Conditions

 

good morning

cold holds firm to foundations

couples chat on platforms

sweet vapours rise the coffees rich

shopfronts open doors

a matterhorn of croissants

empty shops for lease

sensibly clothed to shed layers

the wakeful neatly cross the streets

into the impending rain

 

good afternoon

true temperature twenty

feels-like temperature ten

a phone call changes the complexion

but the contract changes nothing

sun bending over to assist

each colour blossoming on fences

the prospect of improvement is high

the prospect of this scheme is happy

the prospect of the freeway not so good

 

good evening

soft brushing wattle and sunspots

gold mosaic lights the trees

finished touches on rooftops

their acres of similar streets

the meal brings the stories home

this time they’ve gone too far

glamorous glowing small screens

test algorithm bias

or follow the clues to an episode’s death

 

good night

screwing shut windows on another day

a body has no cause to hurry

the cat at rest in the coolest way

entails a tickle and a stroke

emails more deletion than elation

distant aches call for closest panadol

the way to softest sleep

moon rising like an afterthought

let the world news take care of itself

Diary

 

good morning

to a world free of diaries

no time checks or meeting reminders

or words in waves about who knows

what people and thoughts come into sight

filling every curvy square inch

their meanings taking shape

their laughter as blossoms on the breeze

 

good afternoon

to the awesome but somehow hilarious

efforts to be one of a kind

the past has already converted

to yesterdays that could be anyone’s

while today’s mixture of pictures

passions unrequited opinions oft cited

stay white unwriterly

uninscribed as silent prayers

 

good evening

smiles at the domestic ceremonies

preparing the courses

unhyphenated conversations

wine rings all in the context

and cleaning up as usual after

without need for further comment

or several pages of the diary

decades decay

 

good night

to the deity of delight

to the daring and the darlings

deliriums and dramas

doldrums and disappoints

decisions and doubts

and dearie me the diary

blank this as so many other days

testament to something else in mind

strange to find

or the need to forget

Hair

 

As a teenager much of the musical was an incomprehensible ramble expressing an adult world I may grow into, my twenties. The twenties being no more than an unimaginable horizon line just out of reach. If there was a story the characters were walking through, it was interrupted continually by their exceedingly mixed emotions, flamboyant songs obliquely connected to the dialogue, the dropping of a tab and the taking of a trip. To visit the musical over fifty years later is to peer into the world of immense energy and naïve optimism known as our twenties. Innocence is the keynote, with awareness of experience a growing reality: the musical is Blakean in that way. Hippiedom is a collective enterprise, we notice, but closer to the self-interestedness of the society being rebelled against than it would care to see. It is also provocative by definition, making light of religion, damning bellicose politics, celebrating free love, naming many kinds of sexuality overtly, mocking the stupidity of consumerist pollution, and challenging racist attitudes and stereotypes. To use the polite coinage of that time, it is counter-cultural, while in fact being subversive of respectable social conformity, to the degree that Western society soon felt the need to deride hippiedom in order to discredit its actual threat. Yet the musical is also in the nature of a burlesque revue, adopting the cool metier of acid rock to satirize its subjects and even its own subculture and it is this hybridity that is a measure of its confounding charm. Many of the songs end in questions, the sorts of questions that excite our twenties, with or without immediate answer. Some embody the idealism of the Summer of Love, while others blatantly use bleak agitprop, or are reminiscent of the ever-alert wit of Tom Lehrer. All things I would have grasped but been unable to name the first time around in my teens. Other things this time revealed the musical’s artistry. The nude scene at the close of the first half is, to follow the lysergic flow of events, more about shedding all pretences and illusions than about shedding flowery clothes. And the closing anthem (the late sixties were full of anthems) is a psychologist’s dream-come-true as absolutely everyone, cast and audience, lets the sun shine in. ‘Even the very hairs of your head are numbered, saith the Lord,’ (Luke 12:7) The fuss over hair is there from the first. Colour that returns every second generation, what line to take, the curious dictates of length, streaming, flaxen, waxen. The musical reminds us how time has no rigid rules about hair. The fame of that flame of growth touches the edges of experience. And how that flame turns over years ash-grey is a number as old as song. Nothing is the same. Youth was such a musical, in which we sang ‘hair hair hair hair everywhere hair.’

