Impending relief

The sky is upon us. Moistened and streaked with greys. The starkness of red poincianas suspended in seas of green. I resist the urge to regress to feutal imitations in the humidity.

I am breathing salt and scented fruit. Plump and bursting. Even country seems to spill over into the sea.

The air is cooler. Breeze brings relief. I have come back to myself. Dripping. Bloated. Sprawling.

The sky splits. The creeping shadow of rain fills the horizon. I am waiting for it's arrival. Certain of relief.

Between spinifex and spear grass

I dream of the ocean most of these days. Thoughts drift of stone ranges, over red sand and settle on the warm currents and misty air. Float down through storm clouds and onto the land.

Between spinifex and spear grass I am tangled. Caught by burrs on either side. Country calls so loud the voices overtake each other, and silence becomes a dull low purr.

a day to call your own

the day suits you. cool with overtones of grey. it is gentle, yet if you look to the trees, you will see their edges shaking before coming to stillness.

if time and space are no indications of reality then I am with you and you are me. and we are both curled into arm chairs, wishing the slats had enough boyouncy to keep us floating, or would give way so we could disapper. we could flick the pages of the book my mother bought me to console me under the fluroescent lights of the shopping centre.

at least it is not a hot day. the light would be too scathing then, would show up more of what should be left to the shadows. with no clouds to protect us from omnipotent eyes my recollections of catholicism stalk me around the back yard and along bitumen roads.

when we see to much we go blind.

better to bask in the softness. to shelter beneath layers of water. water breaks softly. leaves no marks on the skin.

in this unmarked skin i will wait for you, catching droplets of water, whilst you hold up the sky.

with nothing but the stars

It seems so long since my heart has done backflips. I've taken to sighing over cups of tea, listening to songs I've long stopped dancing to. And smoking always smoking.

I tend gardens, cook elaborate meals,study the lines on my hands. Ocassionally I catch a hazy face between the folds of skin.

From palpitation to dull throb. I go sleeveless through these summer days.Everything worn like shoulder pads slides down my wrists and into my palms.

This ship charts the known and unknown. Between sleeping and scrubbing I search for stars between newspaper and peices of sky.

Small mercies

Small mercies are easy to pray for, can be muttered under ones breath. Redemption is complex, requires coupons and paper work and waiting for things to return.

I practice stillness but still have not mastered it. Feign it best when I am fatigued. The year is eliptical, drawing into long hot days. This last month, so slow and so full.

My plans are chalked. Wash away under water. I am acheing to soak myself in salt and moistened air. To escape these small heartaches that tingle in my soul, like pins and needles across my chest.

I reached out but you did not see my fingers, straining.
I will never speak to you of these things.

on pots and steam

watched pots don't boil. i spill over into the morning.steam rising from chest to eyelids and out into the open world. fingers curl to palms and already i am raging and thrashing in time with the heatwaves.

i string fences with tension. pulled tight to each post. wire lines not to be crossed.

i repeat and repeat and repeat and repeat and repeat and reapeat.
this knock down get up knock down.

the suggestion becomes statement. the boundries erected.
pliers in hand. i enter this day.

end of it

slip my fingers into of a darkening sky. as the light recedes we notice more of it. amidst the greys and the blues it is easy to forget the white heat of the day. the blister outlives the burn, becomes callous and part of our skin.

the last of it gets caught beneath my nails. i carry it with me through the night.

the little dictator

If you could see how close to the edge you are, prehaps you would consider putting on the brakes. A flurry of ignorance, creating dust clouds. Storm warning in a sheltered room.

I wanted to turn with vicious canine teeth, with froth around my jaw. To hurl back at you all that I have witnessed. To deconstruct you until you disapper.

As do the birds.

Until I fall from this perch in this mineshaft I will paint myself yellow and sing like a canary. I will swoop with the grace of a magpie and steal small wisps of yr hair. I will hold it all in my pelican beak, sift through the fluid and find the fish. I will duck below water and resurface with light droplets that run off my back.

Until the last flower is forraged. Until all the nests have been flown and the water dries up and the sun ceases rising, I will warble and swoop and soar.

the dark side

It's like falling in love, but more useful. The gutrush and nights without sleep. The waking with intention, the rushing of tiny breakthroughs that surge you off your seat and into the screen.

As if I ever meant to leave. As if you could swear off these things like one abstains from alcohol, sex and stupid fun. I am mouth open free falling and pacing. I am ageing faster but somehow living more. The romance of a creation feels like some devine force is present, even through the frustration and the angst and the screaming.

Did God come up with existenstialism in his underwear?
Is enlightenment less sleep, more coffee, and a head full of ideas?

so that you know

I want to]peel back responsibilities like wet bathers soaked in chlorine. I want to connect like punchs, like phonelines, like batteries, end to end. I want to do more than request, respond, resolve. I want to recline, with you, who save me, all of you. Spend hours lying in the shade as the land is seared.

These hands are not grabbing but holding. If they were empty, I would open arms wide and embrace.

so long

It had been so long that we'd imagined these chasms, in places where only ditches exist. Skirts hitched we leaped across them. Retrieving childhood games in service of salvation.

Under a big cloud sky we are reminded of that old place where the breeze blows 200 million stories into a small tropical town. We reflect on landscape and it's impact on culture; the imprints it leaves on our lives. This country is small indentations that are at once transient and irreversable. It is a paradox that exists in isolation, that is passed over in the glossy icons of metropolitan dreaming. Sprawled beneath the caterpillar head we invest in our transformation.

I wanted to tell her that she saves me, everytime our footpaths overlap
but sand is not sentimental, and my words, like everything, get blown away.

if all is inconsequential

In these times of upheaval my heart does not go wanting. My dreams oscillate between vibrant disturbance and gentle placation. I sink into these waterholes until waking finds me somewhere between dampness and refreshment. I lay staring at the ceiling, trying to remember how to float.

Some days I forget that I am surrounded by endless spinifex and red dust. That the landscape takes its time to transform from claypan to salt lake, from desert oak to desert itself. I forget that even physics itself must surrender to the paitent march of corrosion, that regardless of our posturing, the mountains will descend upon us, sweeping us aside.

This reassures me that every decision is inconsequential
and in this way, I begin to be freed.

comfort and control

It has been so long now, I have only memories. My skin no longer recollects. In dreams these things seem distant, hollow, as though listening to a voice on a long distance phone line.

I am a photocopy of my desire. Endless reproductions of fantasy grow faded and less defined. My senses become measured and restrained. I find abandonment in books and ideas and such sensible things.

The horizon speaks only of solitude and independence.
There is little comfort in control.

not to be misconstrued as anguish

I am reassured that vultures fly as well as other birds. That my tendencies to circle disaster is an acceptable ecological niche. If I lick my bones too clean at the table, please remember that waste has only recently become fashionable.

I am an eraser of footprints. I am as wind is to sand, as salt is to water, as indifference is to love. I am the peice in the puzzle that leaves room to shuffle. The fire door that slams shut under heat.

Tears are not solid. They are liquid. Renowned for their fluidity. They are as mutible as all my ex boyfriends. They are joy and sorrow and boredom and pain.

I often laugh when I don't know how to react. It provides as little comfort to me as it does to you. You might see me cover my mouth when you falter. I am protecting us both from an akward mistake.

Less perfect. More practice

Between preparations and conversations I slip away to tell you how I really feel. Less perfect more practice, these wanton rehearsals of an ambition I chase when I am bored.

I remember joking about thin veneers and you sneered that they weren't that thin. That every body knew.

So raw that it was bloody.
A butchers shop.

My vivisection complete and reports all written. Detailed painfully in black and white. Drained of colour and movement and sound. Yet captured. Penned in.

