I

…………..Somebody was walking way high up in the sky. They hadn’t jumped up there; they’d gotten caught in the rain. Their body was floating smoothly through drops and then pivoting now and then.
…………..There wasn’t any need to pay attention to words or grammar. There wasn’t any requirement of having any imagination because that implied some sort of direction.
…………..A window creaked open, no fly screen was on it, and another floated out to the sound of a train. The breeze got caught on the raindrop and going up pivoted it side to side.
…………..Others did jump up apart from the rain but they had already had their dreams read. Some had dove into pavlova and others had hid themselves beneath shiny orange floorboards. What was important to others were ferns, lush and with the fine sprinkler on. Some had big strawberries and some were on a windy hill with their knees slung over.
…………..The cushions in the room themselves had rain drops slung over them, just like the mountain. The pools were rich and in a swimming pool shape.
…………..Every now and again somebody up high would whistle as another swam out of the crack of the window. They would go through the trees and find shade; they’d be bustled about amidst the branches.
…………..Another again would fly up in a green sheet, as a ghost; camouflaging in with the tree then moving on as superimposed. They’d whistle into the clearest of air which broke like a chip and it had green flecks in it.
…………..The cups were full of crisp water and others would dive in as small children in little dresses and trimmed fringes.
…………..I repeat, no-one’s imagination mattered or bothered anyone as everyone had been drawn in.
…………..Bodies snuck out of cracks of windows and joined the others who had jumped into the sky or been rained in.
…………..The children swam in the water with tiny red goldfish which you thought were moving. The couches really were huge and could be sunken into; swimming in their cushions. Printers were making pieces for dollhouses for the children who had been swimming and they liked especially the figurines of tiny blood clots which moved like sea anemone whenever the wind caught on.
…………..All the bedsheets got blown off and girls in tanned bras had been holding the blood clots and straightening their fringes in silence. They’d been swimming—doing freestyle when a wave would pass and with their eyes closed like that it was like being on a ride. You can soar up onto a wave when it comes and fall off the other side, pushing your head under water before coming up so as to make the part go on the side.
…………..The mountains do the same, usually after the rain. That’s how they reform themselves, with all those walking up in the sky looking down to the symphony. The floorboards are heard as they walk over it before going up with the symphony and all the others in the rain.

II

…………..Mothers were there unifying everything and tiny flecks of talcum powder grew in wisps on their fine arm hairs.
…………..There wasn’t any sound; only emotion in the meal.
…………..Women sketched old women in pencil and groups gathered with snakes to read poetry. Others got together to unify their dances not their poems.
…………..Mothers didn’t quite realize and just purchased roots of plants to place together in the grinder.
…………..The maroon was more brown than red; the green yellow.
…………..Membranous interiors of shells cracked under toes. And the huge screams matched how the face was cut in half when the membership ended and how somebody cared.
…………..The stamping was of weight because no-one said that the beast was chained to the beach.
…………..The grossierity of the bodies was incomparable to the girls but they don’t necessarily concern one another.
…………..Surface textures feel sensual under the skin and there is a large invisible presence. It is possible to build up this presence and move it around.
…………..Someone knew you were always going to be an artist because of the charcoal in your eyes and because of the empty space in the field of the eye when closed. Also because of the mountains occupying you. Also because of the way the green tree was like being underwater when there was wind to you.
…………..The whole lot of everyone came together to hold their mouths in circles, even those freshly flung up with the rain. Algae quivered on up too and they all remarked how they were seaweeds.

III

…………..Three patches of light divided into swimming pool shapes called the body. It immersed itself by dividing into three with nothing but stomachs coming out the other side. The stomachs were of that shape with one grandiose one due to its being impregnated with stream water.
…………..The water was lapped at and squelched and even the long thin ones from up there came down.
…………..Whistles zoomed around in ancient clay which had been glossed. Serpents swam around too and one of them took a ride on one. Others took luxuries in the form of flying up.
…………..The sea-snakes watched, their snouts in chaff bags.
…………..Three dear ones, one little one, sprung up out of meadow grass with a spray of blossom darting up around. All of them slid down slides, rolling over or dropping like pins. The trees swayed with excitement but cut themselves on shiny steel saying no.
…………..Moistness clung to skin and condensation clung there, because somebody had light feet and they were on the mountain. From afar they leapt and a little one slid down. It wasn’t necessary to be surprised that flowers were twinkling and somebody was painting a wall. Even dear ones were sucking on cherry with moistness trickling. Every time they jumped discs of ice came and cherry.
…………..The grasses from the meadow flew up all around someone eating directly without a murmur from teacups. Others came with tape measures to get a glimpse, ending up catching tears in the cups and finding their blood clots there. They put them in the cushions and lay down.
…………..Meadow grasses flung high into the sky where the ones were still moving around. Like wings going up lightly they’d slipped through cracks and gotten out into the rain.

