Poetry, Fiction & Paraphernalia from a Cete of Dreamers

A pocketful of pigeons

One win­try night, an amaz­ing artist named Jenna showed us her idea for a book, where the pages were cut into the shapes of a flock of pigeons. We all mar­velled at the beauty of such an object, and won­dered about what words could go inside such a curio.
These are those words – or one ver­sion of them, that I then chanted into the micro­phone at the Phoenix on a Wednes­day night. You will see a dif­fer­ent ver­sion of what goes inside Jenna’s book any time you look up at the sky.

 

 

A pock­et­ful of pigeons


The pigeons that roosted under the eves of the great library found a book,

a blank book all poten­tial and undreamt dreams

all orphaned and aban­doned, face down they

turned it over, and cooed and coaxed it back to life.

 

In a mat­ter of months the book was more bird than bound volume

spoke the lan­guage of columb­i­forms, knew the secrets of the skies

along­side its avian fos­ter­lings, pecked pock­et­fuls of seed strewn over Garema’s grey ground.

 

The pigeon-book does not tell the pigeons how to be pigeons

the pigeons tell the book how to be

and the pigeon book, tells tales of tail­feath­ers spread taught to tame the air that is up and up and up above mount Ainslie and higher.

 

The pigeon book sneaks past secu­rity, squabs down to the vaults of the library,

below lake level, lest the library books’ breath­ing quicken and has­ten their demise.

The pigeon book it whis­pers feath­ery secrets into the bind­ings of aus­tere old vol­umes of sto­ries and facts and let­ters and lore.

And inside their paper hearts, a stirring

a strain­ing and a flut­ter to feel that hint of breeze

from the air­con­di­tion­ing vent.

Pages fold into wings and spines crack as they catch the spell of flight.

 

In the cen­tre of the can­berra, paper passer­ines pour forth into the light,

and the coo­ing cod­dle of the under eve pigeons weave among the columns before soaring,

wingtip against paper­flap they wheel and twist so close that you can’t tell where book ends and bird begins.

And the peo­ple of can­berra can only look up

The peo­ple of Can­berra they can only stare at the skies

as their lit­tle cache of knowl­edge is dis­si­pated and evaporated

and all that was left was a few torn out pages and a feather.

 

 

 
~

Smokesmell

Today is glo­ri­ous.
 

 
smokesmell
in the glass­blown blue air,
and the wind stirs the world
like a gin and tonic
with a long spoon,
 
– while autumn rots
late sac­cha­rine flow­ers
in pud­dles and
the shad­ows of trees
pulling their last leaves to their knees
like pet­ti­coats -
 
I am swept away
on this last blue breath of sum­mer
spun in bicy­cle spokes
rushed through slid­ing doors
into the library
 
where the trick­ster sun throws
his shin­ing stones
on book­cases and desks
giftwrapped in lec­ture notes
and the words stir and dance
through their Dewey num­bers,
leap out the win­dows:
the antithe­sis of sui­cide
singing out their syn­onyms,
cir­cling feath­er­like into the sky.

Blackberry Wine

Back before uni­ver­sity descended upon us like an autumn fog of Knowl­edge and all our dreams were con­sumed by Learn­ing Things, Raphael and I made black­berry wine. Since then it sits in the chai room and bub­bles occasionally.

 

 

 

~

 

 

 

Black­berry Wine
bot­tled whimsy
from a bright and flimsy
hap­py­golucky
sum­mer time.

 

I thought by now you’d be mine.

 

Autumn leaves fringe but
the night sky is already win­ter and
the first splin­ter
enters the heart.

 

Sun set spills red, each day my head fills
with what I don’t quite want to know.

 

Past dreams: where do they go?

 

And the moon, she flies and then sets
and yet, and yet
Inside a tea chest of hope
bucket of bub­bles, best before, or, mar­i­nat­ing mir­a­cle
will you ripen and unfold
long past your sea­son
and into the time of cold
giddy won­der as, out­side of reason, stories are told

 

black-as-winter, black­berry wine.

 

 

 

Those Evocative London Placenames

This is a slam poem about grow­ing up. I wrote it after read­ing Han­nah Lowe’s beau­ti­ful pam­phlet, The Hitcher. I always felt jeal­ous of Eng­lish poets because they got to lead lives in all these beau­ti­fully poetic British places­names, while I was stuck in bor­ing old Can­berra. Here is where I come to terms with it.

