YOU'D THINK

I haven't experienced

These moments:

Bits of it around dark

Eyes, understated

Hips, under oak.

The culmination of all these limbs

Is more, I trust, than what it seems.

 EMPIRICAL ANALYSIS OF OXYGEN

on your     doorstep

     the cliff         to your spaceship

is obscured                           by a narco.

     i just wanted        to check

who was leaving me notes –

                     your dictionary of vertigo

was a surprise.

if the question      i gave you

      was a punch                 in the flower,

if it wasn’t

          a packet of deliriant trivia,

                  would you        kiss it?

        i’m sure        your diaphragm

                  could handle        the cortex

of the autopsy

    of whoever      isn’t here,

                      because       they won’t be.

          when you can’t         neaten

your blood-knuckled nicotine spasm,

long exposure      will bring you up

     under              another sky.

the wax on your vellum face

                     makes a painting.

                                                i can’t touch

        how that many breaths

                                                     is enough.

TAXIDERMIST

the taxidermist    touches me like a geisha,

    rippling my     pond-clear       skin,

needling in and shivering out like nicotine.

     shatter my puppet           with crystals

and antonyms and      a    matchbox.

all of this autopsied world

                    is a techno-lit cage,

lasers               hemming the cotton avatars

into small,      schizophrenic         daggers.

the blood on the telephone, in the sink,

                                and through the sheets

is a               cardiac imprint,

evidence of our         nervous ventures.

it glints like glass water between pebbles,

         and spills off the jetty

                    to mix       catatonically

like the           smoke        in my         skull.

OTHER PEOPLE

Lying in your bed munching gravel til my eyes

  split

the sheets must be pink and there's a hole in the middle, begging for it, the dog comes, imbecilic, whining dada. I think your pillow hates me. “Oh we were dipped in it this morning!” What's passing behind the inside of your pretty nose as you read this crap? What's past is supposedly remembered as purposeful, as essential, part of the tapestry. Your head tremors for a second. Next day we float down Smith St, throw our socks at shopkeepers, discuss our theses loudly: “there's an art space in your hair!” & “I've been planting snow peas!” Above, China bulges. I realise I'm a consequentialist and you read sci-fi. Both John Cage's face and EXACTLY WHAT YOU'RE THINKING are put on the page. Ehr. Your hair's uncombed. The plane explodes! “Ooooh there's so many things at once my dear, I fear it’s the very last sun-drop.” The dog remonstrates that coffee stains your teeth, coffee literally gives you hypertension, coffee is made by slaves in the moon, coffee originally came from the Scots, no one speaks. The attention turns, dully.

“Imagine if that happened” & then it happens. We realise we'd been tricked since forever, that there simply are no other people or invisible hands, that a bad thing can outweigh a good thing in the end. Finally I see how lovely tea can be. You find yourself pressed between two large cannonballs which it later turns out weren't there. Another movement, sticky pearls on your book. A friend has died. You enter past tense, it was a tasteful world.

ON THE POSSIBILITY OF A DEFINITIVE UNDERSTANDING OF PREVAILING

SENTIMENTS IN ANTIPODAL SOCIETY FROM THE YEAR 1990 UP UNTIL

THE PRESENT

Fecund as, i'm under and over

whelmed at the same time by heaps

of stuff — australians, sea

food — cause as you'd know i've

got a wide variety of interests [art

etc] n there's soooo much choices out

there           , so i dunno what to

focus on maybe "just love" tho i 

do reckon heaps of ppl my age feel

like this + the internet + i'm wor-

ried things are gonna change [

mining boom + china] i hope books

touching etc will save me, us.

DELECTABLE

I know you think you're

                                            you

well

        I've been thinking

                                            you're me

                                                                         (embarrassingly)

It happens when I put things in my mouth or

when a sun shines through

Some Trees

or when

I'm

                                                                                                                      we're                                 

re-created

by non-   j

flesh

                                                                                                                                                                  ; it's simple                      

it happens with a text message or a birthday card and 

                                                                                                              I                              

"I" as we say

tends to implode

replaced by

                                                                                                              you           

      

But you're not an ego

                                                                                                                                                           you're an object

like a cat

inside a bottle of delectable pinot noir

that's totally

                                                                                               lost the plot

Because there's so much pressure when you're a bottle of delectable pinot noir.

TITLED

Henry Miller and Ai Weiwei are walking down astreet in Kreuzberg when they come across a lady masturbating in an alleyway. Ai drops his vase and takes a photo on his iPhone, while Henry's scribbling frantically. Later, eating kebabs on the u-bahn, Ai asks Henry what he wrote. "I couldn't get the fucking pen to work." Ai shows him the photo—a close-up of her dark, magnificent knee.