One part valium, one part L.S.D.,

one part iron infusion, one part time machine.

One part stinging nettle, a new pair of shoes,

sunglasses without smudges, novitiate on the loose.

One part ninja, wallflower, observant black sheep,

one part placating the ghosts who ride with me.

One part kitten calendar, two parts self-harm;

smile and strike the match, standing on the bomb.

 

One part fear of flying, three parts failure,

the butcher, the baker, the candlestick maker.

Six points the bright star of incantation,

blind drunk when I stop at the petrol station.

One part motherfucker, two parts go to ground,

lying naked in that meadow trying not to make a sound.

or the St Joseph’s nuns at The Haven, Emu Park, Australia

 

the slow road north –

roadworks and the sight of

an overturned car

 

blessed are those who wake in a bed made up by nuns

 

wrapped up in green leaves

in the convent garden –

a small package of ants

 

on the beach

the wind snatches away

the straw hat he left in the car

 

blessed are those who wake in a bed made up by nuns

 

a boundary fencepost

is now driftwood

and salted white

 

like the television ad i heard one night

a little brown owl calls

where the bloody hell are you-oo?

 

blessed are those who wake in a bed made up by nuns

 

uprooted tree –

i upturn the Buddha’s advice

and meditate in the roots of trees

 

a kookaburra gang

not jovial at all

laughs while persecuting a magpie

 

blessed are those who wake in a bed made up by nuns

 

rainy day –

in the mirror of the dark bathroom

i look so young!

 

without much sun

the sea is silvery-cobalt

and stretches on and on

 

blessed are those who wake in a bed made up by nuns

 

ninety years ago, my jilted grandmother

came here

and decided she’d brave mothering alone

 

blessed are those who wake in a bed made up by nuns

if we discard paper more carefully –

origami-like – firming each slow fold

with the flat of a thumb, if we bury

apple cores when the earth is damp and cold,

 

if we throw tin to the salt of the sea,

if we sandpaper down our dry mountains

of ball rubber, if we just plant more trees

to spine land-crabs to the land, if the sin

 

of tyres could be given to mosquitoes,

battery acid to the ants, if this new

Pacific Island of bags could feel the throes

and ultra-violence of the sun, would You

 

spare us the passive aggression of your ire,

the bile of your spit and the tantrum of your fire?

That summer the ride-on was kept in the shed and the long grass

allowed to grow without water remained green above the brows

blowing in dry easterly wiles to knowing which article inspects

snakes and ladders and armies of flying droning creepy crawls

prospering neighbours tut-tutting on to vinyl hifi with refugees

their own labours going as neighbour waste eaten with luscious

long lash going up down downy up lip sewn in sync salad roasts

to whosoever moves that his neighbours must pull out all spooks

 

Ghosts of summers past the time for mowing long lawn cements

itself in place knowing for whosever abides to hang up artworks

must also walk the dog at night all her wiles to avoid poo coups

break wind like law must not obey boat race bobbing into bays

drinking only the best wines as you turn in accomplish buy ups

just is same as rings must pass laws craning to loosen up spools

of light finger cashing and always kowtowing into heaped sacks

burning turns leafy-green money moulds into new sub-prime tips

A: Romancing down the Corner Store

 

Of all those petty signs without credit

And all those puny signs devoid of credit

Of poetry and usury – Open All Hours –

And of our fathers, founding nations by finding

Retirement, pensioned off to a gilt-edged

Security, I won’t stash the usual wad of lies

As such, or tell stories about counting out scratchies

Until a much bigger coup was in store, or remember

How Dulcie, to get even with the Keats’s rule of thumb

Complained about the cockroach – a Handy Food – swallowed

Whole and alive, only to receive an extra – sent upon the bill

‘La Cucaracha!’ ‘La Cucaracha!’ We came to conquer

Napoleon said that, and the Fat Lady shouldn’t wear denim (axiom)