 

 

I used to be enam­oured
With all
those evoca­tive Lon­don pla­ce­names
Wanted to live
Where the streets were built of time
And coalsmoke,
Wanted to breathe the his­tory of Eng­lish
In every syl­la­ble of my city;
Took to the Can­berra streets
A one man army
With pla­ce­names for ammu­ni­tion,
Made streets called after
Birds and dream­times
Into Pall Malls and Park Lanes,
I would not stop until I could play Monop­oly
With the White Pages,
Walked across a dozen pedes­trian cross­ings
In silent south­side sub­ur­bia
Chris­tened each one Abbey Road,
Turned the High Court into Earl’s Court,
Kingston into Kens­ing­ton,
Grif­fith into Green­wich and
Made the Molon­glo a Thames
Before dawn had even thought to break
And then danced back into bed.

 

But when I woke up
I found that Garema Place was still in place,
Par­lia­ment House was clock­tow­er­less
And no masked man had tried to blow it up
Because des­per­a­tion and the times had moved his soul,
There was no river under the bridges
Where Exeter and Drake had sailed ships
So heavy with gold
Their bot­toms dragged on a mil­le­nium of
Silt and secrets,
No Bard had pro­claimed of time and blood
From the planks of Can­berra The­atre
And as I walked our planned-and-planted streets
I found that round­abouts marked the graves of archi­tects
Where I expected flea mar­kets and
Alleys so awash with gin
That juniper twined there from cracks and loose cobbles.

 

I took to drink­ing:
Ale from as British a pub as I could find
Refus­ing to meet the street out­side the eye­socket doors
As spring turned to sum­mer turned to autumn and the rain
And road­works swept away all my edited street­signs
Leav­ing a Can­berra fresh as a dew­drop.
The ale ran dry, with the last golden drop on my
Parched tongue I went out­side,
Stum­bled in Panadol-white sun­light,
Fell and
dis­cov­ered:


That I was wrong and young in my leather pants and
Ricepa­per skin to be enam­oured
with all those evoca­tive Lon­don pla­ce­names,
That I have been built by Bur­ley Grif­fin,
The Brind­abel­las brought me up
On their blue­berry and smoke backs
Lost in the Cot­ter I made dinosaurs of cow skulls,
Caught my first but­ter­fly in Tid­bin­billa
Wings shiv­er­ing in my sweaty palms
Ripped my knee on a Kingston side­walk,
Snuck from school and smoked my first cig­a­rette
Defi­antly cough­ing my inno­cence away
In Telo­pea Park, long and green as a cucum­ber,
Ran away from home and walked all the way to Civic,
Broke my mother’s heart and came back,
Fell in love
And fell in love
And fell in love
And rewrote each time
What love was and where it hap­pened,
Took my bike in the night and bit­ing rain
Through the fail­ing Grif­fith street­lights
To see a girl in a bra for the very first time,
Sat on a car roof in Quean­beyan
Throw­ing gravel at the stars
Until they gave us wishes,
Drank but­ter­scotch schnapps in aban­doned coun­cil flats
And shoved a desk through a win­dow
Because I’d never bro­ken glass before,
Because I’d never been a teenager before,
Because life was new and glo­ri­ous,
Because love was new and glo­ri­ous,
Lost my father on the shore of Lake Bur­ley Grif­fin
And saw his ghost in every old man
In Woden Hos­pi­tal,
Grew up, broke up, broke down, defined the map
Of my life in Bur­ley Griffin’s blue­prints,
I was as planned as this city
And as silent as this city
And as loud and new and young as this city
And went to Lon­don, watched my dark eyes in the
Mir­ror of the Tube,
Became enam­oured
with all those evoca­tive Can­berra pla­ce­names,
came back.

Two Poems About Lakes

Just come back from a road trip from Can­berra to Mil­dura and back, my head is full of thoughts, water, dust, desert flow­ers, roads, places; more things here later.

These are two poems about lakes.

Lake Mul­wala
Some­times the world is too
big; on the stillest
bright­est day
the sky shifts,
slips off
old bear­ings
and with a mur­mur
(too loud for us to
even imag­ine)
falls to the earth:
there we find it
with­out mean­ing to;
propped up
(like by a clumsy child
play­ing with his brother’s Lego)
attached to dead trunks,
the Vel­cro scrub of moun­tains
flop­ping like skin in lake water
where the fish come to nib­ble at it
till it is light enough
to rise once more
air­wards,
pulling the paper parade
flags of its birds
back into
flight.

