poem

Winter ode (lunch with Linda)

we agree

—the correct way to eat Bàhn Mi is with irony and a raised fist—the baguette as de-colonised bun of resistance, made fluffier/cheaper with a handful of rice flour by the Chinese bakers kept in back—pickled radish, carrots and def. go the vegan (eschew pâté in solidarity with the goose)

—on stolen land, beneath London Plane Trees (ugh! more foreigners)—mottled trunks and non-invasive rootage favoured for civic squares everywhere. But it’s their deciduosity (adj: a part that falls off or is shed, as sprouts tumble from my ricepaper roll viz. the deciduous roll) that allows the first sun for days 

—we chat about Sappho and Aphrodite—Achilles sword drawn chasing Hector thru the laundry pools off the Scamander—Joyce and Nausicaa, masturbation and the empty trains to Port Kembla abandoned to the pervs.

The office-workers hurry their take-aways back to their desks; how lucky are we?  Dribble of nuóc châm down my shirt-front—too heavy on the fish sauce, you say (pungency n.) takes you to Phú Quôc island where fishers turn the iridescent beauty of a billion anchovies into the best fish sauce in all the Socialist Republic. Love Island©resorts for tourists and party hacks, once a prison for dissidents and missionaries— 

         beyond the barbed wire, palm trees
         shade the water in the afternoon
         so baby can swim 

You show me photos of Monkey Magic Kingdom garish reds and yellows—I’ll play Pigsy and you can be Tripitaka, your journey to the west...

for now the world becomes intelligible, full of contradiction and good crunch—history as an unreliable menu scrawled on a blackboard—a puddle of sauce glints in the sunshine. 

Image: London Plane Tree by FreddieBrown on Flickr.

For music this morning here’s some lively prepared piano by Taiwanese-Australian pianist Belle Chen from her 2019 album Departures (Youtube).

A drier winter

How like us, all nostalgic about rain:
Jesus-walking through lagoons of tall grass,
forests of floodwater, Kevin 07 knee-deep

down a Brisbane street explaining... how
my seedlings wither, this blue desiccation. 
I’m in the garden spraying water and imprecations 
this is our fallow year—all that’s left

is to wander through old photographs: 
the monsoon in Varanasi (your shirt 
is so drenched), sodden in Gaudi’s park, 
drizzly in anoraks on Brighton Pier.

We rise early, drink tea, are quiet round the house.
The weatherman’s full of juju; we avert our eyes.
You wake at 3, listening—
                             that could be rain.

Image: untitled by Daniel Iván c/- Flickr. For those of you who don’t follow Australian politics, the Kevin 07 reference is to the former labor Prime Minister Kevin Rudd (elected in 2007), who during the floods in Brisbane Queensland in February 2011, helped residents shift their suitcases and furniture (blurry video here).


And for music this morning, here’s Swedish-Estonian accordianiste Tüülikki Bartostik with Norrland (youtube) from her eclectic 2023 album Playscapes (it’s worth a listen).

A Sea of Tears 

sea of tearsDownload

The humpback migration is in full-swing here on the east coast of Australia. From a low of around 100 individuals when whaling ceased on the east coast of Australia in 1963 numbers have recovered to this year’s estimate of around 40,000 whales (this year’s count has not finished). And they’re all heading north to the breeding grounds off the Whitsunday Islands.

And for music today here’s This Mortal Coil from 1984 with Another Day (youtube)

the banyan on northcliffe

in the road a century tree
guard railed, buttress of grasses

encirclement of kerbing 
captive and indomitable

speaks of road-makers’ charity (or cowardice)
its roots extend—feels the traffic above 

suckers appear in gardens
blocks away

it shades, a brief dark pool
sudden respite from the tumult

cruelly pruned to allow trucks
its leaves caress, its arms

wounded but beautiful
as you descend 

Image: The Australian Banyan (Ficus macrophylla,) tree this morning.

