Sharp Heads

Quieting

They are big
These doubts of mine
Let's not quibble
About proportions
Or inheritance

I mean, ask mum
She needed more evidence
Than the midwife's sick
When I slipped out of her

We're talking the whole
Big-Bang-Look-At-My-Gummy-Eyes
Palaver
I don't exaggerate when I say
They'd flat out fill a church hall -
These doubts of mine

A stranger asked me recently
Are you normal?
I didn't blink; I said I doubt it
He said I've been talking
And I think you're not
I said I doubt that too

Then he tried to force me into his car

I needed some convincing,
Let me tell you,
That that person was me

And now there's this whole death problemo
A funeral director
Just (a few years ago)
Showed me the way to the door
(I was sampling a coffin)
He was mighty cross
He said get out you don't deserve it
I said what, the mahogany?

It took 24 policemen,
One for each rib,
And a litre of vegetable spray
To convince me that that
Cadaver wouldn't dance

But here's a question:
Wouldn't we all
Flirt with the dead
If we knew our exhumations
Or serendipitous encounters
Would be Adequately Capitalised Upon?

The Officer in Charge doubted it
So did the judge, his angels,
The small men with shovels and cigarettes
And of course
Sodom's crazy lot

After five years I suppose,
Yes,
I did too:
Big time

Long Legs

All Ways

The last town

How far is it now
Back to the last town?
Back via smouldering horizons
And black-ash roads?

How far is it now
Before the sun falls?
Before our footprints narrow
On formless desolations,
The lines no longer lines
The ground no longer ground
Laid out for them?

When will we turn
Our tired bodies
From all this damage?
Lapsing finally into an
Endless blissful walking sleep
Back to the welcome siege
Back to our first memories
Of the last town?

Side Ways

A biography of belief

Beggars belief
Baulks belief
Blacklegs belief
Brandishes belief
Buggers belief
Butchers belief
Buries belief

How to get inside an artwork

1. Treat it like a stimulating conversation, that is mutually validating of intelligence, humour, ironically drawn bathos and a refined sense of the absurd.

2. Try and convince yourself that the creative experience is shared, that the conceptual foundations of the work, at least, support you and the work's author equally.

3. Imagine the work to be your better self, to whom you can confide lots of little lies and delusions.

4. Arse first.

Tin tabernacle

"C'mon thunder"
James' call peals
Off moulded iron
Awned by night

Leafy wreaths
Gathered at his feet
Pass tiny threads of blood

Evidence, if needed,
Of weeping

The roof's return
Remains mute while
Four pads on tin
Gently find their beam

He won't get down now
Till he's heard
What he's come to learn:
A single awful clap.

Thinking what you're thinking

.
.
.

Yes. A camp French bubble bear who swallowed the wrong Easter myth. (And who can't stop burping up cliches.)

Road Sign

Time to go

A message on my shirt says
Look around you
There are lessons less grave
Than this

A woman in a corner
Turned away
Says they're behind you
Those you came for

Anyway

And a dog
There's a dog yowling
Till I know it's time

To leave

This grey light falling
From someone's

Home

Heals my bones

Oh near, home

Monday evening with Bob

From All I really want to do

I ain't lookin' to block you up
Shock or knock or lock you up
Analyse you
Categorise you
Finalise you
Or advertise you

Fish Corral II

Fish Corral I

Glee is submarine

Thoughtless Bubbles

Early Life II

Early Life I

The Scavenger

I have entered a gap
Narrow and sheer
Bleak beyond reckoning
And blasted with stone

Were it not for my
Hunger to be someone else
To scavenge their joy
I'd be home now
Deep in the valley
Where it is
Bleak beyond reckoning
And blasted with stone

Personal Growth

Winter Comes Early

Tango-tapping Cultureman

House of reprobates

The comment:

You have to ask: what sort of constituency would regard the opposition’s juvenile, petulant, tactless, gormless, insolent, impudent, smug, stupid, brattish and incurably unamusing parliamentary behaviour as worthy? As worthy of our democracy’s primary law-making institution? As worthy of a legislature that has so many urgent generational challenges facing it (such as climate change, the water crisis, Aboriginal disadvantage)?

I know.

The juvenile, petulant, tactless, gormless, insolent, impudent, smug, stupid, brattish and incurably unamusing morons who voted for them.

(With all due respect.)

The response

Thanks for reprinting the thesaurus [blog handle deleted]. It seems you laborites are in desperate need of an education.

The repsonse to the response:

[blog handle deleted], are you juvenile, petulant, tactless, gormless, insolent, impudent, smug, stupid, brattish, incurably unamusing or a moron?

If so, which of these would you say is your most endearing attribute?

If not, let me ask you this: are you lacking in empathy, broad-mindedness, nuanced modes of understanding, tolerance of difference, wariness of overt demonstrations of dogmatism or insidious attempts at political, religious or ideological indoctrination? Further, do you suffer from a lack of compassion, sensitivity, sophistication, subtlety or reasonableness?

