Poems

Picking through the pockets of an old jacketI found notes cribbed years agowrung through washings in different housesof a conversation between two women in a bartalking about men. They loathed those men long gone nowbut after two hours and drinkssoftened and created the perfect manout of all the spare parts memory could findto build the…

A small white spider legs down the guide ropesaround the tent peg and disappears in to theearly morning haze of quartz and feldsparair alive with magpie laugherone in the distance, one above, others by the pondstheir final craw trails off like a good jokelast night dancing to Marvin Gayearound the fire, smouldering nowsparking the slow…

Cities are plastic, the city of illusion,myth, aspiration, nightmarea woman climaxinga train roars past, a man yellsshut the fuck up, or else! The incongruous fragments of othersexposed and exposed by othersisolated signals, gestures, jungle cries, whispers.The plastic easily turns to psychosis. Reading strangers like Braille,The Tarot, body shape, I ChingA subjective riot of judgments.Imperial: are…

This is just to say sorryto the Libraries Board of South Australiafor not returning Thomas McGuane’s, ‘To Skin a Cat’.It was due 8 March, 1989. By March I’d fallen in loveand had gone to live in Melbourne.Completely off my head.I forgot about the book. Now, I am not in lovebut still in possession of your…

In pyjamaslooking for watersleepy 2.00am shufflethrough thick darknessdog asleep on the sofawary of shins and edgesthrough the kitchen doorto catchin an eye cornera white sheet of paperturning over and overa cylinder in black air

Morning dew as fresh as glasses of champagneand further back, the deep dark greenof the tall pine treesas the train snakes it way through cuttingsaround granite outcropsa rabbit jumps and magpies chortlethere’s a fox! First light plus tenalmost too early for peoplein the middle distance, a Presbyterian steeplehorses with necks bowed ignore waddling ducksan abandoned…

Go to the Elwood canal and watch the ducks.Let’s feed them.Walk to the shop.Sliced white bread is best.Open a bag and take three slices.Walk past the teller. ‘Hey, what you doin’ with those three slices mate?’‘I’m going to feed the ducks’‘Why not the whole loaf?’‘It’s only for inspiration.’ Go back to the canal.The ducks have…

I wonder in times’ dark laneswhere you are hugging a world of possibilities every night the black horses comethe cold steel bridles bite the shadow’s there nowwhinnying at my neck

Level of difficulty (9.5)splitting Tiger Coilsgreen zen mazesin the dead of a hot night The box is pure Chinacirca cultural revolution“Earth Tiger” $2.50the bar code codes Naked on white sheetsthe mossies circle for blood I accept their necessity of meas the Earth Tiger curlsbreathless around the house.

The truck driver hurls the empty oxygen cylinders on to the truck.It’s 7.00am outside the old folk’s home.The old people need them to breathe. There must be 50 cylinders on the truck.Some large, some small.He throws them like he’s angry.As if their weight is an insult. Magpies sing in the trees. The driver swears as…