white

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for Cathy White
on her completion of fifty laps of the sun



white


most places I’ve been on Earth
there are people called white
regardless of skin
every language has its own bright version

but unless somebody brings a prism
white hangs invisibly in blue sky
the perfect mixture of all other colours
morphing when it likes
through phantom shapes of aerial water and ice
which may or may not choose to fall
to fill Lake Eyre with fish and pelicans or salt
surge spume along a reach
make the friggin sand for chrissake
the Ninety Mile Beach
deposit the limestone Mallee
or smother Antarctica with ice

white concentrates in clays too
so clean it’s good enough for paint
and in the precise intensity of barite marble and talc
and the zillions of microscopic oysters
that make the cliffs of Dover
and the moist bright chalk of Chablis

somehow the oyster sucks the whiteness from water
and hardens it for a home
one dark old town in Japan knows this
the householders hurl their empty shells
onto the grey midden in the square
fifty feet of oysters towering over a waist-high fence
post and rail
they scratch the cured ones from beneath
hundreds of years they’ve been there
grind them up with boiled pig glue
and make exquisite faces for dolls
beyond pearlescent
pure white

in Australia you’d get a bag of fresh ones
take them up to Ashton Hills
guts them on the veranda with a riesling
and hurl the spent shells into the vineyard for calcium
so your white from the sun via the sea
enters you through a glass of crisp austerity
leaves the teeth and attitude a-sparkle
and heads off through the black gizzards
and the porcelain to the deep
to eventually worm its way back into the blue
dance the whole crazy move again

it’s called pissing on

this is where the colour thing comes in
my black mates giggle when they call me whitey
like a brother from yothu yindi mob
expertly siphoning great reds into his silver pillow
in the victorian italianate apartment I could not afford
watched by a spellbound wine critic from London
on whose behalf
I put it all down to morbid anthropological fascination
and got on with the business
passing the guitar
having a schluck
my girlfriend had a fluffball maltese terrier called oscar
he called it ggurrrrnnnnakkk then said
white cockatoo
he liked the contrast when he wore their feathers
them yolngu blokes could tell you a thing or two about middens


with love
philip white














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on my back

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on my back


on my back in the canyon
gazing at high cirrus
it is a long way up

laid here with lovers and killers
only time they get me
is when I look at the edge

eyes flop over sideways like that
next thing you know
you just gotta go


philip white













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noise

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noise should come out of a poem

































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the biggest cliché in most rooms

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the biggest cliché in most rooms

the biggest cliché in most rooms
is the jerk who first mentions
the elephant he reckons nobody can see
while the guests stare lovingly at the empty corner
imagining a white jumbo they could pat
the cliché steals the silver and scats

philip white


















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I had a soul

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I had a soul


I had a soul.
I took it through milkshed and byre,
tussock and thistle, ragwort and bog
with a burlap sack on my head for the drizzle.
With me it watched the blackwood hewn
and the underground tank surrender its muck
to bucket and shovel,
till all was strewn on grass so green
it really needed to be seen.

I had a soul.
With me it watched the poddy-calves drop
from the neat blow of the axe-back
and the steam rise from their opened flesh
as their gizzards writhed alive, still digesting.
It flopped with me on soft fresh hides
and the fleas in the hay of the barn,
with brothers playing on the beams:
everything was what it seemed.

I had a soul.
They flayed it over communion wine
and tortured it with hymns exhaled through trembling wattles;
pious old throats filled with the Holy spit
and sanctimonious halitosis.
I fucked that soul off across the gaping graves:
kinfolk and kindred who did no harm,
young whose souls some other bastard claimed.
I carry their husks home in the rain.


Philip White



















.

