shift

you can now find me at:
http://eatingmywords.net/unutterable

a list of things to see

1.
lines of people
oblivious to the fire
inside themselves

2.
footpaths once trodden
by heels of revolution

3.
summer skies
without light

4.
boxes painted
with household garbage

5.
a language that sounds
the way it is spelt

6.
the space right in front
of you
that is eternally dissapearing
behind.

the way things fit together

they set fire
to the ships in the sky

and brought
to our bedsides
delicate beverages
to calm us.

a sick feeling
forming
in our stomachs

clutching
one-way
tickets

we take
photographs
of every cloud

passing,

a time-lapse immigration

that smears seconds

across the equator.

seven

do not speak to us
of history
in this place

do not speak to us
at all.

seven
pilgrimages
in seven years

& already i wonder
if this journey is my journey
at all.

***

the city walls
pulse with a language
understood only

by those
who have just been born
& those about to die.

the city gate opens,

i close my hand
over my mouth

one last time.

the thought

report card

the ghosts of the city
were everywhere that night

cascading down escalators

sleeping in doorways
of houses all over
the eastern suburbs.

you sat in a hot portable classroom
staring at interesting cloud formations,

still seven songs separating


your ghosts from mine.

the alphabet one feels with their fingers to read

we stayed for days
on the underpass

watching mechanical music
fall from the sky

watching cars spill onto
the streets beneath us.

unimaginable colours
marbled across
dashboards and windscreens

you held
all ten fingers

up to the sky

a highway semaphore

i imagined
what radio waves
might haunt
the crisp clean air
around us.

word of the day

we played ugly politics
and we played beautiful politics.

we debated
thoughts
that had not even
been formed yet

and they moved through
our bodies
like shadows
passing behind coloured glass.

i wrote
and you erased

two simple codes to

obfuscate
the same meaning,

soliloquies

that we could not anticipate,
let alone control.

music in the morning

i awake
with a nose bleed
on a train
that does not stop.

the whole carriage
of commuters
are whistling
the same strange
song

all around me,
a symphony
of blood letting.

one line

your fingers
cluster
around my collarbone,
a necklace
of invisible veins.

***

tall ships
in a distant
harbour,
you don't even
hear your phone
ring.

***

i remember
seven or eight
places
that existed
before you.

mesh

a love letter
written in braille

-for your fingers only-

provides the map
to an economy of shadows

where we trade words
instead of numbers

and the ones we don't believe in

are always worth the most.

warning sign.

a row of coke bottles
stand to attention

stand in
the formation
of ten pins

you ask me to
step outside

and i remind you
that there is no out side.

out side

does not exist.

we are momentarily distracted

by the reassuring sight
of a couple waltzing
on a deserted railway platform.

dusk.

the hour that things
begin to
turn around.

a single airplane
dangles
behind a haze
of overhead wires

we take our weapons out
the moment it passes.

in this war

everything
must be interpreted
as a warning sign.

barneys

i wouldn't have called it an epiphany, but it was one of those illuminating moments. one of those moments where somehow objects can speak to you, but people cannot.

violet was already more than half an hour late. i was half an hour into a warm flat beer. over the years i'd grown fond of this ritual of ours. the same table every time, the same view of the church across the road. violet arriving as one schooner has turned into three and i am glowing as much from expectation as i am from the alcohol.

well, well.

you haven't changed a bit, harry

the words sigh from her mouth, scraps of hair and earrings and shopping bags float all around her.

i sense her body relax as she slides onto the bar stool, long fingers clasping around a cold glass of beer, the stress of the day- the week- slipping away into the periphery.

what have you brought for me this time?

a glimmer of a smile flashes coyly across my face.

the dance has begun.

what makes you think i have anything for you?

violet takes up my cue effortlessly.

well,

i let the words ooze out from between my lips,

in all the years we've been coming here, i've never gone home empty handed...in one way or another...

