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