then writing

he sits in the dark with his thoughts and his coffee and his fingers on the keyboard and the synthetic sound of rain in his headphones keeping him at peace. his breath comes cool in through his nose and his belly swells with it; flows out easily. he stares into the middle distance. there is no particular idea in his mind about what to write; but there is a need to write - to find whatever it is that lurks in his chest. it is always there, that thing. his own dionysus. his duende. a roar that wants a mouth. he takes a moment to sip his coffee. over the years he has changed. he used to drink coffee milky and sweet; now it is black and bitter. his tea as well he takes this way. he has grown to love this about himself - the minimal; the austere nature of his desires. paring things to their essence. finding the truth of them thus. his black coffee, untainted by milk or sweetner, is rich and full and deep with flavour. it is interesting, he thinks, that in pursuit of flavour that which we add detracts from what exists. he is not the first to know this. but it is good to know it. he has found this also in cooking. the jars of of pastes and sauces that once got splashed into pastas and curries, perhaps to compensate for the blandness of mass produced stock, have vanished. now, he carefully selects only fresh vegetables and fruits vibrant with colour and vitality from the farmers markets, cooks them sparingly, spices them sparsely with coarse sea salt and fine grained pepper. in this way he has found meals to become simpler, richer, more fulfilling, satisfying. his music and his writing as well. when he was younger he sought flourish and floridity; as if by challenging himself to grandiose scales and verbose turns of prose he could prove his talent, touch god with his greatness. over time it dawned on him that talent was found in control. in plucking the bass string precisely in time with the kick drum. in notes not played. in words unspoken. in juxtaposition. last night he dreamed of safety in two parts; having and not having; wanting and not wanting; hunting and being hunted and fleeing with nowhere to go. it was a dream of searching and not finding - houses with dirt floors and rooms with glassless windows that let in the cold winter air; his bed unmade and piled with dirty clothes - so unlike him! so far from where he has come that he found himself confused by his own behaviours and unsure of what this meant about who he was. his mother began the dream, but she moved on quickly without him, preoccupied by something else, and he then was lost. there was a house. there is always a house in a dream. he found it atop a mountain and entered to escape the cold only to discover it equally as bitter inside as out. night was coming on. he did not want to stay but he did not know how to leave. the dark was watery. he felt young again, and very afraid. very alone. uncertain of how to take charge, how to make his own decisions. he was still waiting for someone else to do this for him when he awoke.

Delicious

The berries brought on the madness but the people ate them anyway. They couldn’t help it. The berries were delicious. Breakfast, lunch, and dinner; billionaire, beggar, and babe – the people of the planet gobbled berries by the fistful, desperate and craven, cramming fruits down their throats frantic always for more more more. And the fruits themselves! Winking diodes clustered like inverted pyramids; dew drop orbs, crystalline translucent – twisted aloft to the burning orange sun would elicit alembicated hues of indigo-violet-vermillion; peering deeper now, beneath the skin, a complex shadow-play of Rorschach shapes; veined spore tangled and billowing like nebulae unfurling. They were mesmerising; ensorcelling; a vortex. You could never have just one… But the real pleasure began when lips met flesh in heady lust and stained teeth tingling with that first electric shock pierced release in a sudden jet the wild, abstruse epiphany of taste as tongue now alive with vibrant violent shockwaves of delight swallowed into the body a trill of pure deliciousness. The fruits were like nothing else in the history of the planet. Tiny morsels of moreself; heady drug and body of the deity; canape and seven-course-meal; resplendent tea and redneck moonshine: whatever the imbiber’s appetite the berries provided in abundance. Well. At least. The illusion of... For you see the more the people ate the hungrier they felt. And the more they imbibed the more ravenous they became. They gorged! They ravaged! They munched and chewed and sucked and swallowed. They clutched by the handful and gnashed with mouthes open, juices squirting down both cheeks, eyes glazed at the sundry pleasures of the glut, the frenzy, the feast. Yet were they satisfied? Did they cease? Did their endless appetites sate? No. They were hollow. It was like eating bubbles. Even as their stuffed stomachs were crammed and bloated their wailing moans rose as one in a pitiful chorus of perpetual hunger. They awoke reaching for berries. They fell asleep with berries staining their pillows. The fruits grew wild through the planet, tangled up brickwork in the cities, vines strangling the ruins of their once-peaceful metropolises, and yet the people died of starvation. From whence the berries sprung nobody quite recalled. And yet in a few short decades the berry-eaters could not remember a time before; if you were to ask them, they would have said they’d always eaten the fruits. They forgot how to cook. They forgot the names of their favourite meals. They forgot the words for eggs, for milk, for rice, for chicken, for table, for kitchen, for menu. They forgot cuisines, and so they forgot their cultures. And as their bodies became frail and withered and suffered from lack of nutrition, as their minds broke down, the people cared little. The berries brought on the madness, oh yes, and the people ate them anyway. They couldn’t help it. The madness was delicious.

