Speak slow
with savoured words
these soft yearnings.

Speak soft
of things never spoken.
For words scare
the ibis and carrion crow
which circle and caw
above this simple bed.

Where we lie simply, and roll simply
amongst the long curling legs
that rise above like ivory eyed pedestals
of things beautiful and true.

And yet, this simple bed
will not hold these simple bodies-
beautiful and broken.
And the sanctity of words unspoken
held us by it's token
as we passed into the night
with all we left unspoken.

So speak slow
As we pass into the night.
So speak soft
Under moon burnt light-
But speak! Ye poets,
Ye swine, Ye ****!
Speak and be heard
before the burning sun
with voice, and pen
and scorching scent!
Or suffer the sleep
and endless repent.

I see the recollection
of a thousand and one memories
in the faces of strangers.

It is written
in the burnt out shellac
that write's the gospel
called ideal.

Upon all the waifs
that wail
on wainscotted walls
is visible a weary shade -
A woe begotten word.
That same ink
that wrote the scar
on a thousand and one faces.

It shone to eyes
of the right size
calibrated to the light
by a snowflake.

And once seen
O misbegotten dream!
Hours of amphetamine rooftops
under golden stars.
Mornings alight
with the free realm of jazz
which floats on hazy gaze
that constitute fields
of a thousand and one degrees.

Now not seen.

And is it carved
in the sweaty freedom
of a drunk?
Constellating crystal beads
pour to eyes
gray and sunk
with the wisdom of a prince.
With the stench of a skunk.

Brace yourself
for the wind does come
that marries wind
of heart and mind.

And behind it all
you see it now;
in the thousand and one faces
of the free
the bold
the meek
the drunk
the lost.

The recollection
of a thousand and one memories.

Shall we count the hours
you rimmed in gold?
Awash in wine not sweet but sour;
no warmth shall be brought
to this day ever cold.

In your heart I sense a loveless pyre,
burning bright in endless night;
No climbing sparks leap up these walls
No constant lover will grace these halls.

For you, oh shade!
Oh graceless within your ***
Now seek to drown;
I, within your waves of play
And no such 'write
will come to say.

Within your head, your heart and artless mind;
Nought but a mirror grows.
Nought but darkness holds.
And in that glass of strange design
You hold your fate,
but never mine.

We pass neath the arms of shadow,
and autumns gaze turned away.
With the air filled thick a promise of winter
Layed true by the albino commissaries
that float listless abroad.
Ranks in gray/blue/white.

Slow through pass they are revealed!
Marched immeasurable in form-
By pearly hand of Christmas Kings.

Whilst low round the cavern pass
Forked lightning roared all round us!
Forked lightning soared all round us!
Under heat of wastrel march.

And we all flashed out blackened blades!
flanked by ancient everglades!
Defeat! Defeat all cold and shade!
Slit and slash their marching grade!
Impossible was their victory made!

Soon we sprouted victory wreaths,
Of strange and seeming wonderwood.
For silence hath taken
winters pearly rings.
And death hath taken
their princely king.

She is silver-nitrate and coal.
An Egon Schiele painting
stretched on dream
and sullen sparking glances
tipped in gold.

It is starlight, burnt through a velvet field
that chains me here.
It is honey and hot wine
that haunts my sleep,
by the onomatopoeia
of obsession.

With a lunar caustic kiss
she hexed me.
Woven in her six-sided circle
those rubies in the
hollow of her neck
and fingers that shimmer
like ice.

The Sphinx of Eros.

That heathen curl.
Smoke to hide the ivory!
Spoke to lock the memory!
Caught in click clack shutters
by the silver foaming pond.
Froth from the chambers of
ebony rough hewn hearts.

O starlight!
That raptures me hungry
for bloodsoaked lips
red as fury!

And I sang;
O lord & commoner, I sang!
To the weepings of a sombre, sudden,
stinging violin,
in empty vinyl crackle
from music soaked in paint,
with a voice
like burning velvet.

I coiled around  your coast
and gazed at the foreign shore.
The breakers, they did break
and the sirens they did call
to the clipper upon that fallen, foreign shore.

