He’s not in the background of my dreams
he’s right here, upon my lap
awkward pawing, purring on
autopilot, strangest creature
you’ve ever seen
he’s madder than me.
Out there the last ship docks
in the night, madam waits
at the swinging gates in the snow
more sailors to love.
Instrumental christmas carols
the band play in the corner,
my lap-mate sings in my ear
rude alternative lyrics
in a scouring southern accent,
and I bet this one has stories to tell.
I dreamed the teachers
launched a missile at the students
backstreets urban battlefield,
we’d taken a joyride
just around the block, no further,
in the school bus.
.
I dreamed I woke alone in the suburbs
burning eyes and churning stomach
no wars for oceans, and no teachers talk
about it or even really care –
its not here, it’s there
spare the students any confusion.
.
I dreamed vividly of suburban decay
syringes on footpaths melting in 40 degrees
when the kids go barefoot to the park
flattened house-pets on the road
walking through a winter heat-wave
to the university – I arrive sobering,
.
it was no dream, this is my classroom.
The student reads Keats aloud
stumbling over words like “fever” and “steed”
he improvises and nobody notices
a phone buzzes at a pulse
two laptops tap softly away,
someone has to leave early for work.
.
I dream of a new generation of students
too young to recall television visions of
planes crashing into buildings
crude wars waged and fear of reading
or engaging in talks outside of
an internet chat engine.
At age eighteen you were afraid
you’d inherit your father’s complacency
his brother’s alcoholic gene
his father’s paralyzing depression.
You were into computer games
Final Fantasy, Prince of Persia,
Mariocart. You were into Anime,
eating whole blocks of cheddar
bands like Tool and The Tea Party,
you read Dune that year for the
second time, you started university
you read the newspapers, broadsheet
politics and finance pages front to back.
You left home, we lived in a share-house
damp degenerate rattle-cage art-deco
near town, they planned to demolish
in three to six months – in those three
to six months you never paid your rent
on time, I got a bad credit rating,
I never told you that. You became
vegetarian, you still ate at your parents’
you kept your clothes in the boot
of your 70s Ford V8, you stepped out
half naked in the frost of morning
got dressed in the front yard
you slept on a yoga matt with a blanket
and a tatter-cornered poster of ZZ Top.
Before age eighteen you abhorred
drinking, smoking weed,
neither of us liked the idea of drugs like
ecstasy and speed, but put us in a pub
Guinness on tap, or another stout
like Tooheys Old, and we’d both fold
gladly. Except you liked rum and coke
appetizer for the meal of drunken conversation
to come. Someone once told me
they saw you out in town
chucking milk crates at a bar window
from outside. I told them that sounded
about right. That year and for a few years
You knew just what you wanted:
marriage and children, love and comfort.
So, you went from one blonde to the next
always ending catastrophically –
you couldn’t sleep, you couldn’t eat
you blamed yourself, you couldn’t decide
if you loved them or despised them,
we’d drive out to the country
we’d blow off steam, driving in your
70s Ford V8 and moo at the cows
in the paddocks, see which cows looked up
you called the game Moo Baa.
We’d make plans to move out to the country
which would never eventuate,
you didn’t know it then, you’d just started
university, but you would take seven years
to finish a three year degree, and at the end
you’d end things with another blonde
and devastatedly tend a bar two nights a week
for a thieving boss, get fired for barely
keeping it together for those twenty-odd hours
get yourself down to the dole office
sign up, and stay on indefinitely.
You’ll turn up to the races
with a fiver or just some change you hope
to spend on gas later, and let your friends
pay your way unashamedly having
quite a nice time even though
you turned up four hours late – which
isn’t great but, it’s better than staying in bed
all night too, after sleeping away the afternoon.
You’ll call me daily, sometimes twice
for advice or just an ear, as I’d go about my day
I’d hear about every spiteful thing
your former dear did to you, and you don’t
start conversations with niceties anymore
no hellos or how are yous, you’re straight
to the point of what she did next
how she vexes you and how you hate her,
you prefer not to get off topic for an hour or two,
I’d feel bad for you, tell you you should be glad
it’s over, and by the way, why have you already
shacked up with a new/old lover
before you’re finished with the last one?
I know your past with anxiety and a bad case
of the sads, in fact, I relate and I know it gets bad,
you’ll tell me you’ll go on the medication this time,
at age eighteen you were afraid to
you were worried you wouldn’t be yourself –
you’re not worried about that anymore
you’re not a big fan of yourself anymore.
It’s ten years now,
since you were eighteen and you
don’t want marriage or children anymore,
and you’re not into: making money,
working or looking for a job you like,
looking your best, people who wear scarves
or cologne, people with an ego, people with success
being alone, sharing your food
people who are good at what they do,
artists and musician wankers,
turning up on time or turning up at all,
paying back debts, paying for rent, and
talking about where it started to go wrong.
You are into: computer games, anime and football,
not caring, being a nice person and getting drunk,
even if your friends won’t come with you anymore.
I’d like to be a trucker
fuck the world off from
the cabin of my
Western Star prime mover,
flip the bird at every herd
of sheep I pass by,
take speed and
feed the highways my dust
by day.