At the Bazaar

The photos were good. He could tell that. But there was something else, too.

He studied the picture which so transfixed him. Coca-Cola sign - trademark red and opalescent white - badged upon a sky of shocking, ozone blue. Edging the frame, the canyon-coloured brick of a service station to which the sign was fixed and beyond: a parched highway stretching unto endless desert.

Restlessness stirred.

The image was set in a thick, matte red frame with a fluro yellow dot stuck to it. $15. He didn’t have the money. 

He lifted the photo from the table in both hands, delighting in its weight and heft. He turned it over. On the back, in looping, elegant pen: Montana, USA, 1994. He would’ve been ten, maybe even nine. How old would she have been?

He looked again at the photographer.

She lingered in the shade back from the stall, face partially obscured by a floppy, wide-brimmed hat. She wore a light dress, for the day was hot. He couldn’t tell if she returned his look, or if her gaze was turned upon the trickle of folk who’d somehow stumbled to this cranny of the bazaar. He was the only one here and he was conscious of how long he’d been studying her photos without offering to buy any. Others had come and gone. She’d smiled nicely and made some brief hellos in French-accented-English. But nobody had stopped long. She seemed not to care for making conversations or sales. She allowed them to drift and she continued to observe, cat-like.

He believed she was considering him. He didn't know why he thought that. Normally, this would have embarrassed him. But there was something else keeping him here. And he needed to know. The restlessness was stronger than his shame.

Abruptly, she moved closer, into the sunlight, until they were separated only by her display. Her movements were awkward, as if unsure of her intentions. She met his gaze. 

‘This one you like, oui?’ She questioned, uncertainly.

‘They’re all good,’ he stated, eyebrows drawn together in concentration. He looked at the Coca-Cola photo again, still held in his hands. ‘This one is very good.’ He heard the truth and the confusion in his voice, the restlessness pooled and resonant in his chest, stretching out to the photo, to the photographer - the unasked question of, why is it good?

She laughed, nervously. ‘Oui. Uh, this one, I like also.’ 

From beneath the darkness of her sunhat she peered at him. ‘You are an artist also, oui?’

He paused, then nodded, ‘I write.’

‘You have travelled?’

He looked at the distance stretching in the photo he held, at the many distant lands arranged across her table. He shook his head.

‘You must,’ she asserted. ‘For artists, travel is essential.’

‘I want to go to England. To Europe. Next year - when I’m- I’m half-English. I can get a Visa.’

He heard his youth, his eagerness. Her smile did not change. He wanted to keep speaking, to say everything, anything, to ask a million questions about her art, how she knew – if it was the same as how he did, sometimes – he wanted to talk about the want. He felt that he was walking a tightrope. He felt that every word must be carefully considered. He felt he could make no error.

‘There you are!’

His mother’s voice broke the reverie like a twig beneath a boot, breathless from the hill as she said, ‘I’ve been waiting at the car, I thought you’d gotten– oh.’ 

He saw the photographer's mask fix, saw her shrink into the shadows of her hat. Felt his bony limbs in his t-shirt, his braces pressing against the inside of his lips, the too-hot sun on his skin.

His mother smiled at them both, then peered at her son, at the image he held.

'Oh that's lovely. Do you want it? Do you have enough?’

He felt the photographer observing.

