perpendicular

high on the escarpment

in a train

white cockatoo flies

exactly the speed

wing-beats, pace same

I’m choked

with need

to be

in love?

or grief

tendrils reach

from a thorn-spiked heart

sinuous and green

into the thick undergrowth

lustrous, keen

gymeas ridiculous

Quentin Blake sketch

in a stringybark forest

perpendicular

bridges from

a childhood book

with an old man’s pride

and tragic accident

to overcome

oh!

the ocean glints

and froths

whiteblue, whiteblue

in the distance, so

utterly beautiful

that rock shelf

like bricks, like stones, like fossils and holes

I yearn to be

whole

entirely

immersed

with spray in my face

spindrift, salty

it’s something like homesickness

or lust

ancient craving

carving

can’t explain

the deep interior

sea-cave

heartspace

soul-pain

 

Photo by Ryo Nagisa on Unsplash

 

September

September, September, September
suddenly everything I read
says September! although it generally means
autumn, northern
not sultry sudden-summer breeze
September! marker, moment of stepping through
the brink, the precipice
of spring, sudden launch in
to a shock-cold waterslide thing
with bushfires ahead
not cozy nights
closing in
with
Halloween pumpkins
a flickering torch in a garden
scent-lit by warm-jasmine
on closer inspection
turns out to be
pixelated, muzzeley
not a real flame
immediately
September!
a start or an end?
put my hand in the still-cool water
realise if my palm is the bay,
the knuckles sandbar, my arm’s the channel out to sea
and me
– I’m out there, not the land
but a floating, liquid being
ocean-whole and once again
I wonder
does it mean
to finish, or begin
September, September, September
a door
a spark
an ember
Photo by Tengyart on Unsplash

Receipts

Who has time to waste?

except on Sundays

when I feel like getting wasted

to fill the emptiness

I could almost

write a whole book

on restlessness

if I could settle

in my chair

without scrolling, endless

toxic products

a lifecycle to landfill

existential despair

put everything in boxes

and let the mould grow

your children

won’t be interested

in dusty receipts that show

how much you spent

on name-brand trousers

in the 90s

but

I’ll know

 

Photo: Claire Doble

amber

put that in aspic

put it in amber

as the long gold

of a winter afternoon

draws on my heart

and the cravings start

to preserve that almost-there

feeling, like where

you dragged your lips

down my shoulder

or the nostalgic

sense of a new

room

in a rented flat

as sun slants

across clean paintwork

dust-motes dance

I would

tear apart

shred the world

just to

keep this

butterfly-bright moment

pinned

to my taskbar

like yearning, like wanting, like chance

but the light just

slips

through my hands

 

Photo by Jack B on Unsplash

sand

All the sand has come back

they said

it would never

we are so linear

– So what about that

other way

another day

feeling so cynical

toxic, interpersonal

salute the

strategic resilience

resistance

insistence

and squat

menacing

relation is liminal

devoid of play

the sand swamps all

your rocks

your quay

a new world

relative

perspective

held at bay

Streak – with audio

I didn’t touch you

for months and weeks

and it grew cold

yet bright and dry

in those shining mornings

we would fly through

the world, rounding on

rock shelves and

my heart lifted as the

ache set in deeper

feet cruel and

whispering to stop please

why oh why can’t you

listen when we speak

throwing you down

in sacrificial streak

like gravel, like blood, like steak

ignored until a louder voice

must shriek and tear

away tissues and strings

destruction looms

if only you’d touched me

sooner, soothed or

seen my toil

we might not be in

this awful spoil

 

Recording of ‘Streak’ https://on.soundcloud.com/pnvXB

 

perfection

in the funnel

of perfection

my addiction

blurs the world-

running

narrows to a

thin vibration

plucked and humming

mosquito-fine

only I can hear

what’s almost comfort

sets off

something

whispers

to my inner ear

I don’t stumble

so’s they’d see

just feel my

direction

skews

a line’s breadth

devastation-

failure-

and a child’s

unformed craving

-hovers

unbelonging

raw edge of fear

 

Photo: Claire Doble

Caged light

 

caged sunlight

I was desperate

for another start

to bleed through

and renew

my contract with life

lizards flick

at the corners

of my vision

not quite snakes

but shedding something

a tail, a skin, a bad memory

an addiction, and

the crows call my name

when I pass

beneath the trees

another day forced awake

to meet desires

shucked off

like shoes

like socks

like trauma

like the stumps of his fingers

which set off a gleam of

peculiar-memory

wanting to remove

one digit

trim the top-third

of my ring finger

maybe I was crazier

 

than I ever knew

bleed out

grow

don’t forget

to

move through

weird-warm pockets of air

on the headland

is it

enlightenment, also?

 

industrial abandon

missing my trips to the city

and how

the abandoned cokeworks

rotting away

by the train tracks

sent my thoughts

to that place

where things were so different

a secret world

I want to write about

immersed

in an industrial

wastelandscape

how can I capture this imagined

space

I don’t have those skills

or patience

scrolling in my bed

past my headache

reading about runner’s face

and Nick Cave

and grief

and grace

 

Photo by Darla Hueske on Unsplash 

living memory

he remembers

when my hair was long

a decades-old flirtation

not personal

if it ever was

with him

I remember

that pale, waxy skin

like marble

the feel

of boy-men muscles

along limbs

as I struggle

to catch slurred words

in a noisy pub

even though I’m sober now

he’s invading my space

after 25 years

of long-forgotten…

suddenly

confronted with

being seen

in a way I haven’t been

for ages

is it good or ill

to bathe

in that male gaze

again

I am, am I?

a person now

or then

how to define

myself

hard-up against that

strange

living-memory thing