By night I climb atop my rig
write poems, smoke cigars
under an umbrella
of country stars.
I’d like to be a trucker
singlet and faded ink uniform
lover in every town
they’d love the thrill
of my giant shiny grill.
I’d like to be a trucker
fuck the world off from
the cabin of my
Western Star prime mover.
There was once a time
when a poet, unabashed
by rhyme and meter
with strong feelings on a matter
would (shockingly) write a poem!
.
If a poem weren’t enough,
then over civilised tea
or booze or mound of blow,
with like-minded poets
she’d write a manifesto!
.
It used to be, be it Beat
or Vorticism, New York School
street poets with degrees
not blasted for apparently
having pompous pedigree
as though university made them dumber.
.
And speaking of Blast
what of the Imagists – those
sometimes lyricists who
gave poetry to modernity,
composed with musicality
discard romantic impracticality
still they fought against banality.
.
If tomorrow a painter
paints a landscape
would the other painters,
preoccupied with geometric shapes
concur that she is a most-mod killer?
If The Smiths were right
and “meat is murder”,
then the poet who writes more
than skeletal bones, and word-games:
that guilty poet should be tortured.
.
Thanks to post-modernity
these days poetry thrives
the poets save much time
using ampersands and lowercase,
no more bland meaning or metaphor.
And with all that time on their hands
they blog their guts out
about what they aren’t doing,
and comment, comment, comment
spewing scrollable opinion
not like those scholar minions
who, unwilling to publicly defecate,
still use poetry to communicate.
wow. another — poem published like the
poet and computer: 1 in the same nauseated
rhythm like the bus driver keeps hitting
the breaks / dashes fr commas cos who
needs grammar in 2009? & i thought:
alright / ok — why am i so resistant if this
is the way of the future even if this makes me
lmao & why not use & constantly & fuckit
just ride the new wave – txt msg poesy
back chuck to rock pools of fashionable
idiocy / murky meaninglessness chuck
up in my mouth @ the thought that this is
the new generation of generated poesy
most time spent hitting spacebar to get it
looking squarish / cos that’s what’s hip
& the publishers love it cos: (@ poet)
“omigawd it’s just like everybody else’s:
pure genius” / no longer art – just word-
games in the realm of hangman seems
dismally appropriate.
here I am
here we are
on the bus
610, 2am
and
there’s rock in my ears
Audioslave, Tracy Chapman
and then some Tool, Tea Party,
realisation that this line
don’t go all the way
home.
Flirting with the
72 year old driver
“I’m 83,” I say and
he don’t believe but
he take me home, no less and
we’ll be friends til the last of us
dies
he says
“I’ve a girlfriend”
sure, of course
and the Uturn
after the roundabout
is about
the closest thing to a hug
I’ve had in weeks,
So bless this
bus driver man,
really, fuck all that
white-line dot dot passby
and
bless him.
And his wife who he tells me
passed some months back.
I’m sorry for them
him, her, my pure
being.
Bless and
thank you sir.
For
Taking this poet home.
We need to talk.
Rather,
I need to talk to you two.
There is a distinct lack
of commitment to cohesion
here.
*
You were required to adhere
to my rules
and to the cartilage
holding us all together,
if one barking cough
is all it takes
to break your resolve, then -
we should break up.
*
I know I can be difficult
controlling
stay out late at the pub,
but I need you
you need me.
*
I see this is painful
for you
it hurts me, too,
our fractured bond has hope
if you’d only let me
help you
help yourself.
This is the first stage.
Racing ’round blue highway
bends delight, in waiting
migrating north and upwards
mountainous inland
to see you in a sweet jazz band.
And the room seemed huge
that night, darkened with the hordes
sitting, listening to the strum of chords
each string plucked
right out of me.
Outside, afterward
May mist and cigarette smoke
cold and hot,
a thousand clicks above
the level of the sea,
by the hotel rooms
where I knew you’d be
smoking the jitters away.
We’d spend ’til the next day
in your suite upstairs
truth or dare with fire, inspired
by the red light night heater humming
above the bed.
Words of love never spoken
I left and wrote to you a poem
in the stairwell on the floor
slipped it under your door
the morning light rising
triumphant, slow
time to go
it’s time to go.
Said the rockstar:
If you go into somebody’s room,
after a show,
you don’t mention it.
No exceptions to it
Get it through your fucking heads.
Was what he said
in a public domain
blaming the girls of the day
for making stars pay
for a quick lay or display
of appreciation.
Once apon a time
the sublime girl in velour
was taken on tour, not used in private
she was the muse in the soul
of some great rock and roll.
Now she is shut up
in cheap rooms where she sucks up
her identity so wifey back home
wont foam at the mouth
next time rocker tours south,
and no songs are about her
she’d be sold out in an hour
and put out, still on fire
and despite her devout desire
and love for the tunes
rockstar still can’t ditch her too soon.
Thank him, girl, for letting you near him
for letting you be his ear, for the night
then pushing you softly
til you’re out of sight.
And you have no right
to divulge your delightful meeting
not your business to share,
not his preference to care
to recall that you were there at all.
Because he’s not just a man
he’s a husband with fans
and the exchange in his room (get a clue)
was just a favour to you.
