Notes on Notes on a Visit to a Land Spurned

Who loves the land the land loves love land love
Who lands the love lands love’s love lands land love.

Pope Meat Scandal – Select with Care

Traces of Ratzinger hidden in primates
Unheathy concealment in Milanese meat
Requires prophylaxis in African states
American pork cannot hope to compete.
Abort the career, continue the practise
Forcibly penetrating like with unlike
Good for the poor soul and never mind justice
Infallibly tell him get on his bike.
Say it in Latin, American, silence
We know what it is regardless of white smoke
The lambs in your care stuffed with lies and with violence
Remains on the floor of the abbatoir of hope.
Insidious occasion, watching your face
Watching sad crocodiles in a one horse race.

Makeshift Heart VII: Idling

Puddles all smell of my dog
Bush of crimson fruit disturbed make parrots
Cloud gaps as well resemble rabbits
Tangled pool floor flashes “water made me”
Like a rabbit too he bounces post bunny
Soft light tells me we’ll make it.
Magpie pants drooping in the undergrowth
Dog can see time in a copperhead snake
For that matter me too in a heartbeat
It’s a jellyfish it’s a moon it’s a reef it’s a pelican
It’s true love it’s a shadow it’s only shade.

Makeshift Heart VI

Woman raving at her fence
Child or anima return?
Mate or name your breakdown
Is it home or house you burn?
Trees whisper lullabies
Call or answer duly?
Sin, echt or key indicator
Elm mother or just a storm?

The places I struggle
A sea I swim alone
A look over shoulder
A mildewed hotel room
All common fears beneath
Not enough to render
More than merely sorry
If I am not insane.

State the simple simply
River courses through it
Red gums shade and speckle it
Rainbows belled must hunt in it:
The gamble of saying
It must be worth it
Even if the reader
Tums out to be a fence.

Makeshift Heart V:

one step back

 

Sing of every thing
Be dumb enough to believe
So hopeless you can cry
Meditate in a park
Or wander on a beach
GSoH will help
Leaves bearing your name
Blown away by some fool
Aren’t enough to dent you
I have lived half mad
Lucid dreaming
Did not know I lived but
Even god gets water
In the goggles sometimes
On the analogue digital edge is the breath
Parse fail quality assurance of death
When junk mail bites
When the enemy slights
When everyone seems daft
l simply remember ridiculous things
Dumb fucker
Grief trucker
Chew loud
Act proud
Take space
Start race
Pay attention!
Have gumption!
Petty liar
Wet fire
Shallow grave.

Makeshift Heart IV:

some moral compromises

Go on grab a flake
Go on tuna bake
Go on, you just put in the hours
Never mind the whys or the hows.
A big office arse needs an aubergine grill
And cold pressed, my oath, only eat who I kill.

Vicarious baiter.

You know about boating
You know it’s promoting
You know economics is right
Reads our minds even drowning in flight.
The blood runs south till we get to the gate
Think I give a rat’s for your politics, mate?

Vicious blather.

Can clear up your swine flu
Can open your heart too
Can clear you up every which way
Some new miracle, bless, everyday.
Love, pity, and silver, need a look that can skid
Off the eyes of macaque I would kill for my kid.

Victory is bitter.

You can get it in your car
From coffee in a bar
You can get it and go on unfussed
The furtive and guilty are the faces I trust.

Virtue’s a bother.

Makeshift Heart III

for H

You heard when she said what he did, afraid
Remained when he did what he did, delayed.
Helplessness is an art form, an air raid:
Start, and a muddle, an ending betrayed.
Live through this and death is nothing, sister
Some things pale somethings sit and fester
No idea what living average cost her
Tripping through the office, an impostor.
We slide and we borrow and we wake
Give an hour for every moment we can take
Daily participate in that mistake
Get up and slide and borrow, and fake.
All witnesses, professional and not
Participate anyway in the plot.
Shadow my shadow my widow my murderer
Regret my egret in the field of complaint
Callow my fellow and hollow the wanderer
My family witnesses, none is a saint.
Action if prison if action if warren:
Rondelet gaol and sonnet retreat
Take me to places I do not intend
Sacrifice gently or give up abrupt.
Who reads the papers who writes the papers:
Capulet-Montague baby instead;
Here comes the Chopper to chop off your fingers –
Inkwell of history or another man’s blood.
Hush, hush child. No one is better.
Just thorns upon roses I grew for my mother.

