Anyworld
"Artworld. Theoryworld. Mediaworld. Infoworld. Touristworld. Olympicworld. Foxworld. Bushworld : Oneworld"
Susan Buck-Morss, Art in the Age of Technological Surveillance
setting out,
a scarlet flower
behind an ear,
into the wide
world into
banner-adorned cities
faking
permanent festivity
*
the road
turns an angle
like the dateline does
near Tuvalu
*
once, it’s said, anticipating promise,
they murmured
as they crossed,
‘Bush’ like
‘ boo schh boo schh ’
and
no reply
came
*
sprained westoxified
all-signed-up
for ‘NightTalker’,
( the wine is under
the table somewhere)
crying becomes
a critical criterion
(the flower
discarded )
*
the public sphere
is
newly perceptibly
losing memory
*
re mem ber Bam,
Arg-e Bam
ancient city of sand
and mud
collapsing in an earthquake,
the cultural heritage building
slipping subsiding,
consigning
any record
of the archaic ruin
to dust
*
the memory
is
ruined
*
who can accept
a given world ,
who can
live in it ?
(This poem was first published in 'Social Alternatives' in November 2005)
_____________________________________
One Day in Auckland
rice for a heartache,
sugars for hope.
can ‘heartache’
have currency
in expedient times?
complimentary newspapers
slide under the door,
headlines on the carpet -
last century’s
roadmap for peace,
so-named by pessimists,
zapped out of Gaza
this very day.
the very very day
I’ve woken up early
in Auckland,
New Zealand (Aotearoa)
(why bracket that ?)
I’m seeking some dogs
from a poem
made in Auckland
by a famous American.
overnight
a fog rolled in
to romanticise
the parking stations
along Viaduct Harbour.
I second-guess
today’s poetry class -
do you think of yourself
as an ‘Australian’ poet ?
a student will ask.
lucky or unlucky
to be born wherever it is,
some place where
peaceniks aren’t welcome
and, if foreign, deported.
where drinking water
falls from the taps
like rain once fell
from the sky.
let’s ask the peacenik
what he knows
about weapons.
where shrill environmentalists
run very quiet museums.
it confounds me
to come from there,
to have, simply,
been born there -
why not France ?
I yelled, at ten.
why not Italy ?
at forty-five.
why not Scotland, Mum ?
let’s ask the environmentalist
what he knows about dust,
about bell jars,
about zinc black sands
under green volcanic cones.
can I imagine
where I’m heading,
where I’ll end up
with this pocket-sized map
and Skytower, my landmark.
I dream my plate tectonics
to the south,
where I float
like a great big
imperspicuous slab
on these immense
asthenospheres,
I climb up crust collisions,
hoping not to drop.
(This poem was published on the New Zealand Electronic Poetry site in early 2006)
_______________________________________________________________
Cold front
this shivering caravan
reeks of rum,
shadows smear an atlas
on a pillowcase
idly silhouetting a rabbit
on the masonite wall,
iced-over scraps
on the laminex splashback
grey nomad buys clairol -
the future looks bright
o only a cold front
is oblivion dark ?
come here for a moment,
sit and regard,
gape at the landscape
we’ll never inhabit
en plein air
is so much a sinkhole,
nowhere so zen
as some other place
who changed ‘the proposal’
into ‘the dream’ ?
I never said
‘I’m living the plan’
I’ve already been sideswiped
and I was here last
my cup’s white interior
tarnished by tannin,
readers of teacups
expended by tea bags
such a dreamy hiatus
o only a cold front
copying a trance
is too difficult to do,
sun on shut eye -
deep eggy red orange
but pocket some wisdom
when winter arrives
the grey sheen of sleet
will cleanse us like windex
_______________________________________________________________
1971
the invention of the car seat-belt,
the first City-to-Surf run,
the introduction of R-rating for film,
platform shoes the Nike swoosh
the inaugural sex shop,
a computer-on-a-chip,
the Holden HQ sedan car,
green bans and the BLF
Yagoona gets McDonald’s
Qantas gets the 747,
Daleks - ‘exterminate exterminate’ -
on Dr Who
while moon rover roves the actual moon,
Sonia McMahon
shows some leg
at Richard Nixon’s dinner,
I move to Melbourne
( &, just in time)
learn to screenprint (&,
just in time)
move back to Sydney
take a pill, scratch a film.
