New Life, New Novel
Because we have only Cathy’s income to live on, and are used to a fair bit more than that, there
Read moreBecause we have only Cathy’s income to live on, and are used to a fair bit more than that, there
Read moreWant of Mollusc
our copper blood’s your top shelf unreasonable desire
not just not available for Christmas giftwrapped
it’s an impossible want for the leap year round
as we say in the trade no I haven’t the faintest either
a wonderful retirement curse for example or
give it to the kids for lifelong proud dissatisfaction
So much of it is about realising what you’re writing. What’s going on? In our house we sing this out all the time as a greeting, a punctuation, an existential complaint!
“What’s going oh-on?” I would love to make the words do all they can right now as they find their way into the world and some of that goes on. It’s in the rewrite where their final identities will emerge, their personality and even, now I am growing aware, their embraced imperfection. Once, I hunted down my solecism and eradicated it with glyphosate.
Read moreJust as we were packing the kayaks I heard the cute squidgy sound and looked up to see vibrant green barreling overhead in a volley up to the steps at the end of our street. Where there is a bower in the bushes, blue plastic from fizzy CO2 and cooking propane in a tempting trail leading to what to me looks like a wicker bird from a craft nation flag. Only not creepy. Cool and a bit sexy. Pegs. Bottle tops. Mmm.
Read moreI always try to write something for the solstices. This year I didn’t.
it’s still a day
still
waiting
empty of a morning
A Rationale for Angling
shows us Taoist Fishing swollen bunions
plays us TikTok elderly Sports God
Offers Lumbar Yearning to Ice Chest
So the good folks at PS have issued the eBook version of their own, which is a smashing thing because now even them without funds can purchase it.
Read moreMy new novel, The White Library, is out everywhere now. It’s a pity there is no paperback, but I think digital is something better these days. So far, people seem to like it. There’s an excellent review from Ian Mond in Locus and a five star review on Amazon by somebody who ought to know, a librarian. […]
Read morecame across two saucy wrens
name of Gough and Bobby
both with classic eyebrows
cries
classic curiosity
talked of time that won’t return
Stillness like caramel
slips
dissolves
burnt
on tongue and swallow
feeling so much so
it’s yet to be
paint-spattered and weary.
the new occupiers at our joint got this note
• respect the geckos
• watch the blackbirds but just grumble
• doves nest in the treefern
• rats cross the fence (not possums)
• at dusk our bats do not stop
• but almonds and apples and apricots and figs draw parrots on a single day
• keep mulch and water on the magnolias
• gall wasp want drowning twice a year
• mice foiling when weather drives them in
• when the days are baking three days still
• you may then vent night air
• (don’t cook indoors)
• (not just because the grill knob’s dodgy)
This morning I noticed that US voting booths look like Star Wars All Terrain Scout Transports.
This news is a climb down from yesterday’s buzz: I am so pleased to announce The White Library is on the PS Publishing website! You can pre-order here hopefully in time for Christmas. Do get the lovely print edition.
Read more
for Donald
Come misremember these:
the moon on a trapeze
Arlecchino and a fly—
the three of rule cannot apply
to an albatross—
no fight with getting small
no wandering the hall
no time to wonder why
he isn’t that stopping guy
or on a horse.
The dog of the situation
waits
for the Angry Man
opening gates
bearing in mind NO PULLING
She hates
your jerking differential of rates.
“For that which I work
I do not acknowledge
for not what I will
this I practise but
what I hate
this I do.”
Death once half-achieved
he returned
hands colder than work.
I’ve gathered the worst lessons all along:
what was a snail more shelly than before
what was a belly softer than a song:
for Jacob on the event of his focusing
Read morefor Rowan
Instead soften:
sun greys
buds rise
hard path
dissolves
baked mud
tomb breaks
small herbs
feather the way
I saw Jacinda Ardern riding the other hill
blowing a bubble of gum
on way to a small cloud of love and
impatient flesh knowing just métier taught
you flinched not
at the rain.
