The tastes of Spring
make my juices roar.
Where will this
sweet rotten season
lead me?
Will a golden snake’s kiss
enslave
or free me?
The fruits of Spring
are in the sinning
The smells of Spring
send my blood ringing
The tastes of Spring
make my juices
soar.
My heart
a spitting passion
fruit
I waft
in this luscious air
The bright red apple
hisses like a bright fire
and sings to me:
The fruits of Spring
are in the sinning
Where will the seeds
of my lush paradise
sprout?
The smells of Spring
send my blood spinning
To what peach poison
is my nose
stringing me?
The tastes of Spring
make my juices roar
I bite the apple
I lick the fire
I kiss the sweet sweet snake
I die by the sweet Spring’s
sword.
CAT WOMAN
Song of seduction by a woman
dressed in a red latex cat-suit
Purr and claws
Purr and claws
Like a smoking ghost
I pass through walls
Purr and claws
Purr and claws
My nine lives
floating like gossamer
through the caressing air
Purr and claws
I always land
on your paws
I am your silky
black magic
I am your gentle teasing
death
let the witch
dribble my name
through her tortured
cries
let the witch
call for me
call for a gentle
teasing death
through the agonising
fire
Purr and claws
Purr and claws
I am your
silky black magic
I am your gentle
teasing death
you’re lonely
without me
you long for my
wild soft breath
Purr and claws
Purr and claws
Be my willing slave
I’ll be your burning
chore
I am your
silky black magic
I’m the gentle teasing
death
you want and adore.
THE VEILED LADY
A slow prayer sung by an enormously fat
woman with a bag over her head
Lord God
I am my most nakedly
yours
when you can’t see my face.
Lord God
I am most open
to the slice
of your gaze
when you can’t see
my face.
Lord God
Lord God
are you teaching me
a shame
that burns like grace?
when you can’t see
when you can’t see
my face.
Lord God
I live like a worm
in this dark.
Lord God
flesh
pleads for your sweet
surgery
are you teaching me
to love
a shame
that burns like grace?
when you can’t see
when you can’t see
my face.
IMAGINATION
Sung with hypnotising allure by a counter-tenor
dressed in very dirty black silk pyjamas
I’m your real world
I’m your bottomless pool
of sucking
black mud
trust me
trust me
I’m so soft and warm
and dirty
trust me
trust me
you can sink
so sweet and safely
right to the calling
and calling
bottomless
of me
I promise
I’ll make the journey
worth your while
trust me
trust me
the dark and fabulous
things
you’ll learn and know
from the dissolving roots
of your hair
to the soft slow burn
of your lost lost
toes
the dark and fabulous
things
I’ll show
will never leave you
will never let
you go
I’m your real world
your bottomless pool
of black and sucking
mud
I’ll seep right
through you
I’ll change forever
your bones, soul
and blood
I’m your real world
trust me
trust me
I’m so soft and warm
and dirty
trust me
trust me
take my journey
take the plunge
you can sink
you can sink
so sweet and safely
right to the calling
and calling
bottomless
of me.
THE BLUEBIRD OF DEATH
A woman is dressed as a metallically glittering bluebird.
Her breasts end in sharp points, each breast like a
raptor’s beak. She sings with a relaxed, deadly irony.
You live your life
as if you and I
share some sweet
understanding
You live your life
as if there’s a secure cage
for my clipped wings
you’re planning
You live your life
as if some gullible god
gave you the upper hand
You live your life
as if you can hold me down
and suck me bland.
(Threatening change of mood and tempo)
Don’t fool yourself
my love
Don’t kid yourself
my darling.
Sniff the air
Test the weather.
Smell the storm
of burning feathers.
Smell the storm
of our terrifying
flight together.
The day we go
you won’t know
The place we go
you won’t know
You’ll learn, my love,
you’ll learn, my sweet,
you’ll learn
your bluebird
is not your lover
is not your mother
as if you and I
share some sweet
understanding
You live your life
as if there’s a secure cage
for my clipped wings
you’re planning
Sniff the air.
