a crowd of condemnation and little comfort
finally a spectacle of his art
the art in dying alone
an external soul of tattered black cardboard
picked up in the ruthless breeze of the city
he dies like his ideas
in a bundle on the sidewalk
where the children find his writings in the gutter
and laugh them off as discarded letters of love
midnight’s plague
with a head full
of bad tunes
and
wanting to attack
the cerebral cortex
with a pair of scissors,
cutting the black squares
that keep appearing
multiplying, mutilating
in the room
that never sees sunlight
and
a clock set to midnight
repetitively
thoughts incubate
gestate
pictures from
an out-of-tune television screen
rotate, ignite
the sorry memories
spread like midnight’s plague
the constant visitation
of places without phone numbers
where the wrong moments
have left their mark
and an immune system frail,
reminder notes manifest
into death threats
macabre melodies rise
to the roof of the skull
fall into the covers
nose bleeding
midnight’s plague
taking another victim
the mind infected
with suggestions
like
fortune cookie disasters
labelled
the doctors probed
while I persisted stamping my hooves
on the cold floor of the locked ward
“Mr Watson ... you don’t eat grass!”
“Crap!” I flared.
hooves tap, clop, tok, tap...
“Molasses, salt tablets. Now!” I snarled.
“Mr Watson ... why these antics?!”
“Let me out of here ... I’m a winner ... I have a Cup to win!”
“Mr Watson ... you’re not a race horse ... you’re a human being!”
Oh yeah?
all my life I’ve been under some kind of label—
full blood?
half blood...
half breed!
half caste—
and even questioned about being
a quadroon
well
with magnificent bloodlines like that
I decided
I must be a goddamned pedigree of some sort!
for the wake and skeleton dance
the dreamtime Dostoyevskys murmur of a recession in the spirit world
they say,
the night creatures are feeling the pinch
of growing disbelief and western rationality
that the apparitions of black dingos stalk the city night, hungry
their ectoplasm on the sidewalk in a cocktail of vomit and swill
waiting outside the drinking holes of the living
preying on the dwindling souls fenced in by assimilation
the dreamtime Dostoyevskys ponder
as dark riders in the sky signal a movement
for the wake and skeleton dance
it’s payback time for the bureaucrats in black skins
and the fratricide troopers before them
with no room to move on a dead man’s bed
is it all worth holding onto these memories
amidst the blood-drenched sands?
better to forget?
the dreamtime Dostoyevskys feel the early winter
chilled footsteps walk across their backs in the dark hours,
the white man didn’t bring all the evil
some of it was here already
gestating
laughing
intoxicated
untapped
harassing the living
welcoming the tallship leviathans of two centuries ago
that crossed the line drawn in the sand by the Serpent
spilling dark horses from their bowels
and something called the Covenant,
infecting the dreamtime with the ghosts of a million lost entities
merely faces in the crowd at the festival of the dead,
the wake is over
and to the skeleton dance the bonemen smile
open season on chaos theory
and retirement eternal for the dreamtime Dostoyevsky
the dingo lounge
those of the brown-skin lycanthrope
have merely become the forgotten offspring
from the dark ages of the dreamtime
the black man’s beliefs
are being swallowed up and regurgitated in foreign lands for a
dollar
the night creatures sucked into a vacuum of the techronic abyss
the shapeshifters skulk around the dingo lounge
haunted by the screaming engines of the machines of
consequence
longevity just a whisper in the wind
as their numbers dwindle
and the dark hours are stolen by the monsters of new:
drug addicts, paedophiles and killers
the spirits have almost lost their foothold
the children of the rainbow serpent have no use for demons
scientific justification has rationalised their roles with prozac
and institutionalisation
the dreamtime can be resurrected anytime
and found on the video store shelves
while in the dingo lounge
redundancy and health in death escalates
the bonemen have performed their last dance
and the shrieks of the black dingo go unheard in the night
as the ferryman has already gone down with his ship
and Morpheus in his arduous attempts to dream
has taken to anti-depressants
there comes no stormbird to deliver them to another side
as they fall into the landscape of the shadowmead
and the faded memories of the storytelling damned
valley man
He had rough hands
street hands
black hands
hands
that reached out
and felt the dark places
but
feeling the dark places
He would always return
with something in his face
his face that held abuse
served in an irrational way by society
the material society
a society existent on the dark places
the dark places
places that could not harness him
but only create temporary peace with him
for so many moments
He destroyed the dark places’ grasp
and finally
He danced up a wind
and mocked the dark places
until He laid silent,
waiting...
for when the brolga met his breath
inviting his dance to join hers
when,
once again
He felt the dance of the young
cheap white-goods at the dreamtime sale
if only the alloy-winged angels could perform better
and lift Uluru; a site with grandeur
the neolithic additive missing from that seventh wonder of the world expo,
under the arms of a neon goddess, under the hammer in London,
murderers turning trustees
a possession from a death estate
maybe flogged off to the sweet seduction of yen
to sit in the halls of a Swiss bank
&
nbsp; or be paraded around Paris’ Left Bank
where the natives believe
that art breathed for the first time;
culture, bohemian and bare and maybe brutal
and how the critics neglect the Rubenesque roundness of a bora-ring
unfolded to an academia of art
yes, that pure soil in front of you
the dealers in Manhattan lay back and vomit
they’re the genius behind dot paintings and ochre hand prints
rattling studios from the East Side to the Village
and across the ass of designer jeans
porcelain dolls from Soho wanting a part in it so bad
as the same scene discards their shells upon the catwalks
like in the land of the original Dreaming
comatose totems litter the landscape
bargains and half-truths simmer over authenticity
copyright and copious character assassination on the menu
sacred dances available out of the yellow pages
and
cheap white-goods at the Dreamtime sale!