Some would say caged.

featherweight

I am a feather weight.
Blown off course by every breeze.

I am learning like a four year old.
Fist clenched and thrust to the ground.

These seams are sown with double edge.

At the end of the week i am searching for a site that is refreshing and silent and dark. I want to reveal all these secrets, but the web too highly matted. I know too many people to ask for support.

Scorching or soaring.

She told me to slow down. threatened to mimic generational gaps. a constant nag like a telemarketer late at night.

I need a pace maker to regulate my heart. Every surge of desire that propelling me forward is balanced by the gravity of fear. The what ifs pile in the corner. A cycle of laundry cleansed and soiled.

Yet these days are mostly uplifting as the thermals sneak through the gap and in to the town. I rise with it. Earlier each morning. Scorching and soaring until the last of the light.

depth sounder

These choices are plauged by life and death.

I'm out of my depth

Breast stroking.
moving hand away from heart
and back again.

The learning curve
is steep
i am breathless
chain smoking

fear
of heights

between lightening and darkening

sometimes my body aches with it. the dull throbbing an aching set against the sky lightening and darkening again. flowing from feet to crown and back again. a cyclical silence of time.

the horizon undefined. an elastic destiny. we snap small peices of rubber and call them fate. rushing through the hours we hesitate before unconciousness. small offerings to contemplation.

but on this dawn i am between these things. between wanting and hoping and prayer. a small creek gushes where once there was drought. weaving water where once only was sand.

honestly?

my head purrs like holden dreaming. searching for content in the context. a split second helpings to fill my plate with taste.

beyond the cryptic and the mystic what do these conversations mean? if i could vent the air would blow through the cold. rise to the ceiling as physics demands. would a more explicit version fade into perversity? have we really seen it all before?

the truth is i am at a crossroads and the signs are in a language that i cannot read. i am trying to decipher desire from pretense. i am too preoccupied with memento moris to live in the moment.

i just want a path that is flat and clear
but you can't climb hills without changing gears
and breaking a sweat every now and then

tracking time with small notches

you say these things with paitence. with carefully measured breath. a millimetre of miscalculation could be fatal at this point.

it doesn't get easier as you go along. the overheads are larger. investments must pay dividends. i am trying to match cups and saucers and other implements i don't use.

miss you

left behind at a lonley counter in an isolated town.

whirring with reasons. humming in harmony with preambles about destiny. the second time in three weeks. racking up the dollars and debt hangs like a shadow in the sunniest of yards.

i rebook and replace. readjust and can taste. i act without thinking these things through too much. am i foolish or free spirited? have i something to learn with this hand over fist, hand to mouth, fist to air?

nicely now

his manner had changed. too small shoulders streched to the bursting. sinking into the pavement under the bridge. it's true the sky was lower today; red sand pushed down below clouds. but it was clearly more than humidity that had locked his gait.
ke
i wanted to push through his sternum and rip out his heart. hold it triumphant for him to see. in simple silence we'd stand and observe it's shallow flutters and strained sparks. i'd offer to rewire the electrics. 'i'm an expert on palpatations' i'd say.

but for all my posturings on truth i say less than i feel. my opinions are all intellectual. advice is practical and my heart is irrational. i measure emotions down to the last millimetre.

if you asked i would tell you
everything
until then lets keep it polite.

movement at the station

this time there was stability in movement.

in tandem we sifted, walking the line between entitlement and ownership. everything we wanted placed to one side.

playing tetris with possesions. i let go of everything held onto too long. my relief prints trace the way from there to here. moving small boxes into small rooms. i do not leave this place for days.

with hands plunged in dirt and shredded paper we reassure ourselves we have arrived. in the glow of a monday the first seedlings are upright and pushing for progress. i resolve to mimic them.

sifted sorted stacked

Packed and stacked. I can delay it no longer.

Paranoia of transcience kicks. Longing for the stop drop and roll. I wonder at this world of transience I have built for myself and whether it has it's origins in genetics.

When I feel guilty or doubtful I start browsing realestate.com. Mystified by the six figure sums and ads for donors. Deciphering security from a parade of obligatorys. Shouldn't I have left these things behind long ago.

Do I move so much so I can be missed? Is the constant shuffle of the same cards a poor imitation of social change? Am I procrastinating in this whirlwind? Or is my psyche a little too atuned to the wind?

These are questions that still need answering as my bedroom remains untouched. I try to find them in the sifting. Try to sort them in the piles

the science of desire

what is the inverse of manifestation? is a near miss mediocracy?

these questions plauge like locusts. feed on insecurities. fly through technology and hit me while I'm busy doing other things. it's a knock down and get up game of ambition. somedays i'm floating in a sea of red.

my heart hurts in ways i don't know yet. my fears are triumphant when i'm caught unaware. in this body, these bones i am shaking. tension imitates strength.

beyond ego is time. brilliance is timeless.
the science of desire eludes me.

inertia

the small hum of anxiety. a whistle under my breath. a pedantic whispher as I pace my room pretending like nothing is changing.

but it is.

splayed memoirs scooped into boxes. carted to the next house. the tensions of the last few months filed under undecided. stashed with the other minor losses and fleeting irritations. the new corner fast approaching. still unable to see round the bed.

free fall

i coudl free fall forever and it would feel like flying. electric finger traverse continents till the technology fails. embedded and immersed in a scarlet sky. i am seperating baggage from history.

as the last drops of the candle smother the flame i am washed in plumes of smoke. serpentine through my spine. the sweetest sensation is release. holding too long curled fingers into bone. now the flesh returns like a ripened peach.

a change of direction

the wind has changed. the morning seemed cooler. more welcoming. the sun drifted instead of glared. in an empty room, on a half made bed, transcience seemed simpler than stagnation.

last night we laughed at the year and drew plans in the skies. constellations lit through the vacumn.

i said: it's been so long, i've forgotten that this weight could be lifted.

searching for feathers and cranes.
birds will only circle where there is water.
migration and nesting are both ways to survive.

a day at rest

my flesh in ribbons. a startled heart. dancing the darkness between dusk and dawn. squeezing through the cracks where the light changes. slip sliding into the infinite.

the softness of days in the harshest of lights. domesticity and plumes of smoke. i file away my highlighters. the angles of flourescent too sharp on these weary eyes.

i would prefer softer distinctions. i am seeking fuzzy lines and avoiding juxtaposition. my soul is a bird with a fluttering heart. nervous when held to close.

i coo insight and superstition. adjust my sparkles to chase darkness away.

the first climb

sunstroke and bruised feet. a mountain has many parts.

i drag myself from real estate dreaming and supress my tightened chest. i am dragging old wounds up scraggy rocks. searching for excuses not to sink into the valley. blushing with heat and wrestling with precedent. pride is for more than swallowing.

the rythmic pounding punctuates conversation. i am carving paths through stone. each corner sweeps and crimson rolls. scrambling gives way to grace. fatigue steals from fear and delivers me to higher place. in weariness i find rest.

blood bath in the scrub.

the karmic loop continues. for the record it does not skip. death and birth in a morning. my cramped stomach imitates the house.

neck streched and feathers parted. we remove every trace of life. lines are drawn in the sand as we cover the traces of blood.

my siblings sing of changes. corpses line conversation at home and away. the dead horse we're floggin turns sacraficial. even this we do not share.

flushed and brushed and wind pipe removed. i am counting down the days. consideration and observation as a prelude to desire transformed.

i know that you betrayed me and that is why we cannot be friends.

supression is not sensitivity. it is not a sister of truth. yr honey staples still peirce the skin. a dagger in a cloak is still a knife.

