In the mist . . .

fog
lying on a distant ridge
fog light fog white
mysterious
grey
fading into
green

Firewood Plateau

1

Pale clumps of grass in shallow soil
cold winds out of the south for hours
and in the afternoon high clouds

white books that drift across the sky
wild birds like words sung into flight
a stand of trees in silhouette

the slant roof of a sleeping house
dipped in the deep blue ink of midnight
on the razor’s edge of dawn

faint rainbow light bleeds from the wound
surf music sighing through the pines
blank pages fluttering like leaves

whirled without end

2

like breath on glass
what the bright knife writes
on a distant peak in the winter sun

. . . up where the air has turned to ice . . .

in a storm of
snowflakes blowing
past

3

a body made of feeling flesh
mind to inquire and heart to know
a hothouse filled with summer flowers
frost melting on the ground outside

a hothouse in a silent world
shone through by wishes and desires
transparent sentences
calm thoughts

and footprints on an empty lawn
and tall trees tossing in the wind
like seaweed swaying in a rock pool
as the tide comes in.

Crossing the Great Water

Well, migrating anyway. I’ve started blogging again after a long period of sticking to pencil and paper, but not here. It’s just down the road a piece at a place called Torque Far Star.

Also of course Blood Simple Design at Talkfaster is still there, still slowly growing.

Cheers.

Tarsya

formed in the core of a bursting star
and scattered on the winds of space
i am a windswept mountain peak
a grain of sand lost on a beach
a stone turned over in a field
a pebble in a rushing stream

worn down by weather and by time
i am the soil on which you stand
the underworld beneath the street
where worms find food and seedlings sprout
and roots take hold and corpses sleep
garden and graveyard both at once

from dust to dust from germ to fruit
the diamond that the dragon hoards
is crushed beneath my grinding wheel
i am the continents that drift
the dreams that rise the lives that pass
the shores against which all waves break

like drumbeats pounding in the dark
my comings and my goings are
born to mortality and death
emerging from pure emptiness
i am not fire nor blood nor breath
i am the living flesh itself

Fertility is Emptiness

Intensities of bent invention
sidestep personal intention
on a hieroglyphic journey
through the drift into the dream core
through the crossroads
out a tunnel
as if on a ferry floating
on the waters of a story
past an empty railroad station
filled with ghosts and flickering memories
out onto the raven’s highway
under blue skies in the throne room
clouds like sombre silent kings
emerging as the daylight dims
and the dead come out and the dogs take fright
slinking away from door to door
where corners turn and shadows cast
step over puddles don’t look up
the concrete street is rich with cracks
and down is deep the stairs are there
inside the soil where seedlings sprout
and tall trees writhe up like great snakes
in forests of the place itself
awnings and windows
shops and traffic
little parks aglow with magic
mad shit scrawled on broken walls
make sense somehow what hears can call
what calls can pass through solid rock
like night winds blowing through a tent
or sunlight through transparent leaves
each sight a sign each sign a word
a smiling child a cryptic coin
arriving leaving halved and whole
lost in the echo and the drone
of silence thundering in the skull
like the roaring of a waterfall
in a valley ringed by towering cliffs
where everything is what it is
and fences vanish in the mist
while cockatoos glide overhead
and wallabies crash through the bush
like dinosaurs did the past
amid the disappearances
down on the roads.

Surf’s Up

Time would be the most mysterious thing in the world, if it wasn’t where the world itself is actually situated. We and all things exist in time, on the present moment like the crest of a great wave. And all is foam.

Ghost Story 1973–89

A white room.
The sound and blur of a door closing, slamming shut.
Soft footsteps in the hall.
Wake up.

A bare bulb swinging from the ceiling shines.
Sunlight with artificial light blends strange.
No shadows in the hothouse room. Late summer, afternoon.
Gauze curtains floating in the breeze.
(Sleep, sleeper, sleep . . . there is no end to this.)
Wake up!

Dream movements underneath the lids.
Lips moistly murmuring, or seeming to; the room
as silent as a stone, the body still: entirely still
but for the gentle rise and fall of breath.
Float on, float over, float away . . .

The footsteps in the hall are gone. They never really were. A ball
of string unwinds along the shabby, dark-brown carpet, slowly
bouncing down the stairs. In total silence.
Please, wake up.

Gretel in Winter

Small flurries of forgetfulness
blow white through her declining years
as everything around her sinks
beneath the weight of snow.

In winter everything is simple.
Fading memories extinguished
form a dazzling empty backdrop
for the memories in colour that remain.

And all is well. Each note is right.
Each chord and harmony combines
to concentrate her straying mind.
The music of the past is hers.

Remembering again the truths
the keys of her piano taught
when she was young enough to care
she follows herself up the scale

through a winter wonderland of fields
and frozen rivers clothed in mist
into the vast enchanted realm
of childhood returned intact

the way it always was. She smiles
(in solitude, while dreams abide)
behind closed eyelids, wandering
with her dead brothers out into the snow.

And all is well, it’s beautiful. She’s home.

In Thunderbolt Pagoda

between the boredoms and the dark
in twilight as the doldrums strike
sometimes i look into my soul
and realise there’s no one’s there
and everyone i am has fled
delf sah ma i enoyreve
and then the music changes
and the room is just a room
and things are as they were before
and what i am is how i feel
and everyone is here inside me
light is melting through the walls
and everything is different now
although it’s always still the same
and cisum is still music
and the room is just a moor
except the rorrim is a wodniw
and the window is a door
that someone winged is walking out
across a bridge of shining air
and stepping off with arms spread wide
and diving as the music shifts
into a sky turned upside down
where flying is like swimming
and the sea in which we’re drowned
is what i love and who i am
and everything is flood and flower
drifting and gliding calmly on
at the bottom of a green beyond
among the mermaids and the sharks
and fish with phosphorescent eyes
suspended in a fluid trance
for hours on end a moment more
between the ceiling and the floor

Who is Who

When I don’t have anyone to speak to
I’m so glad you’re here to speak to
and I’m glad that you’re my friend.

I dial your number on the phone
and call you and you sound so pleased
to hear from me I spill it out

I tell you everything
for hours on end.

Or else we’ll meet up somewhere later
for a drink and maybe get a bite to eat
and talk some more.

You look so beautiful and calm
that I relax when I’m with you
and how you listen to me
makes me want to tell the truth

and so it’s easy all the time
and when you speak to me I hear you
I hear every word you say

and I like what I hear
and I like what I see
and I know you like me

and that makes me happy.