And of our fathers, and of English breakfasts, washed down by some

Foreign store, I say, finders keepers to a nation of shopkeepers

Tit for tat in a game of this and that, in this age of the deep-freeze

Where not only the dollar stands to go soft, and the man on the corner

Who used keep pigeons in a loft, is now respectable, and clean-shaven

Enough to race customers, and buy and run his own LuckySeven

 

B. Of Death and History

 

Where are the YouTube videos to show these things

About ourselves we never see, for instance

Distance from the shop, the next door drapery

Or the time it takes to traverse this space from A to B

And how the World Food Store, if caught on the hop

Must be good, for at least one more long weekend

And then the 20teens, arranged to ease this pain

In lieu of Mogadon, resigned to sun and blue fading

In the rain, came the endless lines of Aldi chains

Where the workers lost, and the shopper stood

To gain confidence; or is this merely the difference

Between – she’s got a nerve, changing channels

On my dream – character and personality, exposed

Again on increasingly smaller machines

Where numb to misery and the crisis in store, no more

No more do we catch what the refrigerator hums

Switching off death and history.

I am wired for delicacy, but the online grocer brings

Only ecstasy, oh how I try not to admire the bourgeoisie

Especially at Xmas and Easter and all year round

Ductility confused with tails of ducks

so A.A. Milne adorable

poking from the surface of the pond.

 

What are the ducks after down there?

Little fish? Elvers? The flagrant stems of waterlilies?

Something glorious in the sediment?

 

Perhaps the pond eels

have heard Edwardian children’s literature

recited by visitors to the pond.

Sound waves travelling through water

— glob glob glob globble

glob glob glob.

 

At this time of day myriad winged insects hover

above the uncut grass

visible because the golden light

reflects off and shines through them.

The lawn gnats rise and fall

like champagne bubbles.

Other insects, bigger, but not much, make a purposeful flight

a beeline! Predating on the little ones.

Now a bird. Another bird.

I’d like to say they are the first

in a stuttering series of red-browed firetails

but it’s a magpie pair I’ve started to take for granted.

Stick around, magpies, poo on the garden

I’m too squeamish and lazy

to keep chooks with their problems

of broodiness and garish foxy death.

 

If I’d used the time I’ve wasted thinking about

good and bad for entomology

I’d know more. At the museum

a woman was drawing sandhoppers.

Not insects, tiny crustaceans.

Her drawings make clear those details lost in photographs.

Later I think drawing also shows how seeing works through time

and so drawing is three dimensional in its way.

Photographs pretend a standstill.

Is that something like what Fay Dowker means about atoms and time?

Anyway, I like her voice and the way she hesitates then extrudes boldness when its needed.

 

The children are designing time machines on A3 paper.

They draw in details: arrows and question marks.

Do they want to go forward, or back?

I’d like to stay here for now. Everyone

stops growing, the dust stays exactly where it is

there are no events, bread

doesn’t get stale, ice doesn’t melt.

 

Here is a photograph of Kyoto Railway Station.

I was once there, four dimensionally, but

I don’t remember the shape of it. I remember walking

with my host family, I remember an enormous shopping centre

the whole thing glossy as a perfume counter.

My host sister confided, Kyoto is famous, and old.

Temples, gardens, shrines.

I saw some of these things, but I don’t remember.

Now here are photographs of the famous Fushimi Inari Shrine.

More than five thousand torii gates!

Stretching into the illusion of an unending path!

That red, like the firetail’s brow

not the red of blood or sunsets.

 

Once something’s on your mind you see it everywhere.

The entrance to a block of units looks like a torii gate.

An ad in The Economist shows torii gates.

Three skinny red gum leaves on the ground make the shape of a torii gate.

 

A ductile person is a silly, a gullible fool.

When I was vegetarian I went to a book launch

the crowd so tight in the room

we moved according to a subtle current.

Sushi made with eel was served.

I made a mental excuse for myself, I was so

hungry, I ate. The eel tasted delicious.

I saw eels in my mind, long and mottled

swimming and brooding. I ate more and more.

I thought about eel traps, woven, a place the eel swims into

and can’t turn back.