When the sleep-bellied River rolls over clear
and wombats can stay from the Shoulders
till the flathead Rise Up in Joyous Choral my dear
and the miner birds fall short of Words,
Darling cleave to me and I shall cleave to you
until we cleave to the dust Both Together
cleave my dear Heart to me and you Know I’ll cleave to you
till love and lust cleave to dust and Forever—
for my bike
riding curves
chocolate creek a river
slipping its edges
i am alone
wet as any thing will [be]
first foot down to mudded cadenza
they’re spraying Hong Kong people blue
so this is me and that is you
so spray me too
seamed by two am blue radio
analogue purpose beauty enough
like early magnolia reach
i am stupiding with age
ye fresh arterial blood clot
is blackening on the stage
there’s a place my everything is due
clattering parrots barge through it
you and I suck a margin we can’t keep
waiting for disaster
à vos marques, prêts, faites vos jeux…
Read moreremember this if it hurts and have a nice lie down for Mia easy as swanspassing it covers youplead for
Read morefor 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,
If life gives you lemons fuck lemonade
All that sugar—just suck.
Time for a Good Hot Cuppa
Sleeplessness is awful
Insomnia is worse.
Dreaming of pomegranates
Left on our porch….
fig leaf alchemy
mudlarks galore hop poorly
in dawn’s bloody eye
Saw Alexander Putin waiting for a latte extra hot
They utterly failed to call him Put-in, not Poo-tin
now I am a snake
come October alarm clocks
cry – pesky mynahs
mornings by the creek
ceviche growling grass frog –
post-noon bake
now I am a snake
pretty basic black or brown
stick – lying doggo
grassy-banded spine
belly occasionally
crimson of attack
executive-shy
Read moreIt 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
i
stupid dew that frosts
you can snap better than this –
sublime and try again
Driving Up following pale cracks toward a yearning old sun – surprised by the glare Marathon Running welcome swallows bank
Read moreComparing your skin to my guts, tamer Your liver spots to my innocence, older Your friends to my resting bitch
Read morefor UKL “The necessity of having to do Something” – make particular, dress, argue Generally run in old road ruts,
Read moreThey cannot hold those facing eternity
And, taking ages, hold. They run across
A landscape unhurried after urgency
Imagined. Whorls bake into pastry cases
Evidence crunched and analysed on a tongue
Where good to go and not welcome play
Identically and sometimes both at once.
Show me your hand and what I see is your palm
But the tips are the pupils of that hand
Or, if unpicking a tangle of hooks
And fish slime, just one. They work so hard
You should give them a break and tickle them too
Lick some ice cream off them, buy some gloves
For goodness’ sake, bite your nails if you must,
Please don’t swallow. Unless you’re a god, that is
Whose touch gives light and even a hangnail is
Infinite. Tap time my dear, know that place.
Fingers may be digital but your tips
Analogue. They are not your employees.
Our kiss slides
Noun to verb
And returns
A new place
A new thing.
Once all that’s left is my certificate
Not even rubble
A guy, you can sew him up from all my posts
Will be good enough to run for office –
Good enough? Superior! Going to win!
So why not have at it before I die?
I am a post-thought guy. High up
Everything is media anyway.
Once did nature, yeah:
That yellow liar with its blossom, not yellow really, see?
A conspiracy of colour,
Shadows in the wind Crows playing in the wild bright A shock in those suits
Read moreLittle golden baby guppies Furry fighting biting puppies Hammock and a pillow Sunshine butter fellow Ease because we can Ease
Read moreMight not know your blue
Know you have sky
Stipulate to your desert priest
Know you have storms
Your suffering dog-silent I admit
Like the girl sang it: you’re star.
The heart it melts constantly
You would think it had a limit
It proceeds from some southern glacier
Kept climate change regardless
In the sticks.
Apart from the melting constant
It keeps time rather badly
Operating as if tuned by some other
Alien duid with a set of auto tools
And an ape.
for Jo Cox Each recipe is a bucket list Beet sequence Fibonacci strawberry The end not dusty just a bit
Read moreif I really strain i can hear myself aging – and not just my creaks who can hear each step?
