Splinters
for Peter Hughes
for Peter Crisp
for Ted Jenner
for Scott King
for Marilynn Webb
a birth too hoped
a life too lived
a death too died
•
counting
mummy’s
bruises
•
STAND BEHIND THIS LINE
•
park grass
spongy
underfoot
magpie
quardle oodling
overhead
•
sun-up /
the brilliance of the day
/ sun-down
•
DO NOT
SPIT HERE
•
CAUTION GLASS BEHIND
•
condemned & privileged to say
what others
don’t
•
all these years to find
he is not even
a pretty face
•
cloudless half-moon waning
•
with each new poem
I slip into something
less comfortable
•
words ‘art’ & ‘craft’
are alive when each
is lived within
each other’s scope
they are not dead nouns but
doing words, of which the work
is evidence of their doing
or perhaps ‘art’ is noun
& ‘craft’ is verb for the
one thing we will
ever do, to live
•
the cockatoos are back
dozens of them
littering the diagonal line of
treetops from St Kilda Road
to Adams Street
•
build a nest
feather a nest
foul a nest
•
‘the future isn’t what it used to be’
Paul Valery
•
better the demons
within
than those
at the door
•
7 am – 6 hot-air balloons
heading east
are you afraid of
death – no, I am frightened
of being alive
do you long for
death – no, in spite of it all
I like to wake up
•
I do not know
who I am
what I do
where I go
•
the search for
validation
is not a valid
enterprise
•
nothing changes
nothing ever changes
heaving the something
into view
which is nothing
•
the magazines –
where poems go
to die
•
lone wolf trash talk –
the wolf
does not lie down
with the dog
except
to eat it
•
don’t ask ‘what
is the meaning of this’
of everything
there are events / elements
you can only take
‘on trust’
(this has nothing
to do with
‘having faith’
•
leaf by leaf
the bodies fall
•
the cloud of
knowing
shape-shifter
color-changer
in & out of
existence
•
trace-elements
those
who, leaving the system aside
still hang on to, oh, something
‘spiritual’, out there
or a sense of
reincarnation, of karmic kalpas
always something left
to let go
•
blue light on horizon
almost disappears when
looking straight at it
but flares to sight
when looking slightly
away from it
•
red wound
of sunrise
blue flash
of sky
•
keeping track of
keeping tracks
•
a life
recollected
in tumult
•
translation : murdering
in one language
what has already been
murdered
in another
•
shortest day
longest night
•
Spirituality Centre
closed for
Improvements
•
empty pocket / full pocket
the Same
•
+
LAST AID
•
old scores for
old sores
•
I am a river
into which I cannot (for Peter Koch
step twice
•
I did not expect
this reckoning
before the end
but I’m glad of it
•
‘put it behind you’
eat it
digest it
shit it
•
my generation
is dying
•
Puritan
APPLICATORS (Ellsworth Kelly
•
heresay
theirsay
•
first tinge of
sunrise
seagull
fly-past
•
you’ll be sorry
if you don’t say
you’re sorry
•
fat chance slim odds
•
WASH
FOR TRAMS
•
life’s too short
for forgiveness
•
inner demons
fill the room
poetry remake 