Palms now bare, grasp at skies of bemused blue,

Along dawdling drives of low-key grace,

I behold a line of savvy, vested dog-walkers,

led longways by the strain of their leads.


A slice of tree-lined urbane, these do-gooders...

Brisk breaths have a prolonged hang-time

Here, below a branch tableau.

Stoic canopies.  A quiet symphony,

an elegant samhain.

And the crashing din of the surf was a factor.

It was roaring.

A pride of lions.

It was howling.

A dismayed wolf-pack.

It was crying out into the listless void.

Which stared back, blank as slate.

...what a back and forth.

We dragged shoes back through the trap of the sand.

There was a tunnel.

I slump into poetry,
heave into it.
shift it across the floor and wave,
at the neighbours.

I dangle from its filmy gossamer,
pluck the spindles upon which it moves,
I fold it among the sweatshirts and wrinkles,
placing it in place, by other cherished artifacts.

I cascade into poetry,
ignite each little molecule,
remove its pits and stones,
study them.

And let it propel me, with avidity,
Into each and every fading hour.
Then, submit, as I'm shanghaied
onto a ship of poetic voyagers.

and there is someone, on this earth,
whom I'd feel saccharine
for.

The breaking apart of an ideal remains the breaking apart of something.

O, this carpet, this mattress.

I tore at the wall all night, I decree.

And I pictured fierce torrents jetting from the fissures I'd caused.

Within the whirl of half-dreams.

The evening shoved its nose into my flightpath, and coiled about the rungs of sleeplessness.

I won't fight, I will fight.

I shan't toss my next year away into the expectant wind of the world.

The measure of one's life contained,
Within an overstuffed shelf.

Too often,
I've succumbed.

Mind the pools, that sit on sidestreets in my neighbourhood, I graze past.

I run past.

Lone but with a legion of cheerers in my ears.

A haunted water.

Seas enraged, that once derailed - a pursuit of truth. In extremis

The warmth ushers footprints on, further ahead,
A foxtrotting myna hectors.

A seat atop a mound of grass, staring out, a channel churns below - out of place. Time.

The chest winces, it encases something injured, this sand, this face: relentless.

Through the afternoon, that plods methodically. On, a calmness came...

It flies high overhead, the bird Between headlands. Scrub clambers up the hill, hope tires.

The forces of the natural world snickered into the wind
Untroubled, in their unworried infinity
And something in the wickering boughs and stooping reeds suggested pity.
Piously carrying on, all their defences holstered.
We reach to scream, they reach to breathe.
Out there, beyond the rush of the falls,
The train was due in 60 minutes
the heave of the wood scarcely cared.

- composed on April 11 2020, Springwood, NSW

The flaking fence leaned into evening,
It was the backyard drunkard,
A release of heat and energy

Deserted diversions sat idly,
Everything slackened... sadly,
In the bashful light -

The slumbering grass, itches the irksome
Overthought. I, propped up on elbow and
Watching - a telegraph pole - rigid, out of place

The insistent caterwaul of insects continued,
The crepuscular kind,
The buzz of night, waiting patiently, in line.

SUNDAY

The subtle smell of pasta boiling,
These eyes float through glass,
Out onto the orbed Street.

For once, I didn't feel beholden,
or behoved. Within the waxen glimmer,
the drapes embraced me.

The nonsensical smell of maple syrup rose,
from the dumb walls of forgotten shops,
along a street in the inner west.
The city continues to respire,
indifferent breaths.
What's the point,
in tiredly trying?
Periphery.
Is choice.

Sheets of linen, palls of grey
Old bathroom walled
Scrawled dismay

School of halls, rooms of beige
Sheets of linen, palls of grey

Old bathroom walled
Stalls, dismay.

And following the afternoon's events, a pail of renewed perspective tossed across the windshield of the days that came...
Mortality slunk through the scratch of the grass there.


Disturb the pebbled road en route to the stone-
Stony silence
/\
Kick the gutter with a shoe warmed by active blood flows
/\/\ Scoop the child up and throw the foam plane with sizzling aliveness

slide along into a vast yard, calloused by time, read the inscriptions
With a knowing keenness and carefully selected clothes, a mired aliveness
/\/\/\atop the turf or below - a crude slab signifies they once were

Consider the stories stubbed out... this is ashtray soil.
Think of the ones still spinning, as the year crept to its death!
A plume of cries and upthrown paper, variegated.
Row after row of lowly souls, failed fortunes entombed


It's a cloudburst life.

Scintillate me,
Capture me,
Enrapture me

Your Sloughing sunshines trickle and drop
Onto my lap and I wish to catch,
the uncatchable.

Pithy wishes wash down the rocks eroded by time, solidity.
Who shot the sparkles into the day to whet the appetites gnawing at all of us? Especially me,

Tripped up,
thrown overboard
Overthrown

Surging downward, carried and stretchered, on the wary waters of precarious palms,

clammy beast.

Fizzing through the rain and feeling,
slosh and wipers ice-skate the glass,
while soft hands firm their grip on the wheel.
Sputtering love permeates the compact space
...in between droplets, the splintered reflection of:
the one both inward and outward - self-excavating & selfless

A '100% pure and natural' spring water hurls itself,
off the seat and hits the floor,
I reach to retrieve and eyes meet.
The rearviewmirror, now smeared with dust,
Georgia beaming down on Florida - a state-line and a statement

Wisps of theme park hair, dance and taunt the air,
blow out the gaping window.
Two setting sun figures - testing the afternoon,
two watched wrists entwine,
a case to be made for pit stops.

The rural hours poached breaths off me,
Your shadow casts dark forests on my face
More closures than I can bear,

Something rouge has entered my airspace.

I’m harbouring arboreal love,
It stands stately, shared by you
Your kindness need not extend,

As wide as the wings of the Boeing do…