____________________________________________________
Modern superstitions
using the powersave option
leads to enhanced consciousness
leaving cubes of camphor in a cupboard
guarantees peaceful afternoon naps
a fruitbat hanging on a pay-tv cable
soothes cynicism
finding a scorpion in your bath
brings good luck
taking a bus ride under a rainbow
augurs a ghastly end
an oilstain obscuring your bumper sticker
turns any aspiration into a flop
finding an abandoned shoe in a mirrored elevator
ensures exorbitant profits
experiencing déjà vu in a library
means you are soon to meet a big galoot
a jolt of static from an escalator handrail
is favourable
eating a morsel of pecan pie from a jumbo-size fridge
encourages glad acceptance of all miseries
if you drop an egg into a red plastic bucket
you will always have available credit
____________________________________________________
My father the pope
my father the pope has tired of religion
mon père le pape est las de religion
he's hang-fired and has forgotten the names of the saints he canonised
il est en état d'attente et a oublié les noms des saints qu'il a canonisés
he's letting the grass grow under his feet
il laisse l'herbe pousser sous ses pieds
he's watching the world go by from the bells that toll for sunday vespers
il observe passer le monde près des cloches qui sonnent pour les vêpres de dimanche
to the purring farting blurts and whines of next saturday's vespas
aux ronronnements qui pètent et aux balbutiements qui gèmissent des vespas du samedi prochain
winding happily up around the gianicolo
se faufilant heureusement vers le haut du gianicolo
he's lolling in a weekly daze
il flâne dans une stupéfaction hebdomadaire
he's tired at last of this old world where you can die on friday
à la fin il est las de ce monde ancien où l'on peut mourir le vendredi
only to revive, miraculously, gloriously, on sunday
pour ranimer, miraculeusement, glorieusement, le dimanche
he concludes impossible
il conclut impossible
(my Apollinaire)
_______________________________________________________________________
Peel me a zibibbo
I could go
in any direction
but it’s best that here and now
I remain lesbian,
keep my vanishing cream
sealed.
I’ll go south
eventually
to follow the sheen
of your signals,
in the meantime
my problem’s like how to
design a wall didact -
serif or not’s
a big decision
*
it’s October so
the bogong moths
are back
and the koels - the October
crack of dawn racket -
are back again too,
mauve jacaranda petals
are stuck
on the windscreen wipers rubber
*
by now the wall text task
is impossible -
application decreasing,
attention span diminishing -
transparency an aim,
how coded the coding
*
imperfection in kindness
comes with the void,
you need to
choose
the ‘I’m feeling lucky’ google option
*
drinking in the cemetery
sounds like an early
Nick Cave song
but it’s
something-to-do,
it’s also the subject
of Paddy Fordham’s
drawing
*
should I start carrying
my books
in clear plastic bags
inside
my polyester document bag,
is this a solution ?
16° centigrade
95% humidity
what a precipitate place
*
shouting Shakespeare aloud
to the sea
in Surfers’ Paradise
in 1964
after hurling your body down
fine off-white sand dunes.
now it’s 2006
you’re experiencing thanatos
high up on a Seidler balcony.
if you are in doubt
(slurp over drinks)
what gives the false poet
such confidence ?
*
awake and refreshed
tho with nothing on the page
*
John T phones -
this cloudy gloomy
early summer day
is ‘like the fifties’ he says.
every day ?
miserable childhood ?
photographic weather memory
à la recherche du temps inclément
*
I was reading
about the sweet potato farmers
of Osaka
living such long lives –
nonogenarians, centogenarians -
when Kurt called in with his new book
Hyper Taiwan
Taiwan - it’s ‘sweet potato island’
hi Kurt, hi John T,
hi Nick, Paddy, hi Shakespeare,
peel me a zibibbo
would you
one of you guys ?
---------------------------------------------------------
Existence
Existence
from here on in
if I follow
the girl in the
‘your tv
hates you’
sweatshirt as her motorcyclist
warms his darkly bubbling engine
ready to blur
into a field of speed,
it’s probably
one less path
to torpor
for me
*
a dishwasher whirrs above me
a slab separates us - water restrictions
mean nothing
war
is
imminent,
Sydney goes sailing
*
a thousand people
are surveyed -
how many vehicles on the freeway
that traverses the sprawl
around the swamp
we want to conserve
*
under a nasty sky,
rhetorical uncertainty
dogs me
*
the 326
is never on time.
the bus interchange
uses up
evening’s best hours
*
all afternoon in a car
parked at the ferry wharf
gazing at sparkling waves,
not reading
not listening to the car radio,
just looking out at the boats
and at the sea planes setting off
and returning
*
his email began
‘i thought of you
while i was
driving to Blockbuster
last night’ -
now,
where is that ?
*
she says he
‘takes a swipe
at apostrophes’
punch-uation ?
*
the kitchen man
agrees
it’s all about oil
*
a sandwich board
outside Rose Bay Afloat
advertises the sunset bar –
‘relaxed atmosphere
and tunes’
*
after not having
spoken with you
for 13 years,
now
that we’ve met
you’ve got me
reading
Deleuze & Guattari
all over again
Death by droning
the skywriter
does the third letter,
we already recognize
the brand name
(I couldn’t write a memoir
to save myself,
that would have been
the beginning -
a fine day a bright sky a skywriter
circa 2003
( “circa” – a word
I detest ) but
droning on is not
my way,
mine’s more a kind of
devolution
or maybe,
simply, to make art
through spaces,
without notes to myself -
none - myself to myself ),
chasing the unknowable,
‘drink your noumenal -
you’ll feel
much better !’
and so, to conclude
‘frenzal rhomb !
what kind of a name is that then ?’,
just doesn’t work
Before long
word arrives from way back
but it’s too long ago
to imagine change,
so familiar
the drunk’s insistence
and rivers of tears
probably still flowing.
crybaby dies alone -
guilt-ridden exes
write poems.
that’s beautiful.
now,
can everyone see that it is ?
before long
the interminable series continues
many more
depressing stories to come
and no promise
of revisionist parodies,
the droll aspect
masked by a boozed insistence.
annotating all the books,
(regardless of ownership),
not for future reference
really to say “I was here”
like initials on a rockface,
like a scrawly tag on a street wall