Lift your feet as you tread through the long stalks
Take the hill low, down now, and slither boy
In a bunny ear the very plant talks –
So knee backs burn, it’s the marvellous ploy.
Something else, something even grateful, carved:
Scrimshaw of action, sayings carved
On love and ego even in blood carved
Still witness, false agency, if heart carved.
Lasing memory, no object sintering
(Swan dusk and gold whiting its own reward)
Is the hunt or fish standing still still standing
Decide recreation or cave coward?
Hush, you hush you child. No one gets better
Impossibly murdering their father.

Do the sing do the song of my ancestor
Just because we do Mambo Toraja
Step swing step up boy and step swing return
Flappy just happy in the grip of the past –
Saw nothing then do nothing now
Lordy, hush, I’m home at last.

Makeshift Heart II

Magnolia silvereye sing your fractious heart out
Be that as it may you say or you could not fly
Be that as it may or your heart would be too stout
Lighter by the argument l murmur and I sigh
Experimentally trying l remain a lump
Day too blue and sun too bright and poppies close to tears
Regard the night and dog walk and work it as a pump
I can tell myself to fight the shadow it appears
And fail but twig and twitch my own be that as it may
So that DNA may care but why should I die
So long then I walk lighter with one out of the way
Seeing evening and car park and workplace silvereye
Struggling midlife like rank teenagers into wings
Waking up at least a bit embarrassed to these things.

Makeshift Heart I

When I smell the red red rose, do I,
Hear the rosy baby cry, do I?
Baby’s pricked by hatred of the lie
And, while pricks don’t make me want to die,
Do I?

Good die younger and greats live on:
Kneel unneeded, die, no song,
All the shadows gently long:
I’m no longer sure what’s wrong.

The meadow is nothing without my complaint:
The grass leaves too high or too wet.
Regardless fall sparrows, I’m too young for sight:
Whole forests without my regret.

God is departing after all this time.
Heaven’s choir-shape left after all this time.
Laughing at my own hosannas this time:
The narcissist pulls on his coat.

Does grace fall with tears or weep at the sight
Does my chest form a cup or a cavern?
Wishing meteors after promised delight
Helps opportunists to govern.

Wishing won’t clear my muddle
Will not make me less awful
Put Jimmy Savile on trial
Or an icon on dial
But it gives me a shovel
And I dig like the devil
Till outside feels like the middle:
It’s not, love, and never will be
So hold onto me.

Ancient dance of tears
Modesty taken for weakness
A fish’s twitch is a choreography
Or a lowly reaction.
Our vanity supposes
They are happy and we are right
But vegetarians will eat us in the end.

If This Goes On

When the payday dracula comes disguised as your son
The natural corporate offspring is a robot
Operated by a teenager, avoiding detention
With morons cheating quatrains by Captcha, bombing mosques by Kinect.

It is not no oddity could predict we would not fly cars
By September Eleven Oh-one, who knew we’d hold it against
That past’s Future, our own no space mercantiles, ours no bug fights,
We laugh, power pointing there, Love and Reason always elsewhere.

Their stooge is not the future’s enemy. The Boxer is just
Distraction, strategic delay for cost effective sponsor change.
Far from dim-witted, choosing not to make the decision with his head
But by the faith beaten into him by other clever believers:

The head they hold has its limits yet we suspect we do not
So wisdom must lie elsewhere, we reason. We dream of waking
So we can sleep, of grief so we can weep: noxious passion
For the pimply mind of The Market, our belief.

Don’t mix your doom echo with The Shape of Things.
It isn’t even your shape, come to that, just noise:
See the Boxer relish your panic, easy fixed by his poll
And nothing else. “What’s the good of it?” Indeed.

Good is decent people extrapolating.