‘Yes,’ he breathed. ‘No.’

His mother began searching through her handbag. Without looking up she asked, ‘Do you have change for a twenty?’

The photographer politely smiled. ‘Oui.’

Others had drifted to the stall now and were browsing. The photographer floated to her moneybox in the shade. She bade hellos at the new arrivals. A neighbouring stallholder made a comment. The photographer laughed.

His mother pulled out a twenty, gave it to him. ‘You pay for it,’ she whispered.

The photographer returned, face hidden in the shadows of her sunhat. She held out her hands. He passed her the photo. She slipped it into a brown paper package, sealed it with translucent tape. He passed her the twenty. She returned him a five dollar note.

‘Did he tell you that he writes?’ Brightly asked his mother.

The photographer handed back the photo, looking at her other customers.

‘Oui.’

pit of sound

i fell into a pit of sound and hovered on vibration
the demons there they swooped around and shrieked their indignation
yet reckless i persuaded violently my integration
now heart and soul chew vibrant death and mull manipulation

In Hunger of Words

i have been at war with myself. something in me wants to quit; or else having now summited the pinnacle, scans the ganzfield horizon only to find an echo in the soul that whispers, "Is this it?" i am in want of meaning. i am in hunger of words. i crave a quiet cabin in a nook somewhere with paperbacks and pens and parchment and the effortless quiet that seeps in between the floorboards on frosty mornings while waiting for the kettle to boil.

we went walking to watch the roos go bounding at twilight. a man came stomping down the road toward us dressed all in black with a walking stick that seemed wrought, not found. a large hound, sleek and muscular and at ease with its own presence in the world trotted ahead to snuffle about in someone's yard. the man wore tight pants with a hooded jacket that looked suitable to the weather, which was growing cold in that way that the early days of autumn have. his hair had once been dark; was not yet grey. there was something Mediterranean about his features. olive skinned. weathered. angular. a long beard that was not unkempt, and grey-white-black, reflecting his hair. his eyes were dark; they did not shy away from us. there was recognition; travellers on the path. he greeted us, then whistled for the dog to come, which it did, in its own time. they slipped away into the crepuscular haze. i wanted to be him; hermit of the tarot. i craved what he had secured.

everyone finds their own way through, i suppose. what will be will be. how much longer am i to persist at this mirage? sometimes i feel as though the universe is poised upon me. egocentricism, probably. and yet...

will we, won't we. will we, won't we. will we... 

...it doesn't matter. it doesn't matter at all.

temper, temper, tempest

 Temper, temper, hold yourself

 

    Your heart

    It quivers

 

The soft, downy fur 

of a calf, bare

against the wet 

& hidden damp 

of late night

Spring,

Storm receding

        or rolling in

 

Caught between 

one thing 

with two names

Cryptic Calisthenics

Every morning during the mid-morning coffee rush I watch from behind the espresso machine as the elderly Asian woman glides out laps of University Square.

Wiry hair pinned beneath translucent green visor saluting the sky, tan foundation all thickened and cracked - past serious students and prosaic professors she hustles, tongue-pink jumpsuit whistling like sneakers sliding through piles of dry leaves, arms and wrists tossed and flicked lazily up and out in some vague gesture of a cryptic calisthenics obscure in origin.

Around she goes. And around again. Every morning.

Each time she passes she turns her head to the cafe. We make eye contact, me from behind my coffee machine, her from beneath her visor. We study one another.

She always matches my gaze, eyes as bright as sunrise. Over the heads of scholars thronging, frowning, nodding, pondering. I grin. And she grins back.

This is how I come to suspect we have both lost touch with reality. Clearly, we are happy.

Open sesame

I lived inside a box in my mind
And somehow I found a door

When I opened it up, I realised
There was never a box at all

The Dying Dream

Last night I dreamed I died and watched on as my soul trickled out from my body as a caravan of effervescent orange symbols into a void of pressing black.

The symbols comprised many languages; alive and dead, ancient and modern, verbal, mathematical, syntactical, gibberish -- they were memories of my soul, echoes of its various incarnations, and they quivered with excitement to be returning to their home.

