CORAL AND ME
Picture a white faced Celtic woman with a
scroll of black hair spilling onto shoulder
blades, a body stiff and eyes
that are round like
that of a quadruped. Imagine her standing
next
to the doorway of her lounge room. My
head, is placed on top of her shoulder, with her
back sticking to the red brick interior wall. She
swivels like a compass to her left, and then I
hold her against the door. ‘You prefer wood?’
‘Yes,’ she replies. I
then put my lips to her
unexplored ear hole, and chew on a banana;
she
likes the sound of blood rushing under the
roller of my tongue,
close to her tightening throat. We separate
and move downwards
to the centre of the room
where we exchange vision and connect again
by
touching feet and then fingers. ‘I want to show
you my bedroom,’ she says as she uses her legs
to elevate herself, and her poetry hands which
appear small and crooked, and are painted with
red varnish, elevate me to the level of one of her
floating hexagons.
I submit to the mysteriousness:
a black and tan cattle dog with its acute face,
parked on the most expansive couch in the dim
lit room, its eyes tracking her bare feet; and, a
scant sheep dog with manic eyes attracting
anything that has life in it. I am inside its pupils.
She opens the door to the bedroom. There are
several lit candles all the same height; painted
photographs of
elders sidled along the skirting
board and a double sleeping bag spread out on
the floor. Picture me, placing my hands, on top
of her shoulders, applying a little gravity and
we are down on our knees, with the candles
flickering about us, and she is just pivoting on
her bottom, rocking backwards and forwards
whilst I am trying to
get her to straighten up,
or flatten out, and her body has lost all
elasticity
and has become monosyllabic.
‘I think you should leave!’ she says.
So I walk out the front door out into the
Collingwood night where houses are just houses
and the streets don’t have much to say.
She is a breath behind me as I exit the
short square black wrought iron gate.
She says: ‘I’m just putting out the rubbish.’
I look back at her. Is she talking
about me?
The Yarra River bends my rolls royce and me
home
to Hawthorn. Picture me in my bed
penetrating white sheets, I am in love and
imagine her. Imagine now, a decade of love
and torment set to burst on the scene.
SCULPTURE OF IDEAL (Lynne)
A sculptress deciphers white from true white
in a rough-hewn limestone block.
With fall of fragments, a bulbous woman
disrobes. Gauguin hips.
Surfeited on lime and stone. A rock eater,
healthy and brimming with whiteness,
reclining
voluptuously between Blue Gums,
within hands reach of tools
to smooth her hair. Contrasts
with her maker -
petite,
vulnerable.
This other side of art
has absorbed the
grief of stone, rises
under the weight of falling men.
FENTON DIES
Life is an accumulation of deaths.
Bodies enter and leave this untimely world.
The dog’s body is covered by sea,
he wiggles towards the bottom
hardened by salt.
My hands break the water
to retrieve his breath, and the sun
educates his skin, for him
to shake off his death
and chase his tail.
The suicidal
dog leaps through
the damaged window of home,
a jagged
ring of broken glass
that comes with another whiff of after-life,
following
his concentrated dream
to a ring of green pellets
glittering
beneath the neighbourhood rose
and its carapaces of snails.
He eats the poison
and flings himself back through the glass,
into this last house
that protects him from stars, his face
flinching on one side,
a throat given to tiny vowels -
running out of living
northern walls telling Fenton to straighten up,
the body unleashing itself
until the snails and the garden
and the stars shut down on us.
EAST GIPPSLAND OLD-GROWTH
Time timbers down on
these philosophers of ranges.
Trunks lie stacked in sawmill yards
bark sheared from their backs.
Leaves download light in coupes
where money grows on trees.
In the canopy country
crowns
turn grey and forlorn.
These are no longer kingdoms
that renovate and furnish gullies
or reshape horizons.
This is the fallen country.
NEWSWORTHY
Land without heirloom
lies listless and god-lost,
void of real life,
drained of essence.
Days
of conglomerate deceit, of
electronic new age lies, smiles
of
crashed Vishnu and falling seas,
spools of men and women dying
on
polished factory floors,
commission flats posted to the skies.
Those end-looks, harsh endings
of imagination, nerve touchy.
Least thoughts on an expanding concourse.
Life’s mixture dulled to spume.
Insuperable engineering of emptiness.
GETTING YOU INTO MY STAR SYSTEM
Blackberry hair branching out
across the lands,
she’s falling from a star
with only a compass of bones
to determine which way.
She lands at my feet.
‘I want to make physical contact with you,’ she
says, touching my forearm.
She documents her discovery
rising like water about my waist,
rocking gently at my sides
till darkness comes.
Black rings inexplicably withhold light.
I walk with her
through blocks of buildings and books
before the sun sets on Brunswick Street,
stalking her doorway to doorway
to clarify the dimensions of her world,
strange to me.
She is anointed princess of the poetry scene.
Her sycophantic new earthling friends
tell her to be wary of bastard men.
She looks at me with her eyes turned on.
She speaks of flower essences and of karma,
and the passage of birds whose names exist in
intergalactic books, and of pages of the day
turning over, and of her star dogs
diving at airborne Big Bang
sticks.
Critics creep the atmosphere outside,
looking
to jam her star, me, us.
She’s from a galaxy called STOP!
On the beach at Somers the sky light cracks
the waves. We run for cover as it starts to spit.
I confess. ‘I want to love you forever.’
She offers me affinity instead of infinity.
Sea-birds disembark the sea
leaving an impression of our absence
as she determines to take me on a voyage
into deep space
vacating Earth for the winter.
WILDLIFE RESCUE
Great log of a rock,
furry
bulging bloated football,
feet of stops,
moving bush
of an animal,
damn the day
we became mates,
I can’t shut you
out of doors.
Tom bowler, party crasher
ramming my door.
Hold on, wombat, hold on,
I’m letting you in,
your dinner’s on its plate.
Friend for life.
Gum tree eyes that smile
like cracks of light,
I’m still repairing
the trellis you broke.
Good old wombat
with a distaste for the bush,
earthmover,
rock of a log,
hold on!
I’m coming to your rescue.
PINK HEART OF STONE
The stone is pink,
its interior is crystal.
Made
of matter different from our own.
I was introduced
to the pink heart-shaped stone
through my car door window,
being
gifted it by the other.
She asked me to touch
the stone.
My face was reddened by her sight.
My mind
flat as a punctured tyre.
