I’ve got the red glow
of a stubborn black briquette
soaked in petrol, lit and fanned.

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.

there is a perfect sin
that severs us from the heavens
and binds us to the earth,
that pushes the stars out of reach
and locks us in our skin

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

Cicadas have emerged in Elizabeth Bay.
I can’t remember hearing them last year.
I wonder where they are hiding -
the trees in front of my building are small,
they weren’t here seventeen years ago
and don’t have the roots to feed them.

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.

the broken roads,
crusty gums
our yellow stone
buildings grow from,

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.

(more…)

when broken by the city,
be standing on a kerb,
seeing it from a distance.

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.

(more…)

our heart
is just a pump,
a soft pump
for blood

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

phone numbers
are the coordinates
that make the map
that folds itself
into a different shape
each time.

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.

Cupid had a foe
who was so unpopular
his name was not recorded,
but we can call him Loathe.

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.

imagine the sky divided
into columns
thin as a needle’s point
and buckling
as we skip across them

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

I made a bomb,
a tiny bomb,
there is no smaller
in the world.

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.