infinite jest, or 'there is a plan'

 an open wardrobe.. pieces of time fly
fly past my eye,
she said
"f'off" and sighed

a water canon goes off
into a glass half empty. no no no.
 no no no

the best ideas
are attributed to gods
but gods don't merely
exist

our ephemeral
nuisance lives
buzzin into their eyes
 spoilt with creation

the inverse perfection
is no perfection
until in verse

it crushes us
like wasps
between leathery lips

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the ant trails running discourses to the edge of the ocean
fabulous planes crash in millennial colours across wide deserts
the girl in the black jeans knocks the wineglasses spinning
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the goat herd leads the beards into the yellow stone temple
a new computer sucks air in an empty room calculating infinity
the truth is incompatible with the truth: a light-speed time bomb
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the bicycle is dragged from the river dressed with dark reeds
all through the city a fine mist of snow is falling on parked cars
an overture is recorded in the lineaments of her tired hands
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a curse is unrolling like a cloud over succulent stinging trees
the heat is rising in the refrigerator - but all this is passing
last night the poet floated high above a clear lake in a strange land
the poet always floats in dreams, as a balloon on a cut string, free to-
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good thing i forgot my scarf.

despair despair, the floods, the floods are rising
despair the naysayers, despair the fools who rule in ignorance
despair for our children, despair for our planet in ruin
tear out your hair, ye who are blind, claw out your unseeing eyes
despair despair for our ark, our home, is sinking
our civilisation is beyond repair, despair despair..

∀

little pill
a dream opens -
capital 'A' blasted on my mind

and upside down - an ox head
is turned in the sky
venus retrogrades into the calling void

far away a cup
and saucer
fly into my eye

a piece of maggot wriggling
down the maginot line
drawn slowly on a thread across the tumbling fields

now stones spike the ground
at carnac - and down tor
the evil internet drinking up our brain

fast story - a glisten moment
plastic underwear
goat harvest arguent arduino

rodeohead pyramid song
the 4 -3 3- 4 the sphynx
the modest bismuth noticed by oliver sacks

i like to think like bruce lacey
the technique is to not trust logic
logic is a fool's tool

unchain the plane and linear track
and join the life game effortlessly like joining a dance
or threading a needle

the chance that you might hit the spot
is higher if you follow
the nodding clock-faced hero -wat?

i can see an image
it is under everything today
something to do with - ah, impossible to say

the green giant awakening
a blue death screen on some future computer
the sparks of an accident

the voices of hundreds - thousands
a light - a light
the thread of eyes linked end to end

the glowing daisy chain
of jellyfish stingers
going back to the burgess shale

on this path
on this track our boots have walked
the fittest did not always survive

if you want to out-maneuver your history
you have to listen very carefully
to the piper's call - ∀ (for all)

poet rebel

the idea is all that counts
the body is transient -
that is the idea anyway

you can kill this body
you can kill all the bodies you want
the idea will wait

the idea will wait
dormant through 1000 years
under the tyrant's deep-freeze

but as soon as the lid is removed
the sun hits it - and pow!
baby ideas spawning in a hundred poet brains

a poetic brain is the fertile earth
the idea is the seed
nothing else is there to need - but the word

the word must also be tended
do not forget the word -
it's all the ammunition we've got!

vale burra park trees

stroke the attic of the valley soul
you old wizened things
bitten by many frosts, you
measured the echo of a bat and ball's 'clock'
(that friendly chime)

the old-timers and their dray
flattened the soil at your feet
scraped the hard clay away
raised the three pillared shrine
(and had a good-o time)

your bark like barnacles on a bomber
sunk into the coral bed
the fuselage torn and twisted
by a century's hands and now today
(the waxy smell of fresh sawn pine)

dust blanket reversal pome (c1863)

the rolled warm dogsbody
of a lumpen stranger
lays asleep under the verandah

a bright morning
above a stringybark hut
cockeys tear apart the pink sky

at last stirring
eyes awake and looking then 
bolt upright in one long smooth movement

his hairy ears
broiled with a pinch of mustard
look just like the ridgeline above this place

the soil of sacrifices
has got into every crevice
of these claws now nursing coffee

dew drips from the wattle saplings
poking over on the roof line
onto large stones brought up from the river

a twist of tobacco
into the pipe clay bowl
a smoke noxious and pleasant

drifting off to the tangled trees nearby
and so begins the slow moan
of a new summer day

a new summer day
releases the slow moan
drifting through the tangled trees

a smoke noxious and pleasant
drifts into a small bowl
and magically a twist of tobacco appears

the stones walk back to the river
and a house disassembles
into wattle trees bright with flowers

rising from the soil
people gather into a circle and begin to sing
a journey into eternity

the sun setting slowly
as pterodactyls twist in loose white flocks
tearing apart the sky

fragmen

sometimes ties cost the race
it is not unheard of -
the boat on the harbour
bobbing there on the black moonlit tide
is left to float unguarded
with little warning
and there it is.

lapping the waves
a little light disappearing
back again then lost
and that is your heart out there

in the palm of the ocean
contact is forgotten
and we have to wait

my grandfather
on a corvette in the war
had to destroy everything
my grandmother sent

the torn correspondence
floating in a chain
in the wake of the ship
- just following regulations
the uncaring folly
of duty
 swallows lives whole

pacing the beach
kicking rocks in the sand

waiting for some news
I whistle a nautical tune

Philetas speaks about love

(translation from Daphnis and Chloe 2.7)

They sat in wonder as Philetas told the story, transfixed as if by a fable. And when he finished, they showered him with questions - “When was this? Who is Eros? Is he a child or a bird? What are his powers? And so Philetas hushed them and spoke his reply:

Love is a beautiful power, my children

it makes eternally young

the souls that it inflames

with the pursuit of beauty

and lifts us to ecstasies

that even the Gods cannot touch.