Test the weather.
Smell the storm
of burning feathers
Smell the storm
of our last and final
flight together.
The day we go
The place we go
Only I will know
Only I will know.
LUCKY
TRAVEL
Waiting on a reeking strange
railway station –
then the dead-quiet but crowded
night ferry.
What country
did I travel from
when I was born?
What alluring bait
made me leave?
William Blake
as he was dying
craned forward
towards a country
he’d always wanted to see.
His rapturous curiosity
always
an unsettling inspiration.
The Venerable Bede
embroidered his metaphor
of the brevity of life
after watching
a sparrow fly
from one darkness to another
a living flash
through a torch-bright hall.
What lives
keep leaping
to and fro
those pregnant black tunnels
of being?
On a bold day
my own footloose
soul
can smell a good
sailing wind –
the dare
in Blake’s shimmying-up-the-mast
last breath –
and then crawl
snug and wide-eyed
into the downy
undercarriage
of Bede’s plucky
traveller bird.
SISTER-IN-LAW
For Jenny
Until I met you
I always believed
I lived in an outlaw’s space
where family remote or close
could only be
blood or ghetto
and any gay,
determined to make
their own way,
will tell you straight –
blood is no reliable
home
nor fix
against intolerance.
Until I met you
I was content
to keep my Melbourne family
simple.
my lover. my cat.
my books.
Jenny, believe me
my cosy grumpy cocoon
had not planned
for a sister-in-law
as sweet, as insistently
inclusive as you,
to release me from my own
lonely prejudice too.
LUCKY
For Andy
There’s a damp melancholy
in T’ang poetry
that smudges
the lovely jade
precision.
I love Walt Whitman’s
spunky company
but under his bardic
whistling
I can hear his lonely heart
howling
at the turned back
of some deaf rough trade.
So many poets
starve
in the cold faery spaces
between their frost-bitten ears.
How lucky I am
to hear you, darling,
coming up the stairs
to smell the coffee
floating ahead of you
like my favourite incense.
FOSSIL FERNS
For Rachel and Sam on their wedding day
When the shy garden
of fossil ferns
indelibly inked
in my sandstone path
was frond-green
and under dinosaur foot
it was a hotter different world.
Things change –
but some beautiful things
even in their changing
wondrously remain.
Like the magical space
that love creates
where strange
even fabulous
plants can grow –
not to mention
a thundering hungry reptile
or two.
I won’t say
best of all
the humble fern –
I like a pterodactyl
in the hand
as much as any girl –
but how lovely
to watch over a lifetime
these exquisite fern amulets
unfurl.
LAST ARIA FROM THE ETERNITY MAN
From a chamber opera composed by Jonathan Mills
I always knew
Eternity would smell
Like a cold salt wind
I always knew
Eternity would be
A wild a wild
sea
A wild sea
That will climb
The highest cliff
A wild sea
That will growl
Through the rocks
A wild sea
That will hiss
From the deep
A wild sea
That will come
When I call
A wild sea
I will hear
And smell
Like a lover finally
Climbing
In the window
I would never open
A wild sea
Coming wave after
Blue-black wave
For me.
Oh my valley of briny vision
Take me
In your salty arms!
Let my own soul’s tide
Rise and Flood
And rejoice.
* * *
How can I write
On water?
Do the fish
Do the giant squid
Read?
How can I write
On water?
There is only
One mortal place
Left
No angel is ever
Unadorned
To go before
His maker.
VIEW FROM 417
The sky – twilight sky –
is a wisping blue
friendly and unearthly
I’m not sure where I am
The buildings my window
lets in
have an art deco look
of white flat squares
with art deco design
flourishes
exorbitantly flamboyant
for a hospital room
landscape
Something in me
despite everything
can’t believe my luck
26 November 2008
, Mercy Private Hospital, Melbourne, Room 417