Speed

The dream of speed arose on horseback, need

Not have rushed past gallop but the seed

Burst by riggers and clippers breeds swiftly

Quicker thoughts better little may impede.

The search engines oiled these dreams with greed

Fast landscapes car deeds normalised, no heed.

Runways’ runaway success signed cloud creeds

Been-there-done-that’s insatiable feed.

Rapid transit language post-haste spoken

Lived out the language once awoken:

Store your luggage in the overhead locker

If this is Tuesday it must be Tokyo.

Unstoppable movement left debris tokens,

Straight line bitumen its quartz sparks broken.

Light

 

Starlight bitumen its quartz sparks take you

Past daisy rings trigger forced into thousands

Out to white paths sunstroked magnesium

And houses evening will give some relief.

Freeways shine silver, billboards square heat off

Advertise products with martian allure

Belied by strollers bright lit by sunshine you

Wear yourself, skin tense with perspire sheen.

Shopping trolleys glint all over carparks

Where you step from the sky toward arcades -

Multiverses, outside invisible, inside

Glisten window bursts, sales pitch auroras.

In the chandelier shop an astronaut you

Checks meters for the right level of glow.

 

Photograph by B. Harvey taken in April 2015

A

A, what’s the point, the absolute top

Somewhere to start, and where it falls?

J sounds like A with jealous jitters

But F expletives what an effing A.

K keeps the peace with okay whatever.

X cannot be A, keeping to itself

While Z unperturbed sleeps through the zeitgeist.

It’s uncertain if O is surprised or dismayed

While I will not relax into becoming A.

Always E goes unseen, common as everyone.

N are the names we apply to these forms.

M prefers the movie to the real thing

Even as S slips around the actual question

And Q keeps on searching for an A.

Photograph: Night time at Victoria Park station, Collingwood, Melbourne.

Heat

 

The bitumen and the dry glaze:

heatwave is no respecter of persons.

Every object needs peeling,

eclipse of rational method in lethargy.

Birds stand, their mouths wide open.

Frondy trees wonder how much longer.

Helicopters falling out of the sky (like insects)

and the feeling of a long river writhing through the intensity.

Cardinal rule:

only be your own respecter of person.

As if there were any other choice: go inside the house,

the cool sheets,

the Satie music.

Listen, above the roof, how silent and unbearably bright.

Busy

 

Full-on rage of the sun,

without which we would not be live in limb,

burns up the redbrick days in succession

till paths are filled with browning leaves.

What we call indifference

powers down at noon and sifts the waters,

drifts the mind to unthought, the body to shade.

Provider we accuse of cruelty

from all we feel, when stars come forth

in tears and patches in city sky.

The sun lacks all respect.

In this soft moment when heat subsides

we care for ourselves, we think anew.

We can change nothing, reverence a glass of water.

Waterwall

drowning gone worlds spending the time of day

our sixties retro gallery on the ridge

where the falls went down to the mangroves

a streaming portcullis forever angle land

tactile slosh of hands on plate glass

reaching through Who-like to another realm

the film of the idea based on the sea shanty

damp smell that portends a day of great art

patterned cascade between us and centuries

such a peculiarity Melbourne goes into outcry

it will not be removed the wet rendezvous

curtain of tears and what have you nailpaint

germs no major revamp will exterminate

nor through night flux mainly truly undeep.

Pronoun

I have always been on the outside

Casting last words for someone to re-read.

You are a changing being listening

Subject and object of just such talking.

He is the external eternal choice,

Critic dividing not bad from so nice.

She wishes it was all very other

Where words again say it without bother.

We listen for truth since first waking up

Know when it flows and when it now must stop.

You are the everyone not to be guessed,

Uncaring at all through to closely glossed.

They are future markets wanting a sign,

Downing gone words standing the taste of time.