Death Takes a Take

If Death directed a Major Motion Picture we’d get a musical:
Sound of Music, Carousel, and Rocky Horror, shot 4D,
Celestial, karmic, infernal, choreography and and all that jazz by Fosse;
Or just director’s comments on the DVD and deleted scenes, alternate endings –
Links to extinct contests or sites we can blog to oblivion.

If Death directed a Major Motion Picture we’d get no sequels:
The same thing but different is not Hell but reassurance,
Remakes, fanfic, tactfully nipped by franchisor –
Or each iteration as fresh as the first time you ducked the huge rolling ball,
Gagged at shot vomit, only handsomer, more dimensional leads each time, Clooney for Grant.

If Death directed a Major Motion Picture we’d get more than bargained for:
Hamlet’s quivering obsession our heart’s, Kent’s illness at the green stuff our gut’s,
The Stooge’s hammer blow to the brain our own hollow tone –
Or a cynical knowledge of all endings, all cheap short cuts, all bastardised Odysseys,
Sad gap after original novel, stolen MacGuffin, better Danish original.

But Death does not direct, lucky, gets Associate Producer credit:
As we recline in the dark, hoping nobody sees our tears, we let go
For better or worse, richer or poorer, in the Auteur’s sleight of hands –
And whether we pray for Goddard but get Stone or for Jackson but get Bakshi,
Smuggle your own sweet snacks for the popcorn is too dear.

Tranquility Station

Counting pickets, count the beat
Wear wrong footwear, use wrong feet
Folding answers till they’re neat
Keep Poseidon sweet.
Click the heel, no answer rush
Slow to anger, quick to blush
Smile to fill the question hush
Pattern turns to mush.
Cross aorta, spit and miss
Tidy breathing, tidy bliss
Meditate, and cross goes criss
Must be more to this.
Edge of truth, buttery boon
Out of reach, live cartoon
Mumble something out of tune
And go home way too soon.
Irritation, puff the flame
Seriousness, just the same
A god and everything a game
Or totally lame.
Put a stone down, put a stone
Doan down darn down down down
One foot after another
Only one, only one,
One.
A wave sweeps in and laves all our little wrinkles away.
Hush, hush, there is nothing outside this.

Complications Arising from a Bicycle

Stephen Covey
You impress me
Like Roland’s laundry:
Effectively
Disney.

Looked at Clouds that Way and Ate Them

Before the oboe the phrase of the crane,
Before the bird and the wood,
Squirting along in the Mesozoic sea
Colouring your tentacles with love –
Bumble me tumble me each one a meal
Deep in the belly of the moon:
I eat the children, and
I drink the sea, and
I eat the cauliflower sky.

Towers encrusted with oysters and cheese
Pastry facades line the street:
Black pudding ribbon and footpath molé
Baked glaze and furniture parfait –
Rumble me grumble me menu me morning
Break fast the order of the day:
I eat the women and
Sip on the trees and
Pigeon pot tartin swooping by.

Sontag streaks rheteors or Berlioz, bassoons,
Homer, the wobble and the slap:
No accountant for taste, boys, but I eat it all
Roll big mouth wise by Sublime –
Fumble me stumble me stupid by design,
Experts and master chefs devoured:
Boson your captain and
Strong force the street tanks!
We eat the labour everyday.

Why Crows Beat Gulls

Solstice 2012

Another beat closer to distant appreciation
Taken only by the odd prick of a camera
Phone. Growing deliberate so as not to break
The nice chat. The young curmudgeon cycles
Slower than the pure research product
Proven by a meeting where action points
The Way up a hill steeper than the doped
Competitors’. Race on.

The crow is more important than the seagull:
(Everybody knows this)
Nobler blue sheen, her eye more dangerous,
Expansive beat meditation, not promiscuous
Nor restless jostle nor footless wander –
Boot free, really, as we scatter through history –
Wondering why we went that way and not
This. Kronk.

Crane’s arc, melody to building, rising frame,
In turn, rhythm to the lift and weft of the yellow
Steel across the sky, a beat to the song of its birth year.
Julia mother made your revolution, and the years will make
Your use. I have only this sense, dear,
That plain speaking occurs to me only
On the final downstroke. Over the hill to a quiet
Fall. Say it.