Were we sailors then, you and i?
Or were we shipwrecked?
I think we were shipwrecked.
The mast lay rotting in the waves.
Rope and sail- strewn as a discarded scalp
Upon that foreign shore.

I know the day of leave,
As i know that sirens call.
And I felt the breakers
and the hidden stones that rose as black teeth round your coast.
The wind pulled forth and we did nought to stop the pull.
And crashed upon your fallen shore.

Now we are castaways;
outcasts upon this isle.
Now we are foreigners
on this foreign shore.

Is it your blood
that crawls with art?
A bold union
that cries when the distant
sounds of Bach wisp from there.

I wonder if you were called
by the sudden beeping that
resembles the stain
on a rusty coin from a long buried culture.
America perhaps, but also Caesar.

All the while, we weary wounded
stumbled through charisma and over altars
pristine in silk and lace;
the holy plateau where snow falls only;
amidst this shipwrecked coast.

And above us all
waving and trembling.
And below us all
stains upon the snow
as charmed blood ran deep
to the ghettos of art and science,
collected in this Hermetic vessel
sealed but for a hole
where beauty alone caused tremors
to rage and spark in fires.

And you alone, bound by blood
saw through the night,
through the forest of dreams
to the stars.
Not being burnt by their light
was your cause; bound by blood.

The huntress emerged
swathed in fur
a thousand coins in her pocket
from every distant coast.

Gold capped and exotic
stones beneath her feet,
the scent of blood she did smell.
Once more into the fray
Once more she roamed.

I wondered at her meaning
and how she came in furs.
Was the huntress laying her sight
next upon me?

Would she penetrate the penetrator
to watch it sink beneath stagnant waves?
The blood and whiskey feeding fish
as she once more emerged
swathed in fur.

Time and the sea stripped gold from his face.
Caesar lay in ruins on a burning velvet bed
round him danced the debutantes and believers.
His sullen chamber lit by his burning velvet bed.

Through his window, mottled amber and blue
passed as shades long lost. All that remained
of Caesar, as gold was stripped from his face
now framed by a brilliant half moon;
A memory sent foreign on bitter tides.

In the summer
we will walk
the narrow
antique
streets.

The city sound
with midnight jazz
stolen and soft,
like the wind.
Cool and soft
as the wind,
wrapped its arms around us
the way I wrapped mine
around you.

In the summer
down the narrow
antique
streets.

They doused the lamps
and sent the realm into darkness.

The purest black we did ever see.

No street, nor home, nor lovers eye burnt.
Nor did the stars or the keenest minds
For they both shone dark.

And the realm sat hushed-
Silent and revered
Round the patter of words
that came as rain.

As the beat of rain
came as poetry.
And the realm sat round
the new fire.

There are creeks which shade made lesser cracks of
That spread as hands and ants up antique walls.
I brush those holes and think:
What breath have you spent?
What death have you seen?

He sits at the window;
His back to the world
His back to the rain and sleet
His back to the dying street.

From across the way I peer at him.
He does not know I am here
He does not care.
That dark figure framed by light
That rests across the street.

With courage I crossed
And came to meet
Only the king
Of rain and sleet
As I crossed the dying street.

And all I found were lowered gates;
Barricades of christian steel
And the dying monarch
With silent death peels.

Your tenderness spread from the flesh of bitter fruit;
it razed the ground it was born of.
It is the beating of a wardrum and the shadow of death.

And I found myself at the end of a rope
without the aid of drink or dope.
In my hand I held a note:
A confession without a sound
brought me to my knees.

When the day is too hot for coffee
you find the fog wont lift without it.
I am there, groping at the Thames
Without your hand there to guide me.

Her fingers carved a melody
Wrenching it free from the depths of pain,
and the bottom of white horse hooves
sank beneath the waves.

Whilst Lady Godiva sat by the window
and gazed out a heartfelt glance
at the children in the gutterand clothed her naked villainy
In silk and ermine fur.

And under the weeping tree we left each other letters
that cast aside the discarded uniforms of youth.

