#195 - the city is vanishing

15.7.20

195

the city is vanishing

people go first

and with them

all hunches and aches

ever in a certain light

have heavenly bodies cast

along with all the old excuses

a self put out to trash

blink and it’s gone

a nakedness back

once the weather went around

now it tears roofs away

great marbles have fallen

the rats remain

so much shallow wankery

off the table now

is air thinner than whimsy was?

the country is falling apart

this has to have been said

crushed to a fine sweet powder

lapped up with the cream

and money, we can print it

flight is a sudden imagining

someone said it was the market took off

everyone on a rocket gone

like fluff and blew

in all the rain began

and leafy

it’s where I walk to breathe

I have seen it

gullies too steep to scrape

how these least trees come home

#194 - among objects shone - ekphrastic

14.7.20

194

among objects shone

ekphrastic for Nona Garcia’s (2017) Recovery

[AGNSW, Biennale of Sydney, 2020]

flint lipped

in a worming

bong bone

x-ray tooth

gesture of light

we’re here

shadow and tree

in the bottle

basket vessel

neck puff

trowel and string

see

tin telling open

and eyes on the trail

jungle the plinth

box screen

akimbo stoppered

thrown till

underwearing

dark ancestry

lines fall in a phallus

and back

come here to guess

teeth bright of a head

passed on

all of this makes a mountain

from some sun else

a wrinkle in the skin

let run

and not a word is said

#193 - cards to post

13.7.20

193

cards to post

sometimes from the dream

see things you cannot see in there

the university was a supermarket

had to pass

and I was a ghost

did not wish to be seen

wrote all this blind in the night

the choir wouldn’t sing my song

not even a lyric, tune I could stand

there was a card left to each seat

no one knows from which country to

sometimes, days out from the dream

the secret road, the mountain lost

a forest come down to the sea

know them never by names but still

in this case

night passed in

like a machine

click-clackery

there and next and not

everything’s out of the body and in

trains, and thought for instance

as in life

a conversation in the pictures

there’s no one ever asks

how did we get here (?)

ivy heartstart upmisted

fringe of see blue

all the while

smell of a self unknown

no one feels a thing

peevish, a little, if I must admit

was a long time ready to go

still looking

the cards to post

are rote, touristic

not wearing my glasses right now

know though they bear

lovely stamps 

#192 - in and of the world

12.7.20

192

in and of the world

what part of the past was I in today?

where was I to be here and how

all elsewhere

?

the weather was a wake-up call

and kick the cot

to inch things under

creature else I’ve been

aeons of stars before this here

where once upon each other

time stood

day gull begun

all once upon

and even after

in as much

where, yes we were

and will again

consider the moment

sunshine beyond

the fossick find myself

speck in the run

mind was all elsewhere when

house of my breath

where the windows are written

damp lovely wintermidst of mulch

leaves settling down to life again

misted much as day come true

over all out of the eaves

this big blue

here as good as far

what part of the day was that?

#191 - the old aquarium

11.7.20

191

the old aquarium

I remember

the old spiral staircase down

very Jules Verne

dream cartoon fish

and sea horse riding

jostle along under shark

so many varied glorious

colours of deep and shallows

so many such sharp teeth

corals dead of the air we breathe

sword and hammer

small fry too

at sea among such monsters

reflected in the glass

a nautilus spire down drowning

my glass bottomed head

among the dead men

darker the deeper you go but

view of the harbour

and yellow sands

there must have been music

down so many steps

slate and a hand to hold

something remembered from a dream back then

pirates had us on a plank down here

and someone said a locker

where the flying Dutchmen flew

harbour full of tugs, strange silver of another port

gruff beard of a voice and tales too far

of waves and the silence under

like a drill down

fathomless, on adventure

which is the same as voyage

green of the bush

and yellow the beach

there’s a ferry at the bottom

to bear us home, away

#190 - in the works

10.7.20

190

in the works

sometimes just near the dream

not a thing can be helped

see into

close webbed

glimpse of the springs

and the cogs and the strings

get a whiff of all those monkeys working

guess the gist

as if outside of it

just and blissed

on with the show

all my own work

and everything borrowed

on elbows into the crater attend

white coats nearly rhyme it

sometimes a tendency of farmers

an urgency to wake

to tricks

a preciousness of light

walls closing in moments

keep it all heartshone in

under the spell of

see under the dream

such selves as sometimes hide

dark of a long sung truth so

unnoticed in Norway

or deep in the sea

tumble up

be the desert blow-in

winter it there

often and snug

average of was and will be

often not a word said

there isn’t a future in there 

#189 - selfie

9.7.20

189

selfie

navel and lint

wise to a font

self diagnosed

and medicated

self-administered

and governing

self-propelled

and with some self-regard

(so self-amused you see)

lie straight in bed

self-pleasuring

muck about and in

self-satisfied

yes opinionated of course

(how else here?)

lonesome?

find me on my self-phone

selfless?

nothing, if not self-deceived

fessed up

a self-starter

deprecatory – who can say that?

nevertheless self-abnegate

but never resile

lay myself out a new suit

that’s the virtue signalling done

I say a little prayer

but only to myself

candle light my way as well

you can get your own

a shellfish swim

and drag along

feed the bottom

self-closing, like the door

tinkle up pianos

but I don’t let the music rush me

all the time I take is mine

self-approved

self-adulated

in the very act

self-discovered

self-consoling

hard to frame the others in

I enter the dictionary here