Birds

The gulls circle wildly above
their white feathers
flashing against the impenetrable blue of the lake
a dervish dance
a shrieking, skirling herald of joy
I am enchanted by their spirit
their daring to be so free
their pure expression of life

Mountainside Brides

Scorned Brides of the Mountainside

The mist came rolling in

And we knew

The brides had come to stay.

Wounded women

Diaphanous and transient

Creeping through the fern trees

The veiled brides of the mountainside

They lay low

Biding their time

Seven sisters they were

Some widowed, some spurned

They have come here

To mourn their beloveds,

To make a funeralsite of the mountainside,

To lay ruin to their dreams

Bereaved and betrayed

They lie hysterical across the mountainside

Fawning, fainting

Arching their backs

In physical catastrophe

Heavy with despair

They breathe their darkness

And dormant bitterness

And heave sighs from the sky

They are the mist that clings to the trees

And rises perniciously from the valley

They are the biting wind that howls

The eldest

The stoic spurned

Long ago jilted,

Crawls through the crags

And sequesters in a dank crevice

Like some troll or beast

Plotting her revenge

For one thousand bitter years

The youngest sister

Newly widowed

Weeps soft secret tears

Bereaved for her passed love

Decomposing

She has carried his corpse to this funeral site

And makes a rite of his scattered bones

She will lay with them once more.

She cuts off her golden locks

Weaves them through his hair to create a wreath

They scatter their rings

The sisters, seven

Their golden jewels they leave to the mountainside

Feeding the darkness, the mould,

The growing hunger of the damp

It clings to the rocks as moss

Fertile in its distress

They weave their dresses,

Their white veils

And laced matrimonial finery

Through the trees

Decorating the mountainside

With morbid mist

But they wont stay long

A winter’s season

Or a cold spring morning

They’ll continue to walk

Barefoot and baleful

To haunt another valley

To occupy another mountainside

With malignant mist

Mary's Trees 2

Thirteen bottlebrushes

Righteous women

Broad and plentiful

In garments of feathers

Brown and green

Adorned with 

Deep bright red jewels

These wise women

Gather in a sacred circle

Sharing revered counsel

Mary's Trees 1

Fern green

With a coffee gold

And eucalypt silver

Dappled through 

Growing fertile and dank

From a burnt

Charcoal black stump

Spring # 6

spring is for weariness
for feeling frayed around the edges
for splitting my seams
and arching my back

moments

morning

clutching at my scarf
around my bare neck
I walked through the 
6 o clock softness

I could see the morning
sharpening around me

angles, acuity, awakening

afternoon

nature, thick and intricate
folds and unfolds around me
in a bower
I think about
this woman
how her rosy cheeks
lay me bare
my rib cage aches and
expands
with warm desire
and the trees on the terrace
seem to grip at my skin

evening

rain drips sporadically
thunderously loud
wrenching sleep from my fitful mind
and heavy body
promising a weary day tomorrow

I am tired
I creak and groan
I need something fresh
it is slow, subtle torture

Sea Monsters

There is a darkness to the ocean tonight
a heavy purple grey
as I walk along the shoreline
water swells around my ankles
and salt wind whips at my cheeks
with a fierce cold

I have come here tonight
in search of abandoned treasures

Above me soars a mighty albatross
a massive creature of the sea and sky
thundering through blue
and calling out in
shrill desire
when he stretches his wings
in a graceful trajectory
the span of his reach blocks the sun
and bathes me in shadow.

There is a darkness to the ocean tonight

Here, along this grey estuary is where grand things
Dilapidate and drift
Here is where we receive regal ruins
Of the fearsome sea

Something chthonic
has submerged
and sprawled upon the shore
dismantled itself
and scattered its organs upon the estuary

We clamber over his body
a heaving, hursuit mass
his face
shrouded in seaweed
like a veiled bride

An old king has come to this place to die
his weary majesty
lies at my feet, rotting.
I can smell it

winter # 10

Winter is for

Cold toes and soft sunlight

For sunflowers

And Dyson blues

Desire is a stray bird

Desire is a stray bird
with ragged plumage
proud
but dirty and desperate
desire is a winged scavenger