Reaching Into The Car

Reaching Into The Car It was the summer. A girl passed us in the country. She had a little red car with celery and baguettes on the back seat and you could see she was happy. She had the radio on. Bobbing her head, white throat taking the eucalypt heat, singing along to someone with her hair in the wind. She pulled back in front of us and smashed flat strap into a tractor. He was doing no wrong: dawdling along to the next job, two wheels off the tarmac. two on, his back to her. I knew she was singing when the shatter happened and stopping had occurred. We drew up. I remember the sound of our handbrake as I opened the door anticipating horror. She had a compound fracture of the jaw which she didn’t understand, and because her vehicle was suddenly shorter, her femurs were, too. One of them, jaggedly white, was poking out the side of her purpling leg. In those moments of total shock one’s blood rushes to the major organs, so it doesn’t come out of the holes for an agonising dead length of moments. “I’m getting married” she gurgled through her shattered teeth, “I’m getting married tomorrow. I’ve just bought all the stuff.” I took her bloody phone in one hand, and as the tractor driver shuffled up, fondling his reflective jacket, whispering “I dunno how she did that,” I pressed the button of her last call, my other hand fumbling for a bit that wasn’t smashed so she could feel me as she screamed. I don’t remember what her name was, but I told it to the guy who answered. He worked in a bank. He arrived before the ambulance, a young man with spiky hair, a blue business shirt, pleated chinos and deck shoes. He stood beside her, reaching into the disfigured car for something that may no longer be there, his other thumb poking dumb numbers on his phone as he chanted “We’re getting married in the morning. We’re getting married in the morning. We’re getting married in the morning. We’re getting married in the morning.” It was very dry. Philip White .

on being seated

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on being seated

once fussy about where I sat
the direction I faced seemed important
so having first moved the chair
to get it pointing right
I’d follow that up with further adjustment once down

it was a matter of what needed addressing
ruled by some cool subconsciousness
a flash shard of equations
the rapid sorting mechanery
delivered a sweet calm empowerment

now I find it better
to leave the chair as it stood
take to it with keen interest in the angle it has chosen
get in there with a smoke and a drink
and scour what it offered me all along

I see a better range of stuff this way

Philip White
9 April 2011













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1971

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Thanks to my kin, Robert Hunter, and The Dead for the quatrain. It was better than all other scripture.  Workingman's Dead was as reassuring as Big Pink.

Lace

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Lace
for Annabelle Collett


She was big in black
The mighty great aunt
Shiny and creaking head to toe
As she led me all the way
Through the pines to the letterbox

When we reached the road
She sat heaving on the bank
And drew up her brittle skirts
Layers of stiff yellowing calico
Bits of tattered linen, even ticking

To show the infant me
Her ancient marbled thighs
Beetroot and aubergine
“I’m dying in the legs first”
She said. “Never play cards with a stranger.”

Then came the froth in Mum’s top drawer
That pretty scented mess
Gold, fake pearls and petticoats
Nylons piled soft in the corner
Excited by marriage still fresh

We came down from the mountains
To catch a tram to Dimmey’s
Where the fitting woman said
“Pour your breast Darling
Pour the breast into the cup.”

From that trippy feminine shopful
Mummy’s money went too by cup
Off whizzing along the wire
To the lady in pointy glasses
In a fishtank up in the corner

To be honest we went there
For my first long pair of pants
I’m colourblind, but maroon I reckon
“Big man little boy trousers”
The woman who’d just touched Mum’s tit said

I spent a year feigning illness on Wednesdays
To be home alone with mother’s fluffy stuff
Marvelling on the mystery of breasts
Yearning to learn the water feel them
Swimming in the midnight river

You could catch a glimpse at prayer meetings
When the women took turns
To hike their frocking by the fire
Warming their giant bums
From flaming logs I’d cut

And the bright eyeful I got
When my Sunday School teacher
Leant into our car
That pink unsucked nipple
Suspended in its realm of lace

Her virgin face flushing
With shocked inhalation
Realizing she’d been sprung
The panicked grasp of organist’s fingers
Drawing shut that plain cotton blouse

Bad luck! But wilder fascination
Soon had the rough hand fumbling
Suspender clips rope petticoats
Dreaded step-ins roll-ons uplifts
French rolls crunchy with Gossamer

The Copper Seven came with pantyhose and hotpants
And lace lost instantly out
To blue singlets and army shirts
Whilst froth became something one pumped
On the shrinking lace of the glossies

Until arrived a feminist who understood
Mystique and silk, who would
Laugh at me wearing her knickers Francaise
Neath my Levis in the street
Knowing I’d bar up in the gunshop, discrete

But losing to her lacy wiles
While she sewed my sharkskin jacket
Moulding me her way
Part woman part hayseed boy
Part bagatelle, part toy

Lace was different after that
More a basic essential
In some corner of the life
Forgotten leftovers from leftover loves
Lost somewhere in a sock drawer

But reassuring in its constance
And the impossible combinations of frank and frothy
Frivolous and forlorn
Strands of melancholic politics
On the dirty old sheets of time

Or jumping fearless in your face
From a history of fractal needles
The refreshment of ancient yarns
A-buzz with the annoying tickle
Of lace left yet to adore.

