recent poetry

...making a road by walking...

recent poetry

Sometimes I just randomly write- so I carry a notebook everywhere I go. (if you ever find a purple one near sydney uni, I'm missing it)
some of these are dodgy- I spent way less time on them than the yr 12 ones... they are 'in the moment' poems, trying to articulate feelings and experiences.

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As you drive towards Chatswood on the freeway

The spaghetti roads divide and go their separate ways to North Shore Backwaters

Red and white TV obelisks stand on the horizon

Like hollow steeples, signalling modern values-

and modern aspirations, beside an old stone church

not beaming the right wavelength.

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Driving back from Tent Embassy

I still got the smoke in my hair

I've got the sacred fire in my skin and my clothes.

Aunty says it makes her homesick.

I'm not lost.

am I?

I enter the frenetic envelope of Sydney.

wrong turnoff

delirium winding through Chipping Norton.

The yellow lights blur into a stream of consciousness.

2003

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Even behind riot helmets and steel gazes

their faces show through

anguished

angry
pumped up on amphetamines, it seems

reminding me of nightmares of that movie 'childs play'.

Jan 03

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Angry constable

Sits alone on the back porch

Whiles away the hours.

(hai-ku) 2004

16.3.04

This world we live in

Seems to conspire against subjectivity

by illuminating a hallowed path to fame

as the only way to have a name.

Once in the cold hard light of day

It's clear

this way to recognition

is a hall of mirrors

reflecting the exterior

but discouraging interior reflection.

The bright lights chase all the shadows away

Those shadows that have kept me company before.

I have forgotten them. I have forgotten myself.

I am locked in a template, on the wrong side of the mirror

reacting in ways that are not my own.

Some people

push empty prams under desolate skies...

waking up

to face a chaotic street

buzzing

with the empty harmonies of cars

and the reticulation pumps of

grey fountains in city Places

Floating with the same grit

that you hold between your teeth.

A staged world

With staged smiles

Posing for staged photographs

Taken by unknown cameramen.

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Our descendents are listening

Listening to our words

Watching our actions

And holding their breaths.

Anticipating their futures

Our descendents

They will live on our bones

Will they dance on our graves?

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I object to labels

because they describe a static universe.

I object to history in the past tense

because it denies the dynamism and active nature of social change, placing it on an inevitable plane.

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The glinting yellow lights, like those of a prison, floodlight a runway.

I am in this plane

I am in here, free

I shout in my mind 'I dissent!' 'You should probably lock me up'.

I am in a foreign bathroom now. Clean tiles. An articulate announcement.

The airport is big. Impressive, you'd say.

Marble slabs, tall glass.

An enclosed rainforest.

A subtle dictatorship

That keeps the trolleys obedient.

Consumers are in wonderland.

Smiling Westerners, on branded boards.

Those brands I knew at home

Now take on a new meaning of universal monoculture.

Foreign white people in 'Alternative' backpacker gear walk past.

Wide eyed, admiring

In self-satisfied complacency

Comfortable in their worldviews,

Assimilating borrowed 'culture'.

I'd like to see your alternatives.

I bet you haven't thought about

What goes on behind the glass edifices

I bet you haven't held your breath

And imagined a life without freedom to breathe.

August 2001

worlds away

The shouting and chanting
The deep impassioned ranting
the refugees revolting
Port Hedland on the phone
later
I lie in bed confounded
The experience not yet grounded.
I lean out of the window
look out across the blackened garden
Between leafy trees and beyond the fountain
And the lawnmower strips
a lone streetlight reflects on the wet asphalt
There is a world waiting.

strathfield 2001

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We lived a scattered existence
in an orphanage vacated by the government
Like molluscs we clung
isolated from others by homely armour
until mortgage repayments got too steep.
we left as one does an awkward funeral
not really knowing what to do.
Aug 2002

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Wisdom is sold in the desolate market where none comes to buy, and in the wither'd field where the farmer ploughs for bread in vain. -William Blake

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