.
Pastor James’s Heart Attack
When the bloke hands you the fish’n’chips
He does it coolly over his till,
Takes the money, slides the drawer,
And gets bloody close to the correct change
Without once taking his eyes off the street outside.
After nilly eighty years of fat, salt, starch and sugar,
My Old Man’s in the Royal Adelaide with a dodgy pump;
Scared enough to put away his ancient fear
Of letting humans interfere in God’s Big Plan to
Come down from the hills in an ambulance,
Take their advice and let em put in a Pacemaker.
Pacemaker? Gazing sideways like a fishmonger at
The reflection in that hospital window,
I got Wyatt Earp riding through the chest of My Father The Preacher,
Who’s lying there like somebody’s just handed him his Last Fish,
When this Pisces Dutch fishing shiela I love
- “Who was that Raven-Haired Beauty?” he asked when she’d gone -
Anyway she walks in for the first time beside me
With fresh fish on her breath and my sperm on her hands,
He goes a sort of dishwater grey as his blood remembers,
And he’s kicking his sheets.
After a long careful gaze of this,
She looks at me like her icecream’s jumped
Off its cone into the forty-plus gutter,
And sees me become that old bastard:
Scared and jittery, lustful and fucked:
A rotting King, flat on his silver back.
No chance of fresh black feathers on that helmet.
Pastor Jimmy puts his trust in The Lord,
Whispers prayers over the phone
To Sylvia my Mother each morning
While she kneels with a Bible in her hand
On a mattress on the floor in my attic
Just over the street from the heart ward.
She sleeps as close to sin as she’s got for sixty years those nights,
Near the bed where I’m sliding silently into my fishy Raven,
Whispering about orgasms.
Wondering how many you can get.
Pastor James gets better with his new electric ticker
- Having put an end to his jealousy of his wife,
Who’d sprach too eagerly of the food at my place -
Takes her back to The Purple Valley and goes on with it.
She’s been a bit of a raven in her day, mind you.
Still is, under the fat and the tangled feathers.
After I introduced her to a slimy mate,
My Raven went off to Sydney on whoring work
And everything’s settled down nicely.
Sometimes, when she’s back here resting,
She does the same shit with her eyes as the fish’n’chip bloke.
Maybe she thinks the window is me.
Philip White
.
Friday, October 9, 2009
Wednesday, October 7, 2009
enough fucking psalms
.
Enough fucking psalms
This lipslowed bleat on Rundle Street:
grub-thick, jams in my craw.
It knots because my psalm’s so sweet
But you won’t ask for more.
Philip White
.
Enough fucking psalms
This lipslowed bleat on Rundle Street:
grub-thick, jams in my craw.
It knots because my psalm’s so sweet
But you won’t ask for more.
Philip White
.
monica on the balcony
.
Monica on the balcony
When fantasy takes flesh
and slides her toe beneath the veil,
so sharp she keens the hearts and breath
of ordinary males.
Their chests wind tight and spellbound eyes
glaze dumb with mouths agape,
that toe will totally confound
the ordinary ape.
They stand in mobs and mutter,
hypnotised, thick, moron men,
lined up along the gutter
lest that toe tease past again.
With its sacred scent and whiteness,
and its nail, deep blood-drop red,
it knows no glib politeness
as it taunts the lads with bed.
But they're so dim in passion:
ordinarily they fuck it.
You need a very special man
to take that toe, and suck it.
Philip White
.
Monica on the balcony
When fantasy takes flesh
and slides her toe beneath the veil,
so sharp she keens the hearts and breath
of ordinary males.
Their chests wind tight and spellbound eyes
glaze dumb with mouths agape,
that toe will totally confound
the ordinary ape.
They stand in mobs and mutter,
hypnotised, thick, moron men,
lined up along the gutter
lest that toe tease past again.
With its sacred scent and whiteness,
and its nail, deep blood-drop red,
it knows no glib politeness
as it taunts the lads with bed.
But they're so dim in passion:
ordinarily they fuck it.
You need a very special man
to take that toe, and suck it.
Philip White
.
reeds
.
Reeds
The reeds have been talking.
Last year it was the river:
Its cosy gloom below the zoo bridge
Where the lads plunged through the rails,
Waking the animals with their unnatural splash,
Upside down gurgles in the car,
And the lights working sideways in the murk
Minutes after the thumping ceased.
Police wet and heaving, naked on the bank.
Behind the wall, the tiger opened an eye,
Peeled back a lip, and yawned me to the shallows.
Now the reeds are talking.
This is a relief.
Philip White
.
Reeds
The reeds have been talking.
Last year it was the river:
Its cosy gloom below the zoo bridge
Where the lads plunged through the rails,
Waking the animals with their unnatural splash,
Upside down gurgles in the car,
And the lights working sideways in the murk
Minutes after the thumping ceased.
Police wet and heaving, naked on the bank.
Behind the wall, the tiger opened an eye,
Peeled back a lip, and yawned me to the shallows.
Now the reeds are talking.
This is a relief.
Philip White
.
gravity
.
Gravity
The headspin, shark’s fin,
moonful fly-by-night sin:
Honey, your dark star calls me.
Round the corner, in the car,
chucking darts in Nicky’s bar –
I never thought we’d get this far.
But we do.
The Earth wins through.
The oil by your bed says all:
we only stand until we fall.
Philip White
.
Gravity
The headspin, shark’s fin,
moonful fly-by-night sin:
Honey, your dark star calls me.
Round the corner, in the car,
chucking darts in Nicky’s bar –
I never thought we’d get this far.
But we do.
The Earth wins through.
The oil by your bed says all:
we only stand until we fall.
Philip White
.
pixie
.
Pixie
This house holds many souls.
They crowd its bleakest lonely moments.
Their fingerprints live on its stones.
They are pacific folk, and do not jostle.
Now they vibrate with refreshment.
A pixie was here,
Firing something sub-atomic.
It knocked the grain from the memory,
Leaving a picture quickly bright and crisp.
My phantoms love it.
They are massaging my shoulders.
Philip White
.
Pixie
This house holds many souls.
They crowd its bleakest lonely moments.
Their fingerprints live on its stones.
They are pacific folk, and do not jostle.
Now they vibrate with refreshment.
A pixie was here,
Firing something sub-atomic.
It knocked the grain from the memory,
Leaving a picture quickly bright and crisp.
My phantoms love it.
They are massaging my shoulders.
Philip White
.
song of relief
.
Song Of Relief
The news came first by nightmare:
a vivid, snaky dream.
I reached to touch you in my sleep
and sat up as you screamed
“I’m just not into that scene anymore!
I’m just not in that scene!”
I woke, and like the songs all say,
you were not with me, anyway.
Philip White
.
Song Of Relief
The news came first by nightmare:
a vivid, snaky dream.
I reached to touch you in my sleep
and sat up as you screamed
“I’m just not into that scene anymore!
I’m just not in that scene!”
I woke, and like the songs all say,
you were not with me, anyway.
Philip White
.
the desert pea
.
The Desert Pea
You would nurse it shut
as Nightingale nursed each night:
fresh dressing at dawn,
mother fingers pressing the purse lips closed for sleep.
Now I am invited (or so my little advisor claims)
to manage its opening, permanent.
One curious inspection leaves the
hospital yearning for a whole Crimea of bleedings.
Philip White
.
The Desert Pea
You would nurse it shut
as Nightingale nursed each night:
fresh dressing at dawn,
mother fingers pressing the purse lips closed for sleep.
Now I am invited (or so my little advisor claims)
to manage its opening, permanent.
One curious inspection leaves the
hospital yearning for a whole Crimea of bleedings.
Philip White
.
the electric drum
.
The Electric Drum
One hundred and forty times a minute
You bow to this thump you call techno:
Heads down, shoulders round,
Forearms pounding phantom anvils,
You kow-tow to the dark machine grunt
That disemployed your ancestry.
