Hard (August)

August is hard. The beak of the bird. Ice in window edges. Stones under the cold river. Waking up and getting up. Shell of our house. Switches in half-light. It’s always like this, we tend to forget. Hard roads. Hard eyes. Every brick of this work of nature, our city, hard for a reason. Prospects, plans, news, hard is in there. Hard glasses to read by. Hard zippers against the cold. Temperate is the warm blood of fellow creatures, the possum and kangaroo. The cat curls amidst its warm blanket. Like us. The sun is hard. Clouds are deceptively light.

Upcycling (August)

She asks for spare T2 boxes, no explanation. ‘Fashion as Sculpture’ has set upcycling. I’ve two from work, Pu-Erh and Irish. Eventually requests go to the store. They post 25 spares: “Just send us some photos.” She cuts boxes into scales watching Downton Abbey. In the alps one week white water rafting, personal property goes inside orange garbage bags, inside similar bags, not to get wet. At some moment she connects orange with orange. Close to deadline, “have we white paint?” “What kind?” She switches from paint to white crepe ribbon. Bodice backstitched, come August the creation’s ready for exhibit.

Aspheterized (August)

Coleridge dreams, in a letter to Southey (1794), of a time when “the pure system of pantisocracy shall have aspheterized.” He explains this coinage as the joining of two Greek words that mean no private property and that “we really wanted such a word.” We did? Googling ‘aspheterized’ this August all meaningful hits refer back to Coleridge. Scrabble Word Solver states: ‘No definition available’. During the French Revolution our would-be communists pant for their pantisocracy, a system of government of their own invention, where all rule equally. But they couldn’t agree on a location. Susquehanna? Wales? Their utopian plans collapsed.

Sublime (August)

“The earth, a ghost/ orbiting forever lost/ in our monotonous sublime.” Lowell in 1967, a year before the first earthrise photograph, describes our planet in ways we could say are self-descriptive of Lowell, aged 50. For him, it seems, the universe is the sublime in which we find ourselves and at which we gaze. Coleridge in a letter of 1794, aged 22, writes good-humouredly, “My last ode was so sublime that nobody could understand it.” There are many poems that fit that category, though not usually Coleridge’s. He wishes to push past the august in Augustan, the monotony of hours.

Spat (August)

Man entered crowded carriage at Alphington, talking on his wire. “Yeah the fucking Jehovah’s Witnesses fucking left their fucking information everywhere. Rights? I told them fuck off, pedophiles!” Despite his language he shouted, “I’m over it!” Then, replying to his phone-friend, “I spat in her face.” So I used the defuser, “You’re not at home now,” within earshot of everyone. To his phone-friend: “Oh just some old man who’s going to die soon.” I timed my repeat:  “You’re not at home now.” Man rang off, moved down, glared. I announced that (currently, August 2017) I expect to live to 103.

Sincere (August)

‘Now suppose I conclude something in the manner with which Mary concludes all her letters to me, “Believe me your sincere friend,” and dutiful humble servant to command! Now I do hate that way of concluding a letter. ‘Tis as dry as a stick, as stiff as a poker, and as cold as a cucumber. It is not half so good as my old God bless you, and, Your affectionately grateful S.T.Coleridge’. This August would he sign-off to Mrs. Evans, ‘Kind regards’? Or reduce it to the semiotic cipher ‘Regards’? ‘Best regards’ or its hasty reduction, ‘Best’? The insincere ‘Sincerely’? 

Contradiction (August)

A land that welcomes new arrivals imprisons legitimates offshore. Dual citizens of government may remain in Parliament while dual citizens of other parties will not. A prelate who preaches love will dismiss from his employ those who openly affirm love. A vote on marriage will have an outcome that is not binding for anyone: don’t call us, we’ll call you. A politician who expects 99.99% respectful debate forfeits his credibility as a politician. The atmosphere’s fabric, on which all life depends, keeps unravelling due to the one species that knows it’s responsible: climate changes, they don’t. And it’s only August.

Jetty (August)

[After Ogden Nash]

You may loll while water droplets spray over you like confetti,

Think of nothing much or most everything, lofty thoughts or petty,

On a jetty.

You may live on air or dream of being John Paul Getty,

Write raving great poems worthy of Lawrence Ferlinghetti,

You could count yourself the king of infinite space, or a yeti,

On a jetty.

You may draw in the fish with a hook and never get sweaty,

Live like the Romans on a diet of marinara spaghetti,

Recline all summer and even in August watch the sun settee

On a jetty.

Colour (August)

There is serene stillness, black silhouettes of hillside against night sky and first bird song. First green buds of plum blossom line a street to work. A refreshing red-lettered black-lettered screen these days is my weekly income. Under a grey August sky blue-yellow trains glide toward some distant eucalypt destinations. Buildings of trees are every green, some storeys high; they restore a reassuring sense of scale. In the evening there is the lamp, a cone of orange-white light, under which I read ancient texts about the end of the world, that once were terrifying but now console, all things considered.