Wedding Song

for John and Henny

Today our gold is mixed and made
As we kneel and wash in this stream
That runs like breath across this glade
Into our common dream

And all our gifts are assembled here
On this day in the sight of the world
The ardour of our age grows clear
See the banners unfurled

Sing me for you and the wind blows true
Sing you for me and the wind blows free

Our natures are waiting for answer
Our years may prove what we’ll be
Though chance and fate make us wonder
It’s divinity

And our love gives us moment to dance
Though our days will seem more like a tree
Than a floor where we shuffle romance
Without a company

Sing all for us and the sun shines just
Sing us for all and the sun won’t fall

Our trick of the light speeds the play
(Even strangers announce it’s too soon)
Toward Heaven knows what and won’t say
Like a loon

The state we’re approaching is innocence
The remembered present its boss
The instant and name fall in balance
Then we cross

Sing sky for hills and the rain fulfills
Sing valley for sky and the storm has passed by

– Paul Voermans, Preston 2001

Poise

The cycling craze is upon us.
Living in our skin of Lycra,
Therapy in repetition of our knees,
The road’s song and its scholar
Teach us a halt

Is not acceptable; for if you stop
You have only your legs,
No matter how shapely, to fight
Inertia.  The lead unto temptation is inevitable
Running lights, runaway, through
A mechanical economical gradient
Down to imaginary equilibrium.

Punctuated.

I cannot hate you I am prey
To it myself.  But if you cannot believe
My evolution, I cannot credit yours.
The climate of opinion values a bushy
Authenticity because of too many facts
Statistically getting in the way of the truth.  The truth is
I am sick of you.  You cant you box you
Ride triumphal through the arches –
No hands, Ma –
While we stand mesmerised by the drugs
You do not have to take to crash
Or crash through our living
Rooms. Your ambition at once too big and too
Small.  Just whatever it takes to get you
Through the amber lights.

Organ donor.

There.  I am losing it just like you.
Let us relaunch our poor poise or
Be just history.

Even Fear Grows Old

for Donald on his 60th

Every child is an oracle
Telling the present;
While you rub the sleep from your eyes
They park on your chest.

Ambitions are accidental.
I mortared my want
Round decisions found like rocks in my shoes –
They read as a list.

What wasn’t possible
Is now old and frequent.
No matter what the fat man whispers,
Never mind the schoolboy fears,
Collect these paper scraps of prayers
And burn in the west.

GBNT: Repeat Till True

 

(for The Hon Tony Abbott MHR)

 

Winter Solstice 2010

When I think of poetry I reach for magpie song
Muddle monkeys waddle below
Power startled by this sharp correlation
Mystery and recognition widen His eyes
This through the phrase
That thumps through the eyes
To the heart

Doomed and small but so what?
Solstice without wine but with fire
Tonight I taught my son to sew
Figuring the path from verb to breath to nerve
Via the heart

We imagine for a poem we simply do
But doing all the time imagine on the run
And simply don’t

Now at the sweet end of exhalation
Low point of light
We wait

For all of it to confuse us again

Checking the Spill

Spelling.  I’ve always regarded myself as a good speller.  Certainly adequate.  But converting The Weird Colonial Boy from an old pre-PC manuscript to downloadable format (see prvevious rash promise) has convinced me that Gollancz did me a great service with their copyediting.  It’s taking ages!  Who knows what state my mss go out in?  How asleep am I at the wheel? 

Get a Free Read Here!

I’ve decided to post my earlier work under a Creative Commons license. First up, The Weird Colonial Boy. Will upload asap! Stay tuned for other novels and some short fiction online as soon as I get the copyright sorted with original paper publishers and get time to upload and lay it out. So come and get it!

Fictional Tension

Some might have heard that Jill Sparrow and I are writing a novel. (Don’t ask me what it’s called.) Friends often ask us, “But how could you write a novel that way?” Behind this is the assumption that there is something completely individual about the novelistic art. Well, that may be so. Or it may not. There is a long answer involving collaboration and commercial imperatives, bourgeois art and individualism, and “trash” and literature of ideas, but the short answer is, she and I have complementary strengths.