i don't see why this year would be any different. besides, i know you, i know you couldn't stop yourself...

ha!

her wild eyes flick a sideways glance at me, a look that brings a familiar tingling across my skin.

well, i might as well get it over and done with, you asshole...

reaching into one of her bags.

hardly listening

coming in
to taiwan
the lights
of the city

are probably
a film projector
trained on a wall of clouds

it is impossible to get
good staff
in this country

you confide in me

through pursed lips

a half-peeled mandarin
in your hand.

and i imagine,

that for you,
it is.

the white desert

we drove through desolate
pop art landscapes
for the good part of the day
our conversation drooled back and forth
without punctuation
or cadence

and we came close to achieving
extraterrestrial beauty
in those brief exchanges.

one day

happy accident

(im)permanent

permanent

she seemed to just
fall
into music,

notes touching
her fingers like

after

thoughts.

i opened
the tiny cabinet
of her chest

and found a
joseph cornell
arrangement
of peculiar objects

sitting
beneath
the skin.

instruments
for recording
the sound a

memory makes

when it
fades away.

gadgets
for amplifying
the hum of

brain waves

whenever they think about

sex,
or death,
or the impossible.

first place on earth

last place on earth

we set about writing
an experimental history
for the town in which we were born.

we collected imaginary archives
and transparent maps,

re-zoning memories
as if they were

checkpoints.

we placed Geiger meters
at the four corners of the city
and listened for the sound of

occupations,
desertions
and revolutions

but heard nothing.

we painstakingly transcribed
the testimonials of lunatics,
and used these stories as
the crux of our fluid chronology

a timeline
forming somewhere
at the back of our minds,

a Rosetta stone
remininding us:

the map will have to be
re-written

and we will be the ones
to write it.

the weather report

a snow storm
on stanley street

the two things
in my mind are:

emphysema and economic rationalism

when i see you

photographing the sky

with a giant lens,

a small man
frozen
beneath
his camera.

heart disease

silent night

shadowy figures
with exaggerated limps

food poisoning

prostitutes on elizabeth street

shift workers

on midnight breaks with

no one to talk to on
a sunday night.

another day

a series of tiny canvases,
each painted
with a single word,
arrive on the doorstep
this morning.

i place one artwork
on each fingertip,
there are seven in
total.

[another
day
bleeds
inertia
between
the
sheets]

my quickly clenched fist
destroys the
prophecy

words lay scattered
before the house
like newspapers.

war of words

poetry wars
were raging
all across
the country
when i awoke
this morning.

who else would think
to use the gentle weapons
of eloquence,
assonance
and irony

than men
on the brink
of romance?

upon hearing
the news
i ran out
into the street

and began breaking
car windows
with my bare fists.

i wanted to start
a magnificent revolution
of decadence,
indulgence
and pretension

i wanted to prove
the ancient adage

that the pen
is mightier
than the sword

by stabbing out strangers'
eye balls
with my blue bic biro.

task at hand

it was in the fifteen
brief minutes
just before dawn
that we made our first mistake.

you braced yourself
against the wind
in my thick grey coat

and watched the frozen smile
melting
down my face.

we had instructions
written in the only language
we could understand,
but we weren't counting
on being beaten
to the mark.

you'd bought just enough
bruce springsteen bootlegs
to get us through the night

and maybe that delirium
of testosterone
had left us
weak and spent

or perhaps
we were never
cut out
in the first place
for
the task at hand.

a new heart

dancing cheek to cheek
in an empty warehouse

the floor is the consistency
of a tidal wave.

i marvel
at the way my body
assimilates

everything you leave inside of me

like an organ transplant
like growing a new heart

made from my tissue

and yours.

Christine

If it bleeds,
it bleeds.

you thought as you
picked up the kitchen knife.

All morning long
that block of ice
could not numb the life
that throbbed so reluctantly
in your member.

