without regret
we sit there
night after night
until the close of being
draining the last dregs of amber fluid
in a realm of tungsten candle-light
swollen men
and consumed women
we dance
without regret
telling our feet
at every daybreak
that they are
without a doubt
Aboriginal
and not of ethnocentric natives
who own the paved streets of Paris
future primitive
melted ore from the earth
twisted
shaped
cooled
into the vortex of the material coil
to be born
back onto the land
the black afterbirth of the mother
lubricating
your veins
and yet
your senses will never stand to attention off your metal skin
as you pass over the sacred places
the fathers just couldn't place in you
a soul
or find a copy of the Earth Mother's,
the optional extras can only carry you from here
and save you, your identity
hungry across the land
chewing
tearing
screaming
as the fathers continue to copulate
and pour from the factories
more
and more
of your siblings
that are the new flesh of the earth:
the reinvention of the wheel
the Earth Mother's lot, the vicious circle
the night train from newcastle
like being in the stomach of an alloy-coated python
caught in the beard of a violent pepper storm
this 15 hour journey to Brisbane
and depleted I am
there is the flowering of post-literary-performance syndrome
fed on toxic hangover: the oratorio of itinerant blues
herded onto the night train from Newcastle
I am almost reborn,
the three-year-old tonsilitis-suffering frame I once possessed
waking alone in the sterile darkness of a hospital ward
amongst a sea of crying children
back again
into the corridor of narcoleptic peddlers
all making their escape
eyes barely able to stray two feet from our own reflections
prisoners of our own window-seats
yet everyone taking the opportunity to reflect,
becoming a 15 hour Narcissus
we are at most and in solidarity
dishevelled emissaries
who smile a lavender facade
into the stale air about us
all aboard the night train from Newcastle
sortie
flying low now
minimalist altitude maintained
'tis better to stay low on the night run
with an attitude set on auto-pilot
we stay on alert
every retail-corner in this Australian landscape
has a liquor store
and thus,
an undeterminable charge of electricity
the kind of energy that snaps
a person
in two
good and evil
for better or worse
the spirit of the suburbs is exposing its dependency for booze
but
the suburbs are far
from asking for any help
the finder's fee
it's a dark little shoebox
of some human conditions,
the negative housing of thoughts, memory and pictures
of that single moment
that changed you
forever,
that finding of a body
the refuse of an evil act
milky dead eyes upon your living
and what you inherited
in that pool of blood and membrane
never fading but swirling
within midnight's plague
the unconscious rituals and lusting
to hold that person
you were before,
before someone renovated the inside of your head
so more dead bodies can be stored there,
or just replications of that same body maybe
one on top of the other
a light bulb left gently swinging in the center of the room
hanging
playing that same early morning glow
over and over
the picture of a thousand dark words and sins
a scene that money can't buy,
a finder's fee that can't be claimed
skeletons in the trunk
the lone riders can't escape the tunnel vision
cruising until the rubber subsides
and the bitumen is
no more
this is an endless midnight run for the driver
through the white of the eyes
as the closet at home has become overcrowded
and the skeletons are starting to appear
in the trunk
building a tar-scorching laureate of escapism
reality balanced on the needle of the fuel gauge
skeleton song to the black magic of the road,
a catatonic shell of rogue impetus
made slave to the demons of loneliness
a spirit purged on the bitumen pantomimes ahead
the thousand-yard stare
for Loretta
I remember Lou-Lou in a blue sarong
and a tow-truck driver
whose dirty jokes couldn't go wrong,
'cause at the beginning of the journey
there are no bad memories
of roadside love
but now, I've got the thousand-yard stare
'cause the breakdowns are just too frequent
stuck out here
on a fractured highway of angst
there's no more emergency phone calls,
the dial-tone has gone cold,
dead as the bitumen
no longer can I pick from the tar
inklings of love
so now, I've got the thousand-yard stare
down the endless road in my head
that I have to walk back alone
retinas burning
flanked by a red, rabbit-jacked landscape
while the crows swoop and pick
I'm wanting to say sorry, for all those breakdowns
I was just going blind
and now, on my own
it's hard,
finding it hard
finding my way home
king
leaving Bris Vegas
1am, Eastern Standard Time
my butt 10 inches off the bitumen
travelling at 100 klicks an hour
feet up on the dash
acting every bit like I think an immortal would
maybe?
for now though
this is living,
sun roof open
jet-stream preening the cigarette composites off my white suede
muse,
Georgia's in her own world
by my side
modelling a steering wheel
and a white straw cowboy hat,
she's wiggling to the woofers
this is living
ejected from the smoke-infested nightclubs
Kylie Minogue is taking us both home tonight
so I should
be so lucky!
yet, all I can think about is the King;
I THINK,
THEREFORE I AM...
heaven is framed in the sun roof,
and as I look up and salute
the stars wink back
across Elvis' rhinestone ceiling
last exit to brisbane...
