Freedom Ride.

A woman on the bus this morning was shouting into her mobile that she was "a free agent." That her divorce was now, finally, "legit." This followed a cheerful conversation with her mother, from whom she extracted a full description of her soon-to-be-consumed evening meal, item by side-saladed item.

Except for the volume, I thought, fair enough. She's unshackled. Loved. Evidently, she's happy.

And yet I was pleased when my stop came. The sun had just broken free from the clouds after days of diffusion and greyness.

Woman Posing for a Photograph II

The painting is Norham Castle, Sunrise by Joseph William Turner c.1835.

Smoke

Spooky Ship

These are the stanzas in Part III of Samuel Taylor Coleridge's The Rime of the Ancient Mariner where a spooky cage-like ship advances towards the old seafarer and his crew. I was quite unsettled after reading them.

Are those her ribs through which the Sun
Did peer, as through a grate?
And is that Woman all her crew?
Is that a Death? and are there two?
Is Death that Woman's mate?

Her lips were red, her looks were free,
Her locks were yellow as gold:
Her skin was as white as leprosy,
The Nightmare Life-in-Death was she,
Who thicks man's blood with cold.

The naked hulk alongside came,
And the twain were casting dice;
"The game is done! I've won! I've won!"
Quoth she, and whistles thrice.

The Sun's rim dips; the stars rush out:
At one stride comes the dark;
With far-heard whisper, o'er the sea,
Off shot the spectre-bark.

Woman Posing for a Photograph I

Matinee

Shocked by the light
My lungs
Fold over themselves
For a lick of air -
Glistening slugs
Lapped together
In a cage

We have some business
Down on the line
Says the man with a backwards smile
You, old son, took
The wrong out

My weakness is my mouth
An opening and closing
Toad fish vessel
From which no sound
Can come

Not even a last squeak
To correct his sentence,
To say "turn"
Before unrolling my arms
And dropping my head
Theatrically to the road

Precipitate Fancies

Shapeskis II

The building in this picture was extracted from a photograph (dated 1968) in the Wolfgang Sievers Collection at the State Library of Victoria. It is Accountants House, headquarters of the Australian Society of Accountants, 49 Exhibition Street, Melbourne.


(Note that the blinds are drawn on the ground floor.)

Shapeskis I

These shapes were taken from Wassily Kandinsky's painting Several Circles (1926)

Revolting Fleas

Step

Reading about the 'elimination step'
I understand it's philosophical
Or natural
As far as these things go

After the Lady of Shalott
In a spare room
Any isolation begins
With mirrors and longing

And just as she wove
New temperatures
To fill her time
I sit here now
At the top of a long stair
Believing my Lancelot is a dupe
That his step
Were its force known
Would proceed lifetimes
Out of view

Genetic Paint III

Control

A woman on a motorcycle is waving to a boy standing several hundred meters from her on the roadside. She is travelling at high speed, roaring towards him. The boy is springing up and down on his tippy toes returning her wave with both arms, an action which sends his whole body into delighted gyrations. Her waving is enthusiastic too, yet jerky because of the wind whooshing over her.

She passes the boy and suddenly catches something. The road.

Her waving stops as she snaps her head forward and tightens her grip on the handlebars. The boy doesn't notice anything unusual in her behaviour, however, and keeps waving.

A little way down the road, the motorcycle begins to judder and skip from side to side on the bitumen, kicking sharply at its surface.

The woman is losing control.

I Held You in the Square (Ben Okri, 1986)

I held you in the square
And felt the evening
Re-order itself around
Your smile.

The dreams I could never touch
Felt like your body.
Your gentleness made the
Night soft.

And even if we didn't know
Where we were going,
Nor what street to take
Or what bench to sit on
What chambers awaited
That would deliver us our
Naked joy,
I could feel in your spirit
The restlessness for a journey
Whose beauty lies
In the arriving moment
Of each desire.

Holding you in the evening square,
I sealed a dream
With your smile as the secret pact.

Genetic Paint II

Genetic Paint I

Seeded Wall

A pre-Rudd profile

Lost a limb in Kabul. Blamed it on bad dress sense. Some prank! Currently in rehab near Cuba. Jumping to get my hands on a weapon again, or the bible. Jack tells me the wife's gone missing; reckons she got sweet on her parole officer and's trying to hide the pregnancy. Four kids, three fostered out in Perpetuity (WA). Swelling in the temples is better - less time on the polygraph. Things were looking up after the bushfire trials. Organised a visa through Tony's mob then settled in Afghanistan with Dave. He jokes about it, but I only drove the van. Inherited big time from Thai uncle. A family of orang utans now pissing on mum's sofa and intimidating her cats. Pity I can't enjoy it. I've finally lost all control of my life. Missing all of you. Give my love to John Howard. Tell him not to arse out of his campaign to bring back truth in government. Or his vision for a suburban utopia. I've got so much to learn about what's important. And old father time eh. Wish you could help with this but I'm wearing orange overalls. The only news I get now is through my lawyers and they were educated in the public system!

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