Here. so high,

we can count the clouds.

So few – such thin vapours!

We blow them away

Then

feel their chill.

They clasp my hands as they kiss my face;

they touch us like

a stranger’s tears.

swimming or flying; it’s exhausting

a lurching struggle to keep on top

to maintain buoyancy, a semblance of direction

How I spend my nights, aloft, in

flapping, plunging, plummeting…

speeding into spirals,

open-mouthed crazed arcs

colliding with telephone poles, tangled

in the wires or

strangled by seaweed, out-distancing

a shark – maybe three, vicious

in pursuit: threatening limbs

that churn, that battle, downward-destined and

ploughing through rubber when there’s sharks

all around, there are sharks

there below

How I spend my nights, afloat, and awake,

spent

So mistaken

she looks frightened, wan

a blank face, and dull

no understanding (like a peasant)

no response (a smacked-out hooker)

one

person emptied bleak

alone and

nothing in the world can make this right

Patagonia

iceflint fear

Life, more or less – more often

less – a desolate chill

remote

this is nowhere

she knows

she’s nothing, lichen on a rock

but if

still saying nothing

she just sits

and smiles the next time

life will go on

still clinging

much as before

this is untrue

not necessary

the sun is in my eyes; I glare back

what was given is unguarded but what is

Mine will not be taken

take your fingers from my face

I came

here alone: I remain

unmoved

a flat earth, full of cowboys

hard men, six feet junder

a mythic phallusy, walking dead

and you, your flesh is waxen

eyes are cold, your movements stiff

if you can stand it, stand your ground

but show me life

or I swear

I’l bury you

When he speaks he hears his voice

distorted, shrill – faraway

When he moves

he meets resistance; his progress is stifled

confused, he can’t feel –

no feet, no ground

like living underwater

this stark, still environment tints his vision

chill green

strident luminosity but

he’ll adjust. He’ll grow

clear hard scales, his blood

will run cold – transform to

survive. He’ll learn;

a dampened organism, tongues

insinuate, forever

in motion. He’ll see

through shell-pale eyes now

salt won’t sting

He will return, unwelcome

but welcomed by some

naturally divisive like a mirror

drawing the line between the land of the

existent and the image zone:

His face hasn’t changed and his voice

remains the same; no excuses

to start afresh, no new chink

to offer glimpses

of a different person, unavoidably himself

present physically and emotionally

Omnipresent.

cold, colorless

eyes that register nothing an

expression that won’t alter

altercation made flesh

uncalled for, he’s comeback

underneath he never went

what is true, is eternal; what is false

is what you will

He returns to resume his place here

as if nothing has

Changed

here, I am uneasy

this place is strange, this space

empty. This incubator, sterile compound.

your unit. Myself glimpsed

in glass (in fragments), a full-length window pane

Ghost image on a TV screen

you disturb me

the air –

so sharp it hurts, this high

vertigo –

you make my eyes smart

Far removed, a burglar siren jams

(you alarm me)

the heavy breathing of cars, below

you oppress

like a radio not quite tuned to the stations

a shadow pall –

a phone left off the hook

In summer, while tanned, blue-eyed girls in

white cotton frocks planned weekends on the yacht

(the harbour danced with white, teasing sails)

he went up north

a country boy, he’d shyly confess

no time for cultural gorgings, for opera

in the park – a backwoods poet

raised among canefields

Never been farther than Cairns:

such yearing – as soon as he’d had means

he bought a neck of river: his boast, his own

human clay, his land

of parakeets and snakes. As a child the sky

seemed uncontainable: horizons so wide, so far

out of reach

now, driving north, he sleeps alone

on the beaches at night

counts the stars, then, satisfied the sky

has not contracted, he softly hums

The restless rhythms of the car tune

his days, and he sings, low and gentle

as he never could down here

bright red

wounding the hillside, once

twice: every year

the dust billows down through the gullies

from up north, from the desert

dry-red flatlands, red dust clogs

cloaks the sky

so heavy, day smothers

so light, night fades

desperate-hearted nights, of throbbing sticky

heat: a bullet-hole

moon bleeds over soft lands –

bright red, like a bushfire

casting a pall

and here

all manner of miracles explode

red paint on violet canvas

full fields aflame with sun

all colour

stained-glass images

all light

molten metal

all energy all action all

emotion

is here, for a moment

all intense, comet-flight