RECAPITULATION

In the end
everything
comes home.


So home
must have
no walls
to limit the return,
nor roof
to block
the upward
gaze of wonder.


Home must
be as particular
as the memory
of rain
on a certain
window
on a certain
day
in childhood.


Home must
be as empty
as a monk
waiting
for a god.


Home must
be as spacious
as a desert plane
full to bursting.


Home must
be the thoughtful
space
where
pieces fall
together
though may not
ever fit;


belonging
without
contrivance;
as tender
as the fall.


when the universe
expands
to its limit.


In the end
everything
comes home.

OUT OF AFRICA

Remember when we all
pushed out of Africa
on our first road trip:
clubbing our enemies
and hunting great beasts
like there was no tomorrow.
A man could chow down
on a mighty big steak then
with no need for excuses.
Remember those nights
filled with thunderous rhythms:
one part tribal foreplay,
two parts fear making music.
And the women, oh man,
teeth and claws and ferocity,
sweaty species making,
scarifying intensity.
We had mighty times
tracking down that road.
The world smelt different
when there were places
we were yet to see.

ASYLUM SEEKING TEXT

Tumbled down hungry words laid out on a page;
a procession of ink lined refugees
desperate busted around, from here to where they started,
looking for a home. And what does that make me?
A desperate word smuggling bandito
trying to steal a stanza in between the seen
and what you don't, before some beady bastard reason
shuts the door and calls words uttered treason.
Yet they are only words looking to find a home,
a thousand shades of life in black and white;
sure, sometimes sore, bedraggled, foreign things,
clattered out and scribbled down;
a scrap of overcrowded paper sure to sink;
sometimes sounding with a jarring ring beyond your recognition.
But maybe you need your borders breached this way,
with words like these, seeds in cracks,
hope breaking through dismay, too pregnant
to do anything but undermine
your fused jaw not enough that cannot breath.

SILENCE

He sat there, all mammalian,

a neurologically alternative Buddha:
chin buried to chest, eyes dribbling;
a full stop in a mad rambling world.
I sat with him as excuse, being with,
a refugee from the chaos outside.
I spoke words because I felt I should:
desperate hammered utterances;
all nothing trying to be something.
Time and silence, a sinking down to depths,
Contact and a rocking emergence;
delight through the dance of fingertips.
He speaks like a universe finding words.
Wait beyond conquer or be conquered,
that’s where you might hear him still.

BEHOLD

Behold the man who carries

his history writ through breakages,

on his own too vulnerable feet.

Behold the clay hard shaped

by disconnect mistaken as strength,

manning up to the past ache murmuring.

Behold the man consoled

by impossibly lasting tenderness;

light soft on his broken ground.

HOME BEYOND THE BREAK

She swam beyond the break and turned to watch the rolling beasts heading back to shore. She'd been wanting this moment all day: to be beyond it all with only the slight sound of crowds carried on the breeze, a whole world of clamor turned delicate to nothing, and nothing else but the cold depths below and the liquid blue of the sky above.

 

It had taken a few consecutive summers for her to discover that it was possible to swim beyond the grip of life, if only for the space of a single breath, and simply be movement, as fluid as a school of fish, as electrified as sunlight on water.

There were moments when she felt a jolting awareness of work preoccupations, the undertow of friendships, old loves and the weedy entanglement of memory. She'd learnt to swim through it all and stretch beyond the heavy business of the land.

She looked back towards the city. The skyline was on fire with summer's final setting sun. She felt the day slipping away in the cold current that twisted around her feet and then she turned away from the land and set out with a firm determined stroke.

THE FINAL ACT

He takes in hand and elevates high:

the end of the world with all the dross burnt away,
the old dispensation now dust at his feet,
the untainted smooth of a chalice rim,
the red rolling orb of wine contained,
the rhythm, pouring in, pouring out,
still present like a murmur in the heart.
Grand ancient utterances soft in his mouth,
the cradling shape of lines on the page,
old craven powers are silenced at last,
tall edifices long ago crumbled to dust;
the earth groans in his parable hands
scented by mud and sex and life,
the elemental word spills over what is seen.
He does this thing, completes this act:
a lost voice whispered through a barely noticed crack.

THE CITY EATS ITS OWN

She lived up the raggedy end

of a Surry Hills street;
the city held her in its dark embrace,
surrounded by the electric current
of inner urban life
that spluttered and stuttered
disconnected bright;
the sun struck beaches
bustling light;


her days were measured
in shadows and dust,
near the fashion district
with its hustle and bluff;
and the footfall folly
down Central Station halls
to the writhing underground,
and the overcrowded malls,


where the city grew high
and the people grew small
and the torrent of days
made her nothing at all
but a body now breathless
and still on the floor
for year after year
in a place, dark and poor.