In the void, an object became apparent. Spherical, enormous, a tightly wound star throbbing with densely packed syntax, countless strands of symbols weaving in and out from across the void, all snaking back to this place to be re-woven, re-merged, and re-made.

There was no fear. Why would there be? There was no dualism. To consider terror was to confuse where you were. This coming back was as effortless as breathing. 

As I drew nearer, a shape arose from the sea of symbols - a dragon, clumsy and oafish, splashing about happily in the ocean of words like dolphins leaping before the bow of a boat.

The sphere itself was vibrantly alive with a consciousness beyond any label I might give it. This dragon was like a sock-puppet made purely for its own amusement.

As it splashed about, bits of orange stuff broke off and floated out into the void.

Ah, I thought. That's how life is formed.

How clumsy! How frivolous! How blithely unaware of the consequences.

All love, all pain, all suffering, all grief, just the idle splish-splashes of a God in a bathtub keeping itself amused.

don't tell me let me figure it out

the kids hock and spit and raise their shirts to slap their bellies and
one has tats up his neck and a half-shaved head with hair gelled back and
they cackle laughter like rifle fire
they squawk and jostle and swagger and prowl through the city

he has flowers in a blue bouquet that look fancy-expensive

(lucky thing)

oh they're dressed nice, real fine - armani, or something - i wouldn't know

but they're hungry, that's for certain

(what do you want for when you get home? what do you imagine in wait?)

the heat feels like some sci-fi film i might yet write where the sun strips your skin from your flesh in forty seconds

it would make a good ticking-clock in the parlance of that stuff
i imagine a fictional world where a civilisation might actually pay attention to the omens

the kids spit on the street again and laugh like morons as i follow them through chinatown

i think - i just want to get around you
becomes - i just want you to not exist

Slow drift down the river time

A cast-off moment of pause
Where the doubt seeps in
like mildew
Or a cool frost up between the floorboards
the chinks in armour
the bleary-eyed sobriety
caught early-morning reaching for the wine -
O time -
And yr slow epiphanies
Writ lazily along the day-to-day
Catastrophes
and tragedies
Comedies
and farce

Managing,
we're managing okay

I am here
But my heart vanished
Long,
Long ago

Ancient Hunger

Something deep, and still, and dark, and cool;
A rock pool - opaque -
Cloaked and ringed by the outstretched boughs of a shadowy wood,
Laced by verdant green,
Smelling of wet, and age,

Trees huddled round like crones before an altar 

For unknown gods;

Here this primal well -
You find all the night's fiery glory whole upon its surface,
Glassy, ancient, voracious;
The obelisk of memory.
Nighttime critters fall a'hush as you near.
Be wary of your step;
Only the bones of those before you know how deep its hunger runs.

Unfinished Sympathy

In the sand he squares out symbols of his love from the vague memories of youth and thinks, "These are the first sparkings of the soul." What score marks that? What equation poses it? How is it proved? He attempts Einstein first, switches to Bach, then Schrodinger, then Mozart. The dread repetitions of Glass might make mention. In this way the beach becomes a manuscript of garbled memories, like a parchment overwritten by many minds across centuries. The sun sets, pink washes down the shoreline as the ocean stills in gentle sighs to a glass-green translucence through which a shifting bottom may be spied, but not touched, where great silhouetted sea creatures levitate within waves undulating in rhythm with the oscillating murmuration of restful giants asleep upon the ocean floor, their slumber stirring the world from afar. His footsteps become part of the score, and he dances on his loose equations adding crotchet and quavers with flicks and scuffs. Soft beneath the pads of feet washed clean in the briny, warm still even as the sky now becomes all different streaks of liminal adieu; indigo, crimson, violet, and azure, and a haze of salt veiling off the long curve of coastline that arches like a half-smile upon the musings of his mind in memory, a symphony of science, a tabling of emotion, the synching of heart in beat with the endless spinning of stars pivoted around a heart frozen in love.

Untitular

Does it all sink back to earth again,
These thrumming, violent tendons of truth
That pick and weave their routes through us?

If only languid language might make a place for me in her heart;
I could dust, make dinner, maintain house.
I am not so bad at it.