You could attend church
And eat your god.
Philip White
.
The Electric Drum
One hundred and forty times a minute
You bow to this thump you call techno:
Heads down, shoulders round,
Forearms pounding phantom anvils,
You kow-tow to the dark machine grunt
That disemployed your ancestry.
You could attend church
And eat your god.
Philip White
.
fleurieu geography
.
Fleurieu geography
for Susan Dowie
Lie on your back in a field.
Lie ’til the clover peeks from your eyeholes,
And the capeweed strangles your curved white spine.
Then you can know.
Then you can feel.
Kulultuwi the songwriter tracked an emu,
unaware that behind him was Tjirbruke,
- his mum’s heavy magic brother from the Rapid Bay granite -
following that same special bird for other reasons.
Tjirbruke surprised his nephew - his Njengari - singing
as he cooked that emu with herbs in an earthernware
pressure cooker, a wintjimi.
Suddenly embarrassed that this was no ordinary bird,
Kulultiwi apologised and offered the feast to his uncle.
But Tjirbruke said no thanks,
he had sufficient roo meat,
moseyed on,
and sent back a message of forgiveness,
unaware that Kulultiwi had been blinded by steam when
he opened his wintjimi,
giving his greedy half brothers the chance to kill him
on the excuse that he’d transgressed.
Hunting the wrong bird.
Which they ate.
When he heard the terrible news,
Tjirbruke walked all the way to Gawler searching for them,
then came back south to check out a big show he’d heard
about at Brighton,
where he found them and killed them,
and many of their clan, for lying to conceal them.
He found Kulultiwi’s body, half-smoked,
and took it to Kingston Park to finish the job.
Once it was compact enough to carry,
Tjirbruke took that body down the coast past Scalloway,
weeping fresh clean grievings along the salty gulf to leave
life-giving faucets for travellers.
Then he stowed Kulultiwi in the cliff north of Morgans
where they’d netted snapper as young ’uns,
entered the earth’s crust to emerge at Mount Hayfield,
sealed up his exit hole and walked down to Victor.
There, he became Glossy Ibis on The Bluff,
showing Christ the way by soaring heavenward
where he left his Njengari as a glittering star,
and in an eternal triumphant stoop
plunged headlong into the Tapanappa schist over my
side of the range;
deep and hot and passionate and futuristic enough to
make iron sulphide - pyrites; firestone - at Brukunga
so folk should always have the warmth of fire.
Heaven and Hell in one fell swoop.
His water you watch became Golf Josephine, after their
Emporer’s mistress when Baudin and the post-
revolutionary Frogs arrived some millennia later.
By the time they got home Napoleon had a new girlfriend
who wanted it renamed after her,
and while Josie was growling in her empty salon,
perversely, lonesome Matthew Flinders called that same water
St. Vincent, after his sponsor First Lord of the Admiralty
the Right Honourable John, Earl of St. Vincent,
which Saint turns out to be patron of vinedressers and schoolgirls.
Carrying a name my mob took for their sub-arctic Ness with no hue,
I find myself living by Brukunga,
where Tjirbruke buried his bruke, his firestone.
In China I am Golden Dragon.
They know I don’t know what that means
- I don’t know what any of this means -
but I sport sulphur feathers in my carburetor;
and exude acrid waftage, or moist.
In the land of my clan you dowe, or wilt,
while your highland mob took dowie
- melancholic, dismal, dreary -
from dollie, doll, dull.
Yet you are music-filled champers-fuelled bikini-clad
body-surfing sandfish with little rage but a canny
placitude as thick as syrup,
and certain distance that disappears and you’re perfumed and close.
I risk my feathers to plunge dry through rock and fire to come
out your side and sizzle your fizz and freesias.
You risk steaming away your fishy water through stony fire to be here.
Or by sexy whisper on the phone.
We’ll learn about it all by bone.
Philip White
.
Fleurieu geography
for Susan Dowie
Lie on your back in a field.
Lie ’til the clover peeks from your eyeholes,
And the capeweed strangles your curved white spine.
Then you can know.
Then you can feel.
Kulultuwi the songwriter tracked an emu,
unaware that behind him was Tjirbruke,
- his mum’s heavy magic brother from the Rapid Bay granite -
following that same special bird for other reasons.
Tjirbruke surprised his nephew - his Njengari - singing
as he cooked that emu with herbs in an earthernware
pressure cooker, a wintjimi.
Suddenly embarrassed that this was no ordinary bird,
Kulultiwi apologised and offered the feast to his uncle.
But Tjirbruke said no thanks,
he had sufficient roo meat,
moseyed on,
and sent back a message of forgiveness,
unaware that Kulultiwi had been blinded by steam when
he opened his wintjimi,
giving his greedy half brothers the chance to kill him
on the excuse that he’d transgressed.
Hunting the wrong bird.
Which they ate.
When he heard the terrible news,
Tjirbruke walked all the way to Gawler searching for them,
then came back south to check out a big show he’d heard
about at Brighton,
where he found them and killed them,
and many of their clan, for lying to conceal them.
He found Kulultiwi’s body, half-smoked,
and took it to Kingston Park to finish the job.
Once it was compact enough to carry,
Tjirbruke took that body down the coast past Scalloway,
weeping fresh clean grievings along the salty gulf to leave
life-giving faucets for travellers.
Then he stowed Kulultiwi in the cliff north of Morgans
where they’d netted snapper as young ’uns,
entered the earth’s crust to emerge at Mount Hayfield,
sealed up his exit hole and walked down to Victor.
There, he became Glossy Ibis on The Bluff,
showing Christ the way by soaring heavenward
where he left his Njengari as a glittering star,
and in an eternal triumphant stoop
plunged headlong into the Tapanappa schist over my
side of the range;
deep and hot and passionate and futuristic enough to
make iron sulphide - pyrites; firestone - at Brukunga
so folk should always have the warmth of fire.
Heaven and Hell in one fell swoop.
His water you watch became Golf Josephine, after their
Emporer’s mistress when Baudin and the post-
revolutionary Frogs arrived some millennia later.
By the time they got home Napoleon had a new girlfriend
who wanted it renamed after her,
and while Josie was growling in her empty salon,
perversely, lonesome Matthew Flinders called that same water
St. Vincent, after his sponsor First Lord of the Admiralty
the Right Honourable John, Earl of St. Vincent,
which Saint turns out to be patron of vinedressers and schoolgirls.
Carrying a name my mob took for their sub-arctic Ness with no hue,
I find myself living by Brukunga,
where Tjirbruke buried his bruke, his firestone.
In China I am Golden Dragon.
They know I don’t know what that means
- I don’t know what any of this means -
but I sport sulphur feathers in my carburetor;
and exude acrid waftage, or moist.
In the land of my clan you dowe, or wilt,
while your highland mob took dowie
- melancholic, dismal, dreary -
from dollie, doll, dull.
Yet you are music-filled champers-fuelled bikini-clad
body-surfing sandfish with little rage but a canny
placitude as thick as syrup,
and certain distance that disappears and you’re perfumed and close.
I risk my feathers to plunge dry through rock and fire to come
out your side and sizzle your fizz and freesias.
You risk steaming away your fishy water through stony fire to be here.
Or by sexy whisper on the phone.
We’ll learn about it all by bone.
Philip White
.
stonette-du-jour
.
Stonette-du-jour
(for Dr. Michael “Alacrity” Youds,
on his return of some books)
I put the furniture back from whence it came
a life ago, still autumn seeps early. It’s January,
but when I open the doors leaves troop through
the cobwebs to settle in the corners. My
desk grows wings from the feathers I lean to
collect beneath the trees in the mornings from
my bed through here across the washout to the
store. These sky folk are not sea birds, but
they can do the business. A small Dionysiosaur
eats the Portuguese millipedes twice a week;
magpies and rats love my bolognese; I gas
the blowflies before they lay their marching rice,
and great books long aloft return like ancient
condors to shit refreshed upon my shelves.
