Oxbows

Sydney to Melbourne





At night I see oxbows,

water drops whipping their way
back & forth along
land shorn of trees
in neat edged farms
and rural salt-etched
dreams -
mine is not this place,
wrapped in dusty promises
they’re strips
of puzzle pieces, brown
amongst hazy green,
pock-marked by failed
subsidies and fire-trails
that lead nowhere.
dotted with clouds and
mercury dams, the
parched land flies by
under steel and
a sliding aquamarine
but I can still see
houses on the
table-cloth below

and I’ll still dream
of dust-bowls,
clouds like ak-ak
bursts as far as
the eye can’t see,
where virgin trees dot
a jig-saw land

wracking up

I list a long line of failed friends,

racked up like blow

to be taken at dark parties

with white-collar jackals and their

laugh-a-dime dandies.

I talk to America,

One’s left –

Huh?

and it seems it’s me this time

who takes the opportunity to live

beyond Sanskrit chants and back-read

poetics

I would have guessed my

last guess that he’d be more

thief than liar

A lover’s paradise rolls quietly by

windows stained with chalk-glyphs

- mathematical alphabets as whirling

and unknowable as the stars

I watch beetle-broad men duke and tourney

in the bespoke comfort of a new bear-pit –

slinging Shakespeare and maudlin elegies

around as rougher men fists and dust

Be less afraid –

Now? – he laughs

Time’s ripe for funeral summers run for profit

in times less ordinary when a single scroll

can’t hold the generation to ransom, as if creating

was enough momentum anymore

America, it’s time to go home –

Hosanna in excelsis! he growls

We’ll shout down evangelical bell-hops

and skip-jump up to Lorca’s Harlem dreams,

left dusty in the grey snow banks

He taught me to row there in that park,

like meeting Sondheim and hearing him compose

for you, a different meeting

I ask one more question

of my dark buzz-cut compatriot

Where in this dark sea are you my friend?

He looks at me all side-long, anxious to find his light,

a nod to his square-jaw – through cigar smoke and

that pale grin he finishes his syrup

and throws me a bundle of rags -

Here, enjoy.

They smell of deer - stiff fretful death

and a skinning too real to forget.

They’ll cut off your arm next time –

that angry fix is yours alone

I talked to myself once, asking more and more

for no refrain

sing my Gloria Gloria and laugh no further

at white-collar fiends and their oil-slick eyes

or Boroughs will find you and we’ll slip-slide

into coke-numb elegies and you

Good night -

Take off

felix

thinking of you Cat, puts

a distance between our joints

makes silences strained and

casts a muslin over our cheery

cajoling and playful stares.

she lies between us, hurt and

panting, our love for one for all

teetering on her short breaths

fluttering like her chest, a rapid

up and down much faster than

my heart’s own palpitations

I cuddle her and you – a low growl, a

low moan. When the surgeon

calls, there’s better news and

veils lifted, we embrace

but in the end, I’m still thinking about cats

sms

she's rubbing half the road
against her thigh

riverkeeper

the river will keep this friend

in somebody’s bed the warmth began

again

I couldn’t help but overhear her

lungs cry out for air

I couldn’t help but steer

Whip off the lid, pull out the stuffing -

it’s raining polystyrene and all I can

do is hunt for cereal-box toys and

crafty dolls – ingeniously suggestive

of realer men

this hand will not be taught

to catch thought-bubble ideas

on butcher’s paper nights

all I could do was sing.

while I was all away singing

Nero burned and her dark fiddling

came crashing to an end –

not on a bridge or behind some grand

orchestral surge – but in an

ambulance she drove

stale and crisp and scared

till the water took her and

the Riverkeeper got his friend