand universes, it is possible to argue against this, but impossible to ever truly conclude with a truth that stands alone.

4. that which is self evident is the most miniscule of specs - the dot on the 'i' - at the same time there is no need to change our elaborate understandings just because another elaboration comes along

5.even if the force of an argument can close a debate for a couple of centuries, yet it will resurface as the old sages die and new combatants rise to challenge the existing doctrines

6.through this process, no truth is established forever, nor any established truth ever completely disproved.

7.the ultimate creator of truth is yourself- there is no other who can decide for you what is true

8. your truths are your shields and knives with which you battle the world and survive or die. their suitability is shewn by their applicability in this fight. but tomorrow is another fight.

festive embalming party sees eating of disgourged brain soup and military pie.. isis stands back only to see horus feast on the emblematic token priest. father of god, Aeneas besplattered with the blood of accidental aenemas

..twice into the water fell the stone, counting the reflection as a separation. as the back wall of the cave contains the whole world projected by the mindfather.

and when the good will out, there will only left be cravings and barking of dogs at twilight, while the homely ones stay safely inside.  go out after dark and you will see the things lurking in shaddows cast by the corner of your eye. this is where reality meats the dream, hits the backwall.

trees grown thus perfecting the truth of the tree. there is only one truth of the tree but it exists in countless forms. the tree in the mind is that same tree - there is and has only ever been the one lonely tree - existing horizontally and longitudinally through all time and space wherever it can be conceived - a thousand trillion images in a broken mirror seen by countless eyeballs

9.abbot what are you about? australian dunce winning the race, trounson the princess. water her down with veni vidi vindictive from your wet wet sweat behind the ears boyish charmless guile

10.we create the truth ourselves but it is never truth, just a pretty fallacy, to keep us busy

belief sphere

outside the known sphere of the universe      of universe cities
lies the half-belief sphere

hollow and
it glows

perfectly unlike
the imaginings of any prophet        so far

but resembling immaculately
the great breakthrough of tomorrow afternoon       over the gin soaked side-car

where i
having seen your pale arm
there draped on the green bonnet
asked you to play
croquet

something like that cat used to say
"we are what we believe" minus       what the crows lacerate with black beaks

they say "show your palms"
and open like little white snow daisies

a field scattered with palms
is tended carefully       that is a promise to the future