Winter # 9

Winter is for

For a man with armfuls of tattoos and a ginger beard

On a freo sidewalk

Talking about birds and fruits

And potential permanency

Winter is for familiar barristers in forest green

For sitting on Gemma’s front steps overlooking the jacaranda tree

With green tea in mugs blue eyes blue and sunflower yellow

Synaesthesia of the Sky

Every morning as I drive to work, the sky puts on a different show for me. Often I feel really compelled of a moment to record the words that present themselves to my brain. It is quite a persistent demand, and I know I cant rest until I articulate it. it is tricky when I am driving, but I grab anything I can find to write on. I have endless receipts, and scraps of paper that I had found, and scribbled on the back of, in glorious desperation to make some tangible vestige, of a 'buzzing mind drifting to peace' moment. Once I couldnt find any paper so I wrote a poem on my leg.

I think the sky puts on such a calm and quiet show, most people dont notice it. But how could it be quiet? How could such an audacious display be calm? Maybe it rages with delight, but we just cant hear it with our ears. Maybe we are using the wrong body part for the wrong function. I wish I could hear with my eyes.

I wonder about ... the sound of sights.

I heard something about synaesthesia. How famous composers who saw different chords as certain colours. One composer thought, when he was young, that they dimmed the lights in orchestra theatres so that the audience could see the colour show in front of their eyes more clearly when the music was playing. he didnt realise it was only him who could see it.

When I spend time in the south with my grandparents, I run along the river every night at 5 pm as the sun started to set. The Eaton River is one of my favourite places. It is a rich and golden wealth of so many positive and beautiful memories. but even without that, it is pure and base aesthetic pleasure. The whole riverside comes alive at 5 pm, and in a different way every evening. Each day there is a different kind of sunset, a different kind of sky laced with different kind of light, and different colours, shades, dimensions. I felt like one evening the trees had a whole new shape and dimension to them, because of the way the sun was flickering through the sporadic gaps of sky. bark-sky-bark-sky-river-sky-light-light-light. 

Another evening, a few years ago, I remember feeling, with the full force of my mind and body, that the riverside was on fire around me. there is a row of rich red trees with bleeding glistening sap, that have that burnt black bark, that blisters and crumbles, and the rich red flecks through the charcoal black. the sun had reached a certain point of its trajectory and it flickered through the trees so fast, like the turning of an old movie reel, and, for me, the riverside was in flames.

One evening, as I was running in one direction the sky was gold, yellow gold like straw. Liquid buttery gold. And it reflected onto the river so the river was golden too. And then I turned around to run in the other direction and the sky on this side was pink. What a show, I thought. It was like the sky had two different sunsets for just one riverside. It was so audacious. Maybe it was quietly raging with delight but I just couldn't hear it.

As the sunset dissipated, the sky turned grey blue. Darkness was creeping in around me, and there was that element... there was that purple, to the air around me, that was the gathering dark. Is darkness just the absence of light? how can it be when I can see a physical purple all around me? I can almost touch it.

Earlier that evening, the sky had been reflected so perfectly onto the river, and I could see clouds in the water. I almost couldnt tell the difference between water and sky. was the river in the sky or the sky in the river? was I just standing on my head? I couldnt figure it out. It was beautiful confusion that I felt in my whole body. It was like the elements were sharing with eachother, air and water. up and down. It was like it was all around me. and it was.

I wrote this based on conversations with my friends Gemma and Maevana

Project Number One!

Do A Poetry Reading!

