THE OLD MENDICANT

You need to mix molasses with the straw
even when the paddocks are bone dry;
dark into water clear; a heavy stick to mix;
rattle truck cacophony; bails stacked sky high.
He grunts and mutters dark and light:
loves salt and earth and curses holy goats.
His world: rope tug births, markets, herds,
the stuff of shit stench, dust clouds, heavy loads.
His other world is long remembering:
the virtue vice of old Manila Streets and begging,
the vice virtue of old school monasteries.
Up in the hills he's bellowing his call;
a bucket of molasses and liberal scattered straw;
the drought wise man of practicalities
knows how to keep beasts alive with poor feed.

PADDY

Those sighs measured
his distance from the Shannon;
they were long sighs,
miles and years long,
and full of young departure
and strange exile.

He wore his careworn state
with a battered beanie;
walked with a meandering gait;
his cock-eyed grin
signed off with
arch browed wonder.

He groaned and sighed
his ancient prayers,
sometimes to a chainsaw
harsh crescendo:
soul vigorous
to splinter heaven's door.

Seeing now, not seeing then,
a man like him carved deep
by river memories and distance;
voice long gone,
his exile song runs true.
Now he is river. Now he is home.

SEEING WHOLE

Strange tremorous need to grasp
as though shards could be pressed whole again,
as though pain was counter-intuitive healing.

Vice ideas make bleeding fingers, palms;
hard wired language fuels the rigamortis grasp:
broken, whole, redemptive suffering.

Someday other words and gentle palms,
eyes that see the fragment scattered whole,
unpierced to live this glitter kingdom world.

ANGELUS

Brother cut his wrists

on an island far away.

Gotta ring the angelus:

make a noise and pray.

Letter in the mail;

Tear stains with the ink.

Gotta keep the schedule

so the church don’t sink.

Brother cut his wrists

on an island far away.

Gotta ring the angelus:

make a noise and pray.

All the friars gather,

voting black and white.

Gotta wait to find out

if I'm deemed alright.

Brother cut his wrists

on an island far away.

Gotta ring the angelus:

make a noise and pray.

INSOMNIA

Catastrophic dream flash; cardiac jolt;
now wide awake, dog paddling
the long hours, wanting to stop, to
descend, to drown in a liquid glove.
The tremulous treachery of limbs
resisting, dull dim witted resistance,
back stroking, breast stroking, heat
stroking past midnight; the resignation
of dark open eyes. A sigh of options:
the internet, coffee; yes coffee:
ultimate resignation to be a wake to
the death of slumber. Too far from the
consolation of the sea: the cool to
sooth the fireflash and lightning fork
of neurons. Remembering sounds:
a night like this is made for such
rememberance: river waves
in childhood; the surge sound
of trains just beyond the graves
in Melbourne; the bellow of cattle
on that farm outside Sydney;
years of whispered love
to loveless nights. All these
sound chapters echo years,
making the dark a biographic
thing. Nights waiting for birth,
waiting for death. The weight
of waiting dragging eyes to show
their age. Remembering to
a fictive stretch:  some ancestor
staring out at night cold eucalypts,
awake with bogside memories and
chain scars. And I'm wondering
if genes hold memories of
ancestral dislocation.
All fiction, the night is full of fiction
and conjured ghosts, pretending
company as the whole world
snores and salivates on pillows.

JUST NOT CRICKET

Camp lesson number one:

never underestimate
the cunning pedagogy of a snake;

beguiling, curled to strike,
out on the long grass boundary.

Resist the inclination boy,
let it go for six and don't look back,

that long grass bites like shadows in a crack.
Tears after bedtime in a game like that:

it's just not cricket and it never was.

HOME BODY

Safe strong, safe spent,
safe close to face the dark.
Soft thigh openned:
acquiescent, languorous.

Home, my home,
you are my home to me.
Welcome grip that
holds my marrow creed.

All words folded, quiet;
wordlessly
our skin, breath, heat,
now sing a litany.

