Whovian (April)

They rush from their bedroom-tardis, propelled by concepts. Kitchen is being invaded. Open the pantry, tin-cans multiply, take over. Jelly baby? They master the situation. Are they Clara? The Doctor? It’s a million light years away down there in Geelong. Streets of daleks. Exterminate! They don’t revisit that series. It’s April, it must be Andromeda.  Whether David Tennant or Matt Smith, they will sort out the universe at the bottom of their garden. Bowties are cool. After dinner’s time for the ‘chameleon circuit’ series. If things get out of control, they step back into the bedroom-tardis. Time to regenerate. Allons-y!

Queen (April)

I talked to the Queen last night. English cottage garden inside shoulder-high red-brick wall. Awake I know about the blighted North Atlantic islands, the postcolonial Raj, star-spangled superpowers, and bullish Commonwealth outposts known as Anglosphere. This is immaterial when talking to the Queen in a dream. We sipped tea from Royal Worcester. Awake the Queen’s Birthday is in June, though she herself was born in April. It’s a couple of years since I talked to the Queen. Dreams are the only place I will ever meet her. Like being in a film, only better. I forget everything we actually said.

Touch (April)

Nerve ends read our universe. Oxford philosophers write whole books, but favoured themes don’t touch on the finer sensations of April rain. Skin keeps cataloguing hard and soft. They delight more in deception than truth. Books feel like paper, but what about blindfold? Stanford scientists have a firm grasp of surface: metal grain, flush of fittings. Their imprint’s felt all over computers. Vienna psychologists stress effect. Is touch crystallizing, impatient? While Sorbonne poets leave us sensing, this could last a lifetime. They compare fire to planetary flowers, ice to the end of knowledge. Their charming deceptions are often spoken of.

Lest (April)

The double negative challenges us from the first. Lest we forget. Three little words place us directly where we must remember to remember. While not an imperative, they are call and command. They appeal to conscience. On April 25th, we are prompted to remember soldiers, war, loss, futility, death. Or it may be just to remember we are part of remembering. ‘Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet’ is elided from the experience for many, yet Kipling’s meaning depends on assurance of the Lord’s presence. ‘Lest’ is part of collective memory, even as it increases its antiquated Victorian tension.

Cabinet (April)

We once read about cabinets, principled factors fitted together for results. Cabinets held important papers, solved insoluble space issues. Long night reading sessions brought home reassuring impressions of safe joins and right instructions. Cabinets contained only the best. The people who made them up were solid and knowledgeable. Today it’s disconcerting reading. Cabinets are makeshift constructions of chance materials, pop-up planners. Shiny reliable boards are riddled with corruption. It’s a wonder cabinets hold together, their connections are so slipshod. Parts fall off. Augustan standards prove April foolishness, assembled using an Ikea key. It’s time to go back to the drawing-board.

Medieval (April)

Kingsley Amis instructed that medieval be pronounced in four syllables, “meedy-eeval”. To pronounce it in three was “an infallible sign of fundamental illiteracy.” February is pronounced in two, three, or four syllables, depending on how we manage the rhubarb sound in the middle. Whether any of those are signs of fundamental illiteracy does not vex those in the middle of a February heat wave. Feb will do. April brings no such accusations. Two syllables, though Amis would have taken those to task who didn’t know whether emphasis was on the pea or the are. Only what of Chaucer’s Aprille? Three?    

Pharmacy (April)

THALES: Take two at bedtime. The box buildings of the city are a medicine cabinet. NAB: After use do not try to drive a vehicle or operate heavy machinery. Their names are stated unmistakably near the top of the box. MASON MERCER: Keep out of reach of children. We set them out on the table. SOFITEL: Renew April, if pain persists see a doctor. The labels don’t say if they are cure, placebo, or cause further discomfort. TELSTRA: Protect from moisture. Some boxes look like they open at the top, others zip down the side. MYER: Take strictly as directed.

Entry (April)

Our minds of encyclopedia, beings testing every sense, our past-present-and-future gone for a walk. We carry the mass of Christianity, the shadows of Enlightenment, entry of Everything today. So what are 24 hours? What’s a diary entry? At the end of the day (businessman’s cliché) we report varying weather, curvaceous conversations, restorative meals. Entry to club, church, museum, arena. Entry not so predictable to thoughts’ delight, daring, doubt. We look at what we might admit but do not commit to paper: unfulfilled desires, half-finished plans, abandoned ideas. What’s April? Still so little done, and we must sit with that, ourselves.