I was a non-believer,
but I relented and did as the woman said,
and felt the stone.
I returned to inside her house.
FENTON
A little rectangle
wanders about
in a black and tan coat.
Suddenly its sides unlock
to reveal speed.
The rectangle comes to a stop,
parks its muzzle on my shoulder,
it eyes knowing
the expense of emotion
that kennels human kind.
LETTER TO A COUNTERFEITER
(Long Bay Prison)
The light would be unbearable
forfeiting a generation of skin,
sandstone corridors
with peeled paint
steering your convoluted mind.
So far to the sea
that bangs the eardrums.
Eventually you’ll overtake the corridors,
to once again pedal the rocky seas
beyond the sandstone walls;
out into the years of light
halved,
manic over lost projections,
more bitter.
I remember you arched on the edge
of
a river mirror,
your wet hair chanting to Vishnu,
joking
with the refracted sunlight
that higher powers are really bent,
and
that India is the cock of the world.
You returned home
rejoicing in theories of the Big Bang.
Such was your artifice,
to make psychic shifts:
stolen bicycles manifesting in hallways
of your several addresses.
The prison walls
tunneled with little squares of light
shape the air.
When you get out we’ll have a drink -
even if it’s no longer
to pedal along the edge of society
veering towards vast truths.
DEATH STORED IN A HANDKERCHIEF
He had made his choice.
The
trees are a dark blue.
The moon full of views,
its light
stares through
sealed windows of flats.
I compare different walls,
knowing I must confront
a single window with
an unfriendly view.
Leaves glint metallically.
I am holding a hammer in my hand
to break the view.
The window has always been locked,
he never let in air;
now I must shatter it
in
one gulp.
I approach his bloated body
lying naked on a sheet of moonlight.
The body is restless;
it is riddled with maggots
kept warm by his electric blanket
foolishly left on.
I pull out my handkerchief
but already
the stench of death is stored in it.
RUMOUR
MONGERS/IDIOTS
‘He tried to rape
her!’
she said to him, who said to her,
who said
to him.
‘Fucks his children,’
he said to
her, who said to him,
who said to her,
talking in shafted
tones,
eyes photographing bedroom walls,
documenting
the intimacies
of others.
The lovers
suck on strawberry nipples
while sipping champagne.
‘Did you hear that!
He’s into pornography, abuse
of women, misogyny,’
she said to him, who said to her,
who said to him,
whispering in the gallery.
Phony new agers
offering
comfort
to victims of abuse,
or twisted shadows
groping along walls,
spying and despising
the balance in others.
And then she said to him, who said to her,
who said to him.
While
the lovers
suck on strawberry nipples,
sipping champagne.
Who’s that peeping through the windows?
It’s Johnny and Jess,
Susan, Louisa and Pam,
Lyn and Bill,
whispering in the gallery.
The lovers
strike back with baseball bats,
blackening necks.
ROYAL PARK (1993)
We enter Royal Park
with otherworldly dogs
Binda, Kindi, Fenton,
chasing away
stalkers, misogynists, psychos
and (my) superficial truths.
Stars give birth to the night.
The giant park to ourselves,
we interweave our aloneness,
wrestle over a spread of grass.
Whenever too much space intervenes,
your brown eyes with rings of green
topple on me.
NINETEEN NINETY-ONE
Out of the oil slicks
of Texas talk
a world policeman
takes
his first steps.
Orphaned of imagination,
braced with
towering iron bones
that rust when the oil shuts down,
a
long head above
the curved millions who queue
the rim
of his marathon,
soporific beneath the moon.
Out of the swamp
he has come, with wife
carrying his cow-hide
satchel of American dreams.
He had studied Brave New World
essayed on it at school
with thirty other pupils.
He proclaims a New World Order.
His vision kills worlds.
FIRST
GULP WAR
My neck’s just shot out of my shirt
without permission,
didn’t even wait
for my top button to undo
popped out for no reason.
The
lower body
protests
with sanctions,
no food for my mouth,
no shaving blades and cream.
My feet wriggle impatiently,
long nails set sail
out of my toes
and anchor in the harbour
of my shoes.
But my rebel neck holds court,
nodding my oily head
to the left and to the right;
the bulk of my body
is repulsed.
My heart shrieks,
‘Shoot the assassin in the head!’
Sanctions begin to gnaw.
Thousands of black haired warriors
pour ferociously out of my neck.
The dome in my throat
gulps,
my forehead sweats,
but my neck refuses to concede.
It likes being two metres tall.
After
much coagulation,
a coalition of my body
concurs,
surgical intervention
is the only remedy.
My foot passes my hand
a long silver fish-shaped
blade.
My
left hand
takes it from my right
and raises it to my neck.
The blade travels
across the jugular vein.
A thousand ribbons of blood
rain enough to fill a bath.
VOYAGE
Sails, streamers, men overboard,
ships passing and sinking,
fish flourishing,
clouds knocking together
like varieties of hats,
lanterns holding fire,
waves compressing together
like accordions
playing
shanties to fists of the crew
knuckling in small breaths,
the
sea surfacing,
fish eyes colliding and winking,
coins
rolling on timber
splashed with jacks.
My eyes reside in their sockets.
I will not be distracted.
I will not alter course.
Birds flaunting their wings overhead,
balloons rafting the sky,
waves falling like sea-horses,
lips shuddering on a red horizon,
voices anchored amongst rocks.
My head thunders
in the opposite direction.
I resist all waves.
My
ears point east and west.
My nose faces north.
I am
sailing home,
following the tense curve of my nose.
(Inspired by John Perceval’s painting –
‘Ships at Williamstown’)
THE MOTHER, A LITTLE GIRL AND
A
FATHER
Hills bend the earth about her
in this garden of restraint, furrowing
a path
to her National Trust protected
house, and behind
the four panel door
she keeps their little girl
in heraldry
of motherhood.
She smokes through a black rose
smothering the trinket heart and days
twist through her garden beds, water draining
away into sky.
Canterbury Bells peal on their stems
as she runs beneath the arch of their child,
pulling the door shut;
bells ringing in her head.
Windows close like thickening glass
on a little girl’s vanishing
into a chest of drawers.
The house is
a fortress; hate
bulges
from its parental verticals.
The Father waits
outside
the gate
for his daughter,
until police come.
A straight breeze blows down the country street;
blue and red domes sit on top of a divisional van
without the glow.
Its tyres half on the footpath, half on the road.
