Treasure Island

Within our happy harbourside retreat

we celebrate a life that’s rich and free

as round the barbie with our friends we meet

or watch the footy final on TV.

Our leaders stop the boats, turn back the tide

of those who seek to storm our country’s gates,

to let them know that God’s not on their side

nor will we ever count them as our mates.

The people smugglers cram them in the hold

of boats that are already overfull,

so join the queue, no need to bribe with gold,

and get a proper visa in Kabul.

Or if we must, illegals to prevent,

we’ll just excise the whole damn continent.

Shells

in memory of Andrew McNaughtan, 1953-2003

Over the harbour coves today

the air feels thinner.

On the sand near Castle Rock

I pick up a faded purple shell,

its outer ridges gnarled

as an old boxer’s knuckles,

the inner surface

smooth as a sigh.

I’d put a note on his door,

“Call me urgently”,

but the house already felt like a shell.

He had no children

but the children of Timor.

It hadn’t rained for weeks

then, at the funeral,

torrents burst.

It won’t feel the same

going down to the bay.

I rub my finger over the shell,

comforting as Andrew’s smile

even when our despair

was deep as the harbour.

Geography

How distant I am from your suffering.

Why, it would take a long plane ride

to get there

or for them to get here.

I mean you.

The tyranny of distance, someone called it.

Well, thank god for geography.

Nothing wrong with distance,

good fences,

even the door between us,

even the skin.

Iraqi moon over Sydney

like the face of a damaged child

this full moon

climbing through angophoras near the zoo

will also rise over Baghdad

good for Iraqi gunners

not for our side

we like to bomb in the dark

so the kids can’t see our faces

Circus family

Between heaven and hell

we walk a tight wire.

We leap into the air

hoping to land

on some safe and distant platform.

We poke chairs at tigers,

try getting bears to dance,

elephants to tiptoe,

dogs to stop barking,

monkeys to be wise.

We juggle weighty clubs,

breathe fire,

choking on kerosene,

balance on fragile pyramids of chairs

trusting their thin legs.

We spring, we vault, we soar at times,

rebounding off the frayed trampoline.

We gamely dive through hoops,

leap over a dozen barrels,

sometimes colliding with number twelve.

One day the animals escape their cages

leaving the ringmaster

and the clown

to slug it out.

First bite

My father retired almost deaf

after decades of fixing metal presses.

He took me to the factory one day as a kid.

He wasn’t ashamed of the work he did

to feed his family.

I was frightened by the violent clash of metal

but never let on.

He was in the metal workers union,

read their paper,

the Tele and the Mirror too

but had a healthy suspicion of the headlines.

He grew up in the dark terraces of East Sydney

and ran errands down Palmer Street

for women of the night as he called them.

He was a bastard, legally,

and my mother never let him forget it.

Ten years after the final mortgage payment,

the garage door wide open to the sun,

he drinks DA from a pony glass

he pinched from the Forest Inn,

puts on a silly smile and says

“Ah, that first bite!

Glass of amber fluid, son?”

Warm wind, a song, February 2003

I feel a warm wind blowing

And it feels like peace

And it feels like anger

Against too long injustice.

I feel a warm wind blowing

From wintry Berlin, Moscow and Paris

Blowing across deserts and forests

Across oceans and continents

Across borders and border posts.

I feel a warm wind blowing

And it’s the breath of millions

It’s the breath of people in every nation

It’s the breath of ordinary voices

Speaking out strong and confident

The breath of hope and the human spirit.

I feel a warm wind blowing

Growing in fury and strength

And it’s building to a heated hurricane

That will blow down the citadels of war.

January, Balmoral

summer solstice has come and gone
without a fuss

three kookaburras are making
raucous satirical comments
on the status quo in Mosman

I go down to the harbour
enter the barely ruffled water
sun spearing through clouds

and floating on my back
look toward the south

the sky turns black

a sudden shower

Forecast

Mothers keep churning us out

like there’s no tomorrow

and maybe there isn’t

for us

I see mammoth cockroaches

picking over the rubble

nonchalant

waiting to evolve into something

more photogenic

Call me cynical but

this radioactive dust

they’re putting in warheads these days

couldn’t be playing up with the weather,

could it?

Memorial at Kuta

Gaudy flags

draped over flowers

and in the background

a pile of burnt shoes

shoes that will not dance

nor be flung off in abandon

or slipped under the bed,

will not wear down on one side,

be left to dry on the verandah

or spattered with rain

from running

through a summer storm

Talkback

a riot broke out

at the radio station

police were called in

to quell the listener response

nursing home residents

addicted to their man’s

frenzied fricatives

voluble vowels

garrulous glottal stops

dubious diphthongs

nagging nasals

and crazed consonants

surged out of their recliner chairs

and headed there in mini-buses

when a stand-in for their man

dared to let a caller ask

why

I wipe my arse on the flag

I wipe my arse on the flag

because it’s just an ocker rag,

a symbol of arse-licking

and brown-nosing dictators

and the colours are wrong,

the colours of empire and subservience.

I wipe my arse on the flag

because it was wrapped around Pauline

and it’s always over Howard’s shoulder,

because 350 people who drowned trying to get here

were deemed unworthy of its protection.

I wipe my arse on the flag

because it flutters over desert concentration camps

and prisons full of young black men

and corporate towers exalting cold hard capital.

I wipe my arse on the flag

because I like the feel

of the union jack in my crack.

Good Friday 1999

I’m not religious you understand

but I didn’t feel like calling anyone

or going to Darling Harbour to see

the Flying Fruit Fly Circus

under the freeway.

So I get on the bus

and go to the Museum of Sydney

in the rain.  I should have known.

Closed Good Friday.

Revenge of the Christians.

