outside the window III

adelaide
breeze blows
daylight
saving
cool
red wine
winks
outside the window
the first leaf
yet to fall
a caul of cloud
covers
the new born moon
on pause
before the dead
rise
discard the shroud
and breathe

outside the window II

At 38,000 feet
Felicitiy's plump
jelly bean
pink lips
glisten.
Her skin is
stroke-me-smooth
cream pale
punctured once
beneath her
bottom lip.
Grey wolf eyes
stare into mine,
Can I help you with anything?
Outside the window
the sky is
slap, bang
in your face
blue.
Clouds
dazzle whiter
than
washing powder
advertisments.
February ends.
One of us
is in trouble.
I tell it
the only way
I know.
Face autumn with the
Legions of Love
at your shoulder.

Outside the Window

Journal extract

4 February 2005

In Melbourne with nothing to read.

Outside the icons of Melbourne ting! their little bells. Overhead planes are on the business of coming and going. Ting! Daughter Hope snores on. Her phone vibrates.with messages.

After a week in the Fryers Forest community with compost toilets, and minimal water supply I have had my first shower and brushed my hair. It was showing the beginnings of a giant dread lock. I am clean. ting!

There has been a huge storm in Melbourne, the Yarra flooded, a boy swept away, a tree fell on a car and squashed a man, branches fell, electricity failed, ting! banks broke, back yards sank, front rooms filled with water, leaves flailed from branches, ting! trams water bound, cars piling up.

It is chaos, a friend of Stewart’s phoned.

Why would you want to come?

Stay away!

But my brother believes the news makes it sound worse than it is. Ting! Cath wanted us to cancel

Don’t go today. she said. But I wanted to go and now alone in this white modern city accommodation I wonder why I decided to leave their comfy house so early.

We miss the babe and the vibrant boys. We are sad and have to eat ice cream to seduce our loneliness ting! I text them and they respond. “Hazel has been miserable all day and the boys went to bed crying.”

Outside the window is a grey brick wall and flocks of European birds. Starling, lark, dove and sparrow. No more the plover, rosellas, galahs, crows wrens of Stewarts hippy house in the forest. When Hope and I see the feral sparrows we remember the cute Mongol sparrow flocks digging in the snow fluffed and plumped out against the cold. It was only then, seeing the sparrow in its own environment we understood love for the tiny bird and how they were missed by the first colonists.

We are surrounded by apartments but we see no one I watch a window where dishes are stacked. They did not move all day yesterday but this morning different dishes have taken their place and the door onto a balcony is open. I saw the pink outline of a body through the opaque glass. But other than that no sound no sight of human habitation. In Mongolia ting! you only had to look out your window to see the lives of hundreds of people and you could always hear someone shouting, crying, laughing, fighting, working, all night long. From my Ulaan Bataar apartment I could see into dozens of other apartments, people playing cards, cooking, cutting up meat, drinking vodka and tea, watching television. From six stories up I could see them walking below outside warming themselves in the winter sunlight, talking in groups, staggering home drunk. But here in Australia nothing. Roads and homes appear empty. The footpaths are deserted. No one shouts to children playing or greets their neighbours, the milk man does not call “Soo Araa” and no one goes outside with their jugs to be filled for breakfast.

The trams have stopped ting tinging and a crumpet pops in the the toaster. My daughter’s phone clicks and beeps as she messages her friends.

It is nine o’clock.

untitled

my censored pen leaks
a still born dream
a reptile tailed tooth grin
a gutted insect crawl
connection extinction
drug framed existence
don't search
the black strokes and curves
for meaning
there is no gospel
no testament
no this is your life message
memory raises
pitted bones
under the sun's broken rays

cat-o-nine

his cat-o-nine tails
left no mark
he takes aim
at the love filled heart

he whipped mine
whipped mine
till it bled
lashed mine
lashed mine
drained it
of it's red

his cat-o- nine  tails
he takes it
as his leisure
with little understanding
of where i find pleasure

proof of god

there is a god
he created sunday
put iron man comp
on the tele

Untitled

This morning
the sun rose
in pink sky.
The moon sank
like the cold
grey stone
it is.
The last full moon of Kay's life
was my thought.

instead of doing tax

She is polishing instead of doing tax
sweeping instead of doing tax
cleaning instead of doing tax.
That girl is afraid of doing tax.
All those
numbers
bits of paper
statements
getting it wrong
loosing stuff
not knowing
where she filed
things.
Accountants with
long noses
look down.
Nose through her
bad filing
see her
untidy
slutty
nature.
Next door
the electricians
use a saw.
She listens
instead of doing tax.
In the kitchen
the kettle boils.
She listens
instead of doing tax.
The clock strikes
twelve.
She listens
instead of doing tax.
If her lover were here
she would fondle him
instead of doing tax.
If her woman were here
she would lick her
instead of doing tax.
She would even try
to write a poem
instead of doing tax.
She hasn't written 
for forty days
instead of doing tax.

 

This is what cities look like when you burn coal and manufacture everything for the rest of the world.

Lanzhou, Gansu province, China