And the flesh.
That’s what it’s for.



Philip White
Yangarra
March 2011




















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V8s On Sellick's Hill

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V8s on Sellick’s Hill

the V8s go up Sellicks
hungry for more road
the older ones are soft and throb
others tight with angry explosions in the box
some drivers milk cows
others are poets who haven’t yet realized
avoid the angry tattooed ones in the pub if they stop
but the bloke who just painted his 57 Buick pink’s cool
chrome is my favourite colour I advised
and the matte black stovepaint 32 Ford dude
who loves the rain on his seat
these folks are envied by the rest
who will never know

Philip White


















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twenty one years

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twenty one years
for Dylan Thomas

today is Monday September 3rd 1973
i have just completed my twenty-first year
watching trucks go by from our shed
black wild and windy
no further message

philip white



















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to have you here against the city

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to have you here against the city


walking after midnight streets
determined to avoid the pavement squares
and the reflections of my shop windowed face
cursing the things go better promises of all this cannot give me

it leers
and to have you here against the city
is to have moss on nullarbor sand
a flower in a field

hair over your face and smiling
or pouting over your face and buddha-like
strong behind the wheel
you’re so good warm friend
so good

the sunflower in my garden grew straight up through the corn
smiled his time to the sun
and bowed his humble seeds about to keep his truth in flow

we’ll haul each other up and spread and plant and show
it leers the corn
but even through pavement cracks
we’re growing


philip white
january 1972




















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The Ornithologist

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The Ornithologist


“You won’t get much conversation outa this girl,”
Peter said,
backing the old blonde mare from her float.

“She’s not much of a talker.”

They’d been apart for twenty two years
this stately cutter and her man.

He’d sold her as a filly
and sensibly ran off buccaneering,
only to discover he missed her,
half a lifetime later,
after his wife left.

I told him we’d see,
and when he’d gone I walked to her in the gloaming,
talking as I do to humans.

After my hullo we swapped breath,
my tobacco Shiraz for her sweet malt
and quietly she showed me the birds,
tilting the head to that Raven,
nodding to the Hooded Plovers yonder,
lifting the great chin to the Yellow Tailed Black Cockatoos –
awarding them one mighty eye, then the other,
then both.

Pigeon, Red Rump Parrot and Magpie she taught me that twilight,
following each lesson with a long questioning stare,
just to ensure I was there.

The hoot of the Boobook Owl closed our class,
when she turned content and wandered in silence to the trees.

“Blondie’s an ornithologist,”
I told Peter in the morning,
explaining the evening’s affair.

“That’s funny,” he said,
after a disbelieving pause.

“As a foal she watched ants all day.”

Blondie broke down last night,
the grave sucking life from one exhausted leg,
leading Peter from the midnight to say

“You’re gonna lose your birdwatching mate in the morning.
I’ve just given her a good big feed.”

By the vibe outside I know the deed is done:
earth dug open somewhere I won’t go,
the great slump complete,
the last huge sigh of horse,
the red gape healed with shovel and tractor.

The vet has put his stuff away,
Blondie is back with her ants,
and the first grapes of vintage come through on an eager truck.


Philip White
Yangarra
11 Mar 11






















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Luck

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Luck
Ballad for Darren Delmore


If one is lucky,
Love is like Death.
She visits often.


Philip White


















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For Elias Canetti

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For Elias Canetti
On re-reading The Secret Heart Of The Clock

I was thinking of growing older.
As I did, the ground grew colder.
Which flipped me back to getting younger.
Then, I couldn’t stand the hunger.
So there I was with my warm night,
already in the past: replete; just right.

Philip White















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