Read moreThis here is the story of Irene the sireen
We met in a restaurant they call Disco Beans
She ordered brown rice and I ordered spleen
I was a dumb poet and she was a queen
I crashed on her rocks and now I must get clean
Irene sireen
Irene sireen
Irene sireen
In what ocean your island?
for Karlos Rage against the light or its dying Or punt downstream in a pleasure craft for two (Poop poop)
Read morefor Cathy, after seven years My heart is full Our pulse of days Simply cupped both ends By our hands
Read more(thanks to Oscar for the mans in road)
i Speeches
Jobs and growth
Blobs what float
Flubs and bloat
For rubes and oafs
Gets on goat
Grubs in brogues
Yards and strophe
Two-word pith
Absent oath
Grandstand wroth
Stabs my faith
for Donald Middle of a life a work a love Stitches cannot hold Holding days and nights together Horizon not
Read moreI have been thinking about the little girl who died by Darebin Creek. So have others. There is a poster advertising a newspaper that mentions her on my route to work. I hate this. There have been a couple of articles in The Age about why someone would kill their 15 month old daughter. One is a short google on some instances over the past few years and a few stats. The other is someone, like me, who knows the area. But there have been a few murders in the suburb. There are kids riding trail bikes along the muddy track beside “my” creek to the point where the police had an accident with a cyclist while looking out for them on a quad bike. More than once I’ve seen four wheel drive vehicles trundling along where there is no road, almost no path in places. Where when the water rises, eels cross. It’s a magical place. It has been damaged.
Read moreLorne Sky
This evening is painted by a terrible boor
And hanging in a café for two hundred bucks
It is filled with heckling birds and that gum smell –
It is more than I can reproduce with my crayons.
Start to that ending cadence it’s wanting
Perfect roar of the incoming surf to
Extinction of the sun with prejudice –
It is more painful not to write than to blot.
Go, billions of stars before and after urge
Be, none of your pages will warm bones
Act in the best interest by as much or as little
As the painter of the evening commands.
Purpose of Moths
Algorithmic flap into burning
Rush backward to egg
Beard on a heron
Whistle on a pigeon
Run by with your tongue hanging
But without your head.
Compulsion free for a change.
Lift your face to grey louring
And live in the pale
Pushing air out is all
Past your useful age
From purpose into meaning.
Watch ripe brittle without comment
Prepare being without management
Hope for platypus
Do with far away swallow
Stay by me
For two swings
And a chase.
I sob without recognition these days
Groan after nothing much – not even bones
So I accompany morning’s night with arse trumpet
Although I can very well help it.
Noon’s brief passage is alright
Evening’s better. Less frantic saturation
To formula. To getting somewhere.
Roy feels so bad and got a worried mind. The opening to one of the most recognisable songs of the
Read moredating to the nobbliest ancientest most civil liaison ye emergent fresh from yung silver spaceships ports delievers poerms stark buckety
Read moreGhost cat stuck in a tree
Only living humans to rescue her.
Stuck in a tree crying softly
Nothing has an afterlife but her.
Just what the fuss might be is beyond me. Beyond thin gods in charge of gates. So I have decided.
Read moreEvery time we were born you died Sweet cream in pants And we sighed A golden dream a Columbina –
Read moreThat awful time Before she wakes but After the rest of the laggy planet Has faded to its common but
Read moreRan about 25 k today, something I haven’t done for a couple of months. Good on you legs: a marathon
Read moreWhen I see an Indian myna cross the road, two things impress me: its pompousness; and the way it avoids neatly my wheels, without seeming effort. These may be the same thing. This poem is Based on a True Story.
Read moreSee her out with her husband in cool early scrub
A couple easily composed, inconceivable man on foot
Two legs four legs six legs eight
Don’t speed up don’t hesitate.
Winter teaches me to breathe, the moon to see:
Read morefor Joni Mitchell How like breathing are the clouds How like blood like speaking like a chest if fire How
Read moreI haven’t been publishing poetry on www.voermans.net.au first, because of course that constitutes publishing, and I thought I’d have a
Read moreJustin Bieber is a wanted fella
In Argentina (step and kick)
Justin Bieber failed to appear
After his subpoena (step step swoop)
Oh what a naughty he gonna get caughty bad Canadiol boy! (big split)
My animal is dumb
Arse a shelf
Arms a-dangle
Gut the buddy boy I carry round
Mouth a window on my diet
Everybody part unsound
Everything a sight
I’ve forgotten who I might be
At market in a meeting permanently
Know the shape of situation
Cannot say the pain.