The Father is told to get out of the car/to show
ID/to give a reason for being in Castlemaine/to
get out of town/he gets booked for not notifying
change of address on his licence.
His girlfriend is sitting in her EH Holden
Station Wagon with SA number plates; Coral gives
a false address behind her dark sunglasses.
‘Maybe you should leave town,’ he tells the
cops. ‘I’ll
be back when the sun sets.’
Around
dinner time the Father cruises past the house.
It is sealed like a mausoleum.
The divy van is crawling up the hill,
coming at him from the opposite direction,
the sun on its tail.
LADIES
OF THE SAND
Where the ladies roll
down by the pier
messed in arrayed displays
of wanton gear,
laughing at the tilt
of bearded skies,
becoming the breasts of waves -
Where the ladies climb
up on the coral of flesh
drip on the sand,
roll
dreams into beds
of fishermen’s needs
who thread
their bodies
around the stems of waves -
Where the ladies waste,
and age makes waves
crumble,
lines weaken the anchors of men
and lessen the pitch of love
till the ladies leave
and newer ladies roll in.
THIS SIDE OF THE LAKE
The lake smoothes in
on the shore, the lip of water
polishing a man who now lies
beside me dead,
his crinkled black
hair
rocking over
the blood spot to his brain.
A rifle lies beside him
pointing outwardly
away from his corpse,
the edge of the lake kisses its butt.
There is death
on this side of the lake.
I see this man one more time,
his body being hosed down
on a trolley in the mortuary.
I have been asked to identify him.
Bullet shells of my eyes
glare
at the vacancy before me.
SILENCING A HIT MAN
You are a factory of nerves
peering over your shoulder
between street lamps and the moon.
Hit from behind,
your head is a picket fence.
You stagger to your room.
Memories flush red on the pillow.
Your
number is up.
Pain stops the clock.
The time has come
for you to stand in a lineup
before the murdered dead.
WORDWARD INTO NIGHT
Nearing his full stop,
Ezra Pound whimpers a truth -
"You’d have to be insane
to be a book
in a place like America."
BRICK THROUGH THE WINDOW
Well hello baby,
I didn’t expect that red brick
to arrive like it did
straight through the eye of my house
and as I blinked
I saw an aqua tail gate
speed off down the leafy street.
Darling, it couldn’t have been you,
you were at your place
and in about the time it would take
for you to return home
my telephone rings,
a reminder call to say
you love me passionately.
I tell you not to worry,
I’ll catch the prick.
“They’re all out to get me,
but don’t worry baby
that’s their world.
It could have been a past lover
or some vindictive policeman.”
The second time is different.
She is standing outside the window
in the upturned garden where we
had laid trails of arguments,
her black skull screaming of poison,
her small fists rattling the glass.
Behind the smudged square transparent pane
I contemplate
the speckle of red under her eye.
I am standing in the emotional landscape
of my own glass interior,
transparent and fallible.
Out of the darkness
I cannot avoid the shuddering of her spirit
blackening down on me
in the wetness of our chimney shape
dying friendship.
I follow her outside
as I have so often done during our cycles
of grief,
but she keeps coming at the window
with all her emotion.
SEA OF LOVE
I grapple with you
in the questioning sea,
your eyes an illumination
of love, loops of purity
pressing me to hold on.
The coastline of your body
shimmers that I should come
to rest between your thighs.
Questions rise and fall again
to toss you back into the sea.
A WOMAN’S PERSPECTIVE
How decisive of you
to move between sheets
of
an after-glow,
your face like a photograph
developed
by my body
in the dark.
‘Tremulous features!’
Then up you get
and bounce across the room
to bring me more wine.
‘Recidivist destined to spoil!’
I know you’ll just fall
back into my broken arms
with more tendons than ever
and rub the sheets
on my toes.
‘Till they turn brilliant white!’
How silly of you
to
think that you could extract
yourself from my
breathless
leash
that walks the stars.
I am your woman,
the reason you now stand
so erect and florid.
‘I like your nice smile!’
LACK OF CONFIDENCE
I stop thinking
and then start again;
this is a mistake.
I start thinking
and then stop again;
this is a mistake.
Thoughts line up
against me,
dressed
for battle.
I change my mind.
A RELATIONSHIP
She
worked on me
until
I had nothing
to change.
She changed
so I had
nothing
to work on.
We both
went off
to work.
TURNING POINTS
You do and you don’t
you don’t and you do
walk between the trees,
part plates from greasy water,
stroke the lines on my face.
You will and you won’t
you won’t and you will
stay at my place,
walk with me on water
as we fall like plates.
Turning a blind eye to fate
where
truth hesitates to go,
reaching out
we finger the dark
but we do and we don’t.
Before you departed
to scratch the sky
i lingered about you
a heartbeat to your heart
but i would and i wouldn’t.
And here you are again,
in my arms and out, and
cruelly i push you against
the wall, but you won’t.
We are full of will.
FEMALE CIRCUS TRAINER
It’s you (again)
ringing like a telephone
your voice hurtling along the tightrope.
How do you say it? ‘Hello.
It’s me.’
How do you manage all those phone calls
Triple
0 in vegan wear?
It’s you (again)
denouncing other women as slags
your crooked fingers molesting
the rings of their cunts.
But not that unusual.
For your next feat you say,
you’re gonna ram
a broken beer bottle up my arse.
You’ve organised for your male tenant
to migrate to a big tent in the lounge room,
sleep with the obedience dogs for reduced rent,
and shift another sad male clown
into his bedroom to get more rent.
You are the circus trainer.
It’s you (again)
burning your sisters at the stakes
nipping off their nipples
their floppy flaps and their fat bums
or bony cheeks.
It’s you (again)
ringing like a doorbell
your black bra beating against my door
your own cunt ready to slide mammal-wise
right across my body.
It’s that voice (again)
spiritual and reflective of pain.
FLESH OFF THE BONE
I have learned
to live alone
feel nakedness
of the bone.
No worm
to tend my affairs
no roof of ice
no despair.
Feel a little rain
slither on a leaf.
The
bones step out.
There are no lovers
only the wind
between my ribs.
The way home
is long and tedious.
Hard for bones
that
live alone
like fragments
on a sheet.
REGRETS OF A MISOGYNIST
When you said good-bye
you gave me your photograph.
Shot at, pushed down, punched up,
pointed, squeezed and slotted, brought
down, lifted up, locked down.
When you kissed me good-bye
your lips stopped trembling.
