Lorikeet

Lorikeet and more lorikeets shrill sudden the air density

no pardons above garden paths in suburban settings

 

no hide, all seek you sleek swoop seconds dive peak

cheeky-coloured beak all speak no lies seven days a week

 

clambering through the eucalyptus your due

sizing seizing sipping the flowery fantastical intake.

 

Throat open, paragraphs of shower telegraph to gain

in numbers a chirrup scale pumped to maximum pitch

 

whistles warbles rants chit-chat an entire symposium

fully disposed as you are to frilled offshoots of the territory.

 

Machines produce everything humans can’t use

while you, blue bird, have everything you need.

 

Oceans offering up droplets gliding the chequered regions

and earth, miles of foliage, find a foremost feeding frenzy.

 

You are an advertisement for here now and where next,

an opportunity rocking the treetop storeys transitory. 

 

Headturn dayspring, clawgrip thinbark, fantail upswing,

shiver feathers, swallow sweetness, upwards amble.  

 

Memories of young larrikins in worn footy jumpers

weaving in side streets resemble you, yellow bird.

 

Why you hang in the sky to take a screamer, zigzag

through a pack for the cherry, scout on a wing for the crumbs.

 

Leaf light thread fleck spray spool bounce bend bite drink

pod spill swift glance gaze curve flick gloss knot tip

 

lithographs can’t do it nor installations, however real;

French composers render fiddly moderniste imitations

 

while words in such odes as exist address you, red bird,

falteringly in lines that make pretence at being faultless.

 

Touch and go is your arrival and departure mode:

waiting, your occasional swagger way out of reach.

 

Repeat and more repeats are the hard sweet shrieks

remembered as your pennants burst landwards skyward   

 

people walking around hands jokingly to their ears

what stupendous noise, then you’re gone again, green bird.

Fire

 

“I have composed my stories as reporters write

their accounts of fires – mechanically, half-consciously,

 

“with no concern either for the reader or myself,”

fire being the given, the sudden cause of all decisions

 

the story tells as people run one way snatching belongings

or would stay put and fight heat they cannot beat.

 

Leave now, it is too late to leave, abandon your plans

is the language of fire coming over the hill towards us.

 

Staying doesn’t make you a hero. Fire came from nowhere.

We’ve lost everything. The whole place has just gone.

 

Fire quietens the township’s dreams of a world trip.

Fire has leapt the road and closed all access.

 

Summer in the city, a fine time to read Chekhov,

Anton Chekhov short stories over hardly before begun.

 

The provincial in few pages hides how he’s lost everything.

Loss is official once it’s named by a celebrity.

 

The look on the face of the spokesperson hardly finds words.

Subscripts serve up statistics at a blinding rate, old mate.

 

The secret life of a firebug is blazingly on view

whilst elsewhere stories emerge of unlikely saviours.

 

Fire remains unmoved where it comes to rest

air brown with dry meanings for days afterwards.

 

Certainty is that at the end of these short stories

everyone will stand up, brush down and keep going,

 

at least one of whom will write a letter to a friend

explaining his technique of showing without emoting.

 

Pages caught and puffed and burst in the firestorm.

Online reports disintegrated inside of burnt-out terminals.

 

Fire, the character, looks like nothing but smoke till close up

changing direction with unpredictable speed.

 

Stare at it how we will when fire’s under control

plain speech wants a way forward, left with nothing.

 

A blank page survives fire’s disappearing act

where writers make accounts, deft on show, light on emote.

 

iPhone

 Are you mine iPhone? What relationship do we have, at all?

One that grows in the making, or one purely practical?

 

You track every second of every hour of every month, no slumbers;

I would run out of patience sooner than you out of numbers.

 

Your world clock’s an assiduous asset, a capital invention;

timer untemperamental, alarm beset with intentions.

 

iPhone mePhone minePhone should I feel gratitude

as you daily remind me alone of mine tech ineptitude?

 

Your camera compiles flick files, every angle of selfie

endlessly easy, yet are body and soul made wise, wealthy?

 

When your news is paused following an hour of scroll

may I care to comment that was not my goal?

 

While your forecasts quite frankly wallow in the literal.

Why not, there will be clouds piling up like profiteroles?

 

Unfathomable it is you may conceal my comprehensive ID

without so much as me alone leaving my chair – tidy!

 

You promise the world, the whole deal, the best, a god blast

behind innocuous icons labelled movie contacts podcast.  

 

When I put everything on you, or further up the settings

is that upsetting, or adding mainly to more I’m forgetting?

 

Is it you-with-a-view or I-me-mine always has the last word?

Possibly you, thoughtless think tank of passable passwords.

 

I wonder how your body may get lost, including decorative case

while your soul in a cloud in a new body’s replaced.

 

Are you all you iPhone? And what then when we must part?

I think therefore you are, as we know from Descartes.

 

Had I wished to drop you a line every now and then, who’d known?

Could I write you again if you’d gone down an S-bend, iPhone?

 

On loan for the interim, in this life’s iteration you loom large

hanging on every sentence, and a regular recharge.

 

Companion, lifeline, social coat hanger

dependable know-all, dream machine, doppelganger.

 

The pressure’s permanent, iPhone, to go to the next release

but I me mine will stay with you-who to keep the peace.