And for music, here’s Tom Verlaine (former guitarist with Television who died in January after a long struggle with cancer) with some gorgeous de-tuned guitar work from his 2006 album Around (only available on Youtube). RIP Tom.

tanka on the first heatwave of summer — Feb. 16.

beyond the cafe —
street trees roil, girrrr of 
ten thousand cicadas 
SUV backs into wall —
tea-leaves orbit my cup

Image: my scorching driveway. The poet musing from the air-conditioned comfort of a cafe while the world outside gets used to what local weather forecasters describe as a ‘low intensity heatwave’.

And for music this morning, here’s Taiwanese ensemble Cicada with their 2023 album Seeking the Sources of Streams (Youtube) –

on the path to the shore, a haibun

—

I’d not been down it for a year, not since the dog’s arthritis got worse. It was a cunning way. From an unpromising corner of a municipal lawn, a steep descent into wilderness, a few blind turns, then some scrubground where the dog can go off lead looking for fox and the black snake, an eastern whip bird right there in the casuarinas. 

Today it’s so overgrown it barely exists. Morning glory, lantana, bittou bush and coastal banksia have closed over—it’s as impenetrable as paradise. Crouch thru low doors and tunnels, feet deep in weeds and puddles, the green rained-on vegetation like a shroud over what promise there is in the day.

All its history gone: schoolkids, dog walkers, shoplifters fleeing security guards, masturbators in their groves, workers with their lunch pails taking the back route down to the plant, and men like me, huffing up and down hills, determined to stave off the heart-attack that’ll inevitably take us too early. 

(My ex-wife jokes about what a buff corpse I’ll leave.)

Surely there’s some wisdom about paths needing to be used, remade by walkers lest they vanish?

At last that engine the sea—the grey rollers full throttle against the rockshelf, spray snatched away by the southerly. The remains of the swimming pool built in the twenties to keep the kids and the sharks apart—rafts of twigs and plastic. 

Gone also that house. It had occupied this block for more than 100 years, with a nice aspect to the pool and the yawn of the beach. Lead-light windows, curated succulents in coffee tins up the front steps. I imagined the dark of the sitting room, a photo of her son in his uniform on the mantle, the chime of the clock on the quarter hour, a tabby on the sofa sniffing the day. 

How quickly houses become meadows. And meadows become houses. Surely there’s some Buddhist sutra about impermanence and abandonment?

bleached shell
tossed on this midden
five thousand years ago
just yesterday  

Image: Lounge chair, Port Kembla. And for music today here’s Australian musician and multi-instrumentalist Oren Ambarchi with his solo album Shebang (Youtube). And if you’re wondering what a shebang is, start here

Here’s a PDF for those having trouble reading this…

Afternoon tanka – Jan 27

impatient the air
slams a door, a saucer
certainty of downpours
evaporates before 
reaching this far

Image: Utagawa Hiroshige, Sudden Shower over Shin-Ōhashi Bridge and Atake, from the series One Hundred Famous Views of Edo 1857. c/- Metropolitan Museum

And for music this morning, here’s Japanese composer Isao Tomita with Claire de Lune (Youtube). The whole album (sorry couldn’t find it on Youtube but there’s plenty of Tomita for you to enjoy) is pretty fab from the master of synths. (I remember my father bringing home one of Tomita’s LPs and we sat fascinated that all this music was without a single instrument being bowed or blown into or orchestra being conducted)

a flat tanka — Jan. 15

barely waves, turquoise
lift and settle
of surfers
collective supplication
anything, send us anything

Image: Harold Salvage sunbaking, “The Sunbather” from Camping trips on Culburra Beach by Max Dupain and Olive Cotton c/- State Library of NSW on Flickr

Music this morning, here’s Australian musician Andrew Tuttle with reminiscence of Alexandra (Youtube has the live performance), very chill – banjo, cicadas and sprinklers on the lawns – and no surf today.