But yet the thing eludes.
Is the thing a thing at all?

On days buoyant I might bob just so
And keep a level head remembering
The world is always three parts -

Above, below,
And here.

Hailstone Mind

At night there comes the hooded thing

The thing of dark - of winter bright 

Alone I sit and wonder at it as I have so often prior  

This thing of brooding malcontent, this thing of cold desire 

This thing of broken lust I trust it not? I trust it dire    

These scars are all I have of you so let me love them true  

In wanton heat now glowing I find my time unflowing and the 

Rhyme now grinding down like black space falling inward like
Your atmosphere you stuck me like a pig a piece of cloth a rusting
Cog and now we fly to meet who made this grin like you believe in him and hope  

Little Whispers In The Sky

I sat on the front steps smoking and looking at the black night in the trees, in the forest; a few scattered stars up above, little puncture wounds in the nothing, little reminders of mortality, little whispers that seem to say, "There is no real death."  I wonder sometimes if we build our cities simply to block them out, to turn away from their silent friendship and forget the implications of their existence, building up our own versions of events, electric inauthentic, blasting back into space, rubbing out the atmosphere, making blank the canvas, putting fingers in our ears, pretending not to recognize an old friend at a party. 

Now the train slips up the coastline track, the glorious green of this temperate tropic - trees that grovel, trees that slither, all fresh, all hungry. But I can still hear the chorus in the forest, like something from a hidden memory, incense burning in the magic; the hut standing tall and proud like a gypsy soothsayer expecting you; wooden steps that croaked and a balcony made for soft conversations, little gatherings; and the frogs barking, the owls holding court, the nighttime creatures playing at their wares. We sat among them, cocooned in their warm cacophony, and the smell of wood smoke. I felt safe inside your jumper, and knew you wouldn't mind the stale cigarette smoke I was leaving in the cotton, like a message, little traces of myself, secret whispers, like the stars, to remind you, "There is no real death."

In the Ether Between

Splendid nothing echoing down the endless entropy
Static stars cast like failed gambles
Shadows sleeping like drunks on the sidewalk
Heat that pools in the afternoon -
Too heavy to hold itself aloft -
Treacle thick, golden,
Baking weight;
The city that hangs like a forlorn teen
Food nights and beery afternoons;
And every so often a rape or murder to remind us.
Pretend unknowns -
Souls that have forgotten
Trapped as they are in the
Flesh in the
Clothes in the
Names in the
Memories
Howling out for
Clearer definition.
The forever to remember us as
Broken pixels -
Tap the screen to get them unstuck.
The materialists got the upper hand and
We swoon like a love-struck mark
Sighing at the con-man's every well-delivered word.

Undo

Undo the constraints of skin,
Let the universe expire
And my heart beat bloody in
Your palms,
So then we might know
Once and for all
If it is real.
Or,
If this evening should dip
Into yet another grin of
Silence,
And the skin grow over the teeth,
And the tongue dry up,
And the blood bloom deep in the throat
Of all our nodding
So that the machinations can continue,
And the constraints can hold:

Then let your eyes be like ellipses
That lead to a better version
Of us.

Lessons from the elderly

The little girl is two, maybe younger.  She has olive skin and dark, serious eyes that lock intently on the world and its great variety of things which dance and tumble about before her in all their newness.

She peers over her seat at an elderly woman, who smiles back sweetly.  They play games for a while - the child's absorbing eyes concentrating on the woman's pale skin, wrinkled kindly with age, like old tree bark.

It comes time to go. The woman says good-bye and waves her hand, clapping it like a clamshell.  The girl gazes back ponderously, clinging to the seat, uncertain of the gesture.

The bus stops and the woman steps down onto the sidewalk; the child watches her, silently mouthing this new word, this new sound, 'Bye.'

She mumbles, trying out the one-hand clap, motioning it at the now empty seat. An empty clamshell mouthing silence.

She murmurs it again.

'Bye... Bye... Bye...'

Excerpt from an old notebook.

Writing is like staring at a wall for hours upon hours, trying to decide what to paint it, then suddenly realising you can just knock the whole thing down and extend the room.