sun

the music on the radio is sounding false again,

punk

seems more ridiculous the further time drifts

from 1977.

bring on death, the flower, and flour.

a lonely man surround by friends.

and a cat,

dog,

insects,

birds in the trees in the backyard.

people say they love the sun

but

science tells us the sun will eventually grow bored

and inhale us,

like a hippopotamus breathes in a fly

when it yawns,

or a supermodel sucking on a cigarette with those dead

‘I am beautiful’ eyes.

garden dance

as bombs fall down

on

Syria,

the mosquito screen

on

the front door

shakes in the hot north wind.

the garden outside is shaking.

kind of dancing in the wind

with

branches and fronds for arms and legs.

I hear the crash of a pot plant onto the slate

and

go out, investigate.

these darkened hills

at night the twisted branches of my oak tree

still reach for

a light which is not there;

a possum jumps from it

onto the shed,

a noise so loud it stirs a flock of sleeping cockatoos

down the valley

by the track.

no moon tonight,

and no happiness.

as I retreat from the maddening world

it is a blue night, excuse the cliché.

the valleys running below a slightly darker shade, more thick.

I am living in an old stone cottage from the 1800’s

in a valley

I think only my landlord knows about.  I hope to be here forever,

sans women.

there is an incessant winding up of their springs,

a thousand frogs in the dam

and

down the creek to the next dam, there is no stop.

when the moon rises it will only excite them more.

they are building themselves up,

they will become obscene.

I sense that the frogs can predict when their erotic moon will arise.

from a distant paddock a bull screeches and hollers like the beast it is.

the sound ricocheting

across the hillsides, back and forth, like a pinball.

when people eat fillet steak they don’t think they are eating ‘horrid beast of the blue hills’.

my wine supply is getting low and I am shitty about this.

shitty at myself

for being so falsely pious at the bottle shop and only buying

one measly bottle.

but tomorrow

I will be glad I didn’t do the old ‘finish a cask and put it on my head

like a hat’,

and thinking things through and through like a mental amateur,

conversations in my head getting away from me,

with people I haven’t seen in over twenty years

and

most likely will never see again.

ah, the blue air.

ah, my blue hands.

it is a warm Friday night

it is a warm Friday night

in September

and

I suspect a hoard of my friends are

unconsciously

hoping that by going out into the dismal bitumen

streets

of inner city Adelaide

amongst the amateur drunks

and ice fools

that somehow their routine suburban lives

will be transformed

into. . .

I used to live in this hope.

twenty years later I have learnt from experience

that it either ends with sex with a weird chic

or

a late night lonely taxi

and

pathetic bedroom wank;

the world never delivers.

(stay home, fill ya fridge with beer, dial a pizza).

a man and a cat

the night is as naked and impoverished

as a jail cell,

poor me,

poor cat poking its head through the foggy window,

poor history of men without women

and never enough distraction.

in the city the clouds are nuclear orange from the street lights.

I huddle over my dining table

seeing

Indian faces in the grains of this polished rainforest timber.

the glass of wine is empty,

dirty,

blotches of black dregs drip to the centre and pool.

the cat meows,

wants to come in;

to what? I say.  you can have the whole house!

out here

under the wet light of this floating moon

I abide

nowhere.

eagles sleep in their nests,

snakes collide.

and to this thin veneer of grass

my deck chair, my paddock chair,

will succumb to the black mud

of also ruined sneakers.

all the cities of the world have grinded to a halt.

out here

mist
is forming by the oak tree,

roads are severed.