Elias

hear my voice
it's telling stories
telling just the truth
about the innocent elias
lying next to you
innocent elias

Elias - Wolfsheim

the high-chair gives him away,
crumpled into each pine buttress
he gurgles, deep and satisfied
not making eye-contact with those
grey slate singles, just
bubbling away
as babies do

at first his mother doesn't notice
the length of my stare (is it rude to say,
all babies feel this way?)
so I've nothing to worry about
for
the next minute

and here at his table
this wine-red messiah in his
new minted skin starts -
sings parodies of
music hall hits from
eighty years before

how he knows them, through
the spittle and carrot pulp,
is a mystery to
the last minute of my
gaze - one I intend
to find out

tell me!
all your secrets little man -
appearances can be deceiving and I feel
that you survived Dier-el- Zur
perhaps and lived on
to transpose with fat fingers
my father's faith

so tell me
the depth of a womb, the quiet retreat of
a mother's chest
(one I've not known in years)
help me to see
the ageless mass of you
as new, a bright bursting
shock of hair

not, with passing
squeamish time the deep seat of your
ankle fat, the stubby wrist
those pale endless eyes
and all
I can know of you
was her

bromance

I fall for the men in the
lives of the women I love,
the husbands and fathers
who become, for a time
new best mates, 5 pints
down and close as hell.
I help with their terror,
we share the same
passions afterall - just
look out for my girls
buddy and we'll be fine

>>

I wonder if there'll be a strike,
some bright peel, a tolling in the
distant valley that says
'it's over, go' - something to
herald when he first
to her and that thing
between us isn't

a pencil rub left from
the last time 'need' was said
in common tongue under
the ripe purse of the moon
(impress on them
the severity to
track the imprint,
right?)

notes on arson

so the silence broken
by blood drives and
flying embers, flung
far from you in snow

Kingslake is Dresden
bound, choked in
ash and super-heated,
(mid tea-party)
till all the Dolls warped

await another call
from the bonded
city , dialling M(e)
for reason

all I want to say, when
Melbourne's burning, is
how I shouldn't
but I do
still

I'm afraid for '94, that
we can't evacuate to
Grandma's stuffing
gutters with
slick newspaper

the fire's there alright,
last night it jumped
the river - quiet, fleeting
and landed somewhere south
of Southern St, and me.

bio

the danger with talking in I's and You's is
that you never know which You you're not