Philip White
.
Stonette-du-jour
(for Dr. Michael “Alacrity” Youds,
on his return of some books)
I put the furniture back from whence it came
a life ago, still autumn seeps early. It’s January,
but when I open the doors leaves troop through
the cobwebs to settle in the corners. My
desk grows wings from the feathers I lean to
collect beneath the trees in the mornings from
my bed through here across the washout to the
store. These sky folk are not sea birds, but
they can do the business. A small Dionysiosaur
eats the Portuguese millipedes twice a week;
magpies and rats love my bolognese; I gas
the blowflies before they lay their marching rice,
and great books long aloft return like ancient
condors to shit refreshed upon my shelves.
Philip White
.
friday 13th november 1987
.
Friday 13 November 1987
(on meeting Tyronne Phillip Fischer)
So sweet the meat, the hallowed arc
His forehead flashes to my nose;
To cleave, to cabbage-crunch. So sweet,
The bloody dump of pumping me:
So hot agush my shocked throatdown,
And crimson bursts my shirtfront.
Wall eyes abrim with sinblack faith,
His smile a yard of tombstones with
No earthly breath to dry their moss-
Damp postscripts from the void - that sharp
Skull suck gives only weight to tilt
His business lean to toe-tips,
For the extra leverage he
Needs to swing his club up through my
Balls. Shoulders bulging, head down now
As if he were some shunter, some
Giant engine strained to push a
Hundred coalfull trucks through points
All rusted since the war. Which war?
I ask, aghast to think of more,
Of bigger, badder, more fucked war -
Shit! This mad cunt's for real! He's killed
My cods! His waddy whacking bone
Not hit like this before, my
Baby cradle there where mothers
Have no cods at all - just hollow
Swamps where killers crawl and simple
blokes like me. Or did. No more of
That delight, because tonight, I
Meet our Father which art Death
On the End of a Stick. And now
As the body retches forward
Across the broken cock, the face
Still squirting hot artery blood,
The mind screams panic orders to
Slam the fucking firedoors and
Shut the receptors down clunk! clunk!
Clunk! He swings back in his singlet
Torso, guts now ruts of tightning
Muscle furrows, murderous in
Their tension, chrome springs stretched against
Blue cotton, his hair trigger
Filed off from the start. There is no
Stopping now. So from away back,
A yard behind his warrior frizz
And triumphant jaw, from the end
Of his cartooned sledgehammer paw,
Rain down the finishing shots:
One, two, three, four - each breaching so
Easily the skullflesh, each swing
More gold for Australia, each
Blow a psalm of victory, a
Sweetener for the bloodfilled throat,
A scytheman reaping braincells
By the lobe, chopping the cushion,
The last crop of hair, the final
Tight helmet of flesh. The smooth thought
Creche peels back, layer by layer,
Opening the mains of life, to
Let these dogs of me run free
At last to sky, in great red bursts
Of lifedog, the sprinkler of the
Heart, flooding here the street outside
The pub, where, drained atop the bar
My pintglass slides its endfroth down
Its sides like a nice slow piss.
Philip White
.
Friday 13 November 1987
(on meeting Tyronne Phillip Fischer)
So sweet the meat, the hallowed arc
His forehead flashes to my nose;
To cleave, to cabbage-crunch. So sweet,
The bloody dump of pumping me:
So hot agush my shocked throatdown,
And crimson bursts my shirtfront.
Wall eyes abrim with sinblack faith,
His smile a yard of tombstones with
No earthly breath to dry their moss-
Damp postscripts from the void - that sharp
Skull suck gives only weight to tilt
His business lean to toe-tips,
For the extra leverage he
Needs to swing his club up through my
Balls. Shoulders bulging, head down now
As if he were some shunter, some
Giant engine strained to push a
Hundred coalfull trucks through points
All rusted since the war. Which war?
I ask, aghast to think of more,
Of bigger, badder, more fucked war -
Shit! This mad cunt's for real! He's killed
My cods! His waddy whacking bone
Not hit like this before, my
Baby cradle there where mothers
Have no cods at all - just hollow
Swamps where killers crawl and simple
blokes like me. Or did. No more of
That delight, because tonight, I
Meet our Father which art Death
On the End of a Stick. And now
As the body retches forward
Across the broken cock, the face
Still squirting hot artery blood,
The mind screams panic orders to
Slam the fucking firedoors and
Shut the receptors down clunk! clunk!
Clunk! He swings back in his singlet
Torso, guts now ruts of tightning
Muscle furrows, murderous in
Their tension, chrome springs stretched against
Blue cotton, his hair trigger
Filed off from the start. There is no
Stopping now. So from away back,
A yard behind his warrior frizz
And triumphant jaw, from the end
Of his cartooned sledgehammer paw,
Rain down the finishing shots:
One, two, three, four - each breaching so
Easily the skullflesh, each swing
More gold for Australia, each
Blow a psalm of victory, a
Sweetener for the bloodfilled throat,
A scytheman reaping braincells
By the lobe, chopping the cushion,
The last crop of hair, the final
Tight helmet of flesh. The smooth thought
Creche peels back, layer by layer,
Opening the mains of life, to
Let these dogs of me run free
At last to sky, in great red bursts
Of lifedog, the sprinkler of the
Heart, flooding here the street outside
The pub, where, drained atop the bar
My pintglass slides its endfroth down
Its sides like a nice slow piss.
Philip White
.
Monday, October 5, 2009
forgotten guests like phantoms
.
Forgotten guests like phantoms
Forgotten guests like phantoms filled my house
while you were at the opera.
Three times I turned my back and strode the hall,
my arms outstretched to greet you;
but you were at the opera.
I couldn't eat, but drank,
'til there in the chatter and rattle of plates
your face swooped in before me,
and slid me to that perfumed hush,
snug with the rustle of curtain and skirt,
and the cascade applause of the opera.
Philip White
.
Forgotten guests like phantoms
Forgotten guests like phantoms filled my house
while you were at the opera.
Three times I turned my back and strode the hall,
my arms outstretched to greet you;
but you were at the opera.
I couldn't eat, but drank,
'til there in the chatter and rattle of plates
your face swooped in before me,
and slid me to that perfumed hush,
snug with the rustle of curtain and skirt,
and the cascade applause of the opera.
Philip White
.
she comes down
.
She Comes Down
“They’re those little wispy bits we get before she comes down”
Michael told the telephone in a voice too dry from the waiting.
Like frozen shards off the edge of some mighty shattered sword
the advance droplets shrieked silently through our cheeks
by the time we reached the garden.
Annabelle was in her dressing gown in the roses
as we picked and packed petals for my soap.
Between gasps, the lowering sky gulped vacuums of still deep grey,
Leaving silence, as if it might snow.
Philip White
.
She Comes Down
“They’re those little wispy bits we get before she comes down”
Michael told the telephone in a voice too dry from the waiting.
Like frozen shards off the edge of some mighty shattered sword
the advance droplets shrieked silently through our cheeks
by the time we reached the garden.
Annabelle was in her dressing gown in the roses
as we picked and packed petals for my soap.
Between gasps, the lowering sky gulped vacuums of still deep grey,
Leaving silence, as if it might snow.
Philip White
.
i choose to take this risk of writing
.
I Choose To Take This Risk Of Writing
(for Francis Bacon)
Those arms I felt:
softened they were by Death;
but sorrow warms them too,
and I could feel your strength coming through.
In those arms.
When it happens, nobody understands.
The anchor in the heart
suddenly pulls tight as
the ship draws away,
and great steaks of flesh and rib
drag pumping down the pier.
Now the cables are drawing tight.
The garbage men are banging in the street.