the insincerity dripping in yr voice resembles chinese torture. i am too tierd today to confront you. yr morals are suspect. an amateur dectective could identify yr intention. i watch you parade through two way glass. you offend me with your manipulations. life is more than plastacine. i know exactly what you did and said. yr treadmill of lies winds me up. shadow boxing my way out of the dark.

do not push me. i will shatter. the shards will cut you in ways i can't avoid.

cosmetic appeal

compact erotica and lipstick fantasies. chasing yr stare up my cheekbones. reflecting yr eyes in compressed powder. layering mischief on top of desire.

startled moments and don't touch me's bounce like bassinets. is it you that i've been avoiding so long? crude comments and distractions. i want to be the fat that is smeared across yr parted lips. i'm sure yr ethics would choke on the cosmetic contents.

in the daytime yr akwardness is forgettable. my poetry has a rough tongue. yr name remains referenced on shredded paper. i'm still unsure of who you are.

damn!

i am in the next room. with the door ajar. sun streaming in the windows. holding out till light comes up to make my intentions known.

intuition breathes heavy. almost panting. i am retracing detours with bandaged thumbs. the cities silloute is elegant. i am last weeks make up on the couch.

the best part of me is still shimmering. my oasis is in reach

city of a thousand stories (none of them are true)

the city squats upon the coastline. i fall into it as pavements sprawl into infinite horizons. i can't distinguish anxiety from excitement. fasting to keep up with the pace.

one way tickets meet intersections. i am checking my rear vision mirror. the air is congested. i am trying to filter the present from the excess. wrapped in what-might-have-beens i await for my family to arrive

a thousand frames a second

rising from a flutter to a hum. anticipation washed and wrung, moves to the spin cycle. i am backflipping through the garden. almost shaking as i hang out the washing.

piles of satin and chiffon. cacophany of colours. my sisters breath so close i can smell it on the winds that swirl round the ghost gums. i am holding back as much as i can manage. the bit is left behind.

a thousand frames a second. glass memories never age. these fragile things are fortified. i am swept up with the dust on the breeze.

gentle kicks

nervous system overstretched but the house is silent now. the walls breathe softly. measured pace. i am embraced by my own company.

the future rolls out like red carpet. dots itself along the hillside like spinifex. i am uncertain still but trusting. the relief kicks in.

when we speak the truth we answer our prayers. the value of integrity is unfathomable. despite distance and anxiety there is a paitence that settles the dust.

welcome back

peeled back and scrubbed by river sand. smoked until the only scent on my skin is ash. in the crystallised sky i streched myself until i snapped back into my soul.

it's been cold in the refridgerator. cuddling up with the leftover milk and ice cubes. anticipating every brief interval of light before the door is sealed shut again.

i'm defrosting.

with eyes that sparkled i felt myself return. i heard you whispher a welcome as i fell asleep. cheeks shining with the debris of tears i brushed away the last of the loathing.

floating up my spine and curling through my cheeks. my chest is open again.

you know this ones for you

selfish and in denial. like a salt and vinegar chip. twisted and obscene.

these passive aggressive playtimes. play hopscotch over daily duties. a palaced princess hovering. veiled and out of touch.

peek back beneath the curtain. pretender plastic smile. cutlets of abuse left frying on the concrete. outside.

raise yr eyebrows. run to a safe play. avoid any manifestation of the truth. hide yrself in a daily schedule. fuck you i'm boiling. don't touch me with yr apathetic appraisal. i want guts and truth and honest. i see yr routine is well honed.

splilt into the afternoon and you think i'm bullet proof. i'm loading guns and shining pistols. wear yr armour well when you get home.

softer

I trace the last of the day with my finger. smudge marks the horizon. every hue gets lost in transit. fades back into itself.

as muscles pull from skin, pull from bone and sinew and fat. i fall into that soft place. steady my landing catchin baloons on passing strings. we are much more silent now. i do not hold it. these fears and anger slip from tongue.

a curse is dropped in passing. i pull myself back from waving chicken bones. an archeitecture of possibility emerges from the skeleton. digging only reveals so much. brushing away to see the truth.

for the next act...

the corner sweeps around me and the path is not the same. i am chronicling big decisions in small books. keeping my hand writing neat and tight. these are delicate sweeps of ink and metal. controlled, considered, petite.

i am a stone fruit. my skin is easily bruised. the flesh melts on impact of thumb.

emerging from the cupboard. uncurl my spine and shelter eyes. my electronic life is buzzing. reality is static. the sheets are ablaze with electricity. i am replacing fuses everyday.

between cloud and rain

I have a cupboard full of unframed prints. Pictures I've forgotten to display. On days like these I peruse their beauty before returning them to their shelf. Hoarding treasures like an island. Making maps to plunder me by.

There is a beauty in the silence that hold solitude and lonliness in place. I am an astronaut. Isolated by perspective. The smell of rain is on the horizon but has not yet broken it's thirst. My teeth are cut on small goods. I am processing these things so they'll keep.

the momentum of stopping

i am behaving like a melodrama. my heart mimics book titles; The Unbearable Lightness of Being. A Heartbraking Work of Staggering Genuis. Love Like Water.

I am a cactus in a thunderstorm. I am exisitng in the moments between call and response. You can't hear me because I am imperceptible. I can't stop because the momentum would cause a crash in the main street of town.

when in headlights

ophiphanies rise like headlights on an empty road. bear down like road trains. like track trains. like scars in dirt and clay. i am knocked sideways. speechless. i am imitating the rabbits that stare down the largest of oncoming cars.

the wind blows hot and i am dancing on it. tapping on it with workboots and nailguns. i am rubbing metal against metal against timber and the sky. i am watching baloons catch on thermal breezes and wondering whether or not to fly.

waking up to thunderclouds

i am a sifter of sands. throwing out broken glass. collecting the bottle tops. i am preserving my memories. mixing in sugar to make them set.

the desert is flushed. red sands and grey skies cut in half by power surges. my ego needs the burn out. the smell of water is everywhere.

the rain imitates small feet. i plunge my toes into the residue. forget my lines when i need them. draw them again. this time in the mud.

shoestring

the heart is a precarious thing. it hangs on a shoestring. gets tied in knots.

i store mine in boxes. slide it between paperwork. slip it into the top cupboard with the other useful things.

there she blows

As the fire dropped into stone the steam curled it's way towards the stars. whiskey spilled into waiting gullet. fuses explode on impact.

it had been coming for days. weeks. months. a shaken can left in the sun. exploding before bedtime. reigniting at midnight with threats of violence and declarations of love.

my clothing is not all that is absent. hours spent at the ceiling trying to balance the books. i'm out of my depth here. i have no precedent to tell me if any of this is a good idea.

ocean in the sky

the weather was fare. set to consume. we soar on the thermal breezes and catch ourselves in the branches on the way down.

clarity is slow running water. i play with every faucet in the house. plunge fingers into fountains and splash my face repeatedly. consume litres of rain at a time.

this apprehension is flowing but i am unsure of the direction. set adrift but still sighting land. throwing my anchor at the sky to catch constellations. test the depth so i don't run aground.

soft days of fire

my skin resembles the ranges. flecks of red meld with brown. the melancholy lifts and the sky returns to rotational visions. the horizons spill into places that i can't see.

my eyes are naked. basked in sun. the sand falls through my hand. buried treasures are eroded. there are no shovels in sight.

my heart is an explosion without contraction. there is no fall out. no mushroom cloud. we light fires to experiment with matches. searching the ashes for a likeness of sorts.

redemption or something resembling

push the envelope and pass it across the table. wind myself into a knot until there is no choice but to tease out the details. figure it out by fucking it up. switch the camera from zoom to pan.

emerging from a week spent in stasis. as frozen lips thaw i remember the names of everyday objects. i am floating beyond the free fall. there is peace to be found in the tea shelf and the steady descent of the sun.

i am yet to articulate what this means but i can tell you what this means to me. i know this now: you save me. your breath is not wasted when it catches mine and transforms it into something that reminds me who i am.

these gestures are not small and they give me grace.

muse

faded. the last shades of a melancholy sunset. i'm riding caterpillers along the horizon. dissolve my self into the light as it hits the mulberry branches. exquisite in it's simplicity. drop off the end of conversations and into the evening as it stretches taught across the sky.

yet i am unmoved.

is this how everyone else lives? will i go the way of stockings and turn into tatters on legs? i don't want to sink like the twilight. imperceptible as i become obselete. i am a riddle remembered from childhood. chiming like doorbells. i am awaiting an opening to slip into something else.

fly in a jar

I'm seeking career advice from the landscape. Asking for descriptors from the sky. Trying to get some perspective on the situation by change my relationship with sea levels.