I could lay you down
and breathe your hands.
I could brush the dust
from your eyes.
And I could hold your moon in my palm;
A junkies palm,
the scarred hand of Judas.

But that would not make you happy.
You wish to hold me
within your glass house gaze
and to touch my soul
where hands have never dared.

The game will not be played
by your rules,
once the pawn is a queen.

In your palm you held the ace of Spades
but it was a losing hand
to your filthy heart.

And the dealer delt away
Whilst the jokers laughed and joked.
And they held their stigmata out
for the babes to see.
But they only saw flesh.

With a needle dipped in ink
she wrote me a stigma in italics.
I can still see it;
In the moving daylight,
In the roving daylight,
In the shadows of light
on a palm.

It hurts me to think
of those restless nights
when I sat on your lap,
a pen in my heart;
a dove caught between my teeth.

I spilt ink upon  your night dress.
It shone silver with candlelight
and I was reminded of the mysteries
that spun starlight into constellations.

But then I remember;
the way you stroked my hair
and I remembered
the tobacco stains on your lips.
And it took the hurt away.

"O son, hark ye to the rainbird's call." Said father to son as the golden light spilled out the fireplace, casting their backs into darkness. "O son, hark ye to the rainbird's call, for when the rainbirds are a-comin' the times are a-changin."

Son's wide eyes soaked in the golden fireplace light and the sound of father's voice.

"O the rainbirds, they's a-comin'. They's call ain't like the call of no other bird. Yer a familiar with the warblings and the cawings and the baying's and the singing's of other birds. The rainbird, he don't sound like that. When the rainbird a comes a callin', you best be knowin' his sound. For he don't warble or caw or bay or sing, on no, he don't warble or caw or bay or sing. He's a makin' a different sound all together. O the rainbird, when he comes a callin' you'll a-know its him."

Father puffed long on a clay pipe, his voice accompanied by the sounds of a thousand night critters a-haunting the outside world with their chitin wings and nightmare fur and ebony eyes, shining through the night. O yes, father puffed long on a clay pipe.

"Son, when the rainbird calls. He drowns out the other birds, ya wont be hearin' no warbling or cawin' or bayin' or singing. When the rainbird a-opens his beak, all ye hear is a marked silence from the other birds. O they is still singing, mind you they is still singing, but that ******* the rainbird, he dun drown them out with his silent call. Son. That is how you know the rainbird's callin'."

The golden light kept a-burning, and the fire was a-crackling as the night was a runnin' over the valleys skies. And father kept a-talkin' and his pipe; he kept a-lightin'.

"Son, that is the sound of the rainbird's call. He don't call much round here in the valley, but when he does, you hear the times are a-changin'. And when the rainbird sings, o son! When the rainbird sings! He BELLOWS! And he SINGS! And the valley will shudder with his song. When he sings, the valley will shudder and the darkness will come, for he be callin' on all dem other rainbird's. And they be comin' and the sky will darken like night and they'll a come, like a cloud, they'll a come. And they's flappin' wings will a-shake and a shudder the valley, and they'll a **** lightning and his brethren, his brothers will a-light down and they be filling the valley with their rain and their **** and the times will be a changin. Oh they be a changing."

Son's ears heard the tale of the rainbird that father told him, son believed the tale father told him. He believed, for the night birds did suddenly fall silent all through the velvet darkness outside the shack, and the air was a markedly different thing from what it was before, and the fire sputtered as the rainbird called. It sputtered…it sputtered…it sputtered.

Cross me now roombound
over the threshold.
Cross me now hellbound
over the bed.
Burn me now everbound
to your silken touch.

Bind me to the sensation
of skin upon skin.
Hang me from the rafters
of desire within lust.
Tie me to the taste
of mouth upon mouth.

As we flow as tides do
that endless ebbing and rolling;
With moon-tormented need
the waves make love to the moon
and the moon ***** back.

Hold me now with the grip
of your sinewy arms.
Taste me now with the whiplash
from tongue to flesh.
Hurt me now with the kiss
of your desire and mine.

