Back in business, in tycoon form

touting like a hustler for what

the day may bring: bring noise bring

heat bring dust and it smells

like the street (my private property my

Wall Street, my bonanza)

bought and sold, selling now

on competitive terms: my sharp

my shop-worn challenge

on a day like today, on my street

feeling strong: feel cunning (lazy malice)

and sly: feel like laughing –

wanna rip somebody off

the earth stings

three-cornered jacks and salvation jane

barbs savage flesh

beer bottles, broken, and jagged jutting rocks

cut out to sea

claws

a rip through the Heads

now tearing, now

taunting, a dagger-thrust wind

a place of impalement, by nature

defensive: here, by the shore, the hard-worked flints

sheathed in grit break off

under foot

a ghost race’s weapons still function, still strike

in a fight long since lost, while shells

slice soles: a terrain

sharp with tension

how far (how long back?) what people

lived here

how hostile (what violence?) what intrusion

resisted

resented

what fear remains: in pain, and by force

grafted

enduring – the grey lash-scar weal of

a killer’s brand

dead birds on the shore

she sees them, and sees herself

battered, blown off course

in the guts of such storms as

bully this coast

she’s buffeted: she feels her wings snap

by day her surrounds eddy grey and by night

churn black: the sea, the sky, neither down

nor up nor around no sense

no salvation – small corpses, oil-slick sodden

dumped, junked by the tide

dark damp broken omens against

panic and exhaustion (so tired)

Cathy laughs best

her lips tie a bow

an extravagant, impulsive

christmas present flourish

her eyes go bright green they

gleam like a scarab

a bauble dancing, as jaunty

as brilliant a yuletide

decoration: a gift, an excitement

as frivolous, as generous

sparklers ablaze

Cathy laughs, lights sing

Everything

flies upward: we cheer

and with a flourish, her lips

take a bow

glowering in the gnarled clutches of a malleetree she’s

bent, that cat

my mother tries to reason with her

only the dog ever responds to her logic

the dog and my father, four focused brown

eagerly uncomprehending eyes

the cat resists.

She veils herself behind a silt-heavy spiderweb not

one of us would broach

we discuss deserting her

my mother sobs, tired

hoping she’ll feel pity

(it’s late, it’s dark, the mosquitoes all gloat)

she feels contempt.

Fetch! they command me, the visiting child

the dog and I bound into ropes of corpse-flesh web

it clings like rolled rubber: we imagine many

armed spider hugs and fear

a beach-scrub Kali, slapping her hands across our eyes

our cat has eyes

like a goddess of destruction. She sits,

spite incarnate, in the backseat of the car

She and I, we dislike each other

intensely

all the way home

small joys: just maybe this could work out OK

the night is on

her side, rearranging reality

the dark, sharp with change, is alive

is ambitious: conspiring

against established order. What is

blue and grey by day, and solid as

a whale – whole suburbs, a freeway

a scenic, clear-eyed harbour – by night

disappears: I see nothing

but black, crisp and satin

Satan’s cape. Where once

cloud-bound buildings stood, a spray of

gilt teases

Spanish gold flung down by cut-throats

there is devil’s work at play

reckless spells cast by a witch

there is mischief tonight

great tracts of prime real estate, greys

varied as tweed, blotted out, blown

away – or sucked into a vacuum

lightly kissed by

Satan’s breath, chill, piercing

as a cat’s eye:

golden-green, disquieting embers

against sleek electric black

Janie is a sea monster

On the beach, they don’t know yet

serpent in the brine, green-eyed and unholy

She cuts breakers to size and devours

the shore with each wave. She slashes

bitter salt-whips across the bone-white flesh of the

sand. She smashes

fists of glass; they shatter they pierce callous shrapnel

assassin blades of foam

Janie threshes barbed, brutal coils

causing dangerous rips, gouging depth out of

shallow. The froth, a frenzy of jade

Sun-plated, chill as armour and rage

She’s a deep-sea dragon, malice embodied

She is vengeful

The wrath of the excluded, elemental

force. An agent of retribution

She eyes the beach-towels, beach-balls, umbrellas

all the people in all the lycra-bright colours

judgmental

Janie in the ocean

I’m a catherine wheel

(you may not have realised that)

a roman candle

(singe your eyebrows off)

all gold and pink intense spitting light

flailing the night-sky

fire

shock the darkness

(spin explode display)

I’m a white hot astral

torturing device

A girl with a smile

That buckles and bucks

Like a porn performer –

I like her

Here, pierced by sunlight

She’s laughing

We’re laughing we both

Have stars at our fingertips

Caught in our hair

Lascivious zircon-sly laugh-needle

Stars

his hands

watch his hands, then

his eyes – a wordless

question, a clue

in the distances: relativity

him to me

from here to … where?

a merging of neutrals, non-colours

of winter: soft duns, muted bone

sparrows on concrete, dirt-naked

trees against the sky

us against ourselves

shades of the dead: the dull, the defeated

all things blurred, a blinded sun

pale, white on grey

earth beneath leaves

brittle, fallen

crushed underfoot