Of white and blue.

The page, the ink,

the shirt, the jeans.

Habits of creation.

Some struggle up a hill

to roll back down,

some wear fluorescent.

Up old ghost gums

along Elster creek

sulphur-crested cockatoos

yell for the hell of it.

I hum “Sunny” by B. Hebb

but slow tempo to suit

the mood, the age.

Worse songs are lifers

locked somewhere within.

Sun, doing what sun does

(cloud or not), receives

my divided adoration as

I sip espresso at beach cafe

before resuming journey

to court Emily D  –

a lone white sail, right there,

where blue sea weds bluer sky.

One must not be late.

I lean on the gate. It’s cold & metallic, & that is completely reassuring — A peeled banana, almost whole & reasonably fresh, in front of the green garage door down the street — Someone’s up a ladder doing house repairs to the tune of ‘All My Friends are Getting Married’ —Abandoned fold-up stroller under a jacaranda near a street corner. It’s been there a while, leaf dust accumulating in its folds — ‘I win again’ says little girl to daddy in the race up the garden path to the front door — A large magnificent orange & black winged insect is roaming around between three almost pristine fake grass patches on the verge — Two empty longnecks of Hahn SuperDry on a bench on the verge, but socially distanced — A microwave oven sits on top of a station wagon’s bonnet. A sign attached to it says ‘For Sale $30’ — Furry carcass on the verge, skull bones protruding from one end. Large rat, I guess — She says to me: ‘They are playing music from the 20s. The Great Depression.’ Gestures to a nearby house then walks towards the rail crossing with a small plastic bag of groceries — A mother & son are at the nets at Goodwood Oval. She’s batting: ‘Show me what you got’. He bowls very wide. Next one a little tighter & short-pitched. He’s wearing sunglasses — Dad on bike explaining stuff to kid on bike — A rainbow emerges from clouds chalked onto a cement driveway — The delivery guy keeps his distance, ‘must be safe’, says ‘I’m 64 with a crook chest, it’ll carry me off’, gestures upwards, ‘hey sky, if you want me now, you can take me’, waves & drives off — A black & white butterfly hovers above me near the oval entrance. Is it the colour of my shirt (magenta) that interests it, or the leaves, the weeds? — A man stands at a bus stop, wiping his face with his right hand — The physically distanced chairs in the waiting room make it feel we’re part of a performance that either hasn’t yet begun or has begun with no script, score or instructions. We are the performance — A discarded & cracked white plastic fork under a tree — Walking towards East Avenue I hear the tolling of the rail crossing & the station’s loudspeaker, announcements without bodies — The once-fresh banana cast down near the green garage door is now blackening & two centipedes crawl around it — It’s overcast, a few spits of rain, & the gate’s metal feels chilly. I don’t linger

The narrative was created just before the pandemic, but I found it anticipated my endless shopping treks for my large young family. By completion it was a part of “the pause.” This 5 minute segment is of Stan entering a cave of (extinct) cave-lion/cave-bear to meditate on privations. “Remembering Brakhage” is a half hour radio play of the last days of the great artist-filmmaker. In a post-pandemic world, Stan sets off on a shopping trip to wander strange deserts and ends up in the wastes of British Columbia, where he is “saved” by a tiny community of transgender survivalists. The ghosts of Michael McClure, wives and children, and his dog Sirius, are all conjured – including the toxic dyes of his hand-painted films that some say did for him.

& so I followd th camels acros the Aral dezert, & becam deszrt blind, & folowed the unwobbling vizion of my clozed eye, a milky ripple of foggd film at the ecges of th wirrld:

hwat is a mann w/ut his Bolex, outcast w/ut proboscis to mak senss of strange distans —

a fhantom limb wanting a speare for a distant wooly rhino

find him a cave keeping deth w/ th stink of a steppe lion,

a hominid w/ fyre

a murdering brand

crawl in w/ yr fyre, manchild, sputtering on the walls w/ colured rags of licht —

a text of liht lic a     lic a

flange flaer iluminating a thozand caves/

a wall flickering bison countless unto deeth/

a text on

lik a text lic lihte/ a thusand yellow eyeteeth waiting flash of hell

whers Michal McLur when y/ need to flush ut lurking lionbær — Heere, eet him insted!

