...

a break with tradition

ectomies

don't even know if you come
here
not anymore, that's a step too
far - to much engaged with our
secret failings, orange-juice conspiracies and
tumors unsaid
simple scars aren't a guide to slips and
purses
you're aching, stripped, white, greedy
for a new skin
greedy for an eloquence, a rage
something to delight in
not this abstract
second-hand condition

try not to say the word 'I' -
it's harder than you think - stay
in the prose and lick your way out.
there's a spark in everything
it's just that you're not;
complete in teeth
sound of mind
bathed in a glow like kerosene-fire

how burning's burnt?
would you meddle just to stay
bonded - drawn bakers, bring
a platter round, lay out sweet meats
and indelicate cheese hunks,
a stiff odd knife left to cut
(in the shape of a mouse)
everything here is ours
it's marked

the air, the atoms, the tiny cracks in the paint
on the door above your bed,
where you disipate each night
I watch you slink back in like a fog,
re-piece yourself, fill up the doona,
patch by patch
to resemble you - but tonight
I see infra-red
and it's a dark red smear across your face
obscuring
endless
savage
unhealed and unheralded

That face - it seeps me of me
wrings dry sweat, I can't stop smelling my self
the stink - pent up, pulsed, pushed
the stink
politeness is not the answer,
dogged semantic water-boarding brain
sleep-deprived, insolent
it gives name and rank
name and rank
name and rank
but nothing comes out, a cake
crumbling into bathwater

turning, hoping the subtle power of my
stare captivates you to talk -
begs you to corroborate,
to suggest just one second-guess
but I see all the spectrum
and you're already trailing out the door
a red gash, a tell tale invitation
to make shanty town preparations for
inebriate healing

I think the lumps back -
at least that's something

semantic somatic

semantic somatic
reading fine lines
between unspoken
dry-mouth hatreds

each means everything
too much weight
in words not long
considered for

effect and affect and
tense, steep gaps
meaning made meaning
made loose for nothing

I pore over digital adjuncts
vestigial texts rendered
obsolvent by streaming
radial waves

Coal-raod

I'm the open sign that's always busted
swinging away in real-time clamor,
out on the old Coal road, down Maintyr-way

You
held again - my dark permissions -
we try, try, try - sweat and sanity

the drifts get deeper, sleeping
beatify frosts frowns darling,
why this
harmful?

it's real this time cause you don't
feel words, you don't
feel steep irate poems bubbling

you feel packing, you feel dividing
dvds and newspaper-wrap on goblets
you feel bills and mail and photos

and facebook explanations for single
status friends, you feel like disentangled
stretched, thin, carried over

ours, a porcelein vase, all blue lapis-
lazuli tattooed on fine bone
given over to unknown sons

not this picket, white bleached
hot like sundays and oranges
home again to convalesce

they'll not, you can't
explain the system just didn't
collapse, entropy - no exclusions

stupid silences, gazing at glaring windows
curtains too thin to hide the UV clouds
from your tears, my generous hugs

but belittle efforts made, always
pushing to talk, I'll take you out past the breakers,
ask you to swim back in love

but you've gone, head down
powering out to Bailey's Bay,
chop and chop and you

Kirk-fall

Edinburgh

Friday night pants
they were flares but you
wash them too many
and they shrunk

now to lose so badly
promised to come back
the last week, it's not
really like this before

it's okay for a sad story
there's a lot going on in town
the distractions are the nice ones;
drugs, skates, sell-out position

call me when the neighbor-bell
sounds, it was a moon moved
in purse, I might go out too
always wanted to tick off the lost

v) visor's revived if you turn to
me now, just too madness
approved going to try and
get me to go over-night

vi) there's no poof - evil shit
an arranged pornographic ride
undies in tow - packed by your
mum (you don't own a pair)

vii) too tired to do all day,
you, you; don't need exactly
it's an implement (you've been
charmed) the only way down with it.

viii) in baby belly to what was
that arch, a white slip thinking
each pluck punch look a
firth to my kirk-bound altar.

ix) yeah, it was funny, half-children's
paper, off a side-show alley
you got tickets, they only bought
got to go public, out of our hair

x) like a dialogue, do you remember
I might recognize as something
yesterday you did exactly the same
thing, forced to drink w. us

xi) a long long machine-crawl crunch
mine's at fire at up there, provided
who's the thievier of the latent modern -
not the party's I go for.

xii) so what's happening - I might do it
it's just a bit of an attitude
(what tomorrow?) M & S baggie - that's
mine, just so you know, yeah?

xiii) or you can hear it during the show
I don't quite like twelve at night,
end about two, a very long haul
when you're strange come lightly