Beaten up, lassoed, breasts whipped,
face slapped, head washed, nose pinched,
spaded, buried like-a-bone.
The days now live without you
as I dig up my errors and mistakes.
Eyes withdrawn, stomach stuffed,
house shut, closed off, moved along,
criss-crossed, crossed out.
A COP’S DOUBLE LIFE
He manages to cross thresholds
as if people
are made of plasticine.
He thinks he’s clever.
It’s an art to be simultaneously
accurate and inaccurate.
On one side of the sliding door
a decadent darkness pervades:
a collection of haunted unkempt men,
& women who will dive for their drugs.
The dim light nourishes lyrical illusions.
Through the hotel’s sliding door
he enters Coppers Corner speeches,
censors his words.
Light illuminates from a whiteness overhead,
wiping reality with an intoxicating police
sheen.
He boasts a double life at Stewarts Hotel.
The trick becomes impossible
after too much to drink;
a broken glass, smashing a hole in a door.
Another night off his head and again
two conflicting realities unite,
neither room welcoming him.
A PORTRAIT
I am made up of many layers.
There are these four walls
about me that form a fortress
for my intelligence.
The
walls
could be constructed of light.
If you move a little closer
you will notice my apparel,
hues of blue. Buried in uniform,
I am a walking sky
in which my body broods.
Undo some buttons.
You have arrived at a dead-end,
the wall of my flesh
where the sea, the sweat and the sky
meet.
I shall give you access.
Beneath the first layer
is a little bit of
ego, sadness and felicity
and
several
shopping lists.
Let us go
straight to the core,
a whole lot of ideas
polarised,
awaiting some violent resolution
that will enhance my powers.
I am the opposite
of my own self,
layer
after layer
of unresolved attitudes.
Now gently
fold the strips back,
tuck the sky
of my police shirt
back underneath my chin
so that I appear decent,
and let’s restart the interview.
State your full name, address and date of birth.
JOHNNY WHEEL
johnny
wheel was beyond the rigid grid of
police life/ bit psychic/ took you right into his
head where it’s hard to plan your escape/ but it
appeared he’d lost his nerve like cops do/
whose glory days are waning and find solace
lifting barbells
in the gym/ with children peering on/ one day
they say he just pulled the pin/ some say he’s
locked up in hills Bairnsdale way/ and
that
everyone’s out of his mind/ watches native
birds’
flashing wings light up the bush around
him at dusk
their speeding is self-preservation nothing else/
and that the
spent shells of gum trees means
re-growth/ a crim reckoned once that wheels
sat on his double bed/ shared a joint/ tried to
talk him out of death but he also wanted
information/ tim
would say nothing/ but somehow he felt
touched/ wheels never painted the crim into
the wall but could have/ you could trust him if
there was something going on/ when you could
find him/ but he wasn’t like most cops/ writing
up tickets
or out of the divy van
pissing on with licensees
at the back of hotels/
or screwing single mums/ and separated dads/
in
the housing commission flats/ we all knew
what was going on/ carlton cops could never
keep secrets/ there was a senior constable/
always drunk/ every week tell
you how he manslaughtered someone during
an interview/ but never got charged/ once
I read wheels name on the front page of the
sun/ asked what was the breakthrough/ just
said meticulously it was intuition/ probably
thought he was having a
joke/ sergeant john wheel the loner/ tracked
down/ the young constable with the broken
heart driving north non-stop/ across the border
to brewarrina/
chasin’ this poet coral when he
was supposed to be on watch-house/ wheels
brought him back for his own good/that one
amused us/ I used to drink with him a bit/ talk
in general terms/ at stewarts hotel/ across from
the cop shop/ where cops used to mix back
then/ seeking solace from criminals, disbarred
solicitors, junkies, civil libertarians and other
lowlife/ some
the cops had personally charged
you could catch
wheels in the slide lounge with
johnny autopsies/ hisinformers/ the points of
his eyes would tell you not to walk in/ one day
he said to me he was transferring/ said ‘it’s a
promotion & premonition’/ he said/ ‘you’ve got
to have more than one
reason for doing things
more than one motive
otherwise you go down’/
chewing his cigarette end/ wired up in stripes
and government supplied shoes/ ended up on
one of those/ victoria police protection schemes/
doing time/ he hadn’t turned crooked/ there
was a contract
out on him/ even the hat felt pity/ ‘one of the
few cops not frightened to overstep the mark’/
he said/ ‘but that put an end to
him’/ some
reckon it was the sunny dancer took him down/
talking about johnny wheel with an old crony
the other night/ he reminisced/ ‘you don’t call it
burning out/ you call it fuckin’ history’/ then he
told me/ with those words it was my fuckin’
shout/ you still appreciate/ colourful language
in carlton.
AN END (MURDERED)
‘Do
you have a brother?
Do you have a brother Tim?’
I
didn’t want to give Tim up.
I asked the Homicide Squad, ‘Why?’
‘He’s dead. Dead. Killed last night.’
I felt the edges of my being
shot at and stabbed in the chest,
give way after so many years
of impotent observations and lies.
An illusion spanned through time,
from black haired follies in the yard
to the whip
of your Father’s suit and tie.
You could not resist
the soft caress of smack,
wheeling in money and lies.
A harness for your new suit and tie.
Money on the table,
fluorescent
powder on the floor,
the haughty laugh of success,
wasted
youth in a darkened recess.
I was told you died
last night,
found standing against some wall.
You said
you were too big to die.
Well why then are you dead,
if
you fitted into your Father’s suit and tie?
POLICE CELLS
Put
on the uniform
and you’re a different person.
You
have power.
It doesn’t matter how young
you are.
The jangle of keys,
the spotlights, the concrete floors
staring back up at you.
The needless denigration of humans
comes naturally after a while.
Nothing in the system
to really stop it. No higher power.
Anyway,
who’s
he to guarantee justice -
a young constable, socially spoon-fed,
embraced
by members of the public
who know much more about life
than
he does -
broken down car salesmen
greedy bank managers
helpless social workers
ignorant school teachers
shallow land developers
crummy rock singers
drunken hotel licensees
lonely taxi drivers
IN THE FRUIT BOX OF SUMMER
I want to be up there
with
hats,
I have worn out the ground.
I am going to shuttle
my wooden fruit box
up into the sky higher
than any person has trod.
I must avoid the roofs.
I will use a hammer
to nail on the wings.