Write me your vows on paperflesh
Pen me your desires in lovers blood
Slip it in an envelope, seal it with a kiss
And I shall trace it, with the same pen
dripping still with lover's blood.

Curve your spine over my desk
And spread yourself open as a book
Desire lines penned upon your chest
Heartstrings bared, across open pages
covered with lover's blood.

Bookmark the chapter of desire
Close the cover in the dark
And retrieve my pen, an empty needle
from ****** page fold.
No longer dripping with lover's blood.

Sweat infused with sweat came riding upon the soft night breeze, sliding through the ebony air; bringing with it the scents and perfumes of faraway and exotic places. The continent of Us where union was shared and passion blazed through the rolling waves that lapped and endured with the temperate tides at the beach of Now.

And how the tall trees shook and rocked as the churning wind rushed through them; clinging from it intoxication for our senses, sensual pollen released. Released…released.
In the broken silence of Monday night, the incensed symphony of sound and sweat and passion and desire, the unbroken breath of truth begged upon hands and knees for us to realize its beauty. Simplicity and instinct. Ah that depth to which we sank with stones tied to our decorum; and how relaxed we were to sink to that ocean, upon the beach of Now; the western coast of the continent of Us.
Parting from these natural shores, eyes ever westward we sailed to the peninsula of Dream on the angel-wing blown tempest of Sleep; whence we found ourselves clinging to the memory of that soft, lost land of Us. Where a moment is a lifetime and will not allow us to pass unscarred, unmarked and taunted for it will often blow its breeze so we never forget. And never forgive the time spent upon the beach of Now.

Now a memory as precious as a pearl.

Dawn is locked in pastel reverie. A witness to the slow, fleeting genocide of stars as they are burned out one by one. The morning expands suddenly over the course of dawns gauntlet. The traffic and life of all men begins to trickle in time as the heavens die. The waltz of civilisation and Progress has entered its overture. Let us pray the dancers knows the steps. The jazz of night-time has left, only the instruments remain, frozen in morning dew.


Dawn licks up her pastels in a binge that leaves the day a clean blue plate. The scents of jasmine and wet asphalt greet this day; it is the stench of midnight mystery dying in the sun.


Poets have words for this condition; we have written about maladies for centuries.

The endless night stretches its arms wide and long to the edges of twilight.

The air is soft and fulfilled with the scents of earth and mystery as above us all, the stars burn with subtle intensity and hellfire. Like the Ghosts of ancient Gods; kept alive by waning thoughts in their prisons strong as eggshells and high as romance.

The cool longing rides the breeze of time. It feels like freedom is at hand and this morning will never come. The day is locked in it's grasp; held at bay by our obstinate refusal of it and the midnight jazz that crickets and owls make. Everything is cool and seductive in the way poets cannot name. It is infinite and pure, like the second before a new lover's kiss and it is omnipresent in the way mysteries embrace.

Long live the endless night, long live the freedom of now.

May we find words to sell to poets, so that this time between worlds can be expressed.

There's something tragic about Brisbane; the city speaks of an older more Romantic time, though the people speak of a newer, modern; more disposable age. It seemingly looks at you with a lost lovers eyes.

Though the city still retains some of its antique glamour; take a stroll down any street in the center and around you will be found the remnants of that age.
Victorian Red-bricks dot the city like proud sentinels, keeping watch over the ever expanding invasion of its contemporary neighbours.
What tales would these monolithic madmen tell is if only we had the ears to listen, who's feet did once trample up the now year-stained wooden stairs, who lived and died and loved and uttered curses and birthed within those walls...and what tales would they have to tell if we only listened?

Ah, gentle reader, you see how your mind wanders at the mention of these thoughts?
The City certainly has its landmarks: the Clock tower of Town Hall, over looking the new modern space of "The Deck" in King George Square, the facade of Grand central station still retaining its grandeur and majesty; now turned into theme bars and a nightclub strip. The old houses littering West End and the strip of red bricks running like a sepia toned river up Elizabeth Street. And of course the dotted remnants of Old City Life being ever encroached upon in the center of the City's smoke filled heart.