Lino,
the patio,
the soft afternoon light
of Sydney in winter.
The sound of the
television
on in the other room.

You pulled the dial
around to zero
Threes times
you repeated that action
your hand a shadow
hovering over the telephone.

Ambulance, please.

37 Williams St
Kingscross.

The moment you put down
the receiver,
you brought the knife
down on yourself
as well.

The first sex change operation
ever performed in Australia.

Yes, it is urgent.

There is a woman here bleeding to death.

insideout

a flourish of tongues
scraps of dark hair
and unfamiliar train stations

six hours
separates
all of your life
before this moment
with everything about to
happen next.

a raised platform,
a succession of thuds,
that may have come from
within
your ribcage
or without.

a tourist in your own city

less than one week
in the city of light
and we have already chosen
brand new names
for all our old diseases.

announcements
boom out across
the streets,
nonsensical combinations
of dada poetry
that turn passer-bys
back and forth
on the footpaths,
navigating the invisible maze
of sound in their minds.

***

we’d made paintings
that breathed in our pockets,
living capsules of pigment
to carry about
like mobile phones:
stroking, clutching
whispering to.

we’d penned multiple
sonatas for posterity,
pieced together from notes
found lying on the footpaths

our final rauschenberg homage
sculptures of invisible skin
built on the frames of our bodies.

we’d birthed
panic
the colour of kerouac,
the colour of metal

deposits
built up in our blood like silt
a reminder of
substances
we had ingested or inhaled
sometime in our childhood
and would remain with us
indefinitely.

blink

a room ringed with braille
a ceiling of hallucinations
fours storms approaching
from each corner

a memory cached in
timelapse
between
two distracted fingers
skin that moves against itself
blind to its own touch.

paris sous les bombes

floating barefoot
on a sea of driftwood
i made a promise to myself
to sell my shares
and donate
the money to charity.

there were wild horses
frolicking
with women
in white bikinis
on the shores of an ocean
that glittered like my rolex.

we could almost hear music
beneath the hum of
the generator,
you bought yourself
a set of tannoy speakers
so you could amplify
your prayers
across the beach.

the colour you turn before you wake

by dawn
there was nothing left
but the highway
and the sea.

we had abandoned the thin
wall and the roadside
karaoke
washed up against a desperate
ocean many hours ago

on that cold road
i felt the hot breath
of a mexican woman
whispering in my ear:

i can always tell
where a man is going,
by where he's been.

summon

that night was the first time
we had seen rain for
thirteen years

the people knew at once that
some kind of special ceremony
had been performed

the flocks of white birds
lacing the clouds
as they circled overhead

the ebb of dark music
on the wind,
moving through air
like insence might

seemed to suggest
that something
foreign
had been summoned.

***

the ball of your palm
over my eyelids
keeps me guessing
for a whole five minutes
as to what is about
to happen next.

you tell me that
all sound
comes from silence
and
all sound
returns to silence.

my lips part softly
as you speak
i can almost taste
those quiet, desperate
words.

***

we slept flat
like sheets of rice paper
beneath a sky so full
it looked as if it might
take flight
and take us with it.

no longer in japan
we dreamt of fabric
soft enough to cushion
our desires

in our minds
strolled through markets
in downtown kyoto

searching for the perfect
kimino
to cocoon ourselves within.

a japanese bookshop

her face
distorted
with laughter

the glean of light
from the dashboard

halfway between his house
and the city,
all of the roads
start to look
the same.

waterloo

the sky tends to do
incredible things
behind the suicide towers
at this hour of the morning.

you always call them
ghettos in the sky
but through the hazy mist
of dawn rain,
they could almost be
ivory fingers
tickling the belly
of the clouds.

red door

allen

his nails were bitten down so that the tips of his fingers resembled bulbous turnips swelling up from the earth.

i pressed the barley sugar between his lips, they parted with a dry crackle, revealing the cold moist interior of his mouth. i let my hand linger there for a moment, sensing his taste buds moisten as he savoured the sugary pellet, a sweet film developing at the corners of his mouth as he sucked at the lolly.

after a moment i let my hand fall away, watching the old man relish in the onslaught of flavour, his wrinkly eyelids slinking down like a toad as he swallowed.

loop

it should sound like a voiceover
sent back to earth
from a space station
in the future.

if you could muster
the tone
of a history book
summing up this civilisation
in a single sentence.

you would be close.