Last time these clouds appeared I was still romantic. Still stealing red dust into the office with me each day.Now I'm no concrete chicken but the possibility of permanance leaves me stiff and unable to dance.

for the other side of the bed.

catharisis is a quick fuck and a song about alcoholism. the house stinks of chastity and I am slowly getting naked with the dirty stove and the overflowing compost. strip teasing the leaking taps till each wasted drop resembles tears.

when you finally cried it was a silent sob. the kind made by children in corners or housewives at sinks. I wanted you to cry for mercy, to call out with the same passion that escaped you beneath closley cut fingernails and baby teeth.

a love that knows no boundries
cannot be written in these lines
clearly this is not that kind of emotion.

you tiptoed through the closest chasms of intoxication.
you held control within your breath as you looked clinicly at the edge
never once contemplated jumping.

I never forgave you for being
the kind of person who couldn't move me.

detailing the devil

Yellow is the softest shade of melancholy. The hue of both dawn and dusk. I slide down the edge of the afternoon. Roll off the roundest edge of the moon.

Requiem for a summer

The wind imitates Warumpi band songs and the concerns of anti nukes protesters. Blows hot and hard like the breaking of celibacy. Threatens to dump renegade wood in the yard.

The days turn like chained dogs. Snarling heat licks my heels. Pushes me back on my bike. I am uphill and panting, reminded of last seasons dry river bed crossings and nights alone with the stars.

I wear time like a costume change. So quickly rooted in these stone mountains. I am. Technology relays his memories and aspirations of salt licked landscapes. I am the salt on his skin as I speak of water and red dust. My souls are cracking and I reach for the salve.

scratching up the dirt

my heart runs marathons. hitchikes through the nighttime. catches lifts in clapped out cars.

I am sparring with jesus. burning my fingers on the steam blowing across the ranges. holding my breath till my lips change from red to purple in imitation of my surrounds.

the soil is damp. leeches under my fingers. scratched into hay. i am thigh deep and recycling decay. i erase the memories of fortune tellers. my perspective flicking like cards. i wax pictorial and wane lyrical. eclipse my expectations as the telephone rings.

with oscillations
with hesitations
manifestations. gestations.

hazards lights a cigerette.
suspicion stubbs it out.

rationalisation

The juxtaposition is surreal. unreal. too real. right here.

Storm clouds lick the macs again and I am sipping beer, almost cold as the sun reflects off the ghost gums and we talk shop as big as supermarkets. I am beyond those old times when each success was a sour grin. Basked and baked till crisp and sweet. I am no longer running up hallways.

Invisable hands like market theory. I move between this thought and that. The fire is well burning so I throw away the kindling. Search out something bigger than myself.

chopped vegies

Tiptoeing through the borderlands. Pushing sustenance around my plate. I am sorting through the rubbish deciding what can recycled or thrown away.

Wet feet and overflowing cups. I guzzle too much wine. Oscillate between boredom and overexcitement. Address commitment phobias between changing gears.

Practicing my leaps. Taking up ballet. Climbing the diving board. From this height it is impossible to tell if it's a wading pool or a ravine.

river beds.

The sand melds with the glass. Shattered offspring cut my feet. We do not think of it as silocine as we push it against our breast.

The ribbon of lights uncurls above me. Those ancient explosions reaching down to remind us that our lives are fragile fleeting messages of hope.

What have we learnt in the lifetimes they take to reach us? Is their memory a refraction of ours. As satellites we only revolve around gravity. Attraction is the physics of life.

The coals drain the last of the evening. By dawn the world is flooded again. I am reminded that dreaming is darkness. That we only go inside when we close our eyes.

under the watchful eye

I am as still and silent as that river that sits and waits for the rain.

My fingers are stretched but not forceful. My feet are webbing in anticipation of that sweet warm moisture that wraps around me. That smells like all that I know.

Now is not later. In the candlelight I confessed that the country might steal my heart again. We're only just scratching the surface. Our fingernails are yet to bleed.

My heart returns to that same sweet song of solitude. I am fortunate to know that good tune. Hammocked and hampered my bundle is wrapped solidly. Not yet tight.

settling with thedust

the ethics of epic. my interrogation ends here.

the week is a conundrum. somewhere in here my silence is still sleeping. gently rocking in it's dreams. outside the band plays on.

my epistomology needs vivisection. i occupy myself with the mundane. with the trivial. with the bittersweet.

this is joy in two tone. despite the differences and the difficulties i wouldn't rearrange a thing.

burn after reading

The relief is bittersweet. Hide my heart behind bravado. Listen to your stories instead.

I am not melancholic. I just meant what I said before you wove my words into yours. Rope burns on fingers. My chest leaps into a panic. I don't mean it. My panacea aches.

My ipod haunts me with recollections. I am breaking the cycle right here. This is not repeat. This is not on demand. Not down loaded. Not deleted.

Slow dance in my bedroom because it's the only thing I know how to do when my soul is stained with red wine and lipstick kisses. Beyond the rationality is a romance that bursts through the shower curtains and self control.

I don't regret my honesty but lets forget everything I said.

the last days of winter

Evaporating into the past fast. Fixed like a dress soaked in salt. Like a date in last months calender. Like an equation. Like an election.

For a sum.

Iron me out and make me straight again. My lips are thirsty. My throat is blocked.
Rake me up and burn me in piles with the last of the firewood and other things you won't be needing. The days are getting hotter. It's true.

It's not just me thats burning up.

Reaching up to the water. I am planting phases of the moon. I am sewing myself into stiches. I am scratching myself into itches. I am stripping myself down to britches. These pictures are not for you.

Wake me up when I'm dreaming. It's the least you could do.

fever

Not that I feel it. Not that I'd say it. My palpatations are too stacatto for that.
Not that it matters but pressed into my linen are pictures of myself in first flight.

Arms stretched, body arched. I am preparing for lift off. I am cascading off the edge of the sun. These words are illusions. You can see your reflection but you can't make out the detail of your brow.

You are not another. Something other. An Other with an isolated capital like Ours. In big white buildings I plan my defenses and table another paper about change.

These threats are not catagorised. My immune system materialises that which my tongue cannot.

congestion

Everything that has been locked inside is pouring out my nose and mouth. The honesty in the equation is conveluted. We are recycling old fears. I pass my dreams up into that big ribbon of stars under ntaria skies.

This is not waving but wavering. My fevered dreams reveal old truths. The kitchen sink is overloaded. My washing machine screams. My body collapses into those self same swathes.

I am aching for the sea.

re arrange

I am somersaults and jelly rolls. half baked and deep fried. I am inserting my dreams between flanellete sheets and staying up well past my bed time.

Electro clash fantasies smash up against the morning sun. I am burn outs streaked along this one way street. I am an alternator that keeps starting even after we've lost the keys.