The most curious of these is the impression wrought in plaster and cement, white over red, of a window in the city center, with a set of stairs leading up to a place that no longer exists; 50 feet in the air.
Whenever I gaze up at that window, that reminder of the past, I cannot help but wondre who would be staring down at us, on this date in the last century.

"Suffer them not" I wish to say, "for these people are of a different age, with different Gods and values than you."

Suffer them not, ignore their slings, suffer them not.

I love Brisbane.

It's mish-mash of centuries, its people, the tales of its unwritten past, it seems as if the city exudes both a sense of joy and one of unutterable melancholy.

I'm on the train, homebound now to my modern house in the ultra-modern Gold Coast. This is quite depressing. The freedom, the movement, the chance, the ebb and flow of the people soaked tide of the city is leaving fast behind me as this electric trap with seats barrels under facades and tunnels, with enormous neon snakes glittering down from the peaks of modern and ancient towers and we find them reflected in the winding river like innumerable fireflies...dying and twisting and being reborn in the soft moonlight.

South Brisbane Station.
An immortal Victorian construct, still surviving to this day. The same architecture, the same route...different paint though. This Industrial Relic is overlooked by the shining modern whirlpool of THE EYE, a gigantic Ferris wheel giving you the chance to see the city by air, to one side; and a multicoloured, four story glowing monument to the hairdresser franchise god Stefan on the other...which I dub "Stefan's Pintle".

It's garish as hell.

Passing through the night the train goes ever on, powered incessantly by the ticket payers seemingly endless dollar supply.

There's a strange transition from City to Coast, the outerlying towns left in the dust and wake of one and unsure whether they belong to the other. Places such as Kuraby, Banoon, Runcorn, Altandi, Logan and Eden's Landing.

Yet the train ponders on into the night, as it's denizens relinquish themselves to its discretion and desires.
Yes; the train ponders on into the night...

We slowly pass through Woodridge, one of those last bastions of civilisation, neither here nor there. A glittering town trying desperately to be a city. They have a McDonalds. Yay. These places always scare me, and confuse me.
What are they like? Their people? I guess I'll never know, i've never stayed in one long enough to realize.

Welcome to Loganlea, this is a strange place...the funniest thing about it is the fact that it IS a hole. Yet the sign into it shows a shining beach with palm trees and boldly proclaims "WELCOME TO LOGANLEA".
As you draw closer you realize it's pock marked with bullet holes and rust stains.

A train whizzes past, and we find ourselves reflected in its windows, our reality traveling one way; our ghosts another.
Into the long, pale night, coloured by the stars of a thousand distant streetlights. Like a million tiny man made suns; created to fend of the darkness and keep our fears at bay. We truely live in the age of endless day.

The melancholy of the city is far behind now, it's streets, its smells, its people all gone. As we are lost in the brightness of the endless day and the night grows ever long, touching those distant, far between places with its natural, velvet splendour, running its hand down the cheek of time. For there will always be a night, even when we create days, and the city will always be melancholy, and the coast will always be a glittering sequin on the dress of a cheap, soulless *****.

I love Brisbane.

Come now as the Spring Breeze
Kisses our pale flesh
As we lie post union.

Feel the moment
Feel the ship of time
Watch as it crawls forth
From passions depth less harbor.

Raise your head to the light
My night child
My pretty
My darling
My sweet

As cool spring breezes
Brush over us with their lips
Golden and bright
In the afternoon sun.

In the golden, afternoon sun.

Lay here a while
Rest.

Feel it now
Feel it soft
Feel it blow over our embrace
Whilst soft toned breezes
Stretch the time we hold
In the palms of our baby-skinned hands.

Hush my love
Hush your heart
Stay a moment
Feel those cool kisses
Planted fleetingly on the naked canvas
Of skin
As these tides ebb and flow
In time with our blisses.

Touch it now
Softly glancing
As our hair is sent
Rippling
Like tides on the cool ocean shore
Of time-pregnant moments.

Impregnate out skin
On every lazy Sunday
Since the shared time began
Between Cupid and Psyche
And the coals of Hades
Cool softly
In the spring breeze.