***


how would you say it

if you were to tell the story backwards

if you were to turn the words inside out

if you were left only with letters?


how would you say it

if you were to devise an entire theorem

to explain pattern and form

to account for dynamics and tempo

and then break it?


how would you say it

if you were to say nothing at all.

shoes in the sky

a whole rack
of freshly pressed
perfect suites
poisons my mind
this morining.

on the telephone
your words,
so weak,
they don't even make it
down the receiver.

they hang like empty shoes
clinging to powerlines
by their laces,
decorating the skies
of a thousand suburbs
that i have never been through.

right beneath our feet

it always seemed
such a bittersweet
metaphor

the word
eternity

written in
chalk.

everything but

hooked up
locked down
stitched up
on board

you had it

all tied up with string.

frames

all of the men
were pulling up
the train tracks
they had laid
the night before.

i took a long bath
and shaved off every hair
on my body

you found me just
before i started
on the skin.

***

waking this morning
as if rising from a coma,
the world a sketch book
slowly
filling itself in.

i stumble home,
stoned & cold,
with bags of unassembled
curtains
and dirty clothes.

***

i could have used
cardboard boxes
to build
a home for you

but we marched away
like emperor penguins,

empty handed.

verse chorus verse

trees bulge
with translucent
bulbs

series of strange numbers
appear in
unidentifiable patterns

crowds of people
burn furniture
on their front lawns

layers of sound
fall like a universe
of curtains.

eight small teaspoons

during that period of my life i was only eating sugar.

i cooked copious sugar meals and kept what i could not eat in the freezer.

i hunted down fresh fairy floss with the unhinged menace of a vietnam veteran.

i stalked through fields of sugar cane drinking diluted sugar juice.

even when the sugar insomnia hit i could not stop. sugar haunted my dreams.

i quickly began to resemble a speed freak. it became impossible to concentrate or keep still.

i was constantly under attack by swarms of invisible sugar mosquitos.
i swatted frantically, but nothing could repel the insects from the taste of my saccharine blood.

despite all this, i continued to consume nothing but sugar.

i became a connoisseur of different varieties and blends of sugar.

hard white cubes
soft moist brown
fine caster
crunchy raw
powdery icing
runny treacle
cane and palm
golden demera

it was plain to see that this had progressed from merely
searching for something sweet.

i was completely under the sugar spell.

sound stands still

there were 12 seconds
of perfect pitch

the frequency of a nuclear bomb

sound as clear as light

we closed our eyes
and brought our fingers
to our lips

an instant detox

bodies empty of everything.

swimmingly

we slept in the ocean all night.
it was the only place i could take you
to regulate your body temperature.

you dissapeard
into that warm dark mass
that holds its heat
like a palm.

hard and fast

my sister sits
at her kitchen table
shooting the chandelier
with a rifle.

pellets of glass
explode all around her
like frozen peas bursting
in their pods.

if i have learnt one lesson
from my family,
it is that no rule
is hard and fast.

Veronica

Veronica had a toothpaste stain on her black button-up shirt and a plate of cold eggs in front of her. It was immediately apparent that nothing had changed. Well one thing had changed. I had come to the realisation that in a situation like ours, there are only two actions that you can take. You can either let go and walk away. Or you can hold on tighter than ever.

I had arranged this meeting with Veronica, out of the blue, because I had the intention of performing the latter action. However, this was not going to be a simple task. We had not seen each other for three years. And then there was the matter of 'The Curse'.