Nanna is not my friend,
she paws all over me,
thinking my thoughts,
she is tubby and fat cheeked,
her throat is inside her shirt,
her hands are useless,
she cannot hammer,
she slumps in chairs.
My fruit box
is winged on the grass,
ready for flight.
She waddles towards me,
appareled in an apron.
I need more wind.
She lifts me out of my box
and
rolls me over her bulges,
her fat balloons.
DROPPINGS OF LIGHT
A pact to deceive
squeezed out of lesser mouths
as my little brother and I
bloomed rebel-faced
behind the steering wheel
of the family car.
Smear of oil and paint tins
as we rolled backwards
down the branch shaped drive,
squeezing between fence and wall,
not knowing direction
just the perils of speed,
stomachs braking
over the lawn.
Lodged in green arthritic limbs
of the backyard lemon tree,
into droppings of light.
Bits of our lives hanging
from the tree,
citric acid passing through us
as we fled the backyard scenery
like thieves.
STILL-LIFE OF A GOD
The eye of the tap
surveys
its realm.
A vast drop of water
hanging
from its upside-down well
is released into air,
and splashes
in a ditch.
The tap is god-like
full
of weather,
brass handle controls.
It drips once again
from its mouth
onto gathering dirt,
imitating itself.
Beyond the umbrella of the tap
it seems it has never rained,
the soil is dry and separate
and does not swirl.
Another
drop falls
in the kingdom
of the
tap.
TELEPHONE CALL
I enter the lounge room
on
the black sheets
of a windy moon,
only to find myself
holding onto the telephone,
spinning on a call to nowhere.
Drifting on the line
I countenance her voice
throwing me into a tizz
of pitches, timbres and pirouetting
petals that crackle on the line.
The phone disconnects,
leaving me skeletal, un-petal like
on the floor, twisted and convoluted,
a triple-0 scream of help.
It purrs
through a myriad of black holes.
THE INTELLECTUAL
The pages flipped open
for
me to see the print,
intellectual motifs and a lion’s head.
Although
I’d resist reappearing
in the unprintable pages
mind and body disparate,
I still stroked your spine
capturing serifs of your breath.
Then you pulled me into the pages
chagrin increasing the grip.
The years since
have fallen from my hair
Jim onto king-size sheets.
Love has spread itself
thin over too many lips.
MEN’S ONLY
I’ve
probably had too much vodka
to drink, supplied by Victor, gentle roman milk
bar proprietor
who has brought me tonight
to
this men’s only baths.
The exercise
room.
I chop away naked on a bike,
arriving where I
started, merry, bones of my chest
protruding like spokes, so obvious I’m bone,
like the chrome press-ups, the legs of the horse,
the rings spinning foolishly on the floor.
Follow the hypotenuse
of my nose
right
to the corrugated block of water with men’s
claws gripping the half pipe at the edge; you’ll see
naked men floating
in shallow gladwrapped waves,
eyeballs beaming an extra colour of light.
I dive in,
my red hair flooding
my ear lobes and nape; my penis
which increased inside the thighs of playboy
pages, reveals
my
speechless pendulum.
I am thinking about sex.
Victor tells me not to worry about studying:
‘Learning comes with massaging your skin.’
He offers
me a cigarette.
I giggle a bit and then laugh.
Men’s baths seems like a good place to be
when there’s so much unhappiness in the world.
Someone puts his finger to his lips;
it is perpendicular.
I notice any higher and he
would block his nose.
He
tells me gently to quieten down, pointing to
a closed door.
Fifteen’s a bit young
to enter a dimly lit sauna chokka with
naked men,
their jewels
smeared in sprog and hot steam.
It’s hard to feel your way out of the dark
when you’re young.
LOVE IN THE BARN
Tremulous lanterns
of straw scattered
by insatiable hands
breaking the soil.
The earth opens up
like a windscreen
smashed with rocks.
THE RELATIONSHIP
Coral, where did you get those lips from
painted blood red,
outlining a wall of teeth
and those dark sun glasses
that cut out your eyes and
turn minute muscles to stone,
and your blackberry hair
brushed back in thorns
and those arms that hover
like black cockatoo wings
before carrying you
in direct flight
across the floor,
to come to rest in stone.
Tough as a wound,
each dark
shadow of you
leans against the next,
drawing others
to your immobility.
I follow you to your room,
where
we lie side by side in the candle light,
your
lipstick melting between
two horizons, and the dark
sun
glasses have vanished;
your naked face glows bird-like
as
you release feelings in small packets.
CAITLIN, I REBELLED
You grow older, the petite
body must learn to share its room
with more and more refuse from
parents that feed their children
and use them as a dumpster
to deposit psychic mess.
Rollers of white waves
tumble over your bathers
flattening your back; you become
a hair-clip joining water to sand,
and then you rise up
on your soft white feet
to scuttle along the beach
up to your Father
boiled dry under the sun.
Courts roller-blade in:
social workers, judge-speak, solicitors.
Your two-Mothers-in-one revolve about you.
They dress you up
in tunics and Sportsgirl clothes.
You love the female attention, the glue,
your days structured
from morning till night.
I rebelled,
knowing your sacred garden
beyond the slate mines
where you run wild, where trees
rattle in a chaos of dreams,
and you have a special rock to sit on
which secretly moves
when you disappear.
If you ever need me
I am standing
just at the end of your sleeve.
I’m your Dad looking across from the stars.
MORE THAN ONE WAY TO BBQ A CHOP
Sitting at a darkened bar
with sunlight splitting the lounge in two,
the talk is of deals gone wrong,
Crown Casino, armed robbery
& your mate’s brother-in-law
they flung from a plane,
his cock stuffed inside the parachute of his mouth,
and how to make a business decision
over drinks
served by the usual barman.
It doesn’t gloom me to see
the insouciant movement of veins
that wears your associates down.
You say your gang’s doing fine,
pipes placed strategically ‘under the ground’
to conceal revolvers and merchandise,
and the red trikes are still out on the front lawn,
you’re
running Neighbourhood Watch.
Dangling from buildings
only to climb again to the top.
You’re going for a piss.
You tell me to order you another
half Scotch and Coke with ice.
DRIVING
The
car is my feeling
for the day.
Mindlessly, I drive streets
to where they want to go.
I acknowledge stop signs,
argue with traffic lights,
circle around the sun,
map tree lines.
The car is my feeling
and I am its day,
we are soldered together,
sweaty, tired as a steering wheel.