The novel’s getting toward readable now (though perhaps that’s a value judgement) and I suppose I’m reaching the point where I can reflect on how my thoughts have been exercised by what Jill’s brought to it. A broad and deep knowledge at her fingertips of what political movements eat and drink – and what may poison them. The people living their activism, the trajectories of their lives, and the reasons they rebel or otherwise. The slog. How much of a person’s stance is an accidental collision of history and sensibility; and seemingly in contradiction, how little of one’s relationship to the greater history is untouched by manipulation, how choice can be at once illusory and a matter of conscience. Jill also advocates a fierce naturalism, which I guess is a product of quite an evolved materialism since it eschews the clichés devised by both markets and teleology, no matter whose.

She and I have always argued. About other things! The novel has produced little in the way of fierce disagreement, perhaps because both of us are confident in our areas of strength, mine in the craft of fiction and scientific speculation and Jill’s in historiography and activism. And lack confidence in the other’s areas. We have, however, filled many pages with notes driving characters and situations in electronic chat format and email. We’ve also got years of experience as work mates in other fields, so there’s trust.

And it’s much of that common experience, I now see, out of which we’ve written ourselves. Our old workmates joke with us that they’re in the novel, or that others from our common workplaces are in the novel, and of course we’ve drawn situations and colours from the raw material of our lives, as all writers do, but even if you consciously tried to copy somebody from life, to set them in another context – in this case an ageing, climate changed future, where the nature of political representation reaches discontinuity – renders such alleged portraiture or caricature irrelevant. In any case, what interests me about this process is that Jill and I emerged straight from a bitter industrial battle, during the depths of the Howard government’s exercise of power.

We’ve come from this place emotionally. This is a great deal of the truth of what we’ve depicted, not personalities.

At one stage, Jill asked me what point there might be in attempting an intervention in the form of writing such a novel, when so many things were so bad. I replied that this was the very time people needed this kind of effort. Now, when things may be a little different, and Howard seems not quite so invincible, we see that what might beat him still provides us with the reason for such a project. What it takes to beat Howard is distressing to watch, at times.

Fiction of the future often comes with a Best Before Date. Not only do the dates date, as it were, with people living on Mars in 1999 and everyone wearing Lycra without riding bicycles, but also the social situation provoking the satire or drama of the novel moves on. However, I suspect that it will be a long time before the sort of dire situation provoking the actions of our characters comes about. We mess around at the edges of reform. It seems that once we reach a level of affluence, all hope of assisting ourselves beyond our problematic form of representation – assisting anybody else in other countries with their more clear-cut problems either – is watered down. The ownership of a house, car, mobile phone and computer, aircon, and the treadmill necessary to keep it all going for ourselves and our families, takes the will to change from all but a faithful few, who sacrifice something else to the struggle.

It could be argued that this something is what disables the struggle itself. One must remove oneself from the values that create a society of any kind in order to see how it might be changed. Jill and I have touched upon this process in the novel, as well as a great number of other things. There have been novels about people who want to change the world before, and there have been novels of despair about how fucked things are – there have even been novels of hope about ordinary people who make a difference. Ours is a big novel, about a great number of things, perhaps all of the above things – we tried not to have any one character who could be called the most important. We have written an entertainment, full of drama and comedy, but one which we hope will entertain people we know are not easily captured by the economic imperatives of the lowest common denominator, one with a tension between identification with what gives us the values we wish to change and the objectivity of having removed yourself from those values enough to see what must be changed.

And that creative tension is what you get writing a novel with two people. Hopefully it’s more than either of us could do on our own.

[also posted on Leftwrites]

Woohoo!

Well the novel’s finished. A draft, anyhow. It took almost exactly two years to write the draft and a couple more to research it. Still haven’t thought of a good title! I’ve been thinking of Menace to Society: a political adventure. I’m sure none of my friends look at this blog, but if anyone else does, let me know what you think. You could win a chocolate frog.