Love can move the Earth, the stars,

the planets –

you think you move

your flocks but love is

the power which animates

all life – the trees and the flowers

love is there -

and in the torrents

and in the air

the chemistry of awareness

when i arrive home
worked out

i open the electric letterbox and
 - amaze! - a missive from
Helsinki
the soft vowels broken
into particles that reach me
draped in a blanket
 nursing tea

i have long arms but
maybe if they were a bit longer
i could reach out
and touch the origin
of such breathy vocalics
it all seems so close
 these days

our lives only intersect
in la-la-land
where the flip flops beep
and thoughts run deep
but the cool light of distant day
is burned away
 in an evening pillow

what things gold

initials silencia
 by worms
 a painted argument–

time is a gun
gone off now
 in variable directions

the exciting age
approaches
 down the road

old bones clunk
like the gearbox
 of my first car

madly careering
the ploughshare into
 an ant's mound

the steering wheel
spins out of my hands

a body like
a door hanging loose on its
 hinge

blowing open
with a cold breeze
 - a fever of ghasts

burra (unfinishd)

the deep green valley of the Burra was not green
that hot dry summer, and there were not many cows
as once there were, the oven roasted grass across the
valley floor was occupied by kangaroos
those whose longest toes swing forward two by two
and crunch the ground with agricultural feet so placed
precisely like a bill hook on the harvest straw.
and so begins the day again. The sun soon fells
a paper moon from out the sky and stirs up flies
that rise from under leaves of grass to sit
upon a burr and warm their wings and wipe their feet
and rally to the nose or eye of something dead
too near the road - victim of the rush to work
whose grey and matted fur is broken with the berries
and the little worms that work the secrets in the garden
pulling down a leaf to suck in private rooms
below, at night. the evidence does not like the light.
and on the withering hand revolves around the earth
brushing past the tops of trees collecting beetles
gold and fat into the crevice of another
hand below, creased and accurate with the fault
that arrows like a fortune line from south to north
directing water to the deepest cleft the creek
to fill the holes. and there the water dragons creep
onto the jasper speckled rocks to warm themselves
intact for ancient hours. the shiver of dawn passes
and warmly rising air animates the trees
like bent nails hammered into iron ground
clothed in tears, they litter the grass with shaved
skin and oil and timber and ants and little cups
filled with sawdust. the grease dark earth is muzzled
with debris from trees. the incandescent mizzle
as sun hits it slowly interpolating leaves
a rainbow over London Bridge - the Roman arch
over the water pool - Silurian limestone hewn
by elemental nature, carbonic acid forced
through fractures of the lime by time by time by time

long ago the Ngarigo touched home here
and larked beside the creek - the burra - old ground
known to modern man and stories fit to every
thing, each tree and stone, echoing archaic time.
heroes marched across this arch, their flashing deeds
not known by us, only the stones remember them,
and that water dragon, in his timeless eye
peering at us dressed in our paintbox fabrics
noticing our different noises and our carelessness
stamping over stones. disturbing ghosts.
the fast grab of conversations echo up
past the metronome of modern life unpacked
into the country belt. herculean towns
screwed into the orange clay. iron sheets
trailers and postboxes stand like flags
foreign trees take root and bleed like crimson sores
the autumn breeze evacuating smoke from boxes
scattered dice upon the gaming table plane
water tanks stand on piles, febrile scars,
a flying cigar in the skyzone commute route
parliamentary visitors hang in low descents
and gaze across a signature of lives
water quartered by a pinus swastika
fences riding ridges beside a car trail
a thousand ponds of foil striking through the haze
reflect the sun's relentless gaze -
                                                   - 'not the sun
that is djaua' says the roving eyed budalag
'he is the one who stole the fire ...'

Martin Place inquest findings

they got in there
and they shot her
she had three children
and they shot her right there

she got in the way
of their perfect storm
(there were bullets flying fucking everywhere
it was fucking crazy in there)

charlie hebdo

how funny
that you have shot your friends

Charlie Hebdo
are the best kind of friend
they are the friend that never
comforts our conceit
but corrects it
with a joke
and a kick in the teeth

shooting at
the fool's fool
you are shooting an image of yourself
the reflection on the surface of the pool
just comes back

it is you who wears the dunce's cap
unmasked with a laugh

not everyone thinks the same way
i could be wrong
be my fool - make my day

the true idiots are the ones
whom satire cannot touch -
only they are truly free

an argument

a little spot of wine
and a little spot of black
some sweet apple tea
and a big big fight with wifey

i feel almost human again

is
it
supposed to go like this?

bush air breathes in
the night window

suburban bliss
is a long way off -
aah, tantarella

song of songs
the lullaby
of the wild extremes -

take this human
experiment,
make your moves

nothing glides
without a void
to avoid

so the cursed
heart plateaus
again
and again
on purest pain

the clipper

the clipper moves faster than the wind herself
nothing pauses her glide except -

waterfowl
eggbeaters
asterisks
armageddon
elven lanterns
pincers
woo hoo

wuhu  -yes-
"weedy lake"
did you expect something else?
was this not the sort of poem you came to see?