It’s not so much the muscle that goes,
but the bone.
Eaten and eaten and eaten.
From the arms, I mean: the loving arms.
The bastard sits there smoking,
nonchalant, on the bed,
while the bone goes out of your arms
and your chest is dragged pumping
down the pier.
He puts his hat on, jerks down his cuffs,
and stalks out,
swelling thinly against his shoulderpads.
Leaving us.
When you curl your throat like that
And I’ve got my fingers soft in the back of your knee,
That’s when we pull the wadding of the sky
back into the wound and shoot those
stainless cables down the marrow to the future.
Philip White
.
I Choose To Take This Risk Of Writing
(for Francis Bacon)
Those arms I felt:
softened they were by Death;
but sorrow warms them too,
and I could feel your strength coming through.
In those arms.
When it happens, nobody understands.
The anchor in the heart
suddenly pulls tight as
the ship draws away,
and great steaks of flesh and rib
drag pumping down the pier.
Now the cables are drawing tight.
The garbage men are banging in the street.
It’s not so much the muscle that goes,
but the bone.
Eaten and eaten and eaten.
From the arms, I mean: the loving arms.
The bastard sits there smoking,
nonchalant, on the bed,
while the bone goes out of your arms
and your chest is dragged pumping
down the pier.
He puts his hat on, jerks down his cuffs,
and stalks out,
swelling thinly against his shoulderpads.
Leaving us.
When you curl your throat like that
And I’ve got my fingers soft in the back of your knee,
That’s when we pull the wadding of the sky
back into the wound and shoot those
stainless cables down the marrow to the future.
Philip White
.
the prairie home companion
.
The Prairie Home Companion
Between the hand and the handle,
the soup and the nose,
the notion and the voice,
enters the comforting idea
that things will soon return to normal.
His clothes should betray him.
The suit and the shoes.
The death of a salesman
who fades while suggesting
that things will soon return to normal.
Assurance without insurance.
The phone rings next.
You’ve hit a kangaroo
and can’t complete the run
to get back here to normal.
He came in low enough
to knock a wheel out.
If he’d crashed on your lap,
through your low windscreen,
that would be the new normal.
More and more pointillism.
More and more dots.
Philip White
.
The Prairie Home Companion
Between the hand and the handle,
the soup and the nose,
the notion and the voice,
enters the comforting idea
that things will soon return to normal.
His clothes should betray him.
The suit and the shoes.
The death of a salesman
who fades while suggesting
that things will soon return to normal.
Assurance without insurance.
The phone rings next.
You’ve hit a kangaroo
and can’t complete the run
to get back here to normal.
He came in low enough
to knock a wheel out.
If he’d crashed on your lap,
through your low windscreen,
that would be the new normal.
More and more pointillism.
More and more dots.
Philip White
.
heroin
.
Heroin
Somebody’d popped an artery in the bogs.
Wrong tube.
Sprayed floods of their latest reddest blood
across the white tiles,
the floor and the cistern;
unravelled about forty feet of shitwipes
to sop the wound
then fled in blind white panic.
“Oh have they?”
enquired the publican,
taking his bar cloth in for the wipe-up,
sleeves rolled up to the elbows.
Philip White
.
Heroin
Somebody’d popped an artery in the bogs.
Wrong tube.
Sprayed floods of their latest reddest blood
across the white tiles,
the floor and the cistern;
unravelled about forty feet of shitwipes
to sop the wound
then fled in blind white panic.
“Oh have they?”
enquired the publican,
taking his bar cloth in for the wipe-up,
sleeves rolled up to the elbows.
Philip White
.
gabriella
.
Gabriella
There is no wind.
Smackfucked Adelaide explodes her warmth
to the cloudless chill heaven,
and when the warmth goes
there is no sound or sign.
The half moon’s snapped in frozen blue.
I got no trouble with you, gone Gabriella.
Gone good is where you are.
But not one breath of wind?
No cloud? No sound? No sign?
Only half a moon?
Philip White
.
Gabriella
There is no wind.
Smackfucked Adelaide explodes her warmth
to the cloudless chill heaven,
and when the warmth goes
there is no sound or sign.
The half moon’s snapped in frozen blue.
I got no trouble with you, gone Gabriella.
Gone good is where you are.
But not one breath of wind?
No cloud? No sound? No sign?
Only half a moon?
Philip White
.
the tussocks
.
The tussocks
Well into the tussocks I interrupted ducks
One flightless teenager galloped across the water
And then an explosion of babies
And a mother who did the broken wing trick about a chain away
While I tipped an old cassoulet out for the fish
The rain dug itself in this afternoon
My smoker smouldering some McCubbin into a shin of beef
While ibis rose from the bottom vineyard
To perch on trellis posts in prehistoric rows
And Peter fed his horses as if everything was normal
Philip White
.
The tussocks
Well into the tussocks I interrupted ducks
One flightless teenager galloped across the water
And then an explosion of babies
And a mother who did the broken wing trick about a chain away
While I tipped an old cassoulet out for the fish
The rain dug itself in this afternoon
My smoker smouldering some McCubbin into a shin of beef
While ibis rose from the bottom vineyard
To perch on trellis posts in prehistoric rows
And Peter fed his horses as if everything was normal
Philip White
.
two beach poems
.
Two beach poems
1
Head burning heart hours to ragged rhymes each blue
hard time writing love
This feeling I can't hold in pours to you
But see it washing on the empty beach morning with
centuries of seaweed -
I wonder where the water took it
And why it comes in cold
2
Stumbling thoughts
Sadder than lame gulls
It's as if they've lost forever the taste of earth-free flight
and spend their summer hurling dry curses downwind
with blowing papers and sharp white sand and rancid kelp
Philip White
Summer 1971
.
Two beach poems
1
Head burning heart hours to ragged rhymes each blue
hard time writing love
This feeling I can't hold in pours to you
But see it washing on the empty beach morning with
centuries of seaweed -
I wonder where the water took it
And why it comes in cold
2
Stumbling thoughts
Sadder than lame gulls
It's as if they've lost forever the taste of earth-free flight
and spend their summer hurling dry curses downwind
with blowing papers and sharp white sand and rancid kelp
Philip White
Summer 1971
.
falco longipennis
.
Falco longipennis
What maddened verse gives raptors the rhythm
To thrash through shrubbage and scrub
Risking wings to get at the tucker
And peck the brains from pigeon, parrot, and bat?
I just looked an Australian hobby in the eyes.
She’d done a wing on a vineyard wire,
Humping through the trellis to get the wee birdies
The vigneron erected plastic falcons to scare.
Her falconer had set her up well,
Never holding her down like the dreaded vet,
Keeping her weight up, earning her trust
’Til she up and off, one crook wing tip hanging just
Enough to attract that peregrine that
Drilled a shocked silent hole in the sky,
Smashing all sound of bird into nothing:
A sudden feather-free vacuum of death.
But she came back, that broken one,
Now setting herself on her ground crew’s glove,
Staring black and yellow to my soul, as if to say
“You thought I was fucked then didn’t you”.
Philip White
1 April 2002
.
Falco longipennis
What maddened verse gives raptors the rhythm
To thrash through shrubbage and scrub
Risking wings to get at the tucker
And peck the brains from pigeon, parrot, and bat?
I just looked an Australian hobby in the eyes.
She’d done a wing on a vineyard wire,
Humping through the trellis to get the wee birdies
The vigneron erected plastic falcons to scare.
Her falconer had set her up well,
Never holding her down like the dreaded vet,
Keeping her weight up, earning her trust
’Til she up and off, one crook wing tip hanging just
Enough to attract that peregrine that
Drilled a shocked silent hole in the sky,
Smashing all sound of bird into nothing:
A sudden feather-free vacuum of death.