Lay here a moment.
Rest.

Lay here with me.

On tattered wing of memory
Came the pallid Ghosts of Autumn,
Those solemn gaunt's of Autumn
Swept swiftly in to chill the day,
Their faces long and glum
And coats long and gray.
Down to take the valleys Czardom
Claiming night and claiming day
Rode the gaunt, gray Ghosts of Autumn.

Those thrones were overtaken
From the sundered Summer Devils,
The lordly Devil's of Summer.
And we have not mistaken
We who live in the lands of Almer
Know the cost of war is taken
From father, son and daughter.
As we await the return of the forsaken
Crimson Devil's of Summer.

For soon will come the chilling
Ancient Kings of Winter
Those savage Kings of Winter
And no blood will thus be spilling
As our logs turns to cinder,
As the Kings will then be killing
For vanity and splendor,
The shades of Fall will they be conquering
Those ageless, Kings of winter.

And from the Gaunt's essence
Shall rise the Maids of Spring,
Evergreen and supple Maids of Spring.
To pass the Winter King's defense,
Sans iron and thunder, these lovely things
Will woo and exhaust their frozen senses
Then silence and ****** the Winter Kings.
And Almer lands will grant happy commends
To the glorious Maids of Spring.

Yet these are but forethought's;
Soft now approach the Ghosts of Autumn
Those mild, soulful and solemn
Beautiful wraith's of Autumn.
Soon Almer shall be sought
By Kings, Maid's, and the Devil's Ransom
Our hearts shall ever be owned, but ne'er bought
And we will pay our lords so handsome.
For now our land shall be rendered and wrought
By those gray gaunt Ghosts of Autumn.

Take the key and twist the lock,
Cross the threshold down into
The Hotel of Hearts.

Look inside the vernacular mini-bar
Sample its delights in pearl strewn luxury
As you lie on a soft bed of nails in
The Hotel of Hearts.

Cover you with diamonds.
Mount you in ebony.
Feed your ego on servings served on
plates of ivory at
The Hotel of Hearts.

Draw the alligator-eyed blind down.
Hide your eyes from the ugly outside world,
The true outside world, kept hidden by the
Hotel of Hearts.

Man so naked under that shirt;
Silk now covering crystal mirrors
Barring their faces from truth and lies
Embracing those who stay at the
Hotel of Hearts.

Pay your bill with a view of your soul.
The clerk smiles petal-soft
Your bags are kept as you leave
The Hotel of Hearts.

Particles of man left behind
Imprints on the looking glass.
We swim with all the memories
In this sea of now.

Shipwrecked on the beach of half-past ten
On our voyage to Tomorrow.
Don't worry dear;
We're already there.

There's a thousand monkey paws
Groping in your hessian skin.
They will only be shaved
When the fruit is eaten.

We're sailors all on this sea of why.
Adrift in the mystery of Now.

I placed your silk
on my pockmarked breast
to cover the lid
of my yesterdays chest.


The way we adorn
horror with statistics
or
villains with crowns.


I wrapped your maddona
around my shore
the trails
of her veil
leaving scars
in the sand.


The boats have left
for invasion
and holocaust,
and I placed your silk
within my tomorrows chest;
and sunk it in her harbour.

Her passions wrote lyrics upon the parchment of her lips,
Under the gaze of the scarlet night.

I could not hold her there and we felt alone; though we were together.
Under the gaze of the scarlet night.

The rose is red and the glaze is soft upon the open eye.
The poet in the attic - surrounded himself with ghosts and dust coated lies-
spins perfumed words in the cold scarlet night. He comes to realise
the mystery of fate in the hour of late advance as he comes to recreate
the masterpiece of failure; oh too late.

A portrait was painted in blood and wine
by the hand of a sullen amateur
Then burnt in the fire of music
In the deep scarlet night.

Her passions wrote her confessions in the ink of truth
Upon the eyelids of beauty, as the cars speed past
to unseen glory, waited upon by cherubs in the
bright sun orange light.

Will you give in to the grazing dawn?
Will you hold me in angel glance at the end of this deep scarlet night?