Boundary St
that forged black scratch
a vein from Southbank to West End
with a tail swallowed by the chocolate river
this is the line, the limit
where the dark-skin were toldâ
DO NOT CROSS!
a fence raised to protect the colonial domiciles of angels and
gadflies
and even today, at rush hour
that tar permanently keeps the scar alive
and the dead languages buried
to only escape in the bitumen heat-haze
and fall upon deaf ears
as this boundary continues to stay true
to its makers
denying the junkyard dingo
the treasures of the city
no access to Easy St
fringe-dwelling in white-light static
on the last exit to Brisbane.
hollow squall
Scarborough Marina, August 2001
Twilight is for the communion of soil and water. For a brief moment the hemorrhaging skin of the bay shares no separation with the failing land. This dark monotone body is redundant of inner-detail, sheltered by a violet ceiling and blessed by the evening star. A lone witness to the silent transformation, I had no intention of paying homage to the panorama of ink and sky. There was a blacker pool in the wake. A vision of my own emptiness for which there is no horizon line. This was a special place once,
but now,
all that resides here is a black and white photograph. A single frame of an embraced couple before a listless tide. The man was convinced that love is forever, unlike the fading picture in my mind's eye. As for the woman ... she set sail, to an ocean beyond, beyond the waves I tend.
My heavy heart beats for you; a black rock at the bottom of the sea.
smoke encrypted whispers
new poems 2004
warning:
The smoke from some of the pages in this collection contains, on average:
8 milligrams or less of tarâcondensed smoke containing residue of life experience, including some agents that cause anxiety;
0.8 milligrams or less of nicotineâa poisonous and addictive drug that stains the settings within, encrypting moments with a semi-permanent fixture of tungsten glow;
10 milligrams or less of carbon monoxideâa deadly gas reducing the ability of blood to carry oxygen and a substance capable of inducing whispers that stutter across the conscience.
smoke signals
I remember construction cranes like herds of frozen praying-mantis, high on the steamy Bjelke-Petersen plateau above a brown snake-coiled river. It was from this view, at the age of 4, that I learnt to read the columns of Brisbane city. And from this view, I came to recognise the segregation of
Smoke. Black smoke
darkened the blue-collar suburbs, covering the workers in burnt-rubber cologne. Black smoke was saved for industrial accidents, or when a lower-income family had their fibro-lined house smothered in winter flames. But
white smoke,
white smoke plumed from chez-nouveau, white-collar fireplaces. White smoke belonged to European engines with a smooth choke. White smoke stayed behind the construction cranes where I imagined a life that would
never
depreciate. A place where children weren't scared of the dark. Beyond the white smoke was where I thought I would discover the
Lucky Country
highrises dictate
a crow punctuates the sky
clouds await error
tigerland
for Graham Nunn
âWe didn't win many games,
but we never lost a fight!'
Dad
I was born in Tigerland, on the south-side of Brisbane. Saturday mornings smelt of hardware compost and the static of horse racing. As kids, we bought nails for the cubby-house, grifted lucky-dips and scoured through Trash & Treasure. Under the orange and black stripes of sunset, bouncing off Mt Gravatt, were the colours on the jersey of Easts Leagues Club. That growling big-cat patch that really meant something to us all. My Dad, my uncles, my cousins, my memories all wear that jersey at one time or another. Those colours paved our streets. And from those streets, I was inspired by my first ghosts as they rose from the bitumen like O-rings of smoke.
play hide and go seek
like colour within the petals
of a midnight bloom
scared of the dark
I saw my first ghosts in Tigerland through halogen globes; Council buses projected spectral images onto my bedroom walls. I was often woken with static vision to see spirit-dances pepper my surroundings. Pneumatic hisses from the road outside, spitting through the darkness. Teeth-baring monsters; fangs that remained on the cogs working my mind, keeping me awake for years to come...
Dracula, witches, Bigfoot and
Bjelke-Petersen-police at my parents'
backdoor.
I covered my tracks with plastic army men but was only comfortable lying in the light on the cool floor of the backyard lawn, wondering who was a hero and who was a villain in the solar-flares of my consciousness. Who was I looking up to? In the light of day, they were probably the same dark horses who carried the eyes of my night...
Every night prayers would be said
Within the gauze of a little boy's bed
When, lights out, a plague of darkness did spread:
The Father, the Son, the Holy Ghost
Keep us.
The Father, the Son, the Holy Ghost
Protect us.
The Father.
The Son.
The Holy Ghost, Amen.
wecker road
for Ross Clark
The school nurse condemned me with her simple prognosis, âtree-trunk legs', and they
were
heavy too, but ever inquisitive, I had them drag me down Wecker Road, that one unsealed road on the fringe of my childhood. It contained every urban legend conceivable: devil worshipping,
hoons
in cars, bodies in mangled wrecks, bunyips that swam in its creeks. Brown haze shadowed the sky from deliberately lit grass fires; explosions rumbled the eastern horizon from the nearby rifle range. We even uncovered broken and discarded tombstones underneath one of the high-voltage towers down there. That buzzing we'd feel in our teeth from the static charge after we'd stand there too long, frozen, as the cables sang
wind-blow,
while we pondered the unknown which stifles the world of adolescence ... that same buzzing reverberated in my nightmares.
mysteriously
moving the world around us
an unknown power