Résumé

 

Résumé

 

good morning

I show up I am regular

perfectly suited for the day job at

Appearance Is Not Reality

my diverse abilities are capable

for any set of circumstances

what wonders I perform

with no effort

sunrise warbling coffee

stretching ablutions traffic

good bowel movement

see attachments for complete list

 

good afternoon

can work in all weathers

long hours at short notice

have seen the times

versatile at thinking on my feet

or as required taking a siesta

am familiar with the terms of

It’s My One Dream

been through schools of hard knocks

big bangs global firsts

and believe I can fit right in

to this industry

 

good evening

writes itself

no artificial input

has an extensive list of publications

My Dog Ate The Homework

Tomorrow Is Another Day

their million spinoffs and prequels

an author of light and shade

no attachments necessary

winding down with enough said

wineing down with a red

 

 good night

is an interviewer’s voyage

all applicants should be so informative

delve the deepest darkness

wonder at the faintest light

interviews run a few seconds

or all night depending on the need

of fervent or moonstruck interviewers

email wisdom@the.house and address

The House of Wisdom

for a job well done

thank you for your consideration

 

 

Reading

 

good morning

to the wrench of tanks as your eyes open

on czechoslovakia after all seemed changed

and between text messages

doom unsonorously scrapes cobblestones

untroubled our ‘hero’ the window cleaner

climbs through the French doors

makes love in the old-fashioned way

to the lady commissar by invitation

forgetful for a time of juliette binoche

or that he is a brain surgeon

rococo top floor unalarmed

 

good afternoon

again to the brownings and equally rossettis

the italian thread going both ways

catholicism present but not spoken of

faith at the foreground

and those brontës intense as

that whole question of home as a parsonage

casa guidi the rossettis’ bolthole

place a home where the voice is grounded

christina poems that speak for themselves

to all the rossettis and brownings of this world

good evening

words in fave paperbacks of creased cover

amidst routine surroundings

you cannot live without

explosions and floods

finnish bohemians and hattifatteners

reliving exodus

cartooning happy families

their memoriser on an island in the stream

 

good night

to the drunkest welshman in christendom

young and easy under the apple boughs

turning a page turning the light off

a roof over your head

ikea pillowcases

reading the europeans even in your sleep

as one door leads to a smaller door

down corridors of increasing guilt

reactivated desire

that might be all in your mind

or the castle in a city refusing to be named  

in a time that predates books

and has never heard of such things

as parsonages or czechoslovakia

Technology

 

the daily emails on repeat

I am trained up to delete

the technology defeats me

 

copying out work near complete

jams a critical A4 sheet

the technology defeats me

 

online’s hazardous meet-and-greet

ends/ doomed zooms beat the retreat

the technology defeats me

 

the battery has gone to sleep

the charger refuses to beep

the technology defeats me

 

the fast-track digital sweet treats

lack the monkey password discrete

the technology defeats me

 

I am not a robot a tweet

a reboot a cursor on heat

the technology defeats me

 

the outage shutdown slows days weeks

numerous satellites go eeek

the technology defeats me

 

all those microcircuitries petite

refuse to fuse/ spit the fake teat

the technology defeats me

Fragments

 

 

Image: Iso-mandala no. 138 (October 2020)

 

[October] 

“haiku fragments october”

 

reading zanzotto poppy

frammenti

prompts temporary writings

 

daikon shoots beetroot leaves make

diagrams

where a sower scored the patch

 

unopposed roses’ timely

explosions

finely pose blow decompose

 

reading the master’s work in

manuscript

all the great words he crossed out

 

faces fashions phones focus

reflections

faze in shop glass unfocus

 

are we anything more than

molecules

asks an upright scientist

 

logs are motes in fields fallen

particles

painted signed fred williams

 

passing train windows mobile

mosaic

stable rail ballast below

 

memorial park mower

daisy-rings

spring anew across long lawns

 

sakamoto’s delirious

inventions

turn to pindrops on ‘opus’