This is the wrong end of the FY
Confidence at a low I see
The yard that was home to car seat
Urine soaked teddy kikuyu and Maccas shit
Now mown angular and even green
(Thanks to Carbon Tax eradication)
Flashing festive Chinese blowup logoi
Of shiny Advent metonymy and/or joy
for Tim
Causation of wood and stone
Formal proof of tree and bone
Consciousness won’t let alone
Or at least the karmic.
Today the world is too sweet way to be borne Too sweet way to be borne again my lover Too
Read morefor Oscar, on seven years at the department
Blood magnolia in the shade of one cold;
Warmer blue bay tipping into ocean now –
So knob-head grumpy-jaw pinkies flood the fold;
Of all the minutes in a long afternoon
Of all the motes in the light in this room
The cool shade leaves shaking under this tree
Child sand designs on the shore of this sea
The Honourable Tongue hangs fat from its gob
The Honourable Tongue loves doing its job
The Honourable Tongue swings in the wind
The Honourable Tongue wouldn’t know if it sinned
Strong bones of tree Brains of red rock Feathered clear blue eye beyond, Silvereyes’ nerve Pulsing bees’ bole Far cry
Read moreThere is no poem in me Crows on the evening, no platypus in the Darebin, A catalogue of weeds versus
Read moreJoy is everywhere undeserved
A face a stepmother could love and serve
Mark the billboard’s smiling power
Verse the quatrain’s unplanned bower
And swerve.
Making some kind of sorrow right
Read moreThe great benefit of Modern History,
Fast forward swipe on frame and Botox aside,
Is an Actor’s life on Facebookery
In touch minus foolish detail crisply fried,
Allowing so much more flexible achievement
Accountability intelligence and knowledge management,
To say nothing of bereavement
To say nothing of any moment
Doing nothing at all.
Read moreWho loves the land the land loves love land love Who lands the love lands love’s love lands land love.
Read moreThose newly born cannot worry they are unloved
Only horror could not see their blessing
Innocence at the end cannot pray it’s survived
In horror’s arms and macking.
i: Beautiful Death
Can a tree become a Saint?
Even a frail old elm beset
With auto fuel unburned
Cable rollout, and blight?
And was it a Saint as a sapling?
Or did it wildly sway
Care less, if it grew crookedly
Where its leaves might be falling
If its roots gripped right?
Makeshift Heart IX: upon the decay and death of Thatcher
My beloved gave me a nutcase bell with a glowing green brain on it
The damn thing broke within a couple of days but I cannot remove it
And so as I go pedalling for my life I cannot help it my brain tinkles:
Synapses alight with chemical connection in creative destruction
Neural Darwin makes up my mind. By fits and by starts I love everybody
And such is my heaven, my humanist hell. I fly down the road, ringing.
Hand is poised above the box –
l have never made the harder choice
The harder choice chose me
There was nothing much between my love
And eternity.
Sleep is not a hunger but a thirst and coffee will not slake it
The taste of water only lasts a moment and leaves the ravelled care still knit
The shape in wakeful bed attempts a dream but cannot make it fit
The eye a child awakes is aged but has more liquid in it.
Traces of Ratzinger hidden in primates
Unheathy concealment in Milanese meat
Requires prophylaxis in African states
American pork cannot hope to compete.
Puddles all smell of my dog Bush of crimson fruit disturbed make parrots Cloud gaps as well resemble rabbits Tangled
Read moreWoman raving at her fence
Child or anima return?
Mate or name your breakdown
Is it home or house you burn?
Trees whisper lullabies
Call or answer duly?
Sin, echt or key indicator
Elm mother or just a storm?
one step back
Sing of every thing
Be dumb enough to believe
So hopeless you can cry
Meditate in a park
Or wander on a beach
GSoH will help
Leaves bearing your name
Blown away by some fool
Aren’t enough to dent you
I have lived half mad
some moral compromises
Go on grab a flake
Go on tuna bake
Go on, you just put in the hours
Never mind the whys or the hows.
A big office arse needs an aubergine grill
And cold pressed, my oath, only eat who I kill.
Vicarious baiter.
Read morefor H
You heard when she said what he did, afraid
Remained when he did what he did, delayed.
Helplessness is an art form, an air raid:
Start, and a muddle, an ending betrayed.
Live through this and death is nothing, sister
Some things pale somethings sit and fester