Writing

Because we have only Cathy’s income to live on, and are used to a fair bit more than that, there

Just 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.

I 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

came 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.

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.

Gumnuts rain on her car like rain
that does not sting if he knows its reason
but if it is to fall is like dread

“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

always for Cathy

When we recover
we’ll dance
when we hear
toast and pray

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

You’re simply there
a cloud on the moon
not water
impossible to breathe

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…

remember this if it hurts and have a nice lie down for Mia easy as swanspassing it covers youplead for

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,

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….

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

now I am a tree
small birds sing in me
never need to take a pee
no need of Brie
folly
introspectivity,

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

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

Comparing your skin to my guts, tamer Your liver spots to my innocence, older Your friends to my resting bitch

for UKL “The necessity of having to do Something” – make particular, dress, argue Generally run in old road ruts,

They 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

gesticulated rataplan in dream. The angel Chardonnay left sugar on the table, walked. Even. Life is in motion: Breezes in

Little golden baby guppies Furry fighting biting puppies Hammock and a pillow Sunshine butter fellow Ease because we can Ease

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

if I really strain i can hear myself aging – and not just my creaks who can hear each step?

for Karlos Rage against the light or its dying Or punt downstream in a pleasure craft for two (Poop poop)

for Cathy, after seven years My heart is full Our pulse of days Simply cupped both ends By our hands

(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

dating to the nobbliest ancientest most civil liaison ye emergent fresh from yung silver spaceships ports delievers poerms stark buckety

When 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.

Joy 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

The 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.

Those 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.