Football (April)

A quadri-lanceolate oval employed by a quarantine of wills upon a cornerless field. Its indented heads serve unpredictability, point being to bounce opposite to the course of play. Stitched tight by fearsome egos, laced for loss, it upends the April Premiers’ arrogant marks, rolls clear of princely pretensions, floats mysteriously to a passing rover, watched on high by thousands near a goalpost. The bladder is no possum intestine but imperial rubber: intestinal fortitude combines imported British optimism, purple emotions, and a load of pressurized hot air. Placed, dropped, torpedoed, punted, or stabbed, it’s the game’s one element no-one argues with.  

Beard (April)

Mughal: curled tips in touch with cosmos, or turbaned vanity. Bushranger: hides in dense scrub, speaks in rolling plain outcrops. Hipster: internet-addled show pony whiskers, thickness indicates level of insecurity. Lumberjack: non-trip bib goes with check shirt and axe-grinding opinions. Metro: distressed-look or designer stubble, sometimes with shaved cubist edges. April: antipodean growth response to first chilly autumnal southern drafts. Assyrian: artistic hipster with rasta beads, and graphed interlocking interlocks. Moses: heavy-duty lumberjack, parted in the middle, 6,000+ FB friends. Weirdy: not on the terrorist checklist but camera-ready for suspicion. Caroline: rare, pointed goatee with wavy mustachioed uppers, dyes vary.

Correct (April)

Mustachioed Barry Jones answered correctly (except maybe two) all questions on his Pick-a-Box marathon. Jones came to prominence via this program, especially through his Special Subject, the Habsburg Empire, a subject lost on most Australian viewers in April 1963. The difference between QI and Pick-a-Box needn’t be spelled out: the adjudicator expected you to give the correct answer. Jones knew more than mustachioed Bob Dyer, who was corrected more than once by Jones for factually inaccurate questions. Stephen Fry had it lucky, it wasn’t important what the correct answer was, as long as you talked and looked like Oscar Wilde.

Cosmos (April)

The form of being human, what is to be made of it? Born this way, I learn that I pass through the world with just this form, like everyone else. My appetites are, to begin with, means for survival. Shape of head, mouth, eyes, ears, hands, sacrum, genitals, knees, feet fascinates: we are same-shaped, but everyone different. With ease is cosmos introduced. It is a flower of energy and light, its patterns in the April night-sky and our bodies standing on the Earth tiptoe. Cosmos is body-flowers opening and seeding and returning and dying and forcing their way, awakening anew.

Zinger (April)

Certainly related to “Zing! Went the strings of my heart” (Judy Garland, 1934), though onomatopoeia for the sound of a harp. Zing, a cartoon word, unknown in early OED. American for energy and vigour, but 2. Abuse. Then, 4. A witticism delivered with speed and force. So, a wisecrack or punchline, but note the American connection with Abuse. Ears of Melbourne theatres spend April living off zingers. As for the rest, take it or leave it. Not all zingers are words, but. Billy Connolly’s deadpan look, for example, had the whole place helpless with laughter. How did he do it?

Shadow (April)

An Australian living in its shadow, America, wrote poems about his shadow. He shared his around, while holding on to it for 58 pages. We want to draw a line under this. It’s enough having them nearby nearly everywhere, without talking meaningfully about shadows to haunted aesthetes. Shadow is Anglo-Saxon. In summer shadows get under our feet: by April we shake them off as days cloud. A band called The Shadows is a self-fulfilling prophecy. The Impressionist said shadows require blue paint, not black. In the late lily lakes it’s hard to tell sometimes what is lily, water, or shadow.

Clock (April)

He never reads headlines, has no prior awareness. Or is clock she, never straining for effect, never at a loss for something to say? Clock has an unassuming significant look. She drops soft surprises, won’t let us forget. She’s persuasive, her non-argumentative hands close arguments. Though some say he, fixed on regulations, nothing if not predictable. Tense making: after a breakdown we wind him up. Though he, she, they all of them are it, sitting about ticking off the minutes. It sticks to its position, scarcely moves a fraction. April or August, it’s the same old sounds from time immemorial.