Yesterday I went to The Moon where they hold the Perth Poetry Club each week. I have been receiving emails from these people for months and months, but was too daunted, or maybe too disorganised to get there. One time I was even in the city on a Saturday and brought some poems just in case I mustered up the courage to pop in, but instead I met a friend. Something about the spirit that I am in lately, where things just seem less daunting, where most change feels positive and encouraged and positive change is so much more accessible. My mind feels a lot clearer, and is seeking more clarity still. It is good.
So yesterday I just popped down there, it was held in the back room of the Moon, and there was such a motley crowd. It was strange, and it was sweet, and I really enjoyed that. For some reason I envisaged something youthful and pretentious. This suited me much better, and totally assuaged my nerves. As strange as some of the people were, this was about expression.
The first person to get up and speak was a very old, hunched woman in a red matching tracksuit. She spoke about coming home after a holiday. There was a very large man with long hair and a beard wearing a garish hawaiin shirt who's poems were replete with 'fucks', but still, quite intelligently expressed. There was a European woman who kept forgetting the words to her slam poem, an asian girl in a doctor who jumper who spoke effusively about Vincent Van Gough, a few sensible looking men in sensible pants and sensible shoes who got up and did slam poetry that I did not expect, or beautiful poetry that I did not expect. There was a short bald man with glasses who walked through the audience loudly proclaiming his rhythmic poem, I think that was my favourite moment. Or maybe it was the new guy who wrote a rhyming poem about a lonely man in outback australia who built a tin effegy of a woman and got spade, and tetnis from his rusted steel companion. The two special guests were an interesting dichotomy. An older woman who had an interesting selection of poems, all of different forms, and she would tell us before she read them, a lot of them I had never heard of before which inspired me to do some research about form. (Mark Treddenick had planted that seed a few months ago, about the importance of form in poetry). And the other guest was a man in a hat and sunglasses who's sonnets were called 'death and vaginas' - about creation and voids. He also did a lot of rhythmic poetry which was interesting. I decided at half time that I would get up and do one. Sophie had just gone to a sketching course, and Sarah said 'Its the day for doing new things'. I had brought my books along just in case, so I was prepared. I decided to read Alpheuis and Arethusa, one of my greek mythology series.
I was hardly nervous. It did not feel like such a big deal. Not in the sense that I was unaffected or indifferent. not at all, it just felt right. It felt good. It felt natural. I did not feel the need for any grand expression of nerves or delight or accomplishment or breaking down of fear barriers. Even though I felt all of those things somewhere inside my brain. I think what dominated my mental landscape at the time though, making all those other thoughts quietly diminish, was a calm sense that this was good and this was right. I felt calmly thrilled, calmly confident, calmly like I was born to do this, to get up and share stories that I had crafted with my words.

red nose

I have never seen something so sexy
as blood rushing to the surface of soft skin
as her cheeks flushed from walking
and her nose, red from the cold morning air

Projects (To Do Before I Leave Next Year)

1) Keep a project diary and record this list in an interesting way

2) Buy Gum Boots

3) Go for a walk every day for 2 weeks, once in the rain (find different ways to document the walk)

4) Have a dinner party

5) Make a cross stitch

6) Bake 6 different loaves of bread

7) Take a photo portrait of each member of my family

8) Be a vegan for 2 weeks

9) Have a craft club, even if it is only once

10) Write a sonnet

11) Have a tea party picnic

12) Listen my way through Oumie and Oupa's massive classical music record collection

13) Paint - something of my own and something imitating or replicating an artist I like

14) Record my favourite objects in an interesting way

15) Wake up earlier than usual every morning for two weeks and write

16) Get people to make me mix CDs

17) Go to Pemberton and write poems about trees

18) Do a Poetry reading

19) Learn a song on guitar or banjo and do an open mic

20) Do a dance course - african, tap or swing

21) Buy red lipstick and red nailpolish and wear it, out

22) Try as many different national foods as I can

23) Have 24 hours without screen technology

24) Play the minimalism game for one month

25) Do something amazing with a stranger

sunrise

and then, to my left
smoking, blistering peaches
smeared across the charcoal sky

Michael and me

they owned golden dogs
and they ate golden syrup
they had golden hearts
and golden hair

sunrise

Distracted strokes of soft pink

Like misplaced socks

Scattered across the sky 

autumn 9

autumn is for early morning walks
through air as crisp and sweet as an apple

for the smell of eucalyptus in the dark
(for stopping myself from licking at leaves)

autumn is for tripping over gumnuts as I run along the river
and soft, yellowing sappy leaves

for rich reds
and charcoal black
of burning, bleeding trees

I desire oceans

If I could drink my fill

I would drain the ocean dry

I would press my lips to the mouth of the river

And breathe in every corner of her body

I would suck the brine from each grotto

Run my finger through each racing rivulet

Cup my hands beneath the gutter

Until I gasp for breath

for in me is desire

as boundless as the sea

sunrise

I play Russian roulette with the sunrise
some days I get skies threaded with anticipation
some days I get stained sheets and staggered breaths
some days I get the moment
mind splitting
a spill of colour