i could use the extra space,
the bricks could use some air

then, sticking to the theme,
brush my teeth, clean my ears,
blow my nose, eyedrops, emetic,
enema, diuretic, a good bleeding,
a quick beating, four shots of gin,
martinis stripped down, a breather,
four more, five more, tears,
four more, morning

waking a little erased,
closer to empty, like my room

Europe, Africa, Asia,
North and South America,
Australia and the Antarctic,
the islands in clusters
and alone, float
like crackers on soup

For those who have never dug a hole,
the lawns, the parks and the fields
are like carpets slung between the roads

And beneath the roads,
and beneath the foundations of our houses,
there is nothing but space,
space without stars,
punctured by tree roots
and the sharp ends of fence posts

For those who never climbed a tree
when they were light enough
to get high enough
to reach through the canopy,
the sky is concave and cool to the touch,
it feels like the underside
of a porcelain bowl

How did I arrive?
Like the standing water
I trickled down a hill

The water can’t climb,
but it escapes

I can’t climb either,
Sisyphus is the rock,
or follow the water
into the air

I wait with the houses and roads,
to crumble and steep,
to stain the water like tea

now is being played out
in a lingering farewell
between your ashes
scattered in the sea,
separated by currents

now is being played out
in empty space

now is being played out
in a tiny dot
made from everything

but all that is later,
all now is later,
and you are its vessel,
bright as the clay
that forms you,
collecting each moment
like a river catches rain

skinny dipping
in the sky

They mostly went into drinks, mostly squeezed
into triple sec after the tequila was gone
to make Marge, our placid, degenerate Margarita
with the crazy left out, whose magic ingredient
was ice cubes in the shape of little crosses.

Over the summer the price of limes dipped and rose
as it always does. One day cheap, the next day gouging.
As many as we consumed, we remained detached
from their volatile fortune. We were steady like the heat.

Real skin has thin translucent layers
the light shines into, gathers evidence
of the shyness you are hiding,
and then shines back out again,
carrying your rosy blush into plain sight.

Milk is the same, as are some stones.
Jade, the green stone emperors’ favour,
is one, and, no jeweller, I discovered late
it has a sister that is pink and pale
as the most tender flesh and shares
the same translucence.

You already knew this, and more.
“Jade gates,” you told me,
“are opened with a jade key.”

all the humidity is ours, and the clouds
that crowd the sky, twisting together
like they might wring themselves dry –
we made them in much the same way

also ours - the rain that is coming.
the first anticipatory drops
fell fat and warm into our open hands
weeks ago

taken from a knot
you waited days
to have undone.

that this love is chemistry,
and the chemistry is atoms
and atoms are made of pieces
made of pieces made, perhaps,
of pieces.

and help me forget
that you helped me forget
in exactly, exactly, this way
an infinite number of times before
and we have that many more to go.

my love, help me remember
there is just this moment
and everything is real.

Soaked with that other petrol,
carrying the shrill scent of flowers,
and by lit I mean coaxed
into flame using a primitive friction
method that remains popular.

You keep fanning the glow,
burning up the fuel,
leaving the ash
it was packed between.

it is impossible to resist
and when we finally surrender
we will laugh and dance
for everything we thought lost
is all smaller than we are
and can be held in our cupped hands

The buzzing is around another corner,
maybe they are living above Macleay Street
in the broad, splayed branches of the plane trees,
or in the park around the fountain. It could be
the echoes off the brick buildings
are confusing me, and maybe them.

They call late into the night, later than I do.
When I woke up at 5 they were silent
and I could smell the bushfires in the Blue Mountains.
Yesterday the smoke was adding a touch of haze
to George Street, though you had to peer
down its length to see it. Today the light was stained
like rusty water and flakes of ash floated down,
carried by the hot dry westerlies, the desert’s bellows,
toward the coast.

A change came through in the late afternoon,
a gusting southerly, dropping the temperature
from the high 30s to the mid 20s,
but it was still wind, still a fan
rousing the fires in the mountains.

At about 6am this morning, probably at sunrise,
when I still hoped I might get back to sleep,
the cicadas woke up and started buzzing again.

have been renewed
by council workers
pouring fresh bitumen
and spreading it like jam
to the curbsides

the streets are now
a perfect black,
like space
before the stars ignited

by this evening
bottle glass constellations
will be shining in the pitch.

This grew out of a deleted fragment from a piece I ended up submitting to Meanjin. This poem is actually better than the submission, but these things happen.

On the street I was thinking of the buildings aren’t yellow stone, they are either red brick or smooth and white. I veered from reality, ie lied, to conjure up a toothsome image to go with the gums of the road in an attempt to get a gaping mouth idea happening. But the council has been re-surfacing the roads in Elizabeth Bay. Given the suburb has the greatest population density of anywhere in Australia, I imagine the council coffers must also be the fullest. That they did not have the roads hand-paved with cobblestones is probably a timely demonstration of the influence that the roller-blading faction maintains.