I noticed her from the moment I walked into the café because she was doing her typical nervous thing. Whilst pretending to read the newspaper she would neurotically survey the room over the top of the page. Pathological behaviour such as this, that most people would find unconscionable, was what made me want her back like nothing I had ever wanted before.

always will be

of course strange things
had been happening in the sky.

i had been reading murakami all night.

fed on visions of highly saturated
disaster, magic items of clothing
and

convinced
that some things are
inevitable

even before they begin.

war zone

my hands are
flamethrowers.

i could have fought you,
but instead i produced a
white flag
and together we painted it
red.

***

all along the international date line
flowers were blooming from miniature
window boxes.

we carefully allotted ourselves
rations
but they were devoured
by the constant
changes in time.

***

your finger
in my belly
button
as gentle as

a grenade pin

pulled out
quietly
into a place
where silence rings out
like shellshock.

texas tea

we sat in the yard all night
and set off
black fireworks.

you & me

fat sparks raining down upon us
in an oil spill of light.

gradually you turn to me,
cloaked in that thin greasy slick

and my shivering body just
disappears

a nib

dipped into the darkest ink.

gastrology

you send me a txt msg
with my horoscope in it.

it says:

with so many guns in this city,
no wonder
you’re shooting yourself in the foot.

and i believe every word.

***

there will be three more hours
of darkness
before the city lifts its head
on the morning set aside
for remembering
its softest revolution.

i brush my teeth with tea
and take a photograph out of the window.
the car horns
have already started for the day,
although it is doubtful that they ever stopped.

we hear reports that
crowds are massing
at the people power monument.
i’m drinking calamansi juice
and concentrating on the sensation
of ice rings on my tongue.

***

belt slung low
white teeth and orange shirt
i stuff chocolate cake
into your back pockets
and we walk down the middle
of the road
hand in hand
believing that we can
stop traffic.

prostitutes in ludicrous outfits
are soliciting all around us
we buy some shabu-shabu,
two bowls of halo-halo
and drink eighteen litres of water.

somewhere along the line
you notice
that i have
taken off my shoes.

tip of the tongue

we perform a valentines day vivisection

rows of red paper hearts
pour out from the sky,
dangling like messy handwriting in the thick clouds.
leaking paper blood into the gutters.

you are still humming to yourself
a body memory

it takes me a whole morning to remember
the tune

(& for that moment
i thought i had found
a soft place to fall.)

rest in peace

we'd seen cemeteries in every city in the southern hemisphere.

-i was looking for a place to take you when you die-

the smell of cremation smoke buttered my lips.

kids were singing karaoke from the tops of tombstones.
chewing american gum.
john lennon echoing from grave to grave.
and i imagined
all these people.

it was late in the afternoon
by the time we left the funeral procession.

on the way home the cab driver was playing country music.

'pass me by, if you're only passing by'
'pass me by, if you're only passing by'

i thought to myself, i might just be
developing a sense of humour.

wendy

there was some kind of tension between us. she wore cowboy boots, had remarkably good posture and i hadn't seen her for three years.

she picked her way across the cafe towards my table. i stared intently at my newspaper, pretending that i had not noticed her come in the door. this meant that when she finally sat down in the booth in front of me, i had to elaborately feign surprise at seeing her there.

"Wendy!", i exclaimed. "You look marvelous!"

