She’s putting on her armor just before the sun up,
with a snap of latches, and the buzz of her
electric screwdriver.
In the far field, stuttering unsteadiness,
in the near field, delicate slivers of glass.
~/~
He knows that he is not himself, someone else
inside authoritates the wine list
and whispers to the pillow:
a loquacious tropical parrot will emerge
and leave a chrysalis remainder.
In the photocopied forest,
where origami birds shed origami feathers,
where duplicates with papered eyes
riffle through the files of our dreaming,
where carbon copied life is rampant,
Rosalyn shows me a quick start guide
for human prototypes,
their care and feeding, how to keep them far
from wheels and fire,
thermodynamics
and recirculant mechanics.
Our bonsai minds are caged and shaped,
replicas in miniature of something greater:
trains, the sky, and lightning.
I didn’t pay the bills electric,
now no lights electric,
just a fluid glimmer—
the ghosts from yesterday
illuminate my ectoplasmic reading.
Outside a spinning wind is rising,
furrowing the earth and sky,
and on the far horizon, mechanical invaders
with razored paddle wheels
scalpel air to vortices,
curling slinkies that cannot be
unwound.
Day twenty nine, a synesthetic blizzard
all around. Maths is melting,
braindrops trickling down
the paper windowpanes
chasing swirls of tangled crossings out.
I read back from my diary,
each over-written page of logic
countersigned and stamped
by cat’s paw on the inkpad,
with spattered blood from scratches
in the margin.
in the pavlova recipe
Sorry, I have to take this,
the pavlova says. The microwave
is ringing and they speak together in whispers.
travel blogging
Down by the seas of roads and rails—tarmacs lined
with dashes on the runways to the shallows—
the metropolitan trains approach a nexus
where all begins and ends.
Once my life was stippled on those waters
and broken on those shores.
Tell me something true and real, she says—I
notice her fangs are
a little blunt—you can tell the cat
your dreams.
~ / ~
I came to planet Crypton years ago,
traveled in a sky-blue pod from Earth,
its vaporous madness left behind.
It looks a lot like Earth itself,
more crystalline than you’d expect
and everyone is strangers.
I pour a glass of water, try the hot and cold,
but it doesn’t make a difference, only steam today.
My hair’s dissolved as well, or perhaps
I just misplaced it long ago.
The fridge has flown out through the kitchen
window, appliances in
migratory flocks are traveling north,
and I’ve put my ice cream
in the oven, no need for any baking.
People, so cute they are, Paulo thinks,
especially Miranda,
and always
the same way up.
He envies those with certain knowledge,
in their environs no cloud or mist;
on their loci, labelled points,
soluble in warm
water, formulae taken
twice a day with ritual and promise.
Still, Paulo knows that, should
he name the nameless,
its power will evaporate
and taxes will be levied.
Sutherland birds
All Sutherland birds are flightless, the local
council recommends
tiny holes in fences for the poor
creatures to hop
through, and we are strangers lost
and roaming in a lonely place.
Riders within us direct our dreams,
we who imagine ourselves
untouched by the local weather,
and yet a storm is brewing
by the picture rail in the dining room
where the larks are pecking at the carpet,
and Docinha’s head is hidden inside
a fluffy philosophical cloud.
Three ghosts are in the hall. On the cable
internet outside, two currawongs are pecking,
but the mysteries of past and present,
of calendars, dates and numbers are best
left for numerical processors.
When time was thick and sweet and I couldn’t breathe,
when you wept and left me wondering,
when the blue of clouds and day was painted
on the land to resist the night’s temptations,
I could start six lines and finish them,
know what I’d just said and order wine.
By night I long for vacuum,
yet gravity ties my bones and blood,
wires me to the world, an unbreakable nexus.
I’d prefer a lighter planet, uncored by an iron seed.
We think alike, adversaries and friends,
harmonies of disdain and love,
characters in chiaroscuro,
quotidian actors reading quadrophonic lines.
A thunderstorm’s approaching underground.
Along the shore, waves of sand
competing with the ocean,
from ancient graveyards ghosts will float
into the world, freed from roiling earth,
disinterred.
Lidia pays
no attention
to the weather forecast
and I prepare our breakfast:
spinach, pastry, thoughts of eggs,
peel a purple onion, layer after layer,
until just the memory of an onion’s left.
Through the window, washes
on a watercolor planet,
rainy autumn shades in spring, and
in the early evening, scattered photon showers
are forecast, a luminous return of light
from the shadow sun.
Indoors there are smaller mysteries,
trailing motes in negative space—
old-fashioned sunlight
leaving lamps and bulbs,
domesticities and peripherals,
drawn out between the curtains
to the shadow sun.
We’re squeezed like toothpaste into wires,
an atmospheric phantom network
bouncing off the sea bed and the sky,
and if we don’t pay the bills:
discontinuities in reality.
They’re deep, best not to fall in.
I remember burning forests in the wind
when the air was thick as a roast chicken smoothie,
when nature, lightning and amino acids
made single cells in starter packs,
ever changing, revisable.
But now each heart is pizza sliced in four quaternions,
one alone, the other three—
an irresolvable triangle of love.
Once on a quiet night, I joined a busload
of marsupials and monotremes on tour,
even an emu or two, and we
traveled through the window down
an invisible road to Isvénia.
Where rivers of sand once ran beneath the sea,
I saw an endless room, domesticated white goods,
infinity cubed in rows and shelves and aisles.
And in the concrete fields outside,
Audis stacked eight stories high,
driving gloves in leatherette that clawed
out of the ground,
keen to leave the parking down below.
I’ve breathed the air chirped by sparrows,
critically appraised everything
I didn’t understand,
searched for magica potenta
in urban mysteries, shaded quantum clouds,
on bedroom ceilings, and found echidna quills,
kookaburra beaks, sobriety, all the words
I didn’t want to write.
Three knocks at the door-to-door,
I said I don’t want any, thank you,
not knowing what I didn’t desire.