 

newspaper yesterday old

photographs

insubstantial confetti

 

handheld all the world’s micro

vanity

done delimit close vanished

 

ichiko aoba sings

promises

moon sparkles sparkles sparkles

 

jewellery gold whatever

trivia

beside life’s visible growth

 

splintered fractured blue

ceramic

casts cold eye in rich subsoil

 

twigs branches cover the street

cherry-pips

the path through all-day wind storm

 

spokes webs catches clip-ons of

umbrella

blown away by today’s gale

 

Prosody

good morning has the feel of miltonics

practice makes perfect the start of the day

light upraising the regular patterns

as if today were both norm and the new

soldiering on through another epoch

a complete address of all existence

or just today not precisely the last

nor exactly the first as nerve ends attest

wakefulness requires breath space and line

boundaries inspiring stop and flow

measure a life with the new present known

pressure only what is within range now

until the norm is exceeded again

the nerves early renaming sensation

a business we know all too well

but the sun not nor the world at a guess.

 

good afternoon thou art an ode

commanding responses and yet

receiving them relieving them

of their pent-up spent-up demands

oft midst the old hurly-burly

of thy full-on complexity

redolent of every cliché

thy charms burst to full fruition

circumambient fluttery

polychrome lacustrine restive

piebald crinolined roseate

gymnastic aerobic easeful

fulsome rendered pervasive fazed

substantial triple-decker vocal

serpentine smooth cacophonous

words cometh thick and fast full blast

quick and vast for thee afternoon

come-what-may month-in month-out mouth

open eyes wide feet fleet hands ballet

rain or shine incomparable

some would say inevitable

flawless in thine own fair terms

transcribéd by thy secretaries

chairpersons of quotidian

quote me as thou passeth next time

the hours of free composition

 

good evening too soon however you spin it

majestic in light these visions embody all

we know for now of flesh and thought small and tall

modified slightly into a handy sonnet

wanting all up-to-the-minute infinite hellos

beauty’s best earth’s hits up the lift and over the wall

whatever slog or jog afternoon rushes ready to fall

foreshadowed by shadows line-lengthening shadows

into the shadow of the form’s counterturn

where the glow goes out night’s lights come on again

majestic in dark these visions embody all

thought and flesh left wondering how the sun burns

that too soon however we spin it it’s plain

has gone our words mimicking its scale in recall

 

good night is this closing epigraph

what’s left of entire paragraphs

a lullaby like you

an unspoken haiku

snoozy song snatch an epitaph 

Bridge

Image: Scotch College crews in training on the Yarra

 at Walmer Street Bridge, between Kew and Abbotsford.

 

good morning

merri creek bridge

taking the north-east to work

where the medium-rises meet the renos

where the wattles meet their reflections

minds suffused with corded sounds

delineate the rooftop bricolage

blue hills and grey-white clouds

all the senses and scents

where starts and ends meet

skin fresh from the shower

 

good afternoon

walmer street bridge

the vineyard dozing in colour

scotch rowers loud hailered to scull

a madcap cyclist testing the limits

of walkers’ personal space

curving concrete and rattling planks

consecutively past

apartments inscrutable as their residents

and the merry clangs of trams

 

good evening

montague street bridge

scalper of vans

hard halt to the blind

not so fast is your bypass byword

another week another wreck

danger low brow

nemesis of buses

how many warning signs are needed

for an accident waiting to happen

trasher of trucks flashing news

of the latest statistical mishap

idle pastime of innocent bystanders

reading the prang on their phone

with a good-humoured groan

 

good night

princes bridge

concert goers leaving mahler

convert goths nibbling snickers

midweek diners walking off shiraz

midlife donors talking ten the doz

sporting fans left thrilled or glum

sparring friends just out for the fun

buskers hulking drums lead and bass

late night lawyers lost in a case

condo dwellers their constitutional

tied besuiteds looking institutional

pizza scooters skirting the kerb

puzzled punters employing a verb

addled students with intense frown

uber stood-ups wanting out of town

olds hand-in-hand youth hand-in-hand

another tram and another tram

Manners

 