Theres too much excitement in my sock drawer. My book shelf sings and sings and sings. I am smashing through glass cieling to see the view from the roof. I am making mosaics out of the remains.

eek

my heart is a pop song. I was singing out of tune in an empty room when you walked in and caught me. my soul became borscht. in the old style. stone cold.

every snapshot pinned to my forehead. theres no room in here for thought. you rubbed my feet until I could stand. until I could run. then i ran from you.

when our eyes met we avoid the formalities. made small talk about the show. I wanted to smash your face it looked so pretty under those fluroescent lights. i said this shouldn't be flattering but i want to fuck you. you facebooked my reply.

now my heart is a google search engine that only returns your name. I hit the enter key and drop down a paragraph. set the scroll button to skip pages. zip file my intentions. press send and shut down.

whoosh

my heart is an escalator. hold onto the hand rails. between street talk I try to explain to my mother the difference between literary and literal.

micro terrors and disability dreaming. the punches my dreams pack need bigger bags. i am wave after wave after waving good bye. i am catching up on daydreams of innuendo between coffee and buisness.

i am lust in rubics cube. i am five colours of desire with no co-ordination. i trip over my estimations. my emotion is dress sizes larger than my hips. i shake at the thought of your honesty. bury it with the coals in the morning. my boxes don't have rooms for matches. chase your tail round a redhead instead.

curvaceous lady

The curvaceous lady is an infant as she wraps herself around the hills. We go 2x2. Immersed in this moment of girlish splendor. Scoffing snakes and drinking beer.

She passes through wired prohibitions. Commands the traffic. Turns heads. Christened in champagne and roast chicken. Our fingers are hungry. Plunging through cheese.

Toasts are buttered nostalgia. History melts like the sun into sand and stone. My heart is eclipsed by happiness. My soul a suspended strawberry dancing in champagne.

rivers of sun

My throat as scratched as my cd collection. I'm skipping through the day. The sun floods the river beds, runs down off the ranges and into the town.

Beauty is the aftermath of domesticity. I am curled and crumpled. Dressed in red and dreaming of cupcakes, the day is everything I want it to be.

ant

We buzz beneath the ranges. We slip into cavaties. Our liquid architecture works in slow motion. We are becoming the stones we wear down.

I am an object in motion. I am time + space. I am a softly whispered verse in a crowded room. I am the dichotomy of a tripched world.

This is not a rainbow but a spectrum. You are not nothing but obselete. The camera shutter dialates like a mother to be. Your first intake of breath is a scream.

Centred

After twenty eight hours, three cities and two towns I'm back in the desert. My face contorts as we touch down. Laden with cases and bottles of grog, draping furs and stories behind me. The skies open like the ranges. I curl up in my old self.

sublime

wrapped in salt and water dreaming of the red sandy place. the last day in the city is sublime. dancing with dali and dumplings. remembering to look up at the sky.

my pressure points easing. supple once again. i am slipstreams and alleyways. chasing fish still swept in water. porous and expansive, my afternoon slips into the horizon.

for all the cities lace petticoats, I long for the simple lines of home.

post post its

Cleared of obligations and drunk on duty free. I am stretching my skin to slide myself in. Assemble these new parts of me.

The sweetness of trivial concerns. I become a fluff ball over breakfast. There is a safety in familiarity that cannot be found in family. I explain the difference between kith and kin.

Spend the day repeicing myself in the city. Picking fragments of myself off the coats of strangers by. Find comfort in Dalis distortians. All that was is now. There are no boundries anymore

fair well

All that was is becoming memories.

Rising up above the alps, catch my last glimps of snow. I am transfixed. Trying to make this country familiar. Weaving another story into myself. Another language to speak.

Soon these things will become sensible again. I will make be understood by passers by

steam

inhale too quickly.

burn the ciggerette down to your fingers.

tears are just the overflow

from when the system gets too hot.

like a rat in a trap

the sentimental goes mental, the biological loses it's logic.

We are shredding and grating. you do not understand that it is different for me.

I am a product. Shiny rapping. There is rhyme but not reason.

I must go back to my factory, back track the processes that brought me here.

Squeezed for details. Reflect it back on me.

Splash the citrus in my face.

I can't tell you everything that happened between us.

Let me have some of this for myself.

There may not be that much more to savour.

There is less of him these days....

lost and found

There is a number on a screen and it connects you to a person.

There is an intake of air when they answer the phone.

There is a question and an answer. A moments hesitation.

There is a person and then you hang up the phone.

Flight mode

Belt fastened. Seat upright. Ready for take off. I am in the exit row. I am learning how operate the safety slides if required. I am not smoking. All of my electrical devices are turned off.

Turbulence is unexpected. Sudden loss of altitude will cut your breath off. Help yourself before helping others.

Brace yourself

Enjoy your flight.

step back

The roads grow wider and the light thins. A grey overhang in the sky. I am melting into the shadows. Hibernating in the crowds.

In the rabbit warren hostels, in stacked beds and gendered rooms I am alone. Finally. Again.

Between the big issues and caffination I knit myself a cover. Weave that which has not dissipated into an identity of sorts. My own map of every city is hardwired. I've traced these steps before. If I chose another laneway would my conclusions change?

From the distance life seems as significant as up close. Have I finally found my meaning? The place where I belong?

in and out of it

I'm sitting in the sun but I can feel the cool escaping the house.
I'm leaving home again.
Packing up to go home.
Back to my childhood
to visit myself.

It's been a crazy time, this shifting of houses, this changing of perspectives. I've scrubbed myself raw, glazed my mind with frankincese and we still lost money on the security bond. Safety is an illusion of credibility. Accounting is a poor subsititute for karmic law.

But the wattles still bloom here
the sea still washes the mangroves
in that old place
and I wonder if
the mountains will sing
the flowers remember
the blue bottles still sparkle
when i return home.

rabbit

Sometimes the idea is more important than the action. The gesture more potent than reality.

The work day ends and I find him. My favourite one basking in sun. The only one I never considered being estranged from. The centrepeice in our mandala reading motor bike magazines and drinking tea.

And I thought "If this isn't happiness, I don't know what the fuck it is."

dirty hands

Practicing alchemy and creation with poultry and plastic containers. Mixing my continents into a cocktail. Consuming everything in sight.

The days become overcast but at least now a little light can get through. Cleaning with five different types of detergant. The gumption takes away what the frankincense won't.

gush

O how I've missed my confession booth. Friday finds me in bed with propped up crochet. The remains of my mothers mania. In this place I feel I am home.

What is this possession of relinquishing all that I am in small bytes of detail. To step aside from the scrutiny and report what really occurs in my heart. If I ever questioned the need for earnesty, the answer has revealed itself to me in the past two weeks.

I've made a list of cords to cut. I am sharpening scissors. I am rehearsing apologies. I am creating more space. I have made a throwing out pile wrapped in brown paper of things to cast out of my life.

I could stay here all evening. It's been long overdue. But red satin calls me to action. I must leave my oasis and enter the desert once more.

playing catch up

Too many weeks with an empty cursor. The backlog of trojan horse virus scans leaves me racked with guilt. My month has been a compound maths problem that I am only just starting to solve. Division is tedious, the opposite multiplies. I am plus and minus frenzied. Trying to decipher the decimal from the point.

My heart is in boxes. I throw away the battered suitcases that have moved me across four states. I overlook this gesture of permanance as I fantasise about other places. Two tubs of gumption and a repetative strain injury couldn't clean up the mess we've made.

Reconcilliation comes on a work afternoon as the last of the light drains out of the kitchen. We speak in measured tones. At the point of crisis we sign last minute treaties.

I hope we can keep them.