Showers, trickles of grey tourists

in Martin Place looking stupidly at poster ads.

I’m not the only fool.

Eight died on the roads today

trying to escape this watery, grey,

sad as a cinema queue in the rain

trapped in coffee shops

terminally dismal

Sydney day.

Flight out of Timor

How many Hercules will it take

to evacuate the promises we made,

the lies we told,

the hopes we gave

and then denied?

How many Hercules will it take

to lift the despair of a generation,

the dreams of a proud people,

to transport the bodies of the children

and the blood of the martyrs?

How many Hercules will it take

to rescue a single shred

of Australia’s honour?

Fire sale

A question not, as you may think,

of Shakespeare and show-ponies,

but more fundamental culinary matters

such as who eats whom, and at what price,

here in late industrial suburbs

threatened by longevity

and bored indifference.

People dream their way into tomorrow,

screened off from the institutions of yesterday -

church, family, decency-

consuming tackily glued emotions

on current affairs programs,

black or white it's all the same

between the ad breaks.

Don't you wonder sometimes, fit to burst,

by what algebraic journey we reached

this end of millennium fire sale,

how the disaster corps managed to avert

a show-stopper of smoky nightmares?

Aliens

They laugh at us

the dark ones,

our heavy dance and wobbly gait

treading on stones with tender feet

feeding kangaroos by hand

eating fish from cans

but we know poison

and real estate

the force of guns and laws.

Listen to their keening,

faint now,

for all the generations lost,

a pissed corroboree

outside an empty parliament.

Diana

Like instant noodles

our freeze-dried hearts melt

for the dead princess

(just add television)

Nurses throw teddybears;

teddyboys, more confused, just stare

at the cameras whirring,

whirlwinds of emotion

whipping up historical trifles

from re-enacted slow turnoffs,

runaway cars,

wrecked and flattened tinsel crown.

The stockmarket of souls

advertises our inadequacy

to deal with ordinary death.

"But the people want it", someone says.

I'm bamboozled too

by the pomp and circumstance,

the glue of glitterazzi

holding the set pieces together,

the stupid flags on the Edgecliff Centre

still at half-mast ten days later.

Primo Levi at Thredbo

-after the landslide in July 1997 that killed eighteen people

They’ve closed the Alpine Way.

The death site looks neat

as the museum at Auschwitz.

Why did I bring you here, Primo Levi?

When the Germans buried you alive

you weren’t handsome and strong

like the young Australian.

And when you walked out of the grave

you were wasted away

like some creeping Jesus.

Forty years later

you hurled yourself down the slope to death.

You’d written your evidence in blood

and now had to join

the only true witnesses.

Progress

Walking in the bush this morning

I did not come across

a single convenience store

or video game arcade.

No integrated alarm system

or current affairs programme

or high-security low-risk user-friendly multimedia freedom tellers.

There were no frozen stir-fried yogurt-dipped posturepedic bagels,

no fluorescent ergonomic integrated rollover kitchenettes

or single grandparent tupperware modems,

no KFC, BHP, FID, TAB or after-sales no-obligation deals,

or microwave snap-on set-and-forget condom dispensers.

Not one low-joule frost-free heat-seeking self-adhesive wrap-

around carbon-dated rust-proofed sandwich-maker

or infra-red poly-unsaturated take-away four-stroke closed-

circuit recycled tar-reduced deodorised seat-covers.

Just birdsong

and smells of eucalypt.

Writer's blot

Without looking at a line

this (suspended) spring morning (it is the city)

wondering what I'm still doing here,

what this land means

beyond the flag and the flatulence.

Media missiles cruise into the living room

- search and destroy thought -

telling us over and over everything's okay. 

Help!  Helicopter lifesavers, snatch us

from this flooded island mini-series

of denied yearning

for somersaults of death and beauty,

kamikaze comedians. 

It is no time for levity, 

no time for introspection either

as relentless sparrows announce sunny Saturday

(no haiku please) in Sydney,

named after the maggot-headed politician

as Ruth Park said. 

Blacked-out computer screens, invisible icons,

edit me, quick! 

Powering through, am I still powering through? 

Rational

When the judge cried “Euthanasia”

all the people loudly cheered

at the Rest-Ezy nursing home.

They didn’t want to hang around

and be a burden on the budget.

Give me liberty and give me death

shout the new patriots

(Stop needling me, I’ll go quietly)

After all, we have to bring down the deficit

somehow.

autumn, north sydney

last night after the movies

in the high decibel bar

I wanted to touch my heart

then yours as a sign

but instead we sat smoking

watching the rain

and the taxis

in the blue street below

Union

My lanky son sprints down the field,

blond mane streaming behind,

but when the ball comes to him

he gets rid of it quickly.

I know that feeling.

The field overlooks wild ocean,

the wind salt-charged and blustery.

Now a downpour drenches the striped boys

scattering through melting hail.

I walk to the cliff,

a rush of blue air and emptiness

above  flecked waves,

follow the escarpment down

and swim in the sea

among brown boys.

My son joins me after the game.

In late afternoon sun

we cavort like dolphins

in the spiced, foamy delight

of the buffeting ocean.

hungry head

in urunga we bought leatherjacket and chips

then on to the golf club

dress regulations after 7pm fri sat sun no thongs

damn

we came back on the sat night

sweating in shoes especially for the occasion

walked in to the pokies you felt cheated

look at that fat guy he’s in thongs

half way between sydney and brisbane

reading dazai’s no longer human

I know why some of them up here

turn to christianity

Return from the island

Hovering around the airport phone booths

hesitating, playing for time

the wall clock ruthlessly correct

my father dead

and the next bus south in an hour

fumbling a suitcase for coins

getting the wrong number

you were there, patient

letting my confusion settle

until I was ready

to let the taxi
take us home