But she came back, that broken one,
Now setting herself on her ground crew’s glove,
Staring black and yellow to my soul, as if to say
“You thought I was fucked then didn’t you”.
Philip White
1 April 2002
.
breakfast
.
Breakfast
before came her Sun Earth drew us from bed
pen and her poet in time for John Cargher’s final show
with soy milk and muesli
and Zbigniew Herbert on Marcus Aurelius
“good night Marcus put out the light”
he wrote in the scorched gullies of his blitzburgh
as dead John croaked on about the deficiencies of coloratura
genetically modified
breakfast replaced the morning dung
outside in the frozen vineyard of drought
foxes sprint for last low swallows
she’s wondering whether to flick us off
teased by the notion of a nice new start
“We know there’s plenty of time”
she whispers to her brother
Mars
who’s rueing his last sweet drink
while this tiny machine scratches holes in the top of his head
the sort of gadget Gordon Barton and Paul Hamlyn
dream of securing at auction
for strategic fucking purposes
hi boys
kookaburras laugh us back to our shroud
Philip White
Breakfast
before came her Sun Earth drew us from bed
pen and her poet in time for John Cargher’s final show
with soy milk and muesli
and Zbigniew Herbert on Marcus Aurelius
“good night Marcus put out the light”
he wrote in the scorched gullies of his blitzburgh
as dead John croaked on about the deficiencies of coloratura
genetically modified
breakfast replaced the morning dung
outside in the frozen vineyard of drought
foxes sprint for last low swallows
she’s wondering whether to flick us off
teased by the notion of a nice new start
“We know there’s plenty of time”
she whispers to her brother
Mars
who’s rueing his last sweet drink
while this tiny machine scratches holes in the top of his head
the sort of gadget Gordon Barton and Paul Hamlyn
dream of securing at auction
for strategic fucking purposes
hi boys
kookaburras laugh us back to our shroud
Philip White
bits fly away
.
Bits fly away
This autumn is so unsure of itself
I feel like I should be cold.
As quiet as science you do not come.
We were going to the ocean.
But beside the cutting horses at Kangarilla,
I watch the bulldogs fucking on the lawn,
knowing that you will not come.
When farmers watch their livestock hump,
they think of wives and lovers.
Bits fly away from me very quick now
as the windscreen shatters.
I was in another direction.
Philip White
.
Bits fly away
This autumn is so unsure of itself
I feel like I should be cold.
As quiet as science you do not come.
We were going to the ocean.
But beside the cutting horses at Kangarilla,
I watch the bulldogs fucking on the lawn,
knowing that you will not come.
When farmers watch their livestock hump,
they think of wives and lovers.
Bits fly away from me very quick now
as the windscreen shatters.
I was in another direction.
Philip White
.
laundering
.
Laundering
After the funeral I took all your shirts
and scrubbed the collars and cuffs
with lemon and eucalyptus, so they shone
brighter than they’d ever done before.
I soaked your work trousers then washed them,
edging the temperature to the boil,
feeding the copper with kindling you’d cut,
while that old wringer surged and sang
like you did as we laughed those years
away, surprised at our hunger and lust.
The starching came next, and the iron.
Handkerchiefs, cravat - even your ties.
Now that they’re hanging on the rack
it’s obvious: you’re never coming back.
Philip White
.
Laundering
After the funeral I took all your shirts
and scrubbed the collars and cuffs
with lemon and eucalyptus, so they shone
brighter than they’d ever done before.
I soaked your work trousers then washed them,
edging the temperature to the boil,
feeding the copper with kindling you’d cut,
while that old wringer surged and sang
like you did as we laughed those years
away, surprised at our hunger and lust.
The starching came next, and the iron.
Handkerchiefs, cravat - even your ties.
Now that they’re hanging on the rack
it’s obvious: you’re never coming back.
Philip White
.
Sunday, September 6, 2009
police yet to find
.
Police yet to find motive for shooting murder of man in Noojee
Matt Johnston, Gareth Trickey
December 22, 2008
UPDATE 12.56am: POLICE say there is no obvious motive to the murder of a man found with several gunshot wounds on a remote road last night.
Homicide detectives believe the body found on the New Turkey Spur Track in Noojee, on the outskirts of the Baw Baw National Park, is a 45-year-old local man.
The body was found at the side of a gravel track by two men who were spot-lighting at around 11pm last night.
Police say it is unclear whether the body was dumped or shot at the scene.
The remains have been taken to the coroner to be examined. The family is yet to identify the body.
The discovery was made in remote, rugged terrain, nearly 10km from Noojee, close to a logging area, picnic areas and walking tracks.
Police were called to Noojee, about 100km east of Melbourne, where the body was spotted.
Local police called homicide squad detectives who arrived on the scene at 3.30am.
The track has been cordoned off as detectives investigate the crime scene.
.
Police yet to find motive for shooting murder of man in Noojee
Matt Johnston, Gareth Trickey
December 22, 2008
UPDATE 12.56am: POLICE say there is no obvious motive to the murder of a man found with several gunshot wounds on a remote road last night.
Homicide detectives believe the body found on the New Turkey Spur Track in Noojee, on the outskirts of the Baw Baw National Park, is a 45-year-old local man.
The body was found at the side of a gravel track by two men who were spot-lighting at around 11pm last night.
Police say it is unclear whether the body was dumped or shot at the scene.
The remains have been taken to the coroner to be examined. The family is yet to identify the body.
The discovery was made in remote, rugged terrain, nearly 10km from Noojee, close to a logging area, picnic areas and walking tracks.
Police were called to Noojee, about 100km east of Melbourne, where the body was spotted.
Local police called homicide squad detectives who arrived on the scene at 3.30am.
The track has been cordoned off as detectives investigate the crime scene.
.
straining the birds
.
Straining the Birds
I'm outside now. I scream to you
through flat sweep wind and wheat.
The front rolls in, days late,
eiderdowning soft across my ticking car,
the dogbarked moon, and me.
Jesus! I just drove here from Stockwell!
Dodging the fireflies (there are no fireflies);
hurling my pale whisky puff into space.
This time of night it's ninety miles to petrol.
I could be stuck here at this dance for weeks,
whipped with its mad whorl and spin;
straining all the birds out, like a tree.
Philip White
.
Straining the Birds
I'm outside now. I scream to you
through flat sweep wind and wheat.
The front rolls in, days late,
eiderdowning soft across my ticking car,
the dogbarked moon, and me.
Jesus! I just drove here from Stockwell!
Dodging the fireflies (there are no fireflies);
hurling my pale whisky puff into space.
This time of night it's ninety miles to petrol.
I could be stuck here at this dance for weeks,
whipped with its mad whorl and spin;
straining all the birds out, like a tree.
Philip White
.
the maree hotel
.
The Maree Hotel
If Australia has a ship of state,
it must be the Maree Hotel.
With her green and gold VB ensign at the top mast,
and her stack all black and white for Port,
she sails silently across the empty stone ocean of old Aussie,
wearing the vast brute down speck by speck.
In her hold are hard, quiet sailors:
shoulders to the slow bar.
Four-wheel-drive tenders nudge her rubbing strakes,
discharging envoys from Oodnadatta and beyond,
messengers adrift without city.
About her, like ladies in waiting,
sit E. G. Kruse's mail Blitz,
sinking into the desert,
and the engines of a train long left without rails.
You could think the only politics are the whoosh of space
and the soft weep of power lines loosening,
bored against the blue.
Philip White
.
The Maree Hotel
If Australia has a ship of state,
it must be the Maree Hotel.
With her green and gold VB ensign at the top mast,
and her stack all black and white for Port,
she sails silently across the empty stone ocean of old Aussie,
wearing the vast brute down speck by speck.
In her hold are hard, quiet sailors:
shoulders to the slow bar.
Four-wheel-drive tenders nudge her rubbing strakes,
discharging envoys from Oodnadatta and beyond,
messengers adrift without city.