I am the wavy line
behind the steering wheel,
that points the car
in different directions.
But the motor does not care
as long as it is churning,
and the seat does not care
as long as it is being worn.
I’m a particle of tiredness
shooting through a gallery of streets,
tired as a blown out tyre,
but I keep on moving.
MOVING
BITS
Your curled lips part cautiously
opening an orifice stuffed with hair.
Your lips form a trap
for cigarettes.
In the God endowed years
the two moving
bits gripped your Mother’s breasts.
Vagary of voices and languid tunes
lie tucked in the throat
tangled cords pull
tight
when you move your lips,
the
passageways yet to be cleared
for your laughs to rise like balloons.
MOUNT DONNA BUANG
Coral Hull ascends the look-out
above strand wire fences
and leather shaped domestic animals congealed
within wind-chilled landscape.
Each step she takes becomes goddess.
Stars pin her upright in the whirring
air.
Clouds map the land
of an invisible skier
scything the road downwards
in sublime exercise, the swishes
resounding against our brains.
I am below hunting for firewood,
unplugging my worn runners
that grip the ice,
cut off by the weather
and the iron tower that bolts her to its gaze.
She calls out
to
a billion sentient beings collected below,
‘Trevor..why..aren’t..you..up..here..with..me!’
A FAIRY TALE
At the end of the pier
are the figures
of a husband and wife
sewing up the sea
with lines and sinkers.
On the rotted board
next to them
lies
a solitary orange fish
thrashing its tail.
Soon they’ll
be gutting it.
LAYING DOWN TO SLEEP
I climb inside
the bed of my body, lean
against its sinewy sides.
The moon circles
inside my skull,
delicate tiny revolutions.
Legs lock into the bed position.
Back arches like a mattress.
ZILCH
Zilch, your view is twenty stories up with a plaza
at the bottom, and a water fountain that washes
cash into gobbledygook, it’s corporate culture,
you don’t
have to deal in facts, ’cause a fact
breeds facts and that would take up your time,
your envelope would become too expensive.
One day you took your umbrella to a meeting
because you speculated it might rain, it was
nothing more than a possibility. And you left
papers behind, didn’t really know what was
happening, did you Zilchman, just posturing,
filling
in time over drinks.
You’re not street
wise, more into illusion,
modern culture favours skyscraper crime,
inoffensive
bravado, give more than you take,
you're a member of clubs and on boards.
Down in Williamstown
the sea
foams like a bubble bath,
the waves harvest the attention of mates,
self-promoters and prophets.
You’re comfortable residing there, Zilchman,
right on the
foreshore where new bodies roll in.
There’re
other nice suburbs, Mont Albert,
Parkville, Templestowe.
But
it’s the necklace of the bay,
gives a feeling of
grace.
The renovated wine bars with skillion
ceilings,
skylights that hold in the weather, and bay
windows
with nostrils that snuff cocaine.
Zilch!
It’s all good Zilchman.
THE
PASSENGERS (MEMORY-TOTAL)
Those bird
feathers that flew off her,
the taxi driver could not believe it.
The
windscreen, a transparency of others
awakening as the sun
cuts
through a flap of sky.
Trees fabulously barked, garnished
with
leaves.
In some parts of the world
it is breakfast time.
Not for Madeleine.
Her torn stockings blinding
the rear
vision mirror, hands pinning her down
in the back. Don’t scratch the vinyl -
The boyfriend confiscates her sharp high heels.
Shut up Madeleine, he says, you know I care
about you -
I won’t! Those bastards at the night club
stole my hundred dollars -
It wasn’t yours anyway -
I want the money back! My own brother raped me
when I was fifteen. I want my money back now!
-
her body contorting
in a fluffy dress that just holds
her together,
breast precious.
Shut the fuck up Madeleine,
you’re driving me
mad. Why don’t you say he raped you to his face?
You’re a psychiatric case. I’m gonna punch you
if you don’t shut your mouth -
The Maribyrnong River passes by like a gash.
Madeleine tells the taxi driver to pull over.
She does a runner.
The taxi driver checks the Mem-Tot.
The boyfriend says he’s not payin’ the fare.
WOG TAXI DRIVERS
Rosary
beads
propellers of cards
jugs of vino
cigarette lips
yellow cabs
silver cabs
black cabs
they are off
creating
traffic
that once carved
paths of Apennine
proportions.
These mercenaries
mastered the blood spot
of women
and pitched the marble
of Europe’s might
against the black
vocabulary of Islamic
minaret
temples.
Today
the mercenaries
drive their taxis
from airport to city
from city to airport
down tarred roads
where hailstones melt
in
concrete gutters
and passing the time beads
wiggle in
their palms.
HAUNTED FLESH
The dead inhabit our shadows
walk servilely beside our flesh.
Little time remains
when shadow flirts with death.
Of others’ footsteps -
the lovers, the procreators of time,
their shadows merge with
museums and hotels,
stations and clocks,
moving imperviously.
Outside the museum,
there is a statue of a soldier
shot in bronze,
from
morning till afternoon
his shadows parade
across the
lawn
without breath.
In the beginning
human beings rose up from shadow
to redeem flesh,
but flesh
clings
to flesh.
Time is binding.
Time is unwelcome.
The soup eaters slop their soup
into crooked mouths.
No! Time has no time
for time at all.
The dead inhabit our shadows
clinging to our flesh.
There is no time.
The
bowels are drying.
Listen to them as they walk
-
the lovers, the procreators of time,
their shadows
merging with
discos and hotels,
wine bars and clocks,
easy lovers in an easy time.
Time boiling dry.
The dead are dead.
The living confirmed.
THE HOME BUYER
(Michele’s home For Sale)
Gold rings threaded
through
a wing of your nose
matted hair, deep set eyes
city
mouth
massaged by an estate agent
marrying you to a
house.
Garden encircled with stone
irises plunging in
and out of the dirt
conifers saluting the corrugated roof.
Climbing into the hole of the magnolia
down its stem you are in
the country cottage
bedroom laid in stone.
Hollows in the walls where spiders camp,
floorboards like railway tracks
leading to ghostly rooms.
Down the stairs
into a damp chamber and a secret door,
a miner’s cottage on an era of land.
Many lived here before
making love in cooking smells
brushing hair back into mirrors.
You seek about in striped stockings
and damp flesh,
your body wanting to stick to stone walls
as an offering. This is the house
you have been looking for.
MOVING HOUSE
Park the truck
Tape boxes
Shift stuff
Careful with the dream
Shut
the truck
Start up
Park the old dream
In the new house
GESTURES OF THE BLOCK
Is the house that creaks
in the head speaking in voices
to invoke the dead?
Howling of neighbourhood dogs,
furniture
in the carport
anxious to be moved.
Should I suspect a madwoman
on this shiftless night
or just gestures of the block.
Jumpeeee!
LEAVE, DON’T GO
You told me to leave, and go I did
to flowers, and built fences,
and you came and tore them down
and led me to a room
where you laid beside me
before the downpour.
I built numerous rooves
to
drain away our anger,
and you raced outside
and rattled
on the windows
wet clay trying to open the latches.
I
dragged you back in so you wouldn’t go.
DRESS CODE IN GOLD STREET
Out of the finest light,
the great skin of day
hitched to sky,
a child skips onto the street
bare-footed, gravel toes,
she speaks to animals, rocks and flowers,
she weathers passers-by
blades of grass fall at her heels.
She hates the coming of darkness.
She knows its outward motion,
its habit
of taking things away;
but when it visits
when it speaks to her
she does not deny it power.
She sets her face to the setting sun.
A
sunset like this is not so unusual
as it darkens her adult mood,
disconnecting
me. Her body
becomes screwed to the brass bed,
a doona
shrouding her
to the bridge of her nose,
an occasional
headlight or
the sound of a siren outside.
Inside her built-in robe
there are new days to be worn,
bodies of clothes
dressed in centrifugal black.
BODY TALK
It’s a foolishness
to look too deep
into the body,
sunsets
on the face
the mornings after,
spot fires on the chest
after sorties with drunks,
a sea of flesh that leaks,
little bits of cancerous scrub,
mottled and freckled,
a B minor chord in D.
1989 PRODUCTION ROOM
Eyes that fall in lust
focus on her at work,
her lengthy body arched
fingers pasting down the book.
I move to touch her lips
which edit words in the text,
places that forever seem repeated
Waanyyarra, Scholes and Galliene.
She is always conscious of me,
knows exactly where I’m standing.
As
the pages turn over
the foreboding time of parting
brings
listlessness to our pace,
echoing each other’s thoughts
never
to breach our contract
not to have an affair.
Play pool at the Cumberland Hotel,
balls spin like coloured thoughts,
dreams being pasted together
only just to finish the book!
We arrive on a hill at my place,
looking out to Mt Franklin.
It will be now, or it could be never.
We breach the oral contract,
Diane. Once. One time. Only.
JUST LIKE TO DRINK
Cob was rounded like a leather ball,
sheer
muscle,
he just liked to drink,
did a one-off armed
bank robbery
and never got caught.
‘Can’t
go wrong
if you just stop at one,’ he would boast.
He just liked to drink.
Even at Scotch College,
he just liked to drink.
VB was his favourite.
He would head to the usual haunts,
St Kilda, Prince of Wales Hotel
where you drink, and to the Espy,
the bay windows flooded with people
who just liked to drink,
and think grunge music banging in their drinks.
Cob maintained restraint
when it came to doing
armed robbery.
‘Can’t go wrong if you just stop at one,’
he would boast.
His presence created room,
made it easy
to
stand beside him
without the aggravation
of being knocked
against
by other blokes, and to listen to the music
and
confidently have a drink.
Cob could see two plainclothes
cops.
Mario was not the type
to be jaunting to places
like this even
if he and his mate were at the Espy
because
they also liked to drink.
Mario had a rectangular
frame
with a head shaped like a tv,
his black hair was
cut squarely at the back,
and his horizontal eyebrow,
which
had probably joined up
around the time he sprouted pubic hair,
formed
a panel
below his cropped fringe;
he was so square you
got the impression that that’s the thing
he was most proud
of.
‘Plainclothes cops,’ a pimp scoffed,
smiling but not with his eyes,
his neck tattooed with hearts and
stars.
‘Is that right,’ Cob replied,
reaching for his
drink.
Cob just liked to talk
Essendon Football Club & astrology
& post-traumatic stress,
and he liked to drink beer
and listen to the thunder of a shotgun
going off like music in his drinks.
‘Can’t go wrong if you just stop at one,’
he would boast,
downing another drink.
A NEOLOGISM
Preacher of ‘Equality’ –
Tarantula,
I anticipated your visit,
opened the trap-door
to illuminate your camp,
strummed your web
that rage
should wake
you from your syllabic evenness.
But Tarantula would have it the same:
repressed envy,
tyrannical madness of impotence:
spinning
clock-arrays
in minimum
Tarantula variation.
Drop like a dot from where you hang.
Here appears a new word:
‘Equantity’ –
to stir your thinning blood.
Comes to bag a word.
RHYTHMS
OF THE EGO
Seasons come and go.
Time is supposed to bring change,
turn shade into light
mature and ripen me with age.
But the light that flickers
in the innermost ego
is fueled by other rhythms.
I walk
by the beach.
Last
year it smelt of salt.
Today the air is fetid,
hostile
on my back.
The sea splashes in time.
Hands rotate the earth.
My mind disputes all origin.
I spin the earth about its girth.
GLOBAL YOKEL
I have often thought
of being a global man,
carrying my rake
about the sphere,
over war torn lawns
where
cockroaches
drink from cans,
gently raking up
the urban wastes
left by men of storms.
……..……………..
‘Hey, global yokel.
Think less global
and more local,
otherwise you’ll go mad.’
INTO NOTHINGNESS
I am as a weary man in a dusty closet
arrested by anger
twisted by turns.
While the tongue whines of nothingness
I squeal to the void
stuck in a shroud of noise.
Down to shoe boxes in boots
sweating
and drenched
I turn to turn.
Time reeling by on a wind
shifting
my weight
I need not sink or swim.
A brass handle revolving angel
comforts
me
wiping away my dust as we turn.
POLICE INFORMER
I thought we had planned our escape
from fantasies of underworld levity.
A shawl webbed about your negligee.
Your hands gave shape to my body.
Your mouth too small for cake
opened like a park.
I swam with you.
Then the telephone
rang
just after you had left.
It ominously clicked.
No restraint, no going back.
Wires coiled about your imbroglio of hair,
hot red, seething with underworld revenge.
My offence,
informing you I was leaving Castlemaine.
Not an equation for betrayal,
just a symptom of stress
with an era coming to an end.
My stomach rumbles
returning to the empty
bottle of your room
and looking out your window,
only to view
blue
and red bubbles of the police
revolving in levity.
SONG FOR JULIE
I’m taking my time
to think awhile
and think about
the things you want me to do.
I’m taking my time
to find out in awhile
what I should do
to make you want me.
The time it is hard
it’s hard to find out
the things that we’ve got
that gave us a start.
Well you say that our love
can be measured
by the time
that we spend together.
So I’m taking my time
to find out
what you want me
to do.
A little bit of rain outside
a kinda smile
that comes
when we’re crying.
You may as well smile
tilt your hat to one side
because I’ve got nothing
to hide.
You say that our love
can be measured
by the time
that we spend together.
So I’m taking my time
to find out it all
I’m taking my time
to find out
what it is you want me to do.
ON HER OWN
Through gold-rimmed eyes
she died,
with a heart pump or nothing
when lips stopped her
breathing -
twisted and rotting
from years of garbage -
the crawling dark
of her voice
through unkissed haze -
impinged upon -
silent
as grey blades
concealing bladeless suns,
blameless,
faultless, disturbed,
loveless like a smallish green bean
on
a dull plate -
vanishes into dirt.
UNDRESSING FOR DEATH
Age has curled itself about him
in a worn-out scarf.
He looks deep into the dread-light
of the sea.
He used to dance,
not just on stage
but at parties.
A coffee mug hangs
from bones
encrusted
with ornate rings.
The man kick-steps
towards the dressing mirror.
He fits regularly
into six feet of tall silver,
two feet of breath,
seventy-five years of depth.
The
scarf of his flesh firms.
Images of beautiful men
and
serpentine women
appear before him
in the crowded room.
He turns to his bed
massaging an after-glow of reflection,
curls into lateness of age
preparing nightly to descend
into a shallow sleep six foot deep.
BEFORE CORAL, THERE WAS YOU
Years ago we met in a hotel.
You were in a triangle of friends,
skirts of entertainment
tripping the Albion.
A business card sufficed at the bar
quips and sociable remarks.
The same night I waited
and you came.
I held
you in my arms,
your assailable shoulders bare.
I wasn’t
sure how to love you
only knowing that I could.
Humour brought forth the godliness,
bore our prejudices and retreats,
conflict forced us to see things anew
and traverse our opposing
philosophies.
We constructed a matrix of living,
no notion of the future,
planted seeds in your bricked-in garden
creepers, birches and light.
Chinks and slabs of anguish and despair,
dust on clothes never settling,
a daughter and a step-daughter,
the whole domestic carnival.
We lost our way along the track,
repressed the love that drew us there.
Tears would reflect our failure,
no quips to enshrine our being.
Well, I’m back at the broken-hearted
Albion Hotel after all these years.
Here’s my card again.
It’s Christmas and good-bye.
It’s hard to fall out of love.
LESBIAN WIFE
So many years have passed
I can now look beyond my web.
Life has spun its die
leaving hope of greater springs.
My red beard had engaged
with lies I had not reckoned,
bones stirred by vagaries,
eyes vats for drink.
It
was in the year of
nineteen eighty-seven.
Gross seeds
had been sown
flattered by the skies.
I had plunged into darkness,
my head pressed against her shirt.
The trees were sweaty and auburn,
tombs sealed beneath the earth.
I flooded her in wilderness,
soldiered for her soul,
unaware the demented creature
had traded it for a more flexible form.
The day had reached its zenith.
Our anniversary was a glorious event,
flowers pirating the skies
and kisses shooting from our vents.
But when light
had crossed the path of graves
and daylight had given birth to sight,
I found my lips caught in my lover’ beard.
Blinded by years of love and deprivation
I had failed to realise that women can change
overnight, and that such creatures
are not possessed of sin.
BACK TO MEN
I have seen
hands like that before
on unsure mature
white middle-class women.
Bones parked behind fingertips,
fingers that clutch for order
but refrain to grab,
that have come to touch other women.
I have also heard of motions of change
in women who cease to stroke and music
a woman’s bowl,
but ask the dance to conjure
before a shaft full of vaginal light
the gilded hammer
where no bones lie shattered,
of secret and full of blood penetration.
Back from women towards men.
Having been accused of losing
my de facto wife in the gender wars,
I felt the need to make amends.
I knocked on the door
to a renovated house
off
Hargraves Street.
Being welcomed inside,
I shared with
the hostess my visceral
tale of domestic betrayal,
my
newspaper vision -
The Central Victorian News & Review,
6
glasses of Chardonnay,
my cigarettes,
and even particularised
my revisionist fascist views.
We had only known each other by reputation.
A militant lesbian feminist, the hostess
reciprocated with an intensity of her own,
painting me into a wall
like I was two dimensional.
Later, and maybe it was the poems
I had shown her, I got a call
to avail myself in her bed.
Serendipity. Her word.
She told me to stop talking.
Multiple nights she
would follow me all the way back to men,
restoring the gender balance.
That’s
my account of the affair,
when I’m not thinking of her.
I’m told she’s teaching in London.
BEAST THAT WALKS ON LEGS
The first woman in my life
she was red haired,
soft between the legs.
The second
a sea of new born stars
imploding between her legs.
The
third and fourth
I remember for their legs,
dancers
of the heart.
The fifth
her bedroom carved in bright stone,
blossoms falling from her hair.
I rose up from the underworld
to snatch the blossoms in mid-air
and tell of the wonders of her legs.
Numbers are adverse to names
and with the whispering of sweet nothings
I called her by another’s name.
The fifth sat up and stared
at an interloping image stained
on her bed.
In the random art of love
I
had made one faux pas
to be was cursed
a beast.
SCHOOL CLASSES
Teacher
Forget about the fireballs of Dresden
And bombs raining down on Hamburg and Berlin.
You must read what you are told to.
You must believe in testimonies.
Or be sent to a psychiatrist.
Student
Has the melting pot come true?
Everything leveled out at school?
All values, all ethics, all histories, all?
Cultural aspirations all or nothing?
Teacher, oh teacher?
When may we question?
A SCHOOL KID’S WET DREAM
Our cloud of love
has begun to stir
I must make love
to her.
My laces undone
off with my shoes
raging with desire
I undress her too
and we slip into the fire.
Now naked are we
lying on the grass
the
wind is cool
time has quickly passed.
THE END
In all our imaginings
We failed to define a path
To lead us back
To the humbleness of art.