Wendy said nothing. My coffee and eggs lay cold and untouched. She fiddled with the cameo brooch clipped to the collar of her blouse. She crossed her legs and then re-crossed them. It was apparent that Wendy would not be making this easy for me.

st augustine

another room with another view

postcards

i'd already lost ten days to february.

each morning, i would send you a postcard
with detailed instructions for seeing the world.

on the front
the photograph would always be the same.

on the back
i would say,

picture this:

thousands of bodies
embroiled in each other before the bay.

the street lights are neon hallucinations
coloured in by a cacophony of sound.

there is an expectation
that the couples might all
start kissing simultaneously,

although you do not see this happen.

white lanterns are raised to the sky.
in red letters they say,

'Breathe Life into your grand Expressions of Love'.


picture this:

a landscape of synthesia.
the merging of the senses

like a horizon lost between
sky and sea.

you put your arm around my waist,
forming an equator across my body.

clouds move backwards above us

the Southern Hemisphere is hot and sticky.

the Northern Hemisphere is colder than ever.

room with a view

manila truck

manila bikes

health

you traced an image
of a desperately celibate skyline
somewhere on the back of my hand.

all of these cities
we've built beneath my body
will melt like dynamite
in time.

-limbs need to be lost-

i woke up at 6am,
still drunk from the night before,
and gave myself a hair cut.

i'd got drunk on everything,
on every liquid i could find-

on saliva.
on humidity.
on tears running down the sides of old buildings in country towns.
on science fiction.

i'd left my best friend
in the city
with a man who told us
'my brother and i are down and out'

i'd adopted the soft sort of vultures
and the hard sort of pop songs.

all night long i'd roamed the perimeter of town,
looking for people to attack with the stem of my guitar.

i'd channelled the most vicious diminished chords
through gritted teeth

but

you hung me
like a noose of fake pearls,

kissing me in the same breath
you told me i looked like marlene dietrich,

and i was still choking from the lies.


it took you months to come to terms with my magic powers,

-although now i think you find them quite charming-

the way i can read your mind
the way my eyes change colour every time i blink
the way i only sleep for six minutes every night

and that for every waking moment
i make a star or a hurricane or a traffic light
go off for you.

clerks

sometimes i find myself
sitting in the middle
of an empty room
trying to string together
random movie titles
in the form of dada poems:

in the naked jungle of a prozac nation
a master and commander
find a time for dancing
with the princess bride.

at 10 to midnight
the children of dune
hold a monsoon wedding-
oh, the secrets and lies
of quiet days and random hearts.

this exercise reminds me
that there is no such thing as poetry;

only simple collisions
of the words you always wanted to say

only simple collisions
of the words you could never say.

a certain kind of symmetry

it was as if we thought the exact
same thing,
although we thought it in the opposite way.

we kept edging closer & closer together
until we were standing

so far apart

that normal emotions
were no longer recognised or experienced

and it takes a

full circle

to bring you back to where you started.

all of our footsteps
occur in this formation

spaces & shapes
that never end
but collapse back into themselves
as they go round and round again.

for the ages

he spat something in my ear

i think he was saying
that i looked sexy
but the words were muffled
by thick daubs of sweat and testosterone
sticking to his upper lip.

he walked with a posture
that certain men cultivate-

shoulders attacking the air before them,
each step thrusting forward
like a sex act.

ramadan was over in the western suburbs,
an event
marked by a miraculous collection of shoes
splattered on your landing.

sequined thongs & coloured slippers
congregating on the lino like prayer matts.

i’d spent the night with you in an
industrial estate
trying to capture
something for the ages,
but returned with only
an empty bag of twisties, a chemical
induced headache
& the thought that
keeping this up
is something akin to locking eyes
with a stranger on the train:

caught together for a moment
& then apart

unable to stay staring
unable to look away.

google earth poem

she spat a mouthful of acid into the night
& looking up mumbled
you know when there are so many
stars in the sky
that it looks like fireworks?

when i used to call to ask where you were
you always answered simply
on my way to wherever you are, baby.

& i would wonder
where on earth that could be…

roof

roof and tree

road and sky

road

rest

mountain cloud

mountain grass

grass and tree

grass and lookout

grass and fence

grass

closer than they appear

mastectomy dreams

It was just after 9pm
and a sharp pain on the left side
of my chest
suddenly convinced me that I had
breast cancer.

In a silent spree of hypochondria,
I began mentally evaluating
the implications of my condition.

