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:

Hoick

It doesn't have to be situational,
She explained to him.
It can be abstract - free of place -
And just as good.

Just.
Good.

The words rolled in his mouth.

And why the preoccupation with rhyme?
It's childish and unflattering and quote
No poem was ever better for it unquote.

Why.
Rhyme.

He eagerly licked his last malteser.

One more thing,
She urged, hoicking her pants above her hips:
I was horribly, horribly drunk.

The Falling Man

(A relative of James Taylor's Walking Man, who walks while the other man stops and talks.)

The Adventure

the old man moves forward
his face is a fire
his hands blistered claws
that grip the spaces
in front of him

foolish protestant voices
he thought he'd left behind
leave him now
he can only feel his way

the fields of flowers
he saved for them
are gone
he can only see
streaked falling shapes

what he saw when
first told of the adventure
of immolation

Home

Passengers, side by side, shifting as the bus turns
Leftwards and leaning, urbanely unimpressed:
Back.
Pulsing gently between bends, silently and in unison,
All stomaching the churning of
Big black wheels sucking rain-slicked bitumen beneath them.
All effortlessly mourning the routine
Workaday journey past long pavements
Strewn with mashed newsprint
And bowed, scampering salarymen.

One man is leaning the wrong way,
Intent on taking some flesh
From the young woman beside him.
He is strangely alluring, it appears to her, standing now for his stop,
Surrendering his favourite seat and
Stepping off with one eye.

He is quickening for home, food and sexual love,
Having worked his shift
And earned his day.

Pebble Bridge

The Game

The game of wanting
And wanting to wash yourself,
Your eyes, livid inside
'Open gestures of kindness'
'Public offers of help'
'Outward expressions of faith'
And the crowded personas
That scratch at your mask.

To bring yourself down in fits
To call out, find your feet, fall, then recall
The game of wanting to hold some poise
Tucked in your shirt for later.

Like peppercorn seed, fresh picked
From spectral midnight gardens,
Drips of boiled bromureide
Lidded inside
Tiny black-burned pots;
This: an open gesture of malevolence.
A mystic mother's murmuring
Of poisoned floral picture frames,
Of Drapes and dresses and wretched
Romances.

To watch the wake tenderly rise
From long-shaded afternoons
And a percolating childhood
Undrawn.

The game of wanting
And wanting to waste yourself,
Your I's, livid inside
'Open gutters of kindness'
'Public ablutions of help'
'Outward excretions of faith'
And the clammy personas
That melt from your mask.

Conversion

Please stop walking;
The cymbals on your feet
Are confusing the cat.

The book in your hand,
A blunter instrument,
Is discomfiting the dog.

And please stop crying;
Your mother will think
Your father has failed,
And you father will think
He's left something at home.

The day started well
Didn't it?
Well, it started:
Page One.
Didn't it.

And now how will it end?
I don't know.
Will it end as it may not have begun?
Nobody knows.

The tribe is flooding in
Full of gush and burble
Filling every corner of the house
With laughter.
Some without grace,
Some without knowledge.

And still you clutch your book,
and still you pace the room.

"Morning Constitutional" ... "Morning"

The Small Movements

Tonight the small movements
Are all that separate me
From the people I love.

They are contained yet
From within like skin unstretched
On bone rising
Before breaking
The surface
Before starting
The slow entropic dissolution toward inertia,
Ambient atomised unerringly
Kinetic: The Background.

I think of a floating plastic bag,
Its crimpled translucence
And jellyfish breath
Drawing and discharging air
That is swollen
And thick
With heat.

I wonder: what is this life?

Orange Slices

Unknown Area

Mishydranation

"Asthma: A Multi-Headed Hydra or Misunderstood Genus?"

"MBTA [Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority] - the Multi-headed Hydra. When you play with the bulls you must look out for the horns. In the case of the MBTA, there’s a difference - the bull has many heads - and all of them are disconnected."

"Taming the Multi-Headed Hydra: Mobile Management Becomes a Vendor Must-Have."

"The West’s plight vis-à-vis radical Islam is therefore akin to Hercules’ epic encounter with the multi-headed Hydra-monster."

I'm not impressed by this.

What I've learnt tonight is that Hydra was a swamp-dwelling, poison-oozing water serpent of Lerna who had a terribly disagreeable, ultimately fatal, encounter with Hercules and Iolaus (The H's nephew and chauffeur). These men charioted in from out of town, probably in the morning and without any warning, sought out the piteous chthonic beast and over the course of the next few hours delivered upon it a frenzied series of cuts, cauterisations and club strokes until only one of its nine heads remained unlopped. Hercules then ripped this "immortal head" - which could not be harmed by ordinary weapons - off its stump with his bare hands and buried it beneath a heavy stone. The slaying of Hydra was one of The H's twelve labours (imposed on him as punishment for flipping out and murdering his own wife and children).

So let's get this straight: up until its final moments, Hydra always had multiple heads. Some say nine, others a hundred. History fades. But, please, let's ditch the over-description.

Also, there was only ever one Hydra of Lerna. It was not a bull and almost certainly didn't cohabit with bulls (as, let's be frank, it would have multi-bitten a bull's face if one was ever foolish enough to stray near the swamp looking for a drink or a clump of fresh clover).

Finally, though Hydra grew a few more heads and was assisted by a crab and generally acquitted itself well in what must have been a challenging defensive effort, The H eventually prevailed. Point being: Hydra was never tamed.

