In Air
Move slowly and compose in air
Your mind walks with ghosts on the ceiling
Stand as you move into your limbs
Love your fences and stone as you may
There’s no reply that won’t hurt you
Published in The Australian Literary Review
The Thought of an Autobiographical Poem
Troubles & Eludes Me
So I've been leaning against
the names of things
not just walls but the very air
the rug, the pen
the silver garbage bin.
But all words are
autobiographies
used to tell
half sentences
a quarter turning moon.
Today is a sound.
I hear words that mean
landing jet or rustled plastic
a book that depends on mercy.
And the gas, breathing.
Published in Westerly
Who Can Say When Her Time Is?
This is a song of the white.
The multitude or the pattern.
The rose or the wind.
A woman who begins,
a woman who disappears.
a woman drinking blossom's shadow.
There's a taste that becomes
with spring's movement,
its dreaming is intense. She knows
her secret virtue can be seen in
the water moon that must be (surely)
lying low, somewhere near.
Her body composes its treasures
beyond all the experts in confusion.
Her burdens lightly gather round —
the pure land or fever dreams,
plumes or rejected solutions,
the many-in-one or chaos.
She's never alone among memories.
What's supposed to occur now
is incidental to what happens.
Rising from the grass are fences
and clouds, those little brothers
playing games with the instant.
The moon takes its time.
Published in Australian Book Review
A Small Beach
I contemplate my modern soul
not too much. There's something of steel
in the sky and it bears down
through clearances of blue.
I tried stepping into the same sea twice
or more, and nearly drowned in shallows.
The sand occupies me with its waywardness
its withholding of evidence
debrading millions of dead skeletons.
The crust is temporary
but wind taps each wing
of a high albatross.
A headland is always that far
a lighthouse flashes, its ghost climbing.
The rocky beach is littered
with fur seals. Danger moves
in their sleepy regard and their bloodied necks.
I realise stepping here is wrong
as well. But the wind is cold and sometimes
that’s enough.
Published in Island
I Must Be With You in the Cold Time
I’ve lost my sensitivity, you say.
That was always possible
along with a fear of breathing.
As though this was intentional.
I watch as bucket loads drop
then slowly decrease.
I go into work tasting of externals.
I’ve wished an end, nevertheless.
Elasticity is way round ascension
after a time of emptiness.
A world is stored in whole numbers.
I agree, my absentee moves too hard.
Fear at night blanks inner recovery.
Each word is sent without meaning.
Conceit’s attributes rupture in body.
Psycho-technology witnesses my sketchiness.
I’m hungry with these skinny solutions.
My sweat thickens the walls of an hour.
Even the packages are vanilla wrapped.
I wish for response rather than a flip-phone.
Published in Heat
You can buy copies of my books online
from the
following publishers:
Salt Publishing
Broken/Open
| Screen
Jets Heaven
Picaro
Press
Where the
Sea Burns