Category: Writing

for Cathy

Where is that crow going?
Same place as us.
Look at it rowing
Between a slog and a swallow.
Once heard it groaning
Now it fills the expanse
Mirror black where the oil spill was
Speck of midnight at noon
A little storm in the blue
No reminder of awful death,
My love, sweet shade in the belting sun
Soft dusk two words two words two words
All the murder soft-loud following-joining
Slowing the progress of twilight.
So we’re going the way of that crow my love
So the oceans are filling
With trivia
So bad men do great
While good women groan
So the trial of God secret
And appealed
So I am unkind—
Call low-hard soft-loud to your murder
From our crooks above the creek bend
Hunched and bright dark
We’ll answer.

Continue reading “Christmas 2018”

If life gives you lemons fuck lemonade
All that sugar—just suck.
Find yourself winded on the kitchen floor
Don’t get up, lie a while and feel the dirt
Check your bits why don’t you
Consider
Giving up whatever knocked you down
Thank your stars for arms and legs
And move on—but not just yet
Where’s the hurry to do?
This is not wallowing.
If you’re humble about your failure—
Anybody could have done it
Shit just chose you—
Every now and again
Fail gloriously.
Bless and be still.

Sleeplessness is awful
Insomnia is worse.
Dreaming of pomegranates
Left on our porch
Only to find they’re real—
Or did our porch dream them?
Why not bathe in cool tea
Instead of drinking your shame
All alongside the night?
Find our neighbour left the fruit
But still give credit to the porch:
Bathing in reality is not entirely sweet.
I shall run toward my story
After market, after poetry.
Now, where is that strainer?

Saw Alexander Putin waiting for a latte extra hot
They utterly failed to call him Put-in, not Poo-tin
I don’t know why he didn’t tell them call me Al
Now he’ll badmouth Melbourne coffee snobs at Summits.
As if Turnbull wasn’t bad enough in the queue
Deciding who and on what terms we would get mugs.
All I can depend on is the rain. 

Continue reading “Summer Solstice 2017: diary of a good year”

now I am a snake
come October alarm clocks
cry – pesky mynahs

mornings by the creek
ceviche growling grass frog –
post-noon bake

Continue reading “percentage game”

now I am a tree
small birds sing in me
never need to take a pee
no need of Brie
folly
introspectivity,
a Commonwealth of filigree
from grubs at my extremity
to nematodes hunting darkly,
brachiating heavily
atmospherically
deeply.

Continue reading “entity”

sun bleaching lilac
wind stripping magnolia –
be kind to this fig

It is another year and we are not broken
Rather in the middle still, in the thick
The thicky thick thickly dense
Once which we were struck for
The rattan we still cringe before
A caning struggled not to pass on –
Craft and restrain and laugh.
Where once we were a mess
Today we fold and bless
You’d never get a guess
I’m not one to confess.
We do not demonstrate.
We are not broken and so we do not lie.
Our hearts are full and that is enough.
We indicate in our own way
And proceed.

Continue reading “Solstice 2017: distracting”

i
stupid dew that frosts
you can snap better than this –
sublime and try again

ii
if my flesh is grass
yours is this magnolia
rocking in the storm

Continue reading “three haiku on the verge of a solstice”