Now that my mind has slowed maybe the hangovers will subside as well. Another week of cheap red wine and take away will kill me. I invite something else in instead.

searching for something meaningful.
finding a cuppa tea.

reinventing the wheels

throttle forward. panic eliminates the brake. I'm up to my neck in hard yakka. fighting back tears from the policeman. swerving witches hats and my fears.

If zen is the art of motorcycle maintence I'm a long way from being a monk. despite my lust for the prophetics and my arrogant tendencies I struggle to keep my head up and on the horizon.

She wears denim and is a mid life crisis. He is still a terrified teenager at fifty, scratches on his arm.
We catch early morning coffee at McDonalds. I can't stop oggling the signs. As they discuss the details of dinner I am thankful every love affair I've ever had has ended.

The week holds more resolutions than a UN subcomittee. A list of practical things to do lies unattended. I lose myself in magazines about Arizona highways and dreams of postie bikes.

on hard work

she was stuck in the red tape.

her hair flowed like every romance she'd ever had.

long with tints and aubern tinted, when the growth was new. as it aged it fell kinked around her face. growing scraggy at the ends.

as a young girl she'd sucked on it repeatedly. couldn't stop putting things in her mouth. on excessively hot or cold days she'd still find wisps of it at her lips. would find private times interrupted by hair balls and the need to cough.

not that it mattered.

she had scissors by the bucket loads. where once clumsy fingers struggled she was adept at cutting out lines. sharp and laboured metal chinking together set the rythem to her day. carboard shreds strewn across the loungeroom for her flatmates to pick up when they got home.

do you remember how we used to kiss?

cold noses rubbing up against each other as we invented new depths of warmness in synchronicity to the connex announcements. in the passing of time i realise that what we made was love as the four walls of the flemington house shook with each passing train.

i live in the desert now. that city and all my identities are summarised in books in my friends cafes. those same motifs that used to define me remained patched to a wardrobe of that never sees the light of day. receeding like tram tracks at 1am. the last moments of opportunity are not lost. they linger and distort like light on the ranges.

i wonder if your life, also, has changed.

an apple a day

The journey was a ritual and the ritual was the journey.

Catching god in my fish net stockings. Scaled the ceiling. Baked the bread. God is a sober dj and a white beard left over from christmas. Grind our asses until we the surface is broken and the light shows through the cracks.

We vision together. See in 3D glasses, illuminations of green and red. Stop-go complexes melt like chocolate and get smeared on my face. Amidst the illusion of reality tv show carnivals I brushed the dirt off my ego. It came up a shining thing in the dawn. Tierd feet scrubbed in the bath.

This is redemption in a floral two peice. There is clarity amoungst hallucination. Communion made us mortals and we placed our faith in the hands of the Gods. When the sediment settled we were perfect creations because of our sins.

but nonetheless...

up the gutter and sideways. catch the sunshine. split the road.

fresh faced on an arid morning. these ranges never leave me bored. i could trip over parked cars for the next five years watching the coloured transition. layer lasagnes to the rythem of shadows reflecting on ancient red stone.

a tango of hormones tread on my toes. i'm more volatile than radium. juggling atoms and losing my neurons. pass the proton pill?

but in this moment? clarity. that and pink icing and all of the reasons I have to smile. despite the petty oscillations of ego. my soul sings opera. my heart is a trapeeze.

I walked twice around the block and still didn't want to be in the same room as you.

My wound is a crescent moon on my finger. A blood blister in my shoe. A case for isolation. A contagious heaving heart.

My energy hangs low and foggy. I externalise my guilt. My sorrow will not be eased by another pot of tea.

Your pedantic deflections. My refusal to compromise. Truth telling leaves us exposed when we're up to our wrists in lies.

My assault on innuendo. Your passive agressive turn of phrase. Chalk lines on the refridgerator remain after being erased.

Honesty finds me wanting. Cuts around us like a stanley knife. Reminisenct of a childhood spooning out the blame.

Notice this billboard flashing. Read the stop sign walking past. I am a reflection of your refraction. The martyr behind the mask.

Adrift

It took me months to realise I'm wandering. I've lost sight of land and I can't return.
longing for red sand as I wrestled saltwater
shot like the first flare through the haze

It's been happening for a while though.
The obsession.

In that grey city with fabulous breakfasts we sat in her lounge room.Looking at the picture of Wartakka on my phone, and the photo of Charles Creek on my desktop she told me I was a desert junkie.

This morning I awoke and realised that i never had to leave. For the first time permanance seemed liberating. I am no longer fearful.

Is this the love they speak of in pop songs and on toilet walls?

I lost sight of the coast a long time ago.

experimenting with gone

dissolved like bath salts
swept like the floor
flushed like a girl on her first date
or a septic system just been cleaned.

the end notes of the day in yellow.

still in my pyjamas and typing.
i find myself back in bed.

rubbed back like table and polished.
cushioned in feathers and imitation wool.

i am complete bird, part animal. woven and stretched over wire.
i am linen. so fresh out of the packet i was born with wrinkels.
i have travelled the world and never been washed

my family dances tango and takes phonecalls
in the last days of the garden of birds.

we are greatful in our longing.

itchy fingers

cutting my memories again. small filaments of tissue fall to the floor and into my bag. i carry these small peices of my past with me. watch them get mushed into peices of chocolate left over from days ago.

i am practicing abstinence. folding fingers into palms to avert disaster. technology seems all to convienent and to be frank, you don't feel like a store.

this is my cyber declaration. as close as it comes to out of my mouth. a spill at this stage would be worse than red wine. my hands are stained enough as it is.

show me show me show me. something other than this long distance communique. give me something redemptive like a slow dance on the spencer hill at dusk. i watch planes taking off but your clothes would be better. all smooth and tarnished skins.

this is not something. this is something other than that. other than restorative justice. i am writing in the capital O.

three sentences and no intention

amphibian in my demeanor. the shallows fold back the deep. seated in the front with the wind blow. apart from this the ocean is calm.

swallow what you can't chew. spit the rest into the cup for a stranger. facts are just fiction playing earnest. conversation is what you make instead of love.

found my heart in a crystal. ball games are fairer than the ones that I make. up and onwards into the bright. blue is just another shade of desire.

motion pictures

the day turns soft. the sky a charcoal smudging. i am folded in blankets. melting. wanting to rub pigment across bodies. turn our skin into canvas and pastels. make pollock impressions with sweat from your brow dripping across my chest.

our mouths contain parallel universes. disembodiement of sensation as limbs like satellites encircle eachother. tangled torsos unknot shoulders. serpentine like that ancient archetype that swallows tales to create infinity. breath becomes stasis. pleasure paralyses in still life finger paintings.

lift

it lifts as suddenly as it descends. fog clears with midnight conversations and suddenly I realise how ridiculous it all is.

I am blown open with the simplicity of the universal teapot. warm liquid runs down my throat. now that my sinuses are working I can finally taste what it is. these tiny cyclones seem elegant from a distance. storms in teacups and waves in dishwater.

hot and cold

My sensibility runs out of my nose and between my legs. Delerious spoons and preoccupations. Passing on my cold in the early afternoon between conversation and cups of tea. Playing hot potatoe with my insecurities. Try to keep them in my pocket and end up not being able to sit down.

Conversations about boundries at the gate. After much discussion we agree it's all ambigous.

How do I swim with my head above water when I've become accustomed to scuba diving? Self taught morse code with flashlight and a rope. Coming up for air too quickly and pushing too much oxygen into my blood. No wonder my face is flushed.

my mind is as erratic as this post.

round

a scorpio full moon immersed in water. rising steam and libidos dreaming of plum juice trickling down moist bodies. a language spoken in finger tips. light soft enough to highlight the purple of bouganvillias above the bath.

in the absence of sex, sensuality becomes edible. i am still in the stone fruit season. i am peaches and nectarines, splitting and leaking juice across faces and hands. my soul becomes a small wooden centre. filled with life. waiting for sun.

