JULIAN SHOWED

I had now given the Greeks to the grave
game of spurring. Ajax had played his
jacks for tonight.

Their equations lost to a stark-eye lull.
A riptide anxiety broke the exchange
of warm beer, recall and focal laughs.

Retreat: the enclosure of a mystic.
That wooden-fixed anchoress that
never fixed her hair for love, never
toiled the earth for a showing, but
pitied herself to recollect her Trinity.

Fallen men became breakfast, stuck to
a ruined bed that was her square for
an uncomfortable bliss that was sure
and the vehicle for our heaven.

EARLY MORNING

Sleep and fawn the memory

You sold for a vertical drip

They call a cure

Your recovery

You’re laughing

At the lighting

GENTLY DEPRESSED

Gently depressed

I tow to her bind

As alabaster soils

THESE BIRDS

The birds flutter between brick and tress

I’m all palms for their disinterest –

I know the birds, I don’t know the Name

I bend the brick dangerously in influence

But they’re there and I’m here, so nearby

The dappled beams they register not

I’m so close to blindness and enough

Of wanting to seek, reach, handle

Their security, they all call

But not for me

But I never stand

To address

Their borders stronger than mine

POEMS AND PARANOIA

You tease me about poems and paranoia,

unaware that we are always on guard

with our favourite toys, prepared

to reach the thatched ladder

over the black hole.

The one we are certain

we did not dig.

When you can be fat and happy

hunched over machinery sans guilt,

then you are one rich man falling.

Gift-giving makes such a man nervous

and she has included you childlike

in her great big-hearted basket.

The polishing of pride,

and the lending of contentment

are all swallowed by her good intentions

saved for unity and motherhood.

She kick-starts the leather and merry-go-round

without knowing what she has spun.

COCKTAILS MISSED

don’t be disappointed

by the lady’s inevitability

no point is ever unseen

they’re all so airy thin

but you want to offer

a business card, limb

just in case of grace

they’ll curl-up to sleep

with their dresses attached

for drinks under the doona