Time to pack the station wagon

In a recently published newspaper essay, Thomas Homer-Dixon predicts that the total collapse of society is fairly likely to occur fairly soon. He threads together three ologies to explain that too much complexity driven by too few sources of cheap energy will lead to too little resilience in the event of "simultaneous high levels of distress and conflict at several levels of society." He uses the cheerful expression "massive state breakdown" to describe massive state breakdown, but he certainly doesn't do so cheerfully. Here are the rudiments.

Sociology

"[America sociologist Jack] Goldstone has shown that societies are far more likely to break down when they're overloaded by converging stresses - say, rapid population growth, scarcity of key resources and a financial crisis."

Anthropology

"After studying ancient and modern societies, [American anthropologist Joseph] Tainter has concluded that they generally respond to stress by making their institutions and technologies more complex. A society dealing with a prolonged drought, for example, might build elaborate irrigation systems so it uses water more efficiently on its farms and it might create another layer of bureaucracy to make sure everyone follows water-sharing rules. In the short and medium terms, this greater complexity often produces big benefits - such as more food - and most people are better off."

"But Tainter has also found that greater complexity doesn't produce benefits forever, because it's costly. The cost is paid in the currency of energy ... "

"[He] argues that investments in complexity eventually produce what economists call 'diminishing marginal returns'."

"In time, the benefits of greater complexity fall to zero and can even become negative. As an expanding portion of society's wealth is sucked into further boosting complexity, its reserves to deal with unexpected contingencies fall, making it more susceptible to sudden, sever shocks from the outside."

Ecology

"[Canadian ecologist Buzz] Holling [contends] that any living system - from forest ecologies to modern economies - naturally tends to become more complex, internally connected and efficient over time, regardless of whether it needs complexity to solve its problems. Eventually it becomes so well adapted to a specific range of circumstances - and so well organised as an efficient and productive system - that when a shock pushes it outside that range, it can't cope. And the system's high connectedness helps any shock travel farther and faster across the system as a whole. Overall, then, the system becomes more rigid and brittle - in a word, less resilient."

Now, here's the nub of the problem (the "contradiction" in Homer-Dixon's terms). Modern societies are responding to increasingly intense "internal pressures" - such as the rich-poor divide, global warming, disease outbreaks and the "diffusion of technologies for mass violence away from governments to small groups of people (including terrorists)" - by developing "steadily more complex institutions and technologies" which require "higher inputs of high-quality energy." But this is occurring at a time when supplies of "abundant, cheap, high-quality energy" are drying up.

Soon it will be time to pack the station wagon.

Things on Strings

The Rich Prospect of a Kill

Pierced through tinted panes
Out back of Bennelong point
The sharp neon baubles chill
Noblesse oblige or
Brash near certainty.

Centrifugal gemstoned hands,
Hard-skinned and hunger-clawed,
Set wine in glasses on a whirl.

And nostrils dilating
At the rich prospect of a kill.

A Quayside Sting

I was standing at the Circular Quay bus stop trying to remember whether the 897 would take me to where I needed to go. I was looking in the direction of, but not really properly noticing, a couple of kooky Japanese street performers when a strong voice beside me hissed, "pathetic".

I was truly shocked. I turned to the woman responsible for this totally uninvited judgement and said, "oh, it's a shame you feel that way cos I quite like it". I realise now that my response was instinctive, serving, first, to deflect the woman's hostility with a degree of honest and positive - though, I must confess, slightly confected - appraisal, and, second, to leave the way open for a discussion - ambitious as this may now seem.

Yet she was merciless: "I've seen things like this before, but much better".

I turned away. I couldn't face her anymore. I turned away from the kooky Japanese street performers too. And a little while later, as the 897 trundled me into the rest of my afternoon, I tried but failed to forget about this well-groomed, boutique-bag-clutching, heavily and expensively bejewelled woman. Of all the people at the crowded bus stop, why did she choose me to envenomate with her aggression and negativity?

Billablast

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(Original photo by Rob Taggart)

Curve Ball

I Spose

I spose it does getcha
This waitin'
Scannin'
Twitchin'
Down the scope thirsty
For 'em
Every dust-fucked second eh

This door boys
Poot-poot
'Nother 'ere
Ack-ack eh

Like dancin'
Scamprin' little monkeys
On the clay
No two thoughts
For the circus
Screams

Outta laughs
Outta fuck'n askin'

When we could be killin'
Or cryin'
Or goin' fuckin' home

I spose

Solidarity Starfish-style

STOP!

Splash Shield

Pods

An author's unacknowledged irony

Everybody's superior
To everybody
Til the tv celeb
Arrives

Ascendancy trades
Between floors
Between times
On one-way conveyances

Never down

But now
Clacking prams
And HIM

HIS people

Scrabbling to the rostrum
Low-heeled and gulping
Piped air
Confers all that HE
Intended

Vastness of place and
Order
The supremacy of Man

Something about the virute
Of humility

Satisfied?

The checkout attendant tightly scrunched the note she'd been handed then released it onto the counter.

There was a pause while she (and I) inspected the unsprung currency lying before us.

She lifted her eyes briefly to meet mine and then, satisfied?, completed the transaction.

Are you checking for counterfeits?

No, I don't know, the boss just tell me to.

But why? What are you checking for?

I don't know. If it's a hundred the boss ask.

Sorry, but what I mean is what is it you're aiming to find out by doing that?

I don't know.

But then there's no point in doing it, is there?, if you don't know what you're doing it for.

I know.

Bone Frame II

Bone Frame I

You can have all your power
If that's what you need;
I don't see the resemblances.

I've got all my power, yes,
Moulded in the melodrama of these
Miniature bedroom plasticines

'Your iconoclasm substitutes for
Orgasm,'
That is what you said.

And faithfully I was quoted
Out of pretext
Oh, let's just get our pants off!