Hunker in th belly of a beste — th surge of yr own blood smashing yr eares — & wacche the silent cameraless projecterless movie flickering stickmen in a crackling torch…

hwus that breething —

Is it yoo or me!

a text of darknes/

ech spoke flinging prehensile tunggs & fingers

a schyning blade th thikness of liȝt

I, a depresing modernist caveman, brooding w/ other glowering animals, wy they refusd my arts endowment…

Th torch gutters ut. The phosfene mandalas ar dansing. Th retinal rods see me. A competing predator w/ a begging bowl.

You want me? — want sume haery swetty mete — yu smell me?

Swilch baffle-bag darkness. My hand tuches a stone smooth as pulver, th shap of a tool, th waȝht of a camera. How much doz a Bolex weiȝh in darknes… can yu feel it? — open th camera door, clip th heed & feed it thru th gate, th sprockets sonding richt, & onto th take-up spool. Can yoo do that felid seer! — ursine moðer! Hahn? Can yoo change th motor speed? Cud yoo engineer a Kern lenz to smash my skull in? Hanh? Cud you?… You sit tihte ther Neanderþal momma.

The swæt is running off me.

Taking it off heere boss!…Dont get too excited back ther. If Mike was heere hed probably hump yu… Man, Id film þat.

I cd tak th film ut of its cooking can, finger peint in cave silt. Hwat is a man naked for exsept to paynt. A chthonick urge to smear th blind muck, & mark me pattern-making poet. Wat colour am I — ashenfast spook — burnt cloaca

chew it into coaltar paste & spray it over yr hands, swashing glittering piche

Holy cow, I think Im hiȝh on batshit.

Crawl ut of th cave muth — scarifyd & clannd progenitor patris — a handprinted animalskin of stars…

If I cd spit my berried oxides into yr skyz!

It wil always be hardship for a wandering monk to receve all by begging, & nothing by begging…today he goz forth in th skyblew robe, tomorow his ass is faling ut.

& so he joyns th migrating herds & mastadons acros th Bering bridg, to fynd academick tenure in an empti department, w/ th dire wulfs & hyena.

If y/ shud fall doon unconscius in th crushing cold, let th wild animals ravage yu — perfect in no acsion.

As a poet, I have mourned the absence of gathering, in its traditional sense, through a reshift of creative focus, insofar as the minutiae of the domestic realm have been zoomed into and emphasised. Because time allowed for writing in the Pause. Domesticity, the observance of the object and its indentation on the space, the redirecting of one’s gaze onto the minuscule details of the object, the incidence of light on that space. Then, the physical stepping back to better focus and the parallel mental stepping back and looking at the broader inscription of the human in its environment and the drastic consequences that human indentation has had for nature. This pandemic has opened wide and almost through a whooshing movement what was already in motion, just way less accelerated. How all feels more devastating due to the speed of the unfolding of events and how unprepared societal western neoliberal structures are. Structures that depend on the ill payed labour of keyworkers to survive while concomitantly having total disregard for the precarious working conditions that some migrants are faced with. Survival in limbo. Structures with no long-term investment plans in healthcare systems that are able to provide basic, safe, reliable and affordable services to their populations. The new arms race is now the race to vaccines. Lockdown provided time to recalibrate one’s thoughts regarding creative practice and the artist’s role in all of this.

The long look onto an object and its artistic handling in terms of ideas and concepts the object might evoke materialises, literally, when delving into collage. If poetry is added to the collage it is as if thought, touch and object become one morphed object for the viewer and morphed experience for the author.

Collage making reuses what already existed, minimising its ecological impact. It gives other meaning(s) and provides used materials a renewed existence, the perpetual act of becoming other. As language also does. Could collage and collage poetry provide a good example of nanopoetics?

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foot     fall     asphalt                                                                        Porosities

of crust     add     to the complex

resonance of       morning       A walking

track    Sound assembles

foot     fall     asphalt                                                                                      as

waves     that reach to     ear

with multiple vibrations of     air

& echo

foot     fall    

asphalt                                                                 over chambers of

ground      A welding of      bless &

become

foot     fall    

concrete                                                            The hum now     is

almost open     to histories

holstered by warning

foot    

fall     long grass                                                         Fox

traps     wait     amid

reeds     where swamp     hides

water birds     except

for two chestnut teals

whose        wing        beats          answer

an approach

foot    

fall     wet grass                                                                       Trees

are choired      From their lofts

ravens     always in my sister’s voice

caw

foot     fall    

concrete                                                                   Harder to hear     are

remnants     of those engineers

who      go on bending world

to will     without     consent

foot     fall     asphalt

Studied     each step     gathers

to its timbre     the un-

even tremor of     today

foot      fall      ftt     fll      ft fl   ft f