Recount

It was an erratic weekend. A swirl of costume changes, searching for collective nouns, one too many one too manys and forgetting what the fuck I saids.

Frock one.

If you can't make it. Fake it. A good outfit always helps. I'm a one woman shoe looking for some strings and something to bang. I'm pashing peices of paper and passing them to strangers. Posing for photos and hiding from family, teetering around in these shoes that don't fit. Too high up from the earth.

Costume change.

I'm last weeks shiny. Too thin hangovers stretched under heat across my belly. The metaphor wouldn't seem so tragic if I hadn't fallen over myself on stage. we wiggle our hips till the harmony slips down to reveal bare flesh. Exit stage left.

Cock Tales

I'm up to my thighs in shiny. Holes for my legs to fall through. I turn to jelly and go hunting for beer tickets. Shot through the heart.

One peice.

Thank god for the elastic. It's all a bit loose. We parade our independence. No suspenders in site.
Reward ourselves with more alcohol. Work it like a sweatshop. My judgement goes sideways. An elegant swagger. I zip up my swag to keep my morality in.

Code Red.

I can't even look into my own eyes. My focus plays pingpong with the room. I tried to come up with the words to tell you how I felt but I didn't trust my instinct or my ability to speak. So I put on this outfit instead. Grind my teeth instead of my arse. Fall into the couch and stop moving. Crawl into my friends bus in the late evening. Spend the next three days in the bath.

Exit stage right.

swansong

Cleaning somebody elses dishes. A recipe for disaster. I dream up plans of murdering swans, composing songs for the final scene. Slide antagonism between plates and ciggerettes. Amputate the corpse before sleep.

A ball of knots. Plunging my fingers deep into entwined confusions, pulling them apart, creating more space betweent the thin lines that cross under and into eachother.

fishbowls

Then the frantic shuffling dissapated. Lying in bed, belly pushing against the linen the grasping crawled from head to neck and slithered down my back. That night I dreamt of aquariums and woke up feeling refreshed.

I am not a glass screen. My nose is not pushed into strange postions for the amusement of passers by. Despite my addiction to plasma I am not a flickering light.

My throat felt open. Not entirely unblocked but at least there were spaces for the words to get through. Shoulders rolling and pulse slowing, the amphibians move from water to land.

House Work

I am surrounded by dirty cups.

Thoughts perculate. Pushed through hot water and small brown granules. Give me something to liven my senses. Something to add texture to the day.

The sun goes through the motions of the day. Shreds of shade scatter across the day and I sink into the afternoon, red wine casting itself across the sky.

My tension is going rancid on the stove top. Racing around the house doing other things. Cutting words with a blunt knife on a dirty chopping board.

Despite the whistle of the kettle there is still so much unsaid.

Eyre

The horizon disappeared the moment we lost sight of land. In a country so remote the whiteness seemed alien. The reds gave way to yellows. Yellows receeding to the glare of a thousand crystals. A thousand diamond propositions to give your life away.

We sink beneath the mud. Wallow in our senses. Scratching for water amoungst the salt and the rolled up swags. We relinquish our boundries. Give in to tarmac obsessions. Green signs and green cans and green ciggerettes. Contemplate superficiality before plunging our hands into the sand out here.

The ruins of our forebearers lie crumpling. The roadside monuments constant reminders of impermance. Everything is blown away or evaporated. Everything becomes elemental. Bare bones of mammels and automobiles are licked dry by the wind. Death becomes beautiful. A polished thing.

Pissing on the side of the road I resist temptation to wander into the sand. To join the gibber hoppers and acacia. Make peace with ambition once and for all. The toyota rosy lips and purring heart seduces me back to where I should be, uncertain if thats where I belong.

ciggerette butts as redemption

And it all comes back.

all that big country red sand vertigo. the exhileration of kilometres passing faster than time. all that too fast breath intake and suspension of comprehension. that spinning out of control in a landscape so ancient, the beating of your heart seems irrellevant in it's speed.

the beauty of an abandoned house. the freedom in isolation. the liberation of being removed from everything familiar and transplanted in country that feels more familiar than your thumbs.

the transcendence of happiness, the removal of illusion. A solo waltz in a fluro lit lounge room to the sound of a distant friend. the romance of drinking by yourself

like a ciggerette flicked from a vechile of a car. the fire returned.

season

The wind has changed direction
the coolness is no longer wet.

shhh

Intention was a smooth round stone, rolling over and over in my palm. the light hung like mist, slowly floating down around the back yard. the air seemed cooler than it was. the house was soft edges of blue.

i am tone deaf. the world has one vibrancy and it pulsates with all the vivid imagination of a four year old.

words and music

It starts with the unravelling of thoughts, words, memories and emotions. It starts with a couple of beers.

Every song has a thousand reference points, every album a constellation of flashbacks. I could take every conversation I've had and to a burnt CD and still have enough room left over to drop in some quintessential favourites.

That riff was us driving away from those shallow hot water streams, where I lay in the water till my skin turned into sunsets of blisters, pink is the colour of love fading. That was the first time I read those cards and what they told me terrified me so much that I almost threw them into that cauldron spring.

These lyrics are the longing of distant lovers, of unexpected phonecalls and flooded desert sands. They are the words before you came here, the ones still pungent after you left.

And this sympony, that whole wedge of banded silver. They are the days of eternal baking, $1 stone fruit and clothing racks. The days of kissing at train stations, love so passionate it shook the whole house even as the Upfield line was still. The days of the little house in flemington, too much gunja and the boy who planted flowers as a sign of his love. The boy who forgot to water them, planted seeds in too shallow ground. Their petals grew stunted, cornflower blue. All my walks to the maribynong wouldn't save us. No matter how many punnets of cut price potted colour I purchased, the drought was long and the city was dust storms.

He has since found greener fields.

Me. I moved to the desert with dust older than kin. With mountains that mimic my spinal column. keeping lovers close to saltwater, I plunge my fingers into these empty river beds, and strain my nails searching for liquid. My bed is silent now. Tossing in my sleep, dreaming of sustanence that never reaches my lips.

and beyond that?

the things that I can't talk about
anymore
slack jowls and dirty towels
left on the floor

I scrubbed myself clean
starched and layered like paper reams
turning myself into an auto feed
coloured copies of myself

I am on repeat
skipping to the same
old crack in the cd
holes in my cv

reaching for the polly
filla want a cracker
meant to dust this off
and paint it over

red rover
now your it

so far

It's been a long week. It's tuesday.

Sunday dawning washin away all adolescent hangovers about love and need. The alcohol induced one hung around till lunch time, placated with coffees and springrolls.

Sitting in the shadow of the gap I tell my sisters about my revelations, about the moment I looked deep enough to see how shallow the stream really was. Cleansed by dipping a toe in. All this years of confusion lifted in a single sentence.

Funny how naked boys can do that.

Monday morning saw west macdonnald long drives, all hypothetical about professional developmet, health workers with hangovers and impromptu meetings. By three pm I was asleep on the couch, dreaming of that thin slither silver moon I saw chasing the milky way as she stretched over my backyard.

Then that night came the dreams; layered distortions of yum cha and city streets and making excuses for my illiterate faux pas.

And today.
more driving, more card reading, round table divination surrounded by burnt out nurses.

now the house is silent. I am searching for company and fried food.

Good on paper

Today is unexplainable anxiety. Bonsai conversations and ricochette thoughts behind bullet proof screens. Too much caffine and not enough food. Honesty comes in stacatto, blunders into idle chit chat like an ex wife on valium; vaugly innappropriate, full of appeal.