I would like to draw attention to the word “renew” as used in the second stanza. Firstly, it is interesting that such a word and accompanying concept exists. It implies that there are processes that go beyond repair or patching up, but not as far as replacing, which can return things to their original pristine state. Obviously impossible, entropy is a relentlessly one way street, but I guess there is something in the English-speaking psyche that makes us want to believe that damage and transgression can be undone to the point where we can pretend it never happened.

Secondly, look at the word. Someone slapped a re- in front of new. That is fantastically brief, old-school English styling. I am sure there are other languages where they would have doubled it up instead: new-new. I could live with that. Lets new-new these broken roads, lads.

On a final note, if you have read most of the poetry on the site you would have seen that I reference Greek mythology occasionally, though only to re-work it for my own purposes. When I was young, like 7 to 10, I read quite a bit of it along with books about space and insects. I avoided any mention in this one, but I was tempted, and I am still thinking about, my memory is fuzzy here, the time of the Titans, before gods like Zeus and in particular Apollo, the sun god, were born and the world was dark and there was no light to distinguish the earth from the sky. Thats what I was thinking about when contemplating the blackness of the roads, but I went with space instead this time, space after the big bang but before drifting primordial matter had coalesced into a compact enough mass to self-ignite, like bright pieces of broken glass embedded in the road.

the crashing sensation is real -
it’s the small glass tower
that’s been building,
like a ship in a bottle
swallowed one piece at a time

it was never finished,
tenants were never found,
it never breached the skyline.

the remains spill out of the clothes
and gather in a puddle in the gutter,
like a car window has been smashed.

This poem came about because I wanted to invent some significance for the piles of broken car window glass that you see around Potts Point and Elizabeth Bay. In particular the northern, terminating end of Victoria Street where there are striking views of the city skyline to the west, has stretches of gutter filled with broken glass.

I figured this would be a good spot to stand if one was contemplating a dramatic failure of plans or romance, especially while the sun sets behind the towers and the skyline is thrown into sharp relief.

That was it - an attempt to turns the signs of petty crime into a symbol of a devastating personal experience, the kind of thing that, in a city the size of Sydney, is happening every day to someone and we are all regularly stepping over the results.

and blood
is just the soup
we bottle

to soak our brain,
which is the bees
our heads hive

everything
we can contain
makes a fine paste
or feed

so stand proud
like the corn
and the wheat
in their fields

and like them,
at night,
when we think
they sleep,

scratch a few words
into the earth with a toe
just to watch them escape

the mountains
and the valleys
shift and swap
elevations,

corners and edges
cross the interior
to escape isolation.

sometimes the creases combine
to form a flower.

Only a single, amputated statue
and a fragment of mosaic
give clues to his form:

he is thin and hunched,
his mouth is tight
and he bears a shield.

As we leave behind
the gods of earlier ages,
but carry on their pains,
so this fellow continues
to this day hindering,
sabotaging, the course of love.

With Cupid gone his job is easier -
no more arrows to intercept -
but he still finds a familiar delight
in deleting my emails to you
and misdirecting your calls.

they will hold our weight
for as long as it takes
to recognise
that we are out of place

by our heft
they know
we are what they stand on

but we are already gone,
moved on,
skipping to the next,
flying as fast as we can

Its tiny blast
makes no noise
nor any smoke to see,

and when it blows
the bits that fly
do no harm to me.

My tiny bomb’s so tiny,
even smaller still,
my atom bomb -
the tiniest bomb
i have ever built.

it works in dreams

so well
when underwater too long
my lungs plead:

just a small sniff
of the seawater -
to plump us up.

it will be fresher than air.

plus

2. every plane
has to land

equals

3. runways conduct
arrivals and
departures
with equanimity

who stinks
of his charges.

bless him,
but try
not to maim,
or kill him,

or turn him
to stone,
or into a tree
or a star.

if he must suffer
so olympic scales
remain in balance

then make him
suffer thus:

perfect his memory.

let his honey
taste bitter
after your mouth,

let his skin
be numb
after your touch,

let every woman
compare
to the beasts
he keeps.

during the night
they use the heat
and light to bear
a single fruit
whose sweet fumes
lure the insects
to whirl about it
until they drop
from exhaustion.

when it is ripe
men in trucks
with ladders come
and pick the fruit.

they cannot be eaten.

they are used
in the manufacture
of televisions.

I can fit
my hand in.

all bottles
clean,
no chips
or cracks.

jars must come
with lids.

all colours -
green, brown,
clear.

prefer jars
also clean,
labels okay.

all must go -
easy to empty.

two for one
trades if mint.

take too long
to fill.