About her, like ladies in waiting,
sit E. G. Kruse's mail Blitz,
sinking into the desert,
and the engines of a train long left without rails.
You could think the only politics are the whoosh of space
and the soft weep of power lines loosening,
bored against the blue.
Philip White
.
when it comes
.
When it comes
when it comes
will it be a mountain volcano or meteorite
so fucking big it smothers me
will it seep and weep insidiously
wringing its hands at the end of the bed
you think this is bad whatter bout me
will it be gardens spoofed with flowers
and virgin brides all white
or a beautiful savage with a knife
will it be crashing like thunder
or basic extreme violence
like riding the motorbike into a wall
see I keep going back to violence
Philip White
.
silence in the house
.
Silence In The House
My foreground vision’s gone.
The traffic, a lawyer, a Chinese girl -
Since you went these close things
Vibrate to a grainy mess,
Leaving the vision cast long at the hills:
Horizon being the ceiling at which I stare.
I’d go, if you were there.
It was your bright pentangular face I loved.
Your freckles.
“Any hole you like, Philip.”
It pissed down after you’d gone,
and then you’d gone.
You’d gone.
Your soft flutter “do you understand?”
The way you talk.
The way you dye your red hair dark.
The way the boys stand back and balk.
The way you kiss.
But it is silence in my house.
Four lots of men have been here,
with drinks.
Now they are gone,
and there is a silence in my house
that sucks my love upstairs.
Where there are shoes, but not you.
Philip White
.
Silence In The House
My foreground vision’s gone.
The traffic, a lawyer, a Chinese girl -
Since you went these close things
Vibrate to a grainy mess,
Leaving the vision cast long at the hills:
Horizon being the ceiling at which I stare.
I’d go, if you were there.
It was your bright pentangular face I loved.
Your freckles.
“Any hole you like, Philip.”
It pissed down after you’d gone,
and then you’d gone.
You’d gone.
Your soft flutter “do you understand?”
The way you talk.
The way you dye your red hair dark.
The way the boys stand back and balk.
The way you kiss.
But it is silence in my house.
Four lots of men have been here,
with drinks.
Now they are gone,
and there is a silence in my house
that sucks my love upstairs.
Where there are shoes, but not you.
Philip White
.
the giant woman
.
The Giant Woman
Eight thousand feet high and bumping lumpy this morning:
chin nodding chestward to the beat, the
slapping whack of pelvis ’gainst cheek.
Chill Spencer Gulf air blasts sharp through my hair,
every sweet grain of it reeking of you.
I slump to sleep in the cockpit, falling agape t’ward your slit,
the arms stretched in circumhug
round the joystick to your breasts, full and milkdough soft.
Flying out, we slid smooth along the
back of your calf,
following the seam to the kneepit.
You were crouched like a panther over Adelaide:
Giant Woman, hands and knees;
and we climbed slow the thighback to your cream here at 8,700,
from where the other leg soars white and
perfect down to its knee on Noarlunga.
Over the peninsula we curve across your bumcrack,
The beacon winking “Here lad, here”
while your rose lift and the cedar and brie
and the whey funnel wrap me like cool powdered velvet,
turning silk as the sweatruns,
pulse pumpthrob and fluffdown, tonguelick, butter in the pan;
headswoon, heartsick, I gotta be your man.
We surge home over Spilsby, soft at first.
Then, finding the rock hardness
of the spine from the inside,
the wall of you, with one elbow on Whyalla,
the other on Wedge Island
and your sweet strong chin
ploughing the breeding hollows,
the troughs of baby whiting and oyster,
spewing me into the Bite through a
smile wider than Coffin Bay.
There has been no climax.
You will teach me more.
Philip White
.
The Giant Woman
Eight thousand feet high and bumping lumpy this morning:
chin nodding chestward to the beat, the
slapping whack of pelvis ’gainst cheek.
Chill Spencer Gulf air blasts sharp through my hair,
every sweet grain of it reeking of you.
I slump to sleep in the cockpit, falling agape t’ward your slit,
the arms stretched in circumhug
round the joystick to your breasts, full and milkdough soft.
Flying out, we slid smooth along the
back of your calf,
following the seam to the kneepit.
You were crouched like a panther over Adelaide:
Giant Woman, hands and knees;
and we climbed slow the thighback to your cream here at 8,700,
from where the other leg soars white and
perfect down to its knee on Noarlunga.
Over the peninsula we curve across your bumcrack,
The beacon winking “Here lad, here”
while your rose lift and the cedar and brie
and the whey funnel wrap me like cool powdered velvet,
turning silk as the sweatruns,
pulse pumpthrob and fluffdown, tonguelick, butter in the pan;
headswoon, heartsick, I gotta be your man.
We surge home over Spilsby, soft at first.
Then, finding the rock hardness
of the spine from the inside,
the wall of you, with one elbow on Whyalla,
the other on Wedge Island
and your sweet strong chin
ploughing the breeding hollows,
the troughs of baby whiting and oyster,
spewing me into the Bite through a
smile wider than Coffin Bay.
There has been no climax.
You will teach me more.
Philip White
.
Saturday, September 5, 2009
wildu - aquila audax
.
Wildu – Aquila audax
for Joe McKenzie
Slow to leave the roo somebody’d hit last night,
a wedge-tailed eagle wobbles starving into the up and
lurches to stare from sixty metres off as we draw to a halt.
“There’s another one dead over there” you say.
His gizzards unrolling in the sun, talons locked open.
I pull feathers to freshen my dead brother’s hat.
The highway kills its carrion addicts,
and these wingtips are worn half way through
from years of mothy heaving ’gainst the tarmac to escape.
He’d lost his grasp of air, finally rising so slow
he got splattered with his beak full. Too easy to miss.
Now the female’s twitching to resume her feast.
Can she know? Does she feel it go?
They found the hat in a place like this.
Philip White
.
Wildu – Aquila audax
for Joe McKenzie
Slow to leave the roo somebody’d hit last night,
a wedge-tailed eagle wobbles starving into the up and
lurches to stare from sixty metres off as we draw to a halt.
“There’s another one dead over there” you say.
His gizzards unrolling in the sun, talons locked open.
I pull feathers to freshen my dead brother’s hat.
The highway kills its carrion addicts,
and these wingtips are worn half way through
from years of mothy heaving ’gainst the tarmac to escape.
He’d lost his grasp of air, finally rising so slow
he got splattered with his beak full. Too easy to miss.
Now the female’s twitching to resume her feast.
Can she know? Does she feel it go?
They found the hat in a place like this.
Philip White
.
to a widow grieving
.
To a widow, grieving
Enduring these bleak acres of the night
and yearning for sweet fire on the snow,
to shiver 'til that first thin glimpse of light
is blasphemy no honest soul should know.
Encircled by chill phantoms from the past
who have no way of coming back inside,
the lucky learn the only thing to last
is grief, who makes an eager, honest bride.
And so to you, sweet sister, in your bed,
across these fields of ice, devoid of dreams,
your tears have turned to foxprints in my head,
to give me transport on these frozen streams.
Now we've howled from one moon to another,
I tire of brother. I oughta be your lover.
Philip White
.
To a widow, grieving
Enduring these bleak acres of the night
and yearning for sweet fire on the snow,
to shiver 'til that first thin glimpse of light
is blasphemy no honest soul should know.
Encircled by chill phantoms from the past
who have no way of coming back inside,
the lucky learn the only thing to last
is grief, who makes an eager, honest bride.
And so to you, sweet sister, in your bed,
across these fields of ice, devoid of dreams,
your tears have turned to foxprints in my head,
to give me transport on these frozen streams.
Now we've howled from one moon to another,
I tire of brother. I oughta be your lover.
Philip White
.
LXXVI
.