the mosquito room
a melody on the edge
of monotone madness
rampant
unstoppable
uncompromising
in the mosquito room
it knows not an end
out of respect for the thunder
it does not pause
for the seductive summer rains,
millions of black, micro-winged demons
playing violins at break-neck speed
zipping through the air
malicious
flirtatious
at home
in the mosquito room
mudflat
dried up and cracked
remnants
of prehistoric reptile scales
huge and menacing,
a chocolate flesh
that twists along the shores of the wetland
—but waiting for the veil of the incoming tide
is the monster
content when cold and hungry for
the mass that rolls with the current
it never sleeps
it starts
it starts
from the darkness of mangrove dreaming
unable to surrender to time,
later stalked in death,
the stoic’s domain is the open marshland
under a red sky looming
where the arthritic bones refuse to bend
broken in the blatant malice of the elements,
and even then
its dignity is only served
by the chilling shrieks of stormbirds
astride crumbling limbs
whose space is a waiting graveyard
and valuable a wooden tear
where no mercy spills from the thousands
of lush, green enveloping peers,
so laden with life
so unsparing
that no two trees help one another
amid the birth and dying cycle of this wetland
if only it could speak
and touch human ears
someone may then appreciate
the frozen insanity
that accompanies
the greying presence
of a decaying mangrove tree
1986
he pays no heed to the thunder god
yet he is wary and tired
’cause you see funny things out here
as the heat gets you,
twigs snapping behind him
when suddenly in some places the breeze just stops!
all his hair stands to attention
this black man from a northern people
whose world has nothing to do
with the road ripping through
the wetland
but he is sensitive
is conscious
with dealings and bills
and mouths to feed,
a witness to the machines eating the tea-tree
clawing the soil
burning this patch of bush
for someone else’s lust of bitumen and noise
well, he just has to keep moving
despite the dark shadows of ochre and skin
that tempt the mind’s eye to ponder
what was
and never may be
again
boondall wetlands
poem 9
how do you know?
that the mud doesn’t feel the pain
of your weight upon its resting place
how do you know?
like the snake that rushes before your feet
and you the only audience
a gift only for your eyes
from the old people
maybe?
how do you know?
the tree that moves in the breeze
its branches caressing your head
maybe a touch of recognition?
maybe?
how do we know that this could be
our final resting place?
or sacred to someone else
but how can you tell?
is it voices or wind that pushes
the afternoon tide?
does your shadow talk to the land
or is it just a shroud of light?
are we asking the right questions?
and can they only be answered here on the
wetlands?
are the answers here for our blindness
or was blindness the only answer
our ears were content with?
once was a rifle range
all that remains now is dirt
always dirt
where so many years ago
adventurous young would fill it with lead
and heat
for the sovereign
eyes fixed in the cross-hairs of victory
on foreign soil
and something called honour
but this is also where
on the muddy banks of the creek
a father shared some final moments
with his little boy
and advised him to watch the mystical water
to wait, and never shed a tear
while his father travels away to fight the Boers
in a land called Africa
finally the man took his carbine rifle
fired several shots into some distant mounds of
earth
the child’s frame jolting with every hideous blast
until this father was content
ready for the long haul
trying to ignore the tears in his little boy’s eyes
watch the tide my son
and wait for me to return
upon a distant tide I will be home
but until then my son
wait
and watch the tide...
the kabul manifest
there is no stopping
the brutal freight-train of pure muscle
that manipulates billai dhagun
the likes of kabul
a wise old man
the last of the great contortionists
upon a dogmatic path
where many have tried to cross
to capture
to thwart
the shape-shifting
shedding skin
that comes with the immortality
that is kabul
unpredictable in his sudden appearance
disrespectful to the laws of gravity
yellow eyes the dominion
and has kept the old one’s language
his song of slither through the grass
constantly dreaming without horizon or
parameter
uncompromising his force to the marsh
loathing at human tramples
waiting for the hunt at dusk
free in billai dhagun
> and honest to his foe
endless in campaigns
the almighty kabul...
hotel bone
the job
B R Dionysius knocks on my window one morning
flesh on glass seems to create its own separate taste
upon the middle-eastern-mayhem blasting from a radio somewhere
in the vicinity of this maze
and I almost mistake the tapping for someone else;
asking me to move my car again
people being restless,
restless, restless
into the Ramadhan air
and my dreamtime has little chance
of getting me into that party
but B R is present now
to offer me an assignment,
some cash and more cred.
we sit in my mouse-trap kitchen, my boardinghouse atmosphere,
nothing short of a Casbah
as we gesture and negotiate the terms of a future poetry reading
with the flair of African mercenaries
over drinks out of tainted crystal
it reminds me of the reason
for why I came here in the first place
and B R with his good vibes
as always
neglecting to comment on the ectoplasmic-urine of this stucco shell;
this chasm for my reinvention
taking it day by day
and just accepting it,
as a job.
hotel bone
the street resembles a neck
from a wayward guitar
with Hotel Bone sitting idle on a vein,
wedged between two frets
where the bad tunes can reach her
these white stucco walls, I imagine, once carried a vision of pearl
now a gourd for asylum seekers
Iraqi, Indonesian, Sri Lankan
and one crazy Aboriginal ... who lives with a typewriter
but not with the brevity of a visa on my head; no,
my longevity was guaranteed before I was born
Smoke Encrypted Whispers Page 3