FORGIVENESS

Forgiveness
is not by-pass surgery;
is not an alternative route;
is not discomfort circumvented.

Forgiveness
is rock slow ground to earth;
earth deep fired to brick;
brick carved slow with story;
story strong arched to bridge.

Forgiveness
is bridge broke down to story;
story worn back to brick;
brick slow ground to earth;
earth made bed to seed.

CARMELITE

Just read evening prayer
he screams, lead foot
and in the driver's seat:
accelerating piety
swerving through the traffic.
The time bomb ticks;
his twitching boney cheeks,
grim lined, hard wired prick;
Geelong to Melbourne,
his gun acceleration
now near up a bus's arse.
Read the fucking prayers
he pleads, white knuckle
gripping hard the wheel,
his murderous speed
now making real
his all boys' catholic jihad.
Yet I refuse, my heart beat
drumming: this is how I die;
numb beyond all knowing,
now car coffined fast,
without a prayer to answer.

CHRONIC MIDDLE AGE

Middle ages man mourns,
in the depths of vague expectation,
the non-arrival of a mythic something;
some world confounding declaration;
some messianic consummation;
some something pinnacle unconquered.

He grieves over broken endings
and rages at ghostly silence.
Bruised by could have been's defiance,
he's saved by the tug of the ordinary
that brings him to here and now.

PTSD

Blood red buds, in an unexpected spring,
driven hard through all the clotted earth,
broken and beguiling with that ancient scent:
resurrection currents through grave dirt.

Brute cut betrayed by soft gathering hands
arranging spring patterns to be shown.
Closed doors trap that age old pungency;
heart beat drums rememberance chorus.

SLAP STICK BANANA PEEL MEMORY

You put it
behind
but it still trips you up:
slap stick
banana peel
memory.


How the hell
did it get
back in front:
slap stick
banana peel
memory.

The soul monkey
laughs and then
calls you a schmuck:
slap stick
banana peel
memory.

You clownish
claim that
you've had quite enough:
slap stick
banana peel
memory.

FRIDAY

Eyes press up

through sky cracking trees;
all those leaves
looking to take flight
from brittle slender threads.

Friday convulsions
press my newborn day;
I sip coffee in a place
full of african rhythms
and dream across oceans.

372

Busting at the seams on the 372

a thousand tagged rollerdoors rush by
a girl arranges her face into a sly smile
a businessman shifts discontentedly behind
bare bone streets with middle eastern flourishes
a bag lady dives into yesterday's garbage
a lad paces the corner with a long bay shuffle
early morning light hangs broken in the air
crowds surge to the bus door to be freed
in the tunnel buskers soft strum the crowd
the steady thunderclap of ticket machines
the steady sound of a city breathing
hands rustle and shake newspaper headlines
pigeons gather at crumbs then erupt in flight
burnt toast and coffee scent the air
a lady studiously fingers her mobile phone
monday morning questions hang unanswered
instance by instance dissolves in the flow.

BLACK COCKATOOS

Enter the claw and feather brigade;

a black crack cawing at the sky;
the fierce descent on all things eucalypt;
audio anarchists; night dark to bright light.

CONTEMPLATIVE FIRE

I burnt down the church

to be buried with the ashes;
pressed to diamond, light hardened
in subterranean depths.

I burnt down the church
for the unforseen emergence;
mother, child, dark signature of fire,
an intimate dark night.

I burnt down the church
to be black as an apocalypse,
resilient as a charred and tested job
laughing in the ruins.

I burnt down the church
to end resistance to endings;
breath the highest dome of heaven
here and now.

GOLEM

You were the golem

that I made;
my monstrous inquisitor;
the desperate clamour
at my door
demanding everything.

And I was half-baked
kingdom maker;
sower of future failure;
melancholic in the wings
impaled
by my choosing.

We were each and all
the bell and incense
brigade;
moaners of psalms
and divine serenades
at eventide.