I dreamt I was in Holly Throsby's band last night. We were playing some community hall somewhere. The crowd was moving in, she was really nervous. My equipment was lacklustre and far from sufficient. My amp chord was so short it meant I couldn't stand on on the stage. Numerous power adaptors and power boards were hooked up to each other to enable me to join the band proper. When all the powerboards that could be located were hooked up I was just beyond reach of my spotlight on the stage.
Holly looked young + nervous, a pig-tailed, freckly kid who knows how to sing but who looked like she had walked straight out of the shed and off the farm after helping with some chore. I started making some suggestions to her which she was very eager to hear. One of them was to begin the set not with a quiet, solo number but to come out straight away with her cover of Dylan's "I'll Keep It With Mine". She became very excited by this and began talking to the band in a fevered way about it. I don't remember their reaction. It didn't matter. I was too preoccupied with trying to disentangle myself from the mess and jumble of leads preventing me from being a part of this band as the crowd continued to spill through the door.
- Braidwood, July 2008
Tuesday, July 15, 2008
Monday, July 14, 2008
Canberra - Braidwood Haiku
The broken jet trail
from an earlier plane
dwarfs the newer species.
One evening I walked
the main street of Cooma.
That, or motel room boredom.
After the argument
in the dark heat of the car
I fall asleep.
I disturbed the frost
on a patch of lawn -
should've just left it.
Wish at 5:00pm
let me paint this sky
just as winter has.
The shower this morning
smelled like breakfast
from my childhood.
I bought a magazine
so that unafraid others
could make images for me.
Old paddock log
a woman's legs slightly apart
I'll still embrace it.
When I pull over
I'll feel the gravel silently.
Did Walt Whitman do that?
Reflection posts on highways
as a kid
I used to thank them.
Vodka and cards
beneath a hotel room lamp
a winter highway breathes outside.
First thing I see
stepping out from unfamiliar motel room
the dormant blossom trees.
What else can I do
but take every step
thinking upon goodness?
Each winter morning
can be an epiphany
for the damaged soul.
from an earlier plane
dwarfs the newer species.
One evening I walked
the main street of Cooma.
That, or motel room boredom.
After the argument
in the dark heat of the car
I fall asleep.
I disturbed the frost
on a patch of lawn -
should've just left it.
Wish at 5:00pm
let me paint this sky
just as winter has.
The shower this morning
smelled like breakfast
from my childhood.
I bought a magazine
so that unafraid others
could make images for me.
Old paddock log
a woman's legs slightly apart
I'll still embrace it.
When I pull over
I'll feel the gravel silently.
Did Walt Whitman do that?
Reflection posts on highways
as a kid
I used to thank them.
Vodka and cards
beneath a hotel room lamp
a winter highway breathes outside.
First thing I see
stepping out from unfamiliar motel room
the dormant blossom trees.
What else can I do
but take every step
thinking upon goodness?
Each winter morning
can be an epiphany
for the damaged soul.
Thursday, July 10, 2008
I'm not sleeping lately. I awake and sit up on the side of the bed, my legs earthing me onto the carpet. Dreams I shouldn't be having are disturbing me, shocking me out of sleep. My throat throbs. I have to quit the ciggies.
A woman I knew just died from cancer and I think about her and her 12 yr old son who has had some new kind of gaping aloneness thrust upon him in this world. Why do I think like this at these times?
My wife asleep, the children asleep, the house is quiet so I try to write at the table under a weak light in the cold room but anything that comes out is just shit.
I look out at the trees across the valley and some of them are being lit by the only patch of sunlight breaking through the grey this morning. I false smile at it but I don't know why I do this so I catch myself and stop.
Pointless work for the first few hours of the morning does nothing for this strange fever residing in my head. So I try & burn it off outside by digging a new garden bed, looking for new life anywhere but first I've got to rip the earth apart a little.
Now this evening, I don't know which room of the house I truly belong in. My wife pours me tea and worries at the aloneness furrowing across my face, the thousand yard stare which fixes itself on any object it cares to but especially to the aloneness, the one that's always there, living at the back of my neck. The one I can't rub out, the thing I've been living with since I was a child and before that, too.
A woman I knew just died from cancer and I think about her and her 12 yr old son who has had some new kind of gaping aloneness thrust upon him in this world. Why do I think like this at these times?
My wife asleep, the children asleep, the house is quiet so I try to write at the table under a weak light in the cold room but anything that comes out is just shit.
I look out at the trees across the valley and some of them are being lit by the only patch of sunlight breaking through the grey this morning. I false smile at it but I don't know why I do this so I catch myself and stop.
Pointless work for the first few hours of the morning does nothing for this strange fever residing in my head. So I try & burn it off outside by digging a new garden bed, looking for new life anywhere but first I've got to rip the earth apart a little.
Now this evening, I don't know which room of the house I truly belong in. My wife pours me tea and worries at the aloneness furrowing across my face, the thousand yard stare which fixes itself on any object it cares to but especially to the aloneness, the one that's always there, living at the back of my neck. The one I can't rub out, the thing I've been living with since I was a child and before that, too.
Sunday, July 6, 2008
Jo #2
I promised you something, Jo.
So I'm sorry it's just this
but it is what it is
from me
to wherever
you may be
tonight.
Why do we wonder
the location of people
who have come
into our lives
so much more often
on Sunday nights?
This needs looking into.
Where are you?
Is your country grandmother still alive, Jo?
She was so old
even back then.
Or was she made older
from raising you?
Which one of her children
abandoned you
to her?
Did she worry for you
from her lounge
in front of the gas heater
secretly wishing
she was a girl again
sitting on her father's knee
watching dead tree logs burn
in the country night?
And that night
you drove me there
so you could get ready
for wherever it was
we were going
on those debauched nights
of street singing and gutter vomiting.