Two more questions: are you either (a) a member of the Exclusive Brethren's blog vigilance unit (the one based in Junee)?; or (b) Bronwyn Bishop?

Geo-editorial

Geo-contemplation

Starwisp and Knot Inspection

Booting puddle (or just some funny hat)

Misplaced Comment #2

Dinosaurs are big-boned.

Notes: (1) This comment would be received more favourably if spoken without any special emphasis on the word 'dinosaurs'.

(2) If spoken to a large man or woman who, rightly or wrongly, thinks in euphemisms, this comment would be received unfavourably were it delivered with special emphasis on the word 'dinosaurs'.

(3) Dinosaurs are, of course, extinct: a tense problem. Also, some dinosaurs were not, actually, big-boned: a factual problem. Two very good ripostes in the event of an unkind application of this comment.

Gap

Misplaced comment #1

Shuttle diplomacy is subtle for anyone with a speech impediment.

Notes: (1) In writing what I have just written, I do not wish to demean those who have a speech impediment. I do acknowledge, however, that my words could inspire such an interpretation. Therefore, I propose that all parties concerned sit down, perhaps in groups of three or four spread through the rooms of a big stately building, and talk long into the night. We can have mixed nuts and juice.

(2) I once saw a man perform a punk version of Hamlet (part of a series of productions called Speed Shakespeare), which featured lots of profane language and not a great deal of subtlety (that was the point, of course, which I (kind of) got and (kind of) appreciated). His speech during the performance was flawless; it was only when I spoke to him after the show that I discovered his profound stutter.

The bush

I caught the train to the bush this morning. The 7.40 Illawarra service took me from Central to Waterfall. From the station I walked through a scout camp to the top of a mountain. From the mountain I followed a fire trail to a pool in Heathcote creek, where I swam. After my swim I walked to Heathcote township and had a cup of coffee. Then I caught the 3.28 Eastern Suburbs service back to Central.

I saw a monitor, a skink and a finch.

We caught the train to the bush this morning. The 7.40 Illawarra service took us from Central to Waterfall. From the station we walked through a scout camp towards a mountain. We lost our way among some big rocks but we were not alarmed. We found it again near an electricity pylon. We followed painted dots to the top of the mountain. Afterwards, we swam in a pool and ate muesli bars and dates. We caught the 3.28 Eastern Suburbs service back to Central.

We saw a monitor and a skink. I saw a finch.

Two men caught the train to a suburb south of Sydney. They were destined for a mountain but didn't know it until they met a man in a truck. They were destined to swim in the valley beneath the mountain but didn't know it until the heat came. They talked and drank and followed a steel pipeline, scaled with rust. One of them thought about coffee until, early in the afternoon, he drank one (a dark brew). He then thought about food.

They both saw native animals. It is possible one saw one more than the other.

Petrified Shell

Prone to Repeating

However many things you say now
Will not be true tomorrow
Will be less if you are
More if you're not
Prone to repeating
"I'm tired of you"

So have a stab old son

Disembodied Conversation

Plenty fish

An allegorical or metaphorical saying or narrative; an allegory, a fable, an apologue; a comparison, a similitude. Also: a proverb, a maxim; an enigmatic or mystical saying (now arch.).

How many times does it need to be repeated?

Pardon?

This.

Oh yes. The Parable. Fish stocks restored - crazy; dying man revived - didn't happen.

(Laughter)

So. None?

(Laughter)

Conversation

Then she gave a little squeak.

No!

No. With a much higher pitch.

No!

Closer, but still higher.

Yes ...

Just round from the shop

I'm told it's good to look up at the buildings you blunder past every day on your way to god-knows-where. That often some architectural surprise awaits you near the corner or just round from the shop.

But I'm not sure that if I ever get to god-knows-where, having enjoyed such a diversion, I'll be any better equipped to return.

At Least One

I'm told they turn inside you
Ticking out their time;
These cogs within cogs
Are forever untuned,
I'm told.

But I see at least one cog
Up there too,
In the big old sky,
That is forever
And perfectly
In tune.

Elsewhere

The woman was like a tide
Of silk and tendril arms,
Washing forward then back then forward
To the last bus driver.

He sat serenely ten-to-twoing his wheel,
Eyes straight, feet splayed,
Easing the old bird into neutral.

She called within inches of his face
For directions to a street he didn't,
It turned out, know.

So idle in Alexandria we sunk
While she didn't know why he didn't know
What she thought she knew he should have known.
An interchange.

I looked out at warehouse walls,
Empty corners slicked with night,
At black traffic swelling and
Subsiding beyond view,
And chanced
That that was all that could take her
From this farcical confinement -
Theatre of the 370 -
When, waving away any pathos,
She surged forward, tripped on one step,
Hurdled another, and finally found
Her audience among the elsewhere.

In short

It must not be a declaration.
Yet it may,
On occasion,
Be
One
Sixth of one.

It may not, in any event,
Forsake
Purely
For argument's sake,
Firmness or unfuzziness or
Freedom from flimsy
Linguistic games
(that everbody loathes).

In short: