Tethered to some Round Kennel

Draped city,
we perform our own surgeries
loudly.

The heft of sunset -
worn couples rusted to the bar,
a series of neon sighs.
Their inevitable toxic
accusations bounced out a side door.

Cover band covers all.
A bandage to all the raucous expiration
among the table-clique audience.
The new Angels chorus, inclusive of consumption -
     no way,
     get fucked,
     fuck off.
And we smile at our concoction,
and we synchronize our eye-rolls
with the eyes of the poker machine.

All distilled into blurbs comradian.

...

Pitt street smells like ancient bakeries
dueling with titan vodka.
Alleys with piss cobwebs
and smashed bottle minefields.
The traffic venomous
and ready for metal.
Hooked grins
numerous as cheque book slips.
Technicolour stars scroll-out a worn millenium.

Laugh sifter, mask foundry.
Hand in pocket charmer.

...

The disco junkie smashed the toilet bowl
in that sharp fuse of speed what-comes-next?

The Others new wave charleston beat
strobes the underbelly of a nicotine dragon -
     a young man needs violence.

A cemetery of shot-glasses.
The flash photography
of munch-faces.
An occasional buckle of limbs
cuffed or pumped limp.

Downstair casino fishtank pylons
frothed with foreign game.
Casualties tuxedoed.
The confessional booth of taxi's
and their digital tithe.

Spannering the stars
to make night permanent.

...

Pre-pass-out-burst-plastic offspring.

All the owl-eyed
and sun-disintegrated smirks.
Down in the park with neighbours
in the frayed assembly of purpose.

I - Anniversary of dregs

A coroner stands beside
a young man's bed today
Confused that he woke
The air is quadraplegic
Falling into him
Not doing much

The world is this hole
in the front of his house
he can't enter
The Discovery Channel
of the windows
Faces
are crossword puzzles,
speaking cryptic
clues of themselves
he can't answer

II - Un-focal-point

Re-assemblance
in the balance of a moment
His chameleon eyesmirk
stiff down to the sediment
of the glass factory,
grating together pane-
goggles to watch the world
distrubute itself,
sold to the coming second
without contention
And then recalibration
And then
recalibration
And
then
recalibration
Eyes make a rusty lens

Upflicked switch a martyr
Head in the sandcloud soma
A moment more disfigured
by its offspring
Furious
Slay happy
Fluxed karma backlash

Reverse basted in obsidian
Mandible existence
Meat machine laugh sifter
No pulse horizon gapesmiles
Jowels fanged in lightning

Voice of the meteor leers
loud and venomous
The debristailed
scorpian injects collateral
into groundwounds

Stars in their stalls
The world's been unstabled
A radiant fist pugulising
slow stalkers of trophy
Pull the finish line closer
and closer
Victory

 

Fuck the momentum of No
from his head-pendulum.
He could implode like his idols --

Drag that thick, green
blanket; lie laughing-up
his leftovers - extend
a marble finger toward
those anyone-after.

(Perhaps a sect to saint him
with a halo-epitaph --

Focus of a serial self-killer
and the failure of fake daylight
until night fell gutted...)

Instead, the phone's tongue
is cut-out and shadows pass-out
under everything. The boredom
of being awake.

Town
to town.
(Nicotine-oil window
to nicotine-oil window)
Traffic passes in distant grunts.

He writes his name
to see himself;
to throw himself away again.

... tethered to this round kennel,
he bayed and bayed and...

Hell, I tried to kick the corners
of the world back together
to see if it made Eden. It didn't.

The sun was drowned
in its basement tide. Some
men were dregs, spun: expired
on cul-de-sac paths. Most
had dragged themselves
into their chosen skies: god-soaked
sky, divided into star-compartments.
Divides them still. Caves
were stuffed full of husks
of human, draped in shells: insides
streaked with moss.
                                Tsunami-eyed,
                                they stained the world
in weeds,
then crashed upon the cliff. Hid
themselves in pieces. Made the world
cease every time they blinked. No time-
platter: this second is no banquet,
but a rusted garden harvest, dry
as the stranded moon. Metallic blooms.
Emptied wombs. Spawned on the floor.
Infant chaos, birthed and dispersed
until the distance is too great.
Ash in the eye of the spiral: divinity
best be a phoenix.

[ inverted happy ]

smiles turned inside-out;
wringed red, ready to pout.
laughter falls wet.

 

[ untitled ]

There was no plan to be dead so long.
Or dead so soon.
I could've learnt to rot in increments
like everyone else.
But I fell deep
and sudden, as anyone can,
into any variety of wells
that stab the plains
of this unplain place.
And the water was warm
for a while.

 

[ travelling ettiquette ] 

Awkward air between strangers on the train.
The soft - Hello (But don't talk to me) greeting.
Silent swordplay of facing elbows
and control for vantage
over the documentary playing in the window.
Aisle seat confusion if they should stand
or just lean back if Window seat wants to alight.
A carriage with twenty pews
and twenty arranged weddings, lurching
toward divorce at any given platform.

 

 [Item...]

       Mite,
Emit
       Time-trounced, star
spleen,
           deadest - dust -
 eaten,
           snared,
spat out,

             waits
          to breath
             again.

         (e)Dis-(Re-)
                           placed,
              space
for more you, less
me.

 

[morning-after-words]


happy, hapless hang
over - dis -
                  embodied
head-writer.

 

[Local Psycho Puts a Pen to His Head and...]

Fuck.
That canine chorus is annoying tonight.
Their far-flung noise - their yap,
yap arias and woof baritone.
(Tomorrow's schedule -
Detonate the dogs.)

Arriving home,
the unchased mailman
feeds me a bundle of tickets
just for living.

 

[clocking in at the clockless palace]

harnessed value of poker machine coin:
grey breath, eye-spin, beer-button-handshuffle.
autonomy in the mildewed, neon circuit-
bored to be awake.

[gnawing at the writer's block]


Black keyboard facing me.
Screen: White, glaring.

Purge to diminish the canvas.

Smoke in hand,
looms over keys.

( Ash falls in the valleys of a garbled alphabet. )

- Press one. Punch something.

Beating out another sentence.

Forcing it's relevance.

 

[fabri/medi - catered optimist]

You just picked me apart,
tore seeds from my eyes,
smirked at my presumption
to conjure a white-hot lotus.

Yes,
but the world
is alright
today.

The sun struck
upon a random
chord
of contentment.

And I see
serrated leaves
fall.

And all chaos
unfurl
in detrimental beauty.

[untitled]


All the gold things are crammed full of ash.
Ash that falls at night as one lowly layer
of moon's jaundiced skin. There are no more
mysteries under a sky stiff with rigormortis.
Nothing but a frayed edge at worlds end,
with handfuls of commiseration tossed like dust.
Yes, you miss him too. Yeah, sure you do.

Well, obviously I was drunk -
There was grass in my hair
and I had walked into the local newsagent
unknowingly still smoking.

And when I undressed Summer from her plastic
cover - my Girlfriend of the Month, ash got stuck
in my eyes from the on-fire adder sagging
out my mouth - I needed both hands
to work the glossy pages.

( It was six a.m. and my teeth had a twilight
sheen from the black Sambucca
and my fingers were yellow with cigarette
venom; maybe some piss. )

' Marcus, what in-blazes you doin, this time ? '
The same old host, mouth barelled
at me from behind the counter.

' Aw, shit, sorry, Mr Haddon, '
I smog-splutter, and flick the smoke out the door.
Seemed like a damn good shot. Maybe not.

' Just get what you come're for. '
' Sure thing. '

He has my loose-leaf smokes ready
as I drop the mag and a bottle of Coke into the bag.
I spray the bench with shrapnel.

' Your father'd be so... '
' Screw you, Haddon, see ya tomorrow. '
' Marcus, go home. '

But I'm not ready to go back to my apartment;
There's mice shit in the dishes, clothes in the sink,
stale odours in the sock drawer, and no one.

So I walk down the grey, middle finger of footpath
toward the sun that is already an oven light
turned up to - fuck you.

' Morning, ' I say, to some beady-
browed lady, power-walking by me.

If she'd've stopped, then I'd've said
I didn't mean to stumble into her; I took some odd
steps to avoid stomping those green ants
she just god-crushed.

Gottaccount for something, right? 

 

 

Mother keeps telling me
to ignore
cemeteries in daylight.

( My morbid delight
at twenty-three. )

They startle all
those jesters
amusing
only themselves.

Well
even Dante does not
find gods
so funny anymore.

Oh, just dance,
boy dance.

Grind that monkey
into dust.

And bells ?

There will be bells,
hanging
from thunderclouds.

But do I hear
a little
tintinnabulation

emanating
off the stars ?

You're such a romantic, boy.
Keep it to yourself.

Damn, decay is so intrusive.

stars bob their heads
in and out of the atmosphere.
the pet shop boys announce - go west...
my father veers his truck
between pre-dawn buses,

landing alongside a mcdonald
sign on paramatta road.
today, apartments grow there,
but fifteen years ago there bloomed
a golden M, thirty feet high.
i smile out my window.
father, glum at the prospect
of taxis and glowing pale yellow
from the dashboard gauges, he
turns to me and asks; son,
are you hungry?


-

to work, in an alley off george street.
sunlight leaks down the western walls;
down the rear porches of first floor lofts,
smeared in peeled apricots.

first things first...

son, let's learn to tie a sheepshank.
afterwards, bring down the jackhammer, the grinder
and the wheelbarrow,

and try not to make so much noise,
this is residential.

can you handle this?

of course.

i prove to co-workers how many bricks
i can wield in a wheelbarrow
up a flexi-board mountain.
sixteen was my record at age eleven...

... the boss's son.
gasps all 'round.

-

the rich man's restaurant: a mesh of gyprock, studs and brick.

the centrepoint tower: a black prong in an amorphic skyline.
the harbour bridge: half a web over a buzzing river...

out back, the one way traffic
and a white truck, etched in silver scars,
leaning from the sidewalk
into bitumen.

-

the stench of grease from central station
outflanks the aroma of coffee beans
being cracked open in michel's cafe.

nevertheless,
by ten a.m. i become the caffeine boy.

a notepad in hand,
my writing is uncursed and primitive -

2 s m, X 5.
and for henry - an egg and bakan roll.

a fifty crumples in my fist
and i scamper through the metal nest.

-

the red afternoon tucks itself into a corner
pocket of the earth. white ball, sinking colour
into the landscape as i linger outside the ettamogah.

it was one of those night jobs
i concealed from mother.