I live in the old lay over ward the infants’ windy smilesfall out of the lining of nighta row of piano keys resting whilst at the end of Campbell Street the fishers pudgy fingers hands of bananasare dragging lines for ocean trout saltier from the desal plant in water needed to flush riversback to the … Continue reading Converted Maternity Wing, Wonthaggi

I swam the pavement straitsto be cradled in the sacristal layof your curling sleeplessness furtive strokes between pontoonsof concertinaed cars in early hoursglass beads that paced anxious steps of drizzled rainbows on cresting roads each night in beacon times guidedembraced by window frames strong enough then to lift myselfthrough return journeysuntil the verdigris signal failed stalled … Continue reading Hellespont Queens Parade Clifton Hill

My Love, while you still visit(these surrounds of disturbed conceit)how can this Autumn be confined?challenge the season’s movementstranded as our bed is unnervedit is your will to remain boundless,this worn heart a carapace in lyricsunk deep the roots of our Edenhauls brooding mornings forth,your laugh carillon in the rainthough most of us is now transit(I … Continue reading In which He Bays a Season’s forestall, that She departed may Linger

How the souls cry out their battered endingsfrom this shallow dumping ground,here where the train gasps going by,the abandoned rooms licking their cracked sour paint. The sandy track glimpsed looking upfrom the page or lap top,the endearing favourite song fluttering in scrubby messmate,my decorative sentinels shedding skins. So carefully placed and tended now,a travelling case, … Continue reading Dark Falls by Railway Lines/The Murderer’s Motif

There is one precious thingthrown ahead of you before you know it,ripening in the black cockatoo’s bark.A long long tug rope extends into foggy imaginingshow you arrive so suddenly,to jump out of birth and the step over inhale.A little bumpy as the recoil witnessestoddling scale to the first kiss grazed experiences scab over,to reincarnate love … Continue reading You Put Your Left Foot In…

she had the sunrise on her headand the ramble sky in her eyesand sometimes painted by evening dressin the flat on Richmond Hillwith the old mansion mirrorbecause she told mecolour doesn’t rest anywherean ancient fig ruptured the pathwhere she skipped ahead of meand would tread the bingo call of tidesthe priest asked me if I … Continue reading Vanessa, asleep

The cockatoos came home todayall showy insistencerowdy language hanging from every limb ravenous camping teens stripped the pear treeto a shrivel of skinsa dishevel of band aids the cupey-eyed passion fruit happily just flower in Bilson Street shoppers watchedthe low tumultuous skyturn this way and that across the garrulous horizon a nonchalant blink of avian … Continue reading Of a flock, returning

Skinning words, two-part arrivals She came back, suddenly   god eats your soulAt 3.47 this morning  like a custard tartI’ve learnt not to ask  pushing the crumbs of boundaryWhere she’s been  from the corners of mouthsI turn over, put my head  a knave of bachelorsBetween her shoulder and breast  wayward as a slipped jibThe way I know … Continue reading Skinning words, two-part arrivals

do not fall in love with a Godwhen they say foreverit is the duration of vanity only out of my breathless ossuarythese slow secondsturn within themselves a tapestry made of stone Eos asked him to make me eternalwe were to be beautiful togethera hand aside the mouth of Zeus his incremental curse of immortalitya hover … Continue reading Tithonus and Dawn

My dear Lizzy if I may still be so boldafter 51 years of absence from Longbournexactitude being a virtue amongst friends,as it is to be precise as it is to be worthycan I speak of that struggle so containedby society’s rigours of want for decorum?Be assured I delight in the fortunesof the other Miss Bennetts … Continue reading A not so recalcitrant reader returns to Pride and Prejudice, Jane I remain Yours, &c.