[ L X X V 1 ]
Why is my verse so barren of new pride,
So far from variation or quick change?
Why with the time do I not glance aside
To newfound methods and to compounds strange?
Why write I still all one, ever the same,
And keep invention in a noted weed,
That every word doth almost tell my name,
Showing their birth and where they did proceed?
O, know, sweet love, I always write of you,
And you and love are still my argument;
So all my best is dressing old words new,
Spending again what is already spent:
For as the sun is daily new and old,
So is my love still telling what is told.
William Shakespeare
(ca 1595)
.
[ L X X V 1 ]
Why is my verse so barren of new pride,
So far from variation or quick change?
Why with the time do I not glance aside
To newfound methods and to compounds strange?
Why write I still all one, ever the same,
And keep invention in a noted weed,
That every word doth almost tell my name,
Showing their birth and where they did proceed?
O, know, sweet love, I always write of you,
And you and love are still my argument;
So all my best is dressing old words new,
Spending again what is already spent:
For as the sun is daily new and old,
So is my love still telling what is told.
William Shakespeare
(ca 1595)
.
health warning
.
HEALTH WARNING
Poetry falls from stars and bars
And blows tumbleweeds up the street.
It pushes sand dunes over the mountains
And herds fish to the farthest deep.
Poetry fills the dimmest breath with sense,
And strangles lovers in their sleep.
Philip White
.
HEALTH WARNING
Poetry falls from stars and bars
And blows tumbleweeds up the street.
It pushes sand dunes over the mountains
And herds fish to the farthest deep.
Poetry fills the dimmest breath with sense,
And strangles lovers in their sleep.
Philip White
.
you came and stood by my table
.
You came and stood by my table
My my my.
Best thing I've been downwind of all year.
How many senses breach that handsbreadth of sky
that prickles taut between us in this grainy summer dry?
Dress softening by breeze against my hard trousered leg;
and just once featherweight on my cheek it brushed
the whiff of sea,
meadowbloom, jonquill.
The brookish gurgle of your laughter.
And there we were, surrounded by traffic and dust,
Lost in the clumsiest lust.
My my my.
Philip White
.
You came and stood by my table
My my my.
Best thing I've been downwind of all year.
How many senses breach that handsbreadth of sky
that prickles taut between us in this grainy summer dry?
Dress softening by breeze against my hard trousered leg;
and just once featherweight on my cheek it brushed
the whiff of sea,
meadowbloom, jonquill.
The brookish gurgle of your laughter.
And there we were, surrounded by traffic and dust,
Lost in the clumsiest lust.
My my my.
Philip White
.
les murray
.
Les Murray
Wipe the egg off your chin and follow me
down here where we used to bash 'em
after the footy or the cattle sales.
You can come right down the end,
but it's too late cobber.
We could go as hard as we like,
but we're fucked.
We're fucked, mate.
It's like Ratsteeth's Dad.
Kills pigs at the factory all day:
exchange for fuckin‘ ’em all night.
Loves his bacon.
But he's fucked.
He's fucked, mate.
And what about poor skinny Ratsteeth?
I can remember when her name was Christine.
Philip White
.
Les Murray
Wipe the egg off your chin and follow me
down here where we used to bash 'em
after the footy or the cattle sales.
You can come right down the end,
but it's too late cobber.
We could go as hard as we like,
but we're fucked.
We're fucked, mate.
It's like Ratsteeth's Dad.
Kills pigs at the factory all day:
exchange for fuckin‘ ’em all night.
Loves his bacon.
But he's fucked.
He's fucked, mate.
And what about poor skinny Ratsteeth?
I can remember when her name was Christine.
Philip White
.
for philip ruddock
.
For Philip Ruddock
I think I’d have to say that while none of us seek to waste time in discussions, which, while conceptually appealing, eventually prove to have no positive influence whatsoever, the average person must find it difficult to appreciate that in the matter of these issues at hand we have the responsibility to fully explore the extent to which they are indeed issues, or whether in fact with the passage of time we may eventually realise that they are more obviously matters that are concerning us at this point in time, and not issues at all. I want to make it abundantly clear that, beneficially, on their merits, these matters are definitely non-issues relative to modern day Australia, given that we have no advice to the contrary from hitherto unknown third parties which could well emerge on the ground further on down the track. We look at these as bloc issues in this country. I think the Australian people should understand that. The drought has nothing to do with it.
Philip White
.
For Philip Ruddock
I think I’d have to say that while none of us seek to waste time in discussions, which, while conceptually appealing, eventually prove to have no positive influence whatsoever, the average person must find it difficult to appreciate that in the matter of these issues at hand we have the responsibility to fully explore the extent to which they are indeed issues, or whether in fact with the passage of time we may eventually realise that they are more obviously matters that are concerning us at this point in time, and not issues at all. I want to make it abundantly clear that, beneficially, on their merits, these matters are definitely non-issues relative to modern day Australia, given that we have no advice to the contrary from hitherto unknown third parties which could well emerge on the ground further on down the track. We look at these as bloc issues in this country. I think the Australian people should understand that. The drought has nothing to do with it.
Philip White
.
park without stephen
.
Park Without Stephen
Part grey, today,
part duck.
Behind the trees
a helicopter hurls pulse nonsense
at this sodden heart,
which reliably pumps full
the artery that bloods the gut,
and floods the library with
bright henna for the sluts.
You were not there, I realised,
as I nuzzled with the pups,
my nostrils too late screaming "Wolf!" -
Wolf which these same tired tits doth suck.
Philip White
.
Park Without Stephen
Part grey, today,
part duck.
Behind the trees
a helicopter hurls pulse nonsense
at this sodden heart,
which reliably pumps full
the artery that bloods the gut,
and floods the library with
bright henna for the sluts.
You were not there, I realised,
as I nuzzled with the pups,
my nostrils too late screaming "Wolf!" -
Wolf which these same tired tits doth suck.
Philip White
.
the feds don't have a clue
.
“The Feds don’t have a clue what’s going on down here. They flew down here one time, two days after the doggone, after the event was over, with TV cameras, AP reporters, every kind of goddam – excuse my French, everybody in America – but I am l pissed.
“I basically told the President that we had an incredible crisis here and that his flying over here in Airforce One does not do it justice.
“I have been all around this city and I am very frustrated because we are not able to marshall resources and we are outmanned in just about every respect.
“You know the reason why the looters got out of control? Because we had most of our resources saving people. Thousands of people. Stuck in attics, man. Old ladies, when you pull off the goddam ventilator vent and you look down, and they’re standing in there with water up to their frickin’ neck.”
Ray Nagin, Mayor of New Orleans,
WWL Radio, 1 September 2005.
.
“The Feds don’t have a clue what’s going on down here. They flew down here one time, two days after the doggone, after the event was over, with TV cameras, AP reporters, every kind of goddam – excuse my French, everybody in America – but I am l pissed.
“I basically told the President that we had an incredible crisis here and that his flying over here in Airforce One does not do it justice.
“I have been all around this city and I am very frustrated because we are not able to marshall resources and we are outmanned in just about every respect.
“You know the reason why the looters got out of control? Because we had most of our resources saving people. Thousands of people. Stuck in attics, man. Old ladies, when you pull off the goddam ventilator vent and you look down, and they’re standing in there with water up to their frickin’ neck.”
Ray Nagin, Mayor of New Orleans,
WWL Radio, 1 September 2005.
.
billy graham
.
Billy Graham
it’s coming under the door
before everything out there freezes
not like slaters with all those busy feet
but more streamlined and confident
and flat and wide
like a mat of slug
expanding into the kitchen
it peels open horizontally like a zip
the top lip curling up and out with those hairy teeth
and then the flouros go on at the back of its ten foot throat
and out steps Billy Graham in an overcoat
King James Bible in his hand
Hullo he says
I’m Billy Graham
the damn thing’s phlegm all over him
Philip White
.
