Soundlessly as you can hush the dawning birds stroke out the birth in soil and air, put back the worm to its house of gentle slumber where the rainbow sighs colourless, check for a lyric that hook and root tender as a baby’s fingers clasping unworded faith, seeded now poised for raindrops wake thin of … Continue reading If you plant this poem

but the sky a distractionof borrowed thingslet down this foolish glossover a blistered pillfor the taking and you know there areother ways to reach the barbercobbled lanes of yearseavesdropped overhangsthe sluice through wisteria a pomegranate whistling fallthe pride of lemons in full showa half-chewed day’s groanas the school bell calls it can grow another daya … Continue reading Going for a haircut

There's a Gordon Lightfoot songgoes I'm on my second cup of coffee and I still can’t face the dawnor something like that but it’s lovehe’s hung out on there when youngnow chase the days trying for delayholding on to every febrile bough a puff of cloud on a tongue of hoursand the silence of rem … Continue reading A new poem in BLUEPEPPER

                                                                   Sometimes it was my turnto buy the shilling’s worthof broken biscuitsfrom the new Summerhill shops then the Ryans and mewould cut through the last paddockfor a watermelonand the buckshot over our heads broke up like comets entering the atmosphere we caught yabbies with the tinand our crumbs we reckonedfloated all the way to China … Continue reading Darebin Creek Crimes, Reprise

Patience is disturbed by a knock at the door. “Hello, may I call you Pat”? asks a woman in a neat civilian suit, expensive with authority. “No, how do you do.” An obviously junior assistant shuffles foot to foot, looking down the street. “We are from the Office of Transition, and are here to ensure … Continue reading A Head on Their Shoulders

(Resemblance to any living or dead personor other is purely coincidental) When I was a kid, on the East Reservoir estate everyone called each other’s pets by the surname of the family. Kim ‘Meredith’ was a Labrador slobbering so much saliva pools were left at gates. His dad was a carpenter and known for voting … Continue reading Working Class Pacts

The huntsman’s as big as a dinner plate, on the wallwatching patiently for something to fill her.She’s gone when I boil the kettle, back behind heath paddockthe large McCubbin print from the bric a brac shop.I’m guessing that’s where she idles, a true originalday dreaming between the parched dock,all those works waiting to spring forth, … Continue reading The Shiver in Me

One day I think I mayput an old door and boardsthere on the back porch to hold out the westerly’svoice of God in rain and galebut it is cunning against thwart and breaks from the southfaster than nail and willhardier too in stone persistence bringing the top edge of wavessalt and lash and flip of … Continue reading Lessons by weather

1 This restless melancholiaunsoothed in the applicationof tubular tobacco rectum smokewanders from the crying wallsearching for the musicwhere Napoleon’s toothbrushstrums over Bentham’s skindancing in Florence Nightingale’s moccasinsto keep at bay fatal exhaustionunharnessed touching the amuletsto find the writhing Brailleof unspeaking human faces II Nicotine The masters saythe sheaves aren’t too heavybut you try lifting all … Continue reading Excerpts of Escape from a Victorian Asylum

our heartbeat slowed        to the voices of radio the dog, head angled ears tuned in watched, licked at sound there was dawdle in step morning cracked its egg books and toast gave over day we worked that paddock clean until evening called us in       to each page turner a remit dangling there left … Continue reading Year without television