The Witness
The ancient regime collapses, tattered sackcloth, ashes and timber beams splintering, hollowed by years of white ants and despair.
Explosives fold the stone walls, they dissolve into an estate of broken bricks and mortar, dust rises like smoke over the gray field that remains.
And I, Mona Lisa-like, sit, my hands folded in my lap.
Shattered windows stare blindly at decapitated buildings. Stripped of their leaves raw limbs shiver in the wind.
Pack rats have eyes for smaller beings more easily managed, loot for fast money.
And I, Mona Lisa-like, sit, my hands folded in my lap.
Gratefully the picture tube implodes, releasing its prisoners from the endless assault of images, the onslaught of sound, into quiet oblivion.
Soon a larger fish will consume its predecessor, stronger doses will be needed to combat the disease. As one wall is dismantled, another crumbles to rust, News and Entertainment will record its demise.
While I, Mona Lisa-like, sit my hands folded in my lap.
(November, 1991)
Ginsberg and Glass
at the centre of the universe the navel of the world it is quiet twilight neighbours are rattling pans in their kitchen talking loudly out of windows inside piano arpeggio Glass on the stereo Dylan on the floor beside me looking up to the window slamming and shuffling from next door the chaos of the periphery does not disturb these tranquil notes that still the air here at the centre of the universe the face of a crazy poet gazing out from a book cover and all is still here at the navel of the world where thoughts are born where they in time dissolve into the purity of piano notes the crickets‘ song the still air
(January 11th 1996)
Curriculum Vitae
my life has been a light a lie a distant whisper disintegrating echoes of silent particles another strand of DNA unraveling the parts greater than the whole undecided tentative hurled from invisible heights stranded on this archipelago of fragmented floes blindly bumping their existence in this senseless ocean described and defined and divided by words obliterated by thought slain by superlatives the axe of rationality when we breathe we breath only sunlight all the rest is verbiage all the rest overkill Our lives are lights are lies are silent screams distance and magnitude hold us in dismay consume us the jaws of denial that we (I) you (me) could be reduced to oblivion eternallyonly distance and magnitude fill us gently transport us through the shadowplay of star fire and dark matter galaxies of molecules releasing our passions this theatre exists no more now we are empty space we are distance and magnitude the words of reversal the silence of light
(30th November 1995)
Inundations
people come pouring out of buildings pour out over highways in cars the broken hydrant floods the footpath washing away the traces of their thunder
people come pouring out of nowhere clouds become rain tears turn to mist then suddenly it’s over
people come pouring out of bottles cartons cans come spilling out of plastic containers strewn by roadsides come rushing through storm water channels over the edge of a weary dam
the towering buildings and banks have burst people come pouring out on surfboards clinging to the Styrofoam boxes that held their lunch treading water on asphalt till the lights change and wash away the shrouds and paper wrappings of their grief
caskets come pouring down the sewer’s tide where the tunnel meets the ocean and it’s over
(January 4th, 1996)
Kiss of the Spider Woman
She comes to take hold and let go, emerging from droplets on invisible threads when the world becomes mist and mist overtakes it. And we two are left stranded between disbelief and sleep on this distant atoll. Imprisoned by conviction and fantasy, we merge stories, the wind will disperse them. Mothers lift bedcovers, lower blinds, moonlight a blue shadow on soft-breathing walls. And the kiss of the Spider Woman will take our last thoughts tonight, until we wake to a pale sky when the world becomes light and light animates it.These are moments between prayer and forgetfulness, the dawn hour grey with doubt. Our waking breath evenly rises from stillness to wind-stung water where waves harsh with salt roll fragments of sunlight to a dune-shadowed shore. Prayer-beads scatter on sand, the relics of saints lie obscured by broken shells and strands of twisted seaweed. Their faces blur behind wet glass as the sun dissolves their misted breath.
Beneath the morning sky icons fade in gilded frames, erased by veneration like vanishing stars.
Even unsheeted mirrors will not acknowledge them.
Bright air absorbs their final traces, let us forget.
Fine blades deftly cut the thread, we flinch from the bite of steel as we shudder and dance to the drum-roll of gunfire, shadows in the haze of grit, lust and terror raised by target-bombing.
They flee before the shifting red line of encroachment.
We who remain hear helicopters, black wing-beats bring nightfall to our eyes.
Let us forget.
Fingers gently lift the head, we wake to see our own eyes gazing from the quiet face concealed behind our fragmentary lives.
She comes to take hold and let go, one sharp intake of breath and the pain is over. The kiss of the Spider Woman will erase the aching the moments of terror the mute fear of death.
Starlight her witness in boundless space, a timeless womb where once-estranged lovers wait, their lives and deaths a kiss of recognition and parting.
And we too are left, alone on this unknown atoll, a web of light in a sea of viridian. Our lips touch as the last scene fades and fine threads will softly embrace it
Enlightenment
Ideas like comets come and go and are lost for a lifetime.
