fiction

Melbourne

love is the best sensation I remember

lying for

those eaten-up degrees

each bruise a bite too far

scented oils say the water’s

there to hurt you – love is

a dream you render when you

best remember lying

Mumma

Melbourne

mumma don’t worry I’ve got some

dreams I caught in my sleep.

mumma remember it’s only

the son bringing hope to the forgotten.

mumma don’t worry they’re birds

I’ve taken broken up to the mountain.

mumma I’m sorry there’s hail

here and I’m not all covered.

mother don’t worry I’ve got a

dial tone and some cash in my pocket.

mother remember the night you

cried all blood till the morning.

mother, son’s are like birds

flying over the mountain

don’t worry to remember

tell me

Melbourne, Australia

tell me baby did you fall into step

when the windows closed?

on a street, on a beach

to the places we used to go.

did you keep up with light

on a rainy day?

to meet and know

now I see love’s no date

there on the side of my

empty neck, there’s

a place you pinched me

and I took followers to

bathe and they called my

name in the river’s crisp

current -

did you see me then,

all hair-shirt and pious

depths? maybe lift

your head cause you can’t sleep,

deep down the devil’s rain

knows better than to trust

fate to love and an

altruist’s heart can turn ink

black in the sun these days -

did you see my love, that

windy dawn – I stole your

song to end up here

and that’s okay for now,

I’ll play you back a copy

like it might work again.

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