Manners

 

good morning

common courtesy in situations

or simply ‘morning!’

the sound that shares the reality

cafe noise radio song

it is an unavoidable fact

treat good morning familiarly

with welcome freshness

avoid sounding overbearing

ditto flippant insincere

intimate friends entirely

may dispense with this formality

 

good afternoon

highly appropriate on the phone

sets the tone and puts at ease

hello or a smile may suffice

though between nodding acquaintances

a hearty handshake

 

good evening

you are at risk of sounding posh

good not to gush

better to offer some cheery words

best move on quickly to the next subject

recount the day’s events

without going overboard

sip your drink slowly

 

good night

rhymes with out of sight

time to pick up where you left off

the novel unputdownable

goodbye at parting

is also unobjectionable

 

Plus

 

Image: Iso-mandala No. 77 (August 2020)

 

good morning

has pluses

the shape of the day

takes a shape familiar

or unusual but a shape

the mood is relatively hopeful

others display the same old patterns

their unique tones of voice

their off-scriptedness

and its minuses

it is once more the moment of truth

for example

bouncing or dragged from bed

the knowledge life is not just a dream

and those others require talk

even a daily allowance

 

good afternoon

has its pluses

ego has got into its stride

oft occasioning a wide berth

at the least a modicum of pride

others on their best form

go to almost any length

busy on some incalculable project

and its minuses

the afternoon of the pitfall

the afternoon of the session

the afternoon of news breaking

the afternoon left wondering

 

good evening

pluses

the night is young

the worst is over

no columns in the red

and a roof overhead

some things left unsaid

minuses

aches and pains

request pills and potions

others have left a swathe

pieces to pick up tomorrow

at most something to think about

 

good night

a plus

darkness is lit with other discoveries

a minus

the path can be difficult to find

Statistics

 

good morning

biggest tram network

most caffeinated city in the world

your coffee god of a hundred names

dozens of pronunciations

your ‘remember to hold on’

your ‘mind the gap’

never say this after lunch

 

good afternoon

how to say this in a city

with the most languages

some have no word for afternoon

they move forward in an atmosphere

of the four seasons in one day

when did that originate

pink then lime russet then black

converse with emotional content

hold onto your hat

throw an extra coat in the car

and tap the cost on the terminal

use sensibly until dusk

 

good evening

wealthiest once city of empire

your gold-edged boulevards

and bluestone villas

fastest growing city

since the day before federation

and roads turning bitumen

is geelong nervous of merging?

no one is saying

they have nothing to worry about

said sparingly with timing

 

good night

largest again city of australia

the great experiment

no one could dismiss

ever since the dismissal

most liveable and now

the dinner party topic is liveable

where olympic philistinism

is atoned for in multilingual tones

trenchant belief in facadism

we itemise where all the cities

we’ve visited don’t match up

say this last thing at night

 

 

Cimelia

 

Iso-mandala no. 162 (October 2020)

 

good morning

gold array breaking sky from land

at no extra cost

bright enough to blind

glow enough to warmly bind us

as the once invisible emerald

rises in the light of day rising

breathing priceless air

unnumbered foliations

beaming fluttering

 

good afternoon

seasides of lapis lazuli

casually lapping coolly lacing

then surging with rarest force

swamping the senses

likewise I’m sure the rocks

combustion unlocked

in a ticktock blink

so hard to take

so easy to take in all at once

an invaluable sight

 

good evening

good heavening

worn out pearls of wisdom

clouds streetlights windows

in superabundance

no one may put in a box

or think about twice most oft

 

good night

insistent stars

self-scattering jewel boxes

broached with arrogant names

us claiming a small part of them

a trice in a millennium

and as for good white silvery moon

good night up there

sensational moonstone

steady as she goes