Billy Graham
it’s coming under the door
before everything out there freezes
not like slaters with all those busy feet
but more streamlined and confident
and flat and wide
like a mat of slug
expanding into the kitchen
it peels open horizontally like a zip
the top lip curling up and out with those hairy teeth
and then the flouros go on at the back of its ten foot throat
and out steps Billy Graham in an overcoat
King James Bible in his hand
Hullo he says
I’m Billy Graham
the damn thing’s phlegm all over him
Philip White
.
in my name shall they cast out devils
.
"In my name shall they cast out devils; they shall speak with new tongues; they shall take up serpents; and if they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them; they shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover."
So then after the Lord had spoken unto them, he was received up into heaven, and sat on the right hand of God.
.
"In my name shall they cast out devils; they shall speak with new tongues; they shall take up serpents; and if they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them; they shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover."
So then after the Lord had spoken unto them, he was received up into heaven, and sat on the right hand of God.
.
blues for joseph
.
Blues For Joseph
I’ve been staring at the ceiling
That’s become my expertise
I’ve been staring at the ceiling
That’s become my expertise
Winter time I stare at embers
Sometimes I sweat sometimes I freeze
No-one waiting for acceptance
Nobody round here to refuse
No-one’s yearning for acceptance
Nobody round here to refuse
I don’t have no mournful longing
I’m just here waltzing with my muse
I got that old moon snookered
She’s become my confidant
I got that old moon snookered
But she’s become my confidant
She says Whitey you look rooted
Night times I do day times I don’t
The sheriff came with papers
No-one here of that name
The sheriff came with papers
Nobody here by that name
I been living out here lonesome
Nobody went nobody came
I see smoke out in the woodlands
not supposed to be a fire
A wisp of smoke out in the woodlands
not supposed to be no fire
Not expecting visitors
I came out here to retire
I see suspicious ripples
at the far end of the reach
I got suspicious ripples
Up the far end of my reach
No-one’s supposed to be here
But there’s footprints on my beach
I’ve been staring at the ceiling
That’s become my expertise
I’ve been staring at the ceiling
That’s become my expertise
Winter time I stare at embers
Sometimes I sweat sometimes I freeze
Philip White
.
Blues For Joseph
I’ve been staring at the ceiling
That’s become my expertise
I’ve been staring at the ceiling
That’s become my expertise
Winter time I stare at embers
Sometimes I sweat sometimes I freeze
No-one waiting for acceptance
Nobody round here to refuse
No-one’s yearning for acceptance
Nobody round here to refuse
I don’t have no mournful longing
I’m just here waltzing with my muse
I got that old moon snookered
She’s become my confidant
I got that old moon snookered
But she’s become my confidant
She says Whitey you look rooted
Night times I do day times I don’t
The sheriff came with papers
No-one here of that name
The sheriff came with papers
Nobody here by that name
I been living out here lonesome
Nobody went nobody came
I see smoke out in the woodlands
not supposed to be a fire
A wisp of smoke out in the woodlands
not supposed to be no fire
Not expecting visitors
I came out here to retire
I see suspicious ripples
at the far end of the reach
I got suspicious ripples
Up the far end of my reach
No-one’s supposed to be here
But there’s footprints on my beach
I’ve been staring at the ceiling
That’s become my expertise
I’ve been staring at the ceiling
That’s become my expertise
Winter time I stare at embers
Sometimes I sweat sometimes I freeze
Philip White
.
fix
.
Fix
It is waking in the night
after the theatres and before the milkman,
alerted by some signal from the golden drug tapeworm
that eats your flesh and drinks your peace;
you reach for the needle and busy yourself
preparing the utopia substance in a blackened spoon
held in candle flame
by now your thumb and finger are leathery
being so often burned this way ...
it hurts much less than withdrawal
and the hand is needed for little else now anyway.
Then cordon off the arm with a belt, probe for a vein,
send the dream-transfusion out on a voyage
among your body machinery.
Hits you like sleep - sweet, illusory, fast,
with a semblance of forever.
For a while the fires die down in you
until you die down in the fires.
Once you have become a drug addict
You will never want to be anything else.
Michael Dransfield
.
Fix
It is waking in the night
after the theatres and before the milkman,
alerted by some signal from the golden drug tapeworm
that eats your flesh and drinks your peace;
you reach for the needle and busy yourself
preparing the utopia substance in a blackened spoon
held in candle flame
by now your thumb and finger are leathery
being so often burned this way ...
it hurts much less than withdrawal
and the hand is needed for little else now anyway.
Then cordon off the arm with a belt, probe for a vein,
send the dream-transfusion out on a voyage
among your body machinery.
Hits you like sleep - sweet, illusory, fast,
with a semblance of forever.
For a while the fires die down in you
until you die down in the fires.
Once you have become a drug addict
You will never want to be anything else.
Michael Dransfield
.
wine tasting
.
Wine tasting
the dead-weight of years crushing down, down,
largely destructive,
yet has crushed from these barren lives
a wine we'll call Australian,
since no tariff has been paid.
Taste it. Not bitter
but with the dust of the outback
prominent. Slide it around the palate.
See with what rosy light
the chandelier blazes through this blood you
suckle on. Consider the delicate
bouquet of revolution
it was a good year for martyrs.
Jan Palach lit up half the silent east
with his death agonies
taste the ashes you thought were sediment
from long storage it is hard
to forget. Remember too the vintners
whose feet trod flat the grapes,
trod flat the barbed wire at Lone Pine
so the press could sing,
sing of "significant advances", a selflessness.
Taste it at V. C. Corner,
how many heroes then trod flat the fields to grow
the grapes you think you taste.
An amusing little vintage, you call it,
vampires of humanity,
from your penthouse the world is beautiful
the filth of streets is far below
the dead cannot be smelt unless the wind changes
bringing you the sound of death
of city solitudes
of labourers returning home exhausted
from factories you control. You
suck their lives away, their spirit,
an amusing little wine.
They toil that you can celebrate your profits,
play aristo with some amusing friends
drawn from the ranks of profiteers, scuttling
from Europe to get near the cash,
jetting from Texas to pick up the pennies
better men would scorn to touch.
It was a good year, you say, the auditors agree;
inside a wilderness a hermit listens/the
change he speaks of to the world
will come; dare you face it?
Michael Dransfield, Windhover, 1972
.
Wine tasting
the dead-weight of years crushing down, down,
largely destructive,
yet has crushed from these barren lives
a wine we'll call Australian,
since no tariff has been paid.
Taste it. Not bitter
but with the dust of the outback
prominent. Slide it around the palate.
See with what rosy light
the chandelier blazes through this blood you
suckle on. Consider the delicate
bouquet of revolution
it was a good year for martyrs.
Jan Palach lit up half the silent east
with his death agonies
taste the ashes you thought were sediment
from long storage it is hard
to forget. Remember too the vintners
whose feet trod flat the grapes,
trod flat the barbed wire at Lone Pine
so the press could sing,
sing of "significant advances", a selflessness.
Taste it at V. C. Corner,
how many heroes then trod flat the fields to grow
the grapes you think you taste.
An amusing little vintage, you call it,
vampires of humanity,
from your penthouse the world is beautiful
the filth of streets is far below
the dead cannot be smelt unless the wind changes
bringing you the sound of death
of city solitudes
of labourers returning home exhausted
from factories you control. You
suck their lives away, their spirit,
an amusing little wine.
They toil that you can celebrate your profits,
play aristo with some amusing friends
drawn from the ranks of profiteers, scuttling
from Europe to get near the cash,
jetting from Texas to pick up the pennies
better men would scorn to touch.
It was a good year, you say, the auditors agree;
inside a wilderness a hermit listens/the
change he speaks of to the world
will come; dare you face it?
Michael Dransfield, Windhover, 1972
.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)