Were you listening
from your room
with the overhead light
above the mirror
as you fixed an earring?
Your grandmother and I sat calmly
and spoke of farms and sheep and droughts
and we let ourselves
be ruled
by our memories
for those minutes.
That was a sickness then for me, Jo.
No two ways about it.
I don't know where
we were going
but fuck me if you
didn't look great when you stepped
out of your room.
That jacket.
And don't take this
the wrong way, Jo,
but you always were cooking
when you wore that blue Coles uniform.
Holy Moly!
You were beautiful.
Are you still beautiful, Jo,
as you've slid like the rest of us
into the back 9 of our thirties?
Where have you gone, Jo?
We were never a couple
but how many young boys
sat where I sat
and got away with it
so seamlessly?
The ones you chose were cruel
I could've told you that
at the time
but you were probably
never ready to listen.
Jo, where did you get
your thin lips from?
From where did you get
your gum chewing habit?
You see, I've got these
questions, Jo.
And tonight, at least,
they won't stop.
Were you older than me?
I think you were,
a year or so maybe.
I would've dug that
at the time.
Did you ever want
to kiss me, Jo?
Prob not
but sometimes I saw yer eyes
looking across a room
of 40 or so people
at me
dumb
drunk
laughing
down at the Peppermint Lounge
where J.G. got busted
for buying Amyl
and there were always
free Lifesavers on the counter.
Now gone, noodle restaurants
come n go
but you were some
kind of constant, Jo,
whose lounge room I sat in
on one simple night
waiting for (and imagining, I confess,)
you getting dressed.
Tonight, I am Kerouac
in my old flanno shirt
just like his b+w pic
going through snaps of old girlfriends
with big ol' boozy breath.
But Jo, I have to
put you away now
with bad unstructured verse
and old ruminations
on Sunday twilight
which we all go looking for
when this life
comes crashing in
from behind
and we're left wondering
whether it's something
we're running with
or from.
So I'm sorry it's just this
but it is what it is
from me
to wherever
you may be
tonight.
Why do we wonder
the location of people
who have come
into our lives
so much more often
on Sunday nights?
This needs looking into.
Where are you?
Is your country grandmother still alive, Jo?
She was so old
even back then.
Or was she made older
from raising you?
Which one of her children
abandoned you
to her?
Did she worry for you
from her lounge
in front of the gas heater
secretly wishing
she was a girl again
sitting on her father's knee
watching dead tree logs burn
in the country night?
And that night
you drove me there
so you could get ready
for wherever it was
we were going
on those debauched nights
of street singing and gutter vomiting.
Were you listening
from your room
with the overhead light
above the mirror
as you fixed an earring?
Your grandmother and I sat calmly
and spoke of farms and sheep and droughts
and we let ourselves
be ruled
by our memories
for those minutes.
That was a sickness then for me, Jo.
No two ways about it.
I don't know where
we were going
but fuck me if you
didn't look great when you stepped
out of your room.
That jacket.
And don't take this
the wrong way, Jo,
but you always were cooking
when you wore that blue Coles uniform.
Holy Moly!
You were beautiful.
Are you still beautiful, Jo,
as you've slid like the rest of us
into the back 9 of our thirties?
Where have you gone, Jo?
We were never a couple
but how many young boys
sat where I sat
and got away with it
so seamlessly?
The ones you chose were cruel
I could've told you that
at the time
but you were probably
never ready to listen.
Jo, where did you get
your thin lips from?
From where did you get
your gum chewing habit?
You see, I've got these
questions, Jo.
And tonight, at least,
they won't stop.
Were you older than me?
I think you were,
a year or so maybe.
I would've dug that
at the time.
Did you ever want
to kiss me, Jo?
Prob not
but sometimes I saw yer eyes
looking across a room
of 40 or so people
at me
dumb
drunk
laughing
down at the Peppermint Lounge
where J.G. got busted
for buying Amyl
and there were always
free Lifesavers on the counter.
Now gone, noodle restaurants
come n go
but you were some
kind of constant, Jo,
whose lounge room I sat in
on one simple night
waiting for (and imagining, I confess,)
you getting dressed.
Tonight, I am Kerouac
in my old flanno shirt
just like his b+w pic
going through snaps of old girlfriends
with big ol' boozy breath.
But Jo, I have to
put you away now
with bad unstructured verse
and old ruminations
on Sunday twilight
which we all go looking for
when this life
comes crashing in
from behind
and we're left wondering
whether it's something
we're running with
or from.
Friday, July 4, 2008
The Disease
I have
the same
affliction
as Kurt Vonnegut
Too many drinks
chugging down cigarettes
I need to contact
all the people
from my past lives.
Except this time
it's to say
sorry
for the letdowns
and dashed expectations
but that now
I'm following the Donnie Darko
line of who I am,
who I should be
and what's to come.
the same
affliction
as Kurt Vonnegut
Too many drinks
chugging down cigarettes
I need to contact
all the people
from my past lives.
Except this time
it's to say
sorry
for the letdowns
and dashed expectations
but that now
I'm following the Donnie Darko
line of who I am,
who I should be
and what's to come.
Three More Winter Haiku
The addresses
for the winter hotels
are written on the envelopes
It's winter
would you be interested
in staying at the farm again?
I thought of G
when you lay asleep
and I watched the coastal lights
for the winter hotels
are written on the envelopes
It's winter
would you be interested
in staying at the farm again?
I thought of G
when you lay asleep
and I watched the coastal lights
Impulses
Just for a moment
I wanted to throw
that Zelda Fitzgerald story
which reminded me of her
right onto the fire.
I wanted to throw
that Zelda Fitzgerald story
which reminded me of her
right onto the fire.
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