Specks of dust that were stars float in the sunlight before my window.
There are night-lights, twinkling in hills thought to be uninhabited, glowing lianas in jungles, frosted constellations that glitter on the edges of shapeless continents.
For whose benefit is this breath-taking display?
Telescopes reveal only the slow undulations of distant nebulae, the inner chamber of soundless eternity.
Ideas like falling stars flare and plummet and are gone before one can attract the attention of bystanders.
They remain unaware that someone close at hand now bears one more glimmering fraction of light on the mind’s invisible coastline.
Annunciation
I am the dark angel with soft wings. I invisibly land sparrowhawk on your shoulder. My call is a high lilting drone, making stars glow as it weaves its way roundthe hollow stones of space, the white noise of quasars and sleeping giants. sentinels at the gate of my blind hinterland that was once called eternity.And I wait on your shoulder, sparrowhawk your light sable lover.
First published in Navigations Issue 3 Summer 1994
Nona
I am Nona, anon. There is no-one at home.
Nona – me, no name at all, no-one to be or become.
Anonymous, quite beyond recognition.
The mass grave, the final communion between strangers.
When body language is stilled. in silent discourse we intertwine,
slowly fall together at last, that intimacy none can disturb.
Breathing in time, inhaling earth and darkness, we settle
through decades of sleep, our bones relaxing in unspoken trust
where no-one can find us, no word to define us, no name at all.
Anonymous, quite beyond resurrection.
The past dissolves into today, and I
stand at the window, invisible eyes behind framed glass.
The world perceives only its own passing, it’s busy, and I
am Nona, there’s no place to go and I am alone.
(May 1, 1994)
Fields of Mars
So the angel consoled the weeping charioteer: „Out of your sorrows distill a victory.“
„Out of the silent devastation, do not linger to mourn among the helmets of the fallen, day and night will release them. Only large, extinct creatures have time-lapse perception of this.
„Once a bolt of blazing light consumed a forest entire in the eastern regions of a mighty land , while all the king’s horses and men were fighting to contain its fragmented and contending parts. So swift, that only slow and credulous peasants remember.
While the educated hordes rushed into a century as if a new emporium had opened its doors.
Armies of new and old creeds fired at each other through the portals and the ramparts of silent architecture. Printed tracts infiltrated the workplace, private screens surveyed production lines from hidden rooms.
Some faded like moths into that dazzling eye, others dissolved slowly on racks of packaged goods and rows of processed evils, many dissolved in empty vats of liquid dreams.
„Eventually we all dream our last dream, undertake to cross that field, and then the contents of the cauldron will cease its restless churning.
The aeon will transmute it, printed still of ancient engravings give graphic descriptions of this.
„Go forth, Charioteer, these images of anguish are flickering shadows on a back-drop of space, like the grey clouds gathered over the battlefield today.
As armies pour like lava from the lead-walled cauldron, each exploding shell will release a galaxy. Another generation of gods will resonate chorus to this.
The angel vanished, a fragrance of lilies strayed through tear-gas, then the lightning.
Death Road
Run over, left next to a take-away bag crumpled in the gutter. Covered in soot from exhaust fumes antiques lie forgotten in windows, squeezed between the bumper bars of the used-car sales yard. and the hock shop front hoarded over like a brothel. Motor bikes gleam in formation tied by chains to the kerb. Stuffed backpacks dangle over the doorway of the disposal store, khaki coffins spread over the pavement, opened to display their full capacity.
Weeping Mary carries the body of her Son across the busy road. passers-by look away,
embarrassed, the shops are closing in five minutes, the kids are waiting at home there are things to do. And after all this is not Via Dolorosa, but Albany Highway.
The supermarket car-park stretches like a desert for a whole block. Its marked rows empty as the sun sets, the last shoppers emerge from swinging doors, loading white body-bags into open boots.
(Easter, 1992) First published in The Broadsheet, June 1992
In the Grip of Death/Life/Love
Hands held violently against words that mean nothing.
The voice of the common good kills us daily.
Slippery blood- stained hands strain to keep us
from leaving each other forever,
strive for our lives against words that mean nothing.
(October 21st, 1995)
Remnants/ Revenants
This is then the lonely severance, the last things packaged and left in an empty hall; in the morning couriers will take them away.
These are the things we take the things we leave behind.
This is then the enforced dispersal, when blood becomes history, and life a flurry of images caught on film, heartbeats moving like targets across the moving screen, over and over until the last sight is mist moving over the final mountain.
the things we take and what we leave behind.
This is the in-breath and the out-breath, taking and giving that which knows neither ownership or bestowal. These are the packages of emptiness left on the pavement for charity or junkyard heaven where they know the value of nothing and the price of the ten thousand things
that we take and leave behind the final mountain.
(Tibetan New Year, 1996)
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