Stranded

Brisbane tv 1976 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=64kAK0CZjdk

Like a snake calling on the phone I find
I've got no time to be alone but all the time
There’s something coming at me, all the time.
Snake time yeah babe I think I'll lose my mind.
I'm riding on a midnight train all right
And everybody looks the same dejection
A subway light it's dirty reflection
I'm lost babe I’ve got no direction, all right
Because I am stranded on my own my own,
Stranded far from home, nothing I can do.
Spatial, you have got to leave me alone
Because we’re stranded on our own, the world
Babe come now look at me looking at you
You’re lost too, your mind is stuck in a whirl.

How

How it asks each one of us, how is your lockdown.

How patronising, this supernumerary microbe.

How indifferent to our many doctorates.

How do you do, it says and then says, good night.

How came this gamechanger amidst our midst.

How and Why Wonder Books don’t seem to know.

How long is a piece of string, how peace of mind.

How many windows can be opened on a screen.

How to apply for a Centrelink claim.

How the West was won and then infected.

How Kemo Sabe now keep two metres distance.

How to complete a sonnet with lines from London.

O how the wheel becomes it! sang Ophelia.

Howl, howl, howl went Lear in a plague year.

Cancel

Cancel all entry, dust the CD case

I am DJ HAIKU of my own workplace.

Cancel canapés, the poolside digress

I walk the plank of the Diamond Princess.

Cancel the night out, that would’ve been nice,

I thrive on a diet of rice, rice, and rice.

Cancel the Council on Doing Things Better.

I work at home, neither quitter nor debtor.

Postpone the crowd zone with its homegrown moan,

We retail with email, live on the phone.

Postpone the concert, ALL hypotheticals!

For us, the lifestyles of eremeticals.

Postpone the flight to our favourite Big Town.

We ask each other, how is your lockdown?

Q

Grand Prix time again the quick and the dead.

The Coronavirus Team what more need be said.

Their mystery entrant, too late, see red.

All sound and fury for the overfed.

The chequered cloth black phlegm white sediment

Falls across both bad and good, savings spent.

Noise and spiral turns to an upset event

As the viral burn asks where it all went.

Quite quite quiet is (quoth) quaint quarantine.

Quatorze we fast forwards to: quelling scenes

Of quoits (forsooth), quaffing, books about queens.

No, cannot quibble with a long Long Weekend.

Do our own Decameron and spend

Unquestioned quiescent quietude. End.

Do

The rest of the leaves go into oblivion.

This leaf alone, its words written over words

Till night as black is how it, blurred, occurred,

Explains what I want my one in a million

Words to do, to touch, to circle, to lift, to measure

In fewest syllables the multiplicity,

In numbers torrential her versatility,

In vocab vocal various the maker’s pleasure.

This leaf alone, quivering sheet of Reflex,

Could turn night to day with a simple twitch

Of perfect-for-now amidst out-dated rejects.

This leaf that good grief says Get A Life,

Return here tomorrow, but for now the switch

That turns day to night and calm out of strife.

Pathogen

Flies in the night. Enters chambers unawares.

Crowned, signifies Clown then likewise the King.

Turns flesh to fever without really thinking.

Renders visible the invisible, half-scared.

Interrupts the news, his friends look unwell.

Sniffs at frontiers. Sneezes “All aboard!”

Closes down the theatres. Opens up the wards.

Stops church service. Tolls the passing bell.

Crosses your customs, a jumpsuit miming “Curtain!”

Leaves you counting 400, 500, six…

Audience participation certain.

Dies in the spotlight, a fully-blown human.

Breathes faster harder fresh out of tricks

Hereafter the fires of summer consuming.

The word sounds like a character in Commedia dell’Arte. Enter, Pathogen. This weekend I read ‘Shakespeare’s Life and World’ by Katherine Duncan-Jones. Chapter 4 is ‘The Infectious Pestilence’, which describes the three times the plague hit London during his time there. Because they had to close the theatres Will had no work, so wrote long poems instead. The sonnets were published in the plague year of 1609. These facts lend further credence to the fact that he wrote the plays flat chat to meet the demand for new plays. You want ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’? What’s the deadline? Pathogen in Shakespeare sounds like one of those dodgy secondary characters who stick a dagger into someone without warning. I’m sure the news of the lockdown of Venice is in my mind also. Photograph: a group of partygoers at the Venice Carnival wearing the mask of the commedia character the Plague Doctor (Medico della Peste).

Cottage

Like the flying house of old Loretto

James Cook’s birthplace found its half-acre.

Childhood flew for the far-flung map-maker

Turning the globe to a British ghetto.

It was a grim wade on Tahitian seas

Brought these humble bricks to their resting place,

Though whether James spent a night of grace

‘Neath the lowly roof? Ah! Life’s uncertainties!

Steer a course using Melways explicit,

Talk to Satnav but try to be gentle

And it will appear, you can’t miss it.

Admire its aspect, as is your wont,

And mind not to bump your head on the lintel

As you reverence chance in Jolimont.