I imagined telling my family, my friends.
I envisaged their distress, their devastation.

I however, felt surprisingly nonchalant about the news.
I was overcome by a zen calmness
that bordered on existential enlightenment.

I believed, quite abruptly, that our earthly bodies are merely transient vessels.
I knew that my sickness would enable me to transcend my physical form.

I flexed my upper left arm and tried
to comprehend how my chest would feel with this absence.

I considered options such as
silicone replacements
and a life of padded bras.

wind farm

shopping list poetry

i feel like i’m coming apart without you.
this devastation does not take place in a dramatic way.

it happens in a tiny pieces,
one at a time,
kind of way.

it’s not like bridges are falling.

there is no celine dion crescendo to my longing.

just pieces

like a phantom limb
like an arc of pink cherry blossoms
like a masonic temple
like a tiny painkiller in my palm
like a whole list of metaphors that,
despite the tricks of language,
cannot quite convey

these days without poetry
where i can walk beneath a wall of colour…

& not a thing.

body like bread

feeding myself on sweaty bodies
& kylie minogue
while planes crash all around me.

i want to put this
to pictures.

i content myself
by sitting with you in the corner
pulling out all of my piercings

one by one

until my empty body
is perforated and un-jewelled. i find its

eastern-most-point,

it might be a rib or a shoulder,

and break it.

in my hands
the bones come apart like bread.

i consider, for once, thinking about something
other than my self

and we all begin to eat.

to all the cool kids

all kinds of dirt
all kinds of words

& you always know exactly
where to put the punctuation.

put it right there between us

and dance around it

dance right on top of it

pull off its shirt and dance right
up against it.

the longer i watch you do this
the more i abhor politics and art

the more music stops making sense to me.

& the only things i care about
are hats and dresses and shoes.

redfernrain

flamestreet

flametower

flamesky

podlove

we were standing so close together
that i could not hear you breathe.

but i could hear
fragments of guitars humming.
the reverberations from your ipod.

and you from mine.

you were listening to godspeed.
i was listening to sigur ros.

and i thought,
this is post-rock love.

a deep breath

I smelled his neck,
She said.

Dancing around me in circles
we were
listening to early U2.

Sunday Bloody Sunday.

The neck belonged to Bono.
The Zoo TV Tour.
She was 15 years old and staking out the band at their hotel.

Bono had singled her out of the crowd of fans, and arms flung open to pose for the cameras, pulled her in close, to the nape.

She had mumbled into it,
“You smell good”.

He smelled of cigars and whiskey and aftershave.
I could see the remains of that schoolgirl in her guarded grin.
Just how I imagined a rock star should smell.

“Well”, he had said. With that accent of his. “Take a deep breath”.

And she had inhaled the musky scent so deeply that all of her other senses dissolved. She became colour blind and deaf. Her skin numb, her tastebuds taken.

The song finished. Another 80s track came on. Simple Minds.

All these years later, I could still sense that smell faintly on her skin. The brush with fame. Lingering still.
The way a scent does.

There are days when they are wrong about the weather.

On Darlinghurst road
i had almost three quarters
of that cigarette down my throat

before i was struck with the most
overwhelming urge

To rip the music
out from under your nails.

All those riffs
that i thought were ours

(silence)

were yours only.

(sound)

picnics, fluorescent lights, the road.

(silence)

I though we felt
the same thing
that we felt it together.

I was mistaken.

I felt nothing.

nothing you can say that can't be sung

for you i formed
-in the back of my mouth-
an entire phonetics of forgetting.

i nursed it there
-amongst saliva and gums-
creating hypotheses and systems
that sounded more like slumber than science.

it only occurred to me later
that i should have sung it for you

i owed you that much at least

a pathetic karaoke opera

that would echo
in your ears forever.

blitz

i could already see
this whole week
unfolding before me
in a blitz of haikus.

only
that
perfect
symmetry

could capture in one

Inhalation & Exhalation

the

Rise & Fall

of an empire.

the right and proper thing

I walked across the car park just as the sun was coming up. During the night burnouts had appeared on the asphalt in formations that resembled crop circles. I thought momentarily about how the patterns of civilisation inscribed on the earth would look from the sky.