I am long distances and narrow goat tracks. A check list of ideas pinned up on the fridge. Nothing gets behind the texta marked facade. It's all plywood and mirrors.

Looks good on paper, not so flash in the flesh.

I am 10 rationalisations. Yep, I'm happy. I really am. Just ask me to recite the reasons, monotone like a national anthem, like a manifesto someone wrote a long time ago.

It's just a minor crisis, a loose connection, a crackly line. I'll be over it by dinner time.

back to back

the dust hardley settles before I bathe my throbbing head in cold beer. The milky way has moved above us; skies folding back to reveal the fullness of the universe.

juggling ex lovers, crushes and media men. reconsidering what is right. lining up ambitions till I can see them in clear sights, crossed like a christian, seeking a bulls eye in this land of camels and donkeys.

after Noon

chain smoked ciggerettes and airconditioning. thick black markers and wanking to leonard cohen.

three hours off the plane and I am floor patterns in hallways, hallucinating ambition and checking in with the technology. the fridge is full of wilting food. my flatmate is unable to eat. it all seems the same round here.

The chickens are roasting inside of their coup, I throw scraps of garlic and olives over the fence. They don't seem to get the joke. Everything is irony in this palace of idealism I have built around my life. Her face seemed stretched with the realisation that things had finally worked out OK for me.

I am pages upon pages of inspiration, scrawled and splayed in notebooks that are left in loungerooms and bus shelters. What is this sadism that drives us to document every moment? Like a tourist strapped to a camera, will we miss the point whilst trying to capture it?

cut and paste

Ctrl C
coffee shops. Last time I was here we thought my mother was dying. Do you remember the letter I sent you?

Ctrl V

Back then I was akward. Well, I'm akward still, but it gets to me less and less these days. I'm sending drunken text messages to boys who don't matter. But at least I know they don't matter now.

I am a hop skip and jump from maturity. I am faking it till I make it past puberty. I am racing round corners, ignoring the landscape, trying to pinpoint places I recognise on a map without street names.

I am all inspiration and pens left at home. I am passing out on the fumes of my daydreams, running into people and accidental ideas. Eating chips and gelati in this city of birds.

Ctrl C

Last night I remembered all the reasons I loved her. Beyond the obvious things like talent and style. The way her eyes grow large and distracted mid conversation reminds me of my mind. I remembered that something about her was familiar. in a whirlpool of terminals, thats a comforting thing.

Ctrl V


Cunt chased my friend to my hometown.
It's too small for the three of us.

Ctrl C

I don't like change but I'm addicted to movement. The sleek lines of going somewhere else. The simple beauty of a wellpacked suitcase. The routine of passing through security screens.

fast change

Another logisitical cock up. I should start breeding chickens. The click click of directions changed with each webpage reload. I'm getting tardy with my money, indecisive with my fate.

And as if on cue melbourne opens it's skies and pours out glorious spring days. Like a mistress in fresh lingerie, she is luring me back to her crotch. Days like these were made for chain smoking. I sniff the ground for inspiration. I am hunting coffees and support materials, scalping fast men and slow meals.

rest and reset

The tyre tracks in my drive way have not yet cooled. They are layered, too many seasons of come-go to distinguish the names of the departure points. I am hauling in bags of left over food and blankets my mother crotched when she was manic. Dumped on the lounge room floor, I ignore them, and loose myself in my first beer for days.

I am leaving again.

Bags unpacked to be packed again, to be unpacked and packed again. I am a carousel of destinations. Last night I slept under Ntaria skies, first quiet night in the community all week. Tonight I rode home through small town roundabouts and watched the largest shooting star I've seen in months descend from the skies like a suicide bomber, like a moths final declaration of lunar love. Tommorrow I'll be back in that rabbit warren city, quipping in bars, wearing my red dust like armour, trying to suck all the authenticity out of the tram lines and wandering aimlessly through places I've forgotten.

I take my dirty laundry with me. I travel dirty, and light.

Again

The day retracts. The house darkens as I turn my thoughts to the lovers I've left behind. Ripping hair from my legs I tell her that torrid is the only relationship type I have, make jokes about recognising arseholes by their sex appeal. He tells me not to block love, that it can come at any time.

I run a stick around the edge of my defences. You mistake it for the beating of my heart.

That morning, as you sauntered off down the street to catch the tram, did you know it would be our last time? I crushed roses from the doctors surgery and watched you, silently saying goodbye to the cafe where you'd fetch me morning lattes. We pretend it doesn't mean a thing, insist on getting off our faces before we go home and slip insults between the sheets when the sex begins to resemble intimacy. I wake at 3am to find your tongue hanging out as you rack up lines to serve up to pretty south side girls and huddle on the couch with bed hair, cursing my waistline, telling myself I'm too old for this shit.

And I am.

You sucked the potential until the opportunities dried up and washed up in my bed like two week old dishes, still stinking of meals once enjoyed. When you rejected my calls I bought Leonard Cohens new book and sent you the relevant page numbers.

I return to the city again this weekend. I presume you did not understand.

serenity in smoke.

The city turned yellow before I landed. The softness suits this time. Fingertips tar stained, huddled in aircon, everyone is considering quitting ciggerettes. The drought breathes heavy here, panting like salivating lovers, blowing wind into our crotches and salt onto our lips.

My phone rings at 5am, private numbers invading my sleep. Last night my dreams were located in the rubbish dumps of my childhood, lecturers I've never met insisting I sit for my honours degree. I've become so addicted to salaried nipple that weans me off my youth. Sitting in park swapping love on the dole stories with gentle eyed boys in mid twenties crisis. Staring at clouds in slow motion, making my peace with the city again.

Acting is pretending to be something that you are not.

It was flowing out of me, all the toxins of the last six months, manifested in liquid format. Stained underwear and cheeks,Now I am literally blood sweat and tears. We play pass the bucket as the spit slicks back into my face.

This is my justification: i'm just another fucking poet. direct this up your arse. don't tell me where to stand now.

This is my five minute installation, my reflection on problems entered. Body contorted I am seconds from breaking I am seconds from emotional impotence. I am inventing lovers on mattresses in scout halls because god knows nothing if not peaceful sleep.

Snap shot of me holed up in river. Holding this pose because the collective demands it. We are the worst kind of hive mind. Directing is being told what to do. I am searching out the peices of anarchy that still remain in manic laughter that exists after silence falls.

Pass you a peice of my heart printed on paper. It's the only way I can show you who I am when I leave.

Blunt brain in bris vegas

The cafe is erratic, all fast lattes and waitresses with henna hair and tight t shirts. The humidity has dropped into the air, and the ocean is closer than it's been in months. Mangroves are licking the edge of the city. The streets of the CBD are dead.

I am recaffinating after a whirlwind melbourne stopover, imbibing the surroundings, waiting for my soul to catch up. I've left my luggage in a locker at central, prehaps all the different parts of me can be consolidated in that long steel crevice. I'm feeling somewhat anebrieted. Throwing down beer and herbal remedies in unison. Plunging headfirst into the new year. Praying my body can keep up with the next three wereks.

reset

The year began as a slow moving target. My head, a community radio station scrambled with best hits fm. We're squashed into bathtubs, sitting in sludge and water the temperture of vomit. The new year is baked eggs and whiskey, left over beer and noses dragged across CD cases. Surrrounded by dogs and other peoples underwear, retracting into rocking chairs, passing out on concrete and sand.

My new years resolutions are currency conversions slurred in the pool on a Friday afternoon. My new years resolution are drowning in cheap indian food, passed around the circle like a roach, coughed up into the toilet bowl, retrieved on the bike ride home.