the Jesus Bird

I saw the Jesus bird
alone on a fence
overlooking the freeway
on a dry afternoon in autumn
I saw the Jesus bird
at dusk
on a light pole
watching the commuters
wander down from the station
in the dark with the others
I saw the Jesus bird
silhouetted against
a dirty orange moon that hung
crucified and flayed
on a vast black cross
looking down on begging
empty spaces in the market
where cold sleeping ducks
bills buried in
feathered shadow
saw nothing

But I heard the Jesus bird
singing in black
trees of solitude
while men and boys cut
through cold white mist like
fighting soldiers under
artificial suns

And the modern neanderthal
calling our fragile existence
a miracle
sat hunched over flickering
screens and packaged nourishment
in his artificial cave
While the Jesus bird
sits lower than him on the food chain

I didn't see the Jesus bird
he took refuge from the knight
but reappeared the next day
under fluorescent swords
in the eyes of a little girl
who said thank you at the supermarket

Jobs Friends

Yeah, the poem thing is getting a bit obsessive at the moment...

billboards
tell you what
to do
who to be
and what to eat
Television
tells you how to live
sitting with you
in the lounge each night
like one
of Jobs friends
She tells you your nothing
and yet
your loins boil for her
the whole thing is fucked
and you think that no one understands?
you think your a unique
lonely poet in a city of automatons?
No.
the poet lives next door
in the eyes of an old man
dying of cancer
the artist is pruning her roses
shes shuffling to the gate
to see if theres any mail
the painter is on the porch
smoking a cigarette
thinking of her

Fred

I went out
This morning
And Fred was
sitting in the
Garden
Under a tree
He looked tired
and old
His hair
is almost gone
his back is hunched
And his face
is pocked with liver spots
His eyelids sag
over once blue windows
that watch the grass
and consider...
nothing more
than what he will
have for lunch
I commented on
the spaciousness
of the front yard
with the big lilly pilly
gone.
Yes he said
it doesnt look the same
anymore

Dictionary of Saints

These are the saints

A girl with a lesbian mother
and a butterfly stamp on her forehead
looking at a boy
The man who gave me that twangy guitar
before he died alone in his bed
and said,

Music is about

Silence

The woman who kept the carcasses
and bones of animals in her kitchen cupboards
and passed me at night under yellow streetlights
in a turtle neck jumper
and rummaged in bins on train platforms
while I ignored her and
defaced public property with a stolen texta
in a fit of unrequited love

The man who taught me my first three chords
while telling me his prison stories
and then duped me out of forty bucks
To go drinking

These are the saints
The ones I loved
and the ones I hated

A certain ugliness

Ive been scribbling a few poems over the weekend, inspired by the raw poems of Charles Bukowski. Inspired, not because of any genius with words, or even the grotesque nature of them at times ( thats there of course) but the very mundane nature of his subject matter, drawn straight from his life. so... here goes...


The girls
with their perfect lips
and high cheeks
were some kind of art I
didnt presume to be able to aquire
But merely look at in the museums
of cafe strips and the megaplex
But to my shock one of them, or maybe two
seemed interested in me.
And so I found myself at the high school formal
with my secret ugliness and a stuck up bitch
She didnt like me for very long
but she had already asked me to the formal (funeral?)
So I had to go
coming down the stairs with a girl from
one of the most prestigious private girls schools in the North West
and not six months before I had been hitchhiking somewhere
in the middle of the Eyre Peninsula crying my eyes out
And hearing God by the side of the road

And now Im a man
in my shoes that trudged through the mud
of Thailand and kept my feet dry
while I took photos of AIDS victims and walked
the alleyways of bangkok slums
But theres no raw sewage outside the video shop
Middle class girls dont beg
their tracksuit ensembles
with their beautiful men
their dogs and coffee
and noodle box laksas are all grown up
and High school formals just a photo in a long line
of predictable milestones

a step away from malnutrition
a step away from sex
a step away from love
Death
with a certain ugliness
that is not really present in my face
but will stain us both black and red

Cars and birds

Cars and birds
outside on the lawn
While you work
at your table next door
Dying slowly

We exchanged pleasantries
at the letterbox
you brought from America
An all three of us
ignored the closeness
of your death
Your sagging eyelids
and drooping posture

I hear you coughing
in the early morning
Hacking up your past
Choking on your whole life
And we say hello
Talking of the heat and the cold
and the dying grass
and the thrashed Geraniums
As if they were the
only things that mattered

Life is so small
That cars and birds on the lawn
Are all we seem to have

You know that laugh?

And you re entered my life
Like the sweetest nightmare
Or rather, I re entered yours
And we spoke
And we laughed, drank coffee at the same place
I saw the pain in your eyes
carefully noted the details of your body
while the tears still swam around
somewhere deep inside you

And you re entered my mind
I've been letting you in to that ugly cage
undoing the latch
On the door to that stupid hope
in me

that we

would laugh the laugh
of joyful grass reaching for the sun
you know that laugh?