a failure in optimism

(hopefully brief) we are all but sharks in the planet’s glowing tides snapping at spilled blood and exhausted by a need to grow teeth some days a deep breath means looking up... missing keystones and folded tower-blades, all in the seven greys of a dead fish, clouds raked into piles and societies bent low, as … Continue reading a failure in optimism

#Go Dog Go Haibun Wednesday

Write about the weather in Present Tense These last few days, everyone is saying “Thank goodness for the sun!” People are stretching like cats, long skin and whiskers pleased. It’s true the summer has been a wet one. Canberra wringing in a wet towel, warmth like dogs breath fogging up the sky. Mosquitoes are having … Continue reading #Go Dog Go Haibun Wednesday

In the Way of Progress

When the bulldozer came for our house we sewed signs into the windows that said “panegyric government perpetuating poverty” and the great machine purred there like a cat contemplating a lizard’s tail. Then a bloke yelled from the driver’s seat “What does it mean?” and we yelled back “Look it up in the dictionary!” He … Continue reading In the Way of Progress

Two Years After the Fires

(i) on the ridges trees in death black arms still flexed for holding up the sky but it falls strung between them whitely broken such soft caressing of their limbs now rain comes the marching of time slick silver arrows (ii) we walk in a valley torn flat trees prostrated by flood the tinny upper … Continue reading Two Years After the Fires

The Value of Measurement

This wasn’t technically written on November 26th but I’m reposting it from November in 2019 as part of Fandango’s Friday Flashback.

Out of the Cave

In The Power of Imagination, I compared Eichmann to a cog in a clock, unaware of the bigger picture. This morning, when I re-read it, I thought about how it is not the clock that makes time pass. A clock is just a measuring device, like a tape measure or an odometer. All these human concepts. The birds have no clocks and yet they know when to do what. The nest-building, the partner-finding, the egg-hatching, the migrating. It all happens. All around them are clocks, I guess. Leaves falling, buds growing, sun-rises, rain falls, tides, moon phases.

Humans have our clocks and yet we seem to know so little. We know when we need to be at school or at work or how long it is since we ate. But we don’t know when or how to find the right partner, we don’t know how to prioritise raising kids…

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Two Lost Souls Swimming in a Fish Bowl

(Pink Floyd - "Wish You Were Here") oil - sinewed rainbows rafted up to swirl and giggle riding high on the nausea of a fatty sea your blood’s dark swig sucked and spat your prehistoric core birds in Brylcreme slicked sick I hear them weeping yet I sleep on bubbled in glass so far away … Continue reading Two Lost Souls Swimming in a Fish Bowl

The Place We Live

The sun sits in leaky splendour; watermelon juice staining this upholstery this smog brown décor this Faberge sunset this velveteen smoke haze. A cloying choice but here we all sit in our plush living room our shrine of consecrated ignorance and listen to the clock and the crackle roar of our future. Written for Misky's … Continue reading The Place We Live

Who Hears the Crying?

When a million stars take leave from night duty and arrange themselves on Earth's blackened boughs then you know that tree cries are heard all across this universe we perceive as barren. But tomorrow, when we stand dressed in smoke, completely lost in its ebb and rolling, our asphyxiated wails will vanish quick as bio-luminescence … Continue reading Who Hears the Crying?

They Have Hearts Too

pour happy thoughts into your breakfast bowl that summer mayn't dry out hope leaving it on footpaths adrift amongst the stepping stone madness of commuter feet try looking for a moment through the spectrum of flowers petal art by vein they have hearts too open to the sun begging for bees and if they wilt … Continue reading They Have Hearts Too

Things that Pass

It was said that all things must pass: the big wheels turning, turning over the drought-lands, the down-and-out lands cattle skeletons ploughed in like rotted ships fence-posts - frayed and far-fetched zippers - dragging lines of wind-sawn wire – dun and drear the fierce fires rolling, roiling wanton flames - the lunge and buck, the … Continue reading Things that Pass

Apology

Oh my children, born into a world of opposites; dividing lines. The horizon, like the wild words of dictators, stomps parapets and, uneasy, leaves drift by them from tree to ground expecting scorn. Seeds rear bruised heads through soil’s ceiling awaiting crazed weather’s cruel whip. Invisible clouds, our human waste, hug tight Earth’s sphere; suffocating … Continue reading Apology