 

 

Lake Kan­ga­roo
Hav­ing con­fused
Geom­e­try and geog­ra­phy
In high school (an easy error)
I set off west
On a day like the Euclid­ean plane,
Leav­ing the com­plex for­mu­las
of Can­berra round­abouts
I came here
To under­stand width.
Here
Where trac­ing my own cir­cle
With sun­scrunched eyes
I see noth­ing but hori­zon,
Where water and land and sky are
One, where the rules of
Math­e­mat­ics break down,
Where joy and lone­li­ness and silence
Are all expressed ∞.

Playgrounds

I’m recently moved to this sub­urb, and I’m not yet inti­mate with its inter­est­ing bits. Its blots and blem­ishes, sur­prises and gifts.
Today, I went out explor­ing after the storm. When the roads and gar­dens were steamy damp as if they’d just got out from a hot shower. refreshed.
In old Can­berra you can walk in almost any direc­tion and count upon find­ing a park before too long. I picked a direc­tion. I found the park and before it a pre-school, tiny lit­tle place, with sand­pit and a bed of straw­ber­ries. Bring­ing back mem­o­ries of being very small, Nine O’Clocks and packed lunches, that mix of love and fear.
It’s thanks to the ACT Government’s (past) pro­gram of hav­ing sep­a­rate preschools, tucked away in the sub­urbs. Looks like this one sur­vived the schools clo­sure. Good for it.
And the park adja­cent has a play ground. If you grew up in Can­berra you’ll know the sort. Old, metal, uncolour­ful. Swings and a slide that, if you fell off, you’d prop­erly hurt your­self. Years ago, they took the set from my child­hood down, and replaced it with some­thing mod­ern, safe and fun proof. I mourned for weeks. Every time I dis­cover another orig­i­nal play­ground still stand­ing, I’m a child again, bare feet trot across the tan bark. My hips are almost too big for the seat, my legs too long, I have to tuck them under, but with very lit­tle effort I’m prac­ti­cally air­borne, and I may as well be seven.
No two of these old swing sets are quite the same, shorter, taller, wider, longer. They’re most likely from the 60s, as old as this sub­urb. Maybe built by a local plumber, climbed all over by gen­er­a­tions of lit­tle ones. Some­one had left a space ship on the park bench, out in the rain. Did it go for jour­neys down the slip­pery dip, as my favourite toys used to?
Ah old Can­berra, with your estab­lished trees and quiet pock­ets of endur­ing love. Vision­ary plan­ners. Places for grow­ing up tucked away in this lit­tle sub­ur­ban won­der­land. Greened and paved and tamed from the dry wilder­ness.
The report that I’m not writ­ing as about high speed trains in Aus­tralia — a net­work will effec­tively be cre­at­ing more dor­mi­tory sub­urbs around Syd­ney and Mel­bourne. What kind of sub­urbs are we build­ing these days? Big­ger houses, larger roads?
It’s rain­ing again, with drips and rus­tles, and I think of my for­tune to live in a city that breaths. The cock­a­toos have cer­tainly got some­thing to say about it.

Windchimes and Elephants

I think every poet is hop­ing, one day, to write a poem about love which is as sin­cere, strange and inde­scrib­able as love itself. This is my hun­dredth attempt, and I’m learn­ing.


One night
We were wind­chimes
And our octaves
kissed
Under the lid of a sky
Through which sci­ence and god were peek­ing
Like school­child­ren
But we did not care because that night
We were wind­chimes.

One night
We were ele­phants
We were grey enor­mous old
As ele­phants:
But I still loved you because one day
We had been windchimes.

The Black Swans

Black Swans

© Ketha.Ledchu http://www.flickr.com/photos/ketha/6638616131/



the black swans
sweep up the sky
in the evening,
clear­ing the heav­ens until
we can see the
heart of things above us:
stars and dark­ness.

the black swans
fly silently, black wings like
grave­stones in the air,
eyes look­ing
straight ahead.

the black swans
dare not look down.
the black swans
dare not see
the world in the evening:
fac­to­ries wreathed in sun­set fumes
vomit-golden.
hol­low chil­dren swollen futile who have for­got­ten
what milk tastes like.
coral like old men’s scalps
dead in warm water.
Allah and Jeho­vah
hid­ing in bunkers
afraid to show their faces
afraid of bombs,
they never asked for bombs;
men killing men again and
again and
again.

(we do not kill black swans, the black swans say.
but they dare not look down.)