I still had that buzzing feeling in the side of my neck that I always get from ice. I kept rubbing a particular point on my shoulder with my thumb knuckle. I convinced myself that this amateur acupuncture could cure my comedown.

I needed to find that photo booth. I clearly remembered the inside of it. Where we had fucked madly, feeding sweaty coins into the money slot to squeeze out blurry shots of our entwined limbs. This city still seemed unfamiliar to me, especially at this hour of the morning. I had no idea what the booth looked like from the outside.

However, I did have the photos in my back pocket. They were burning a hole there like little squares of kryptonite. I’d thought to use them for directions to the booth, believing that they would instinctively guide me like thumbs on an ouija board. But drenched in the post-dawn glow of the car park my feet were drowning in the bitumen. I could not move. I could not conceive which direction to head in. My internal compass was broken. Not that it ever really worked. It had led me straight to you and that was one of the most fucked up pieces of navigation in my life.

I pulled out a packet of chewing gum from my bag and shoved all seven pieces in my mouth at once. I started chewing ferociously, working up the bile in my stomach, sloshing around great wads of saliva in my mouth. Sucking and slurping on the lump of white rubber like a cow chewing cud.

The more I chewed, the hotter the bile in my stomach burned, until it seethed like the lump of kryptonite, as if I had pulled it out of my pocket and shoved it down my throat like a fist. The bile began to stream from my mouth in spurts of magma, vomit erupting all over the car park. My body convulsing with spasms of nausea. Ejecting every last drop of fluid from my abdomen. Chunks of our respective hearts. You told me that you had done the right and proper thing by breaking mine.

mountains and mountains

Everything in moderation, including god and taxes. This mantra, imparted upon her by working class parents, formed the crux of my mother’s outlook on the world. While she was growing up this saying was constantly repeated in situations as varied as dinner table chat to family holidays. It is the kind of humble protestant sentiment common to people of my grandparents’ generation. It is coloured by a tinge of great depression hangover and a slathering of wry Australian humour. Both of my grandparents existed with the living memory of the depression; the susso, the bread and dripping for dinner. Of that unwavering sense that everything you have could at any minute conceivably disintegrate. Like currency. My mother told me many stories about the hardship suffered by her parents as she was growing up. The way my grandmother would rub the hardback covers of red books against her cheeks every morning because she could not afford to buy rouge. The way my grandfather would save the chicken that he won in a meat raffle all year for Christmas dinner.

It is clear how these small privations influenced the way my mother brought me up, despite social mobility having firmly rooted her in the burgeoning strata of the middle class. When I was a little kid my mother often threatened me with the 'rule of diminishing returns’. This rule states that the more you indulge in something, the less satisfying it becomes. My mother would quote this rule at me in supermarkets when I would plead with her to buy me lollies. She would use it a rationale to counter the desire for immediate gratification that all young children posses. And she often used it on herself as a method of self-control. When dieting she would think of the ‘rule of diminishing returns’ to justify why she did not want that second piece of chocolate cake.

I’d never tried it before. It’s sort of like heroin, he said. The way nothing can rival that first time. The original utter fulfilment can never be reached again. The flies kept distracting his hand from the steering wheel as he swatted away like an orchestra conductor. But there are a lot of things in life that are like that. We were back on the road, with nothing but mountains around us. I wanted to keep driving forever. At least until the gullies and canyons swallowed us up into their rocky bellies. At least until we crashed head first into some tender cliff that would absorb us like a portal to another universe. I looked out of the back window. Before us, behind us, only mountains.

And mountains and mountains.