✰i✰blog✰
30. antithesis
Jan 26
these hours stretch
lazily on their stomach
in a field somewhere
unawares
of how often I
think of them
and wonder if I mean anything
to them
probably definitely
not
they don’t have to play it cool because
they are
unaffected
uncaring
racing ahead
with a purpose
I don’t know enough about
to pretend to possess
but here
on Autumn checked
sheets I know they’d hate
(complemented often by friends
but seldom by lovers)
I pile doona and pillows to counter
cheap mattress sink
and face (the wrong way) the window
to nurse a dehydration headache
and growling stomach
in peace
this is not a place for sleeping so much as
discovery
realisation of
the self variety
last conclusion :
limerence
now star-crossed and faded
match marching with
stillness
in peace be outlasted
listen to
winds soar
owls hoot
(now almost sunlit
beyond the pane)
until want
tastes like
nothing
29. restless
Dec 25
still in sleep
a part of me is
soaring
along a midnight street
running,
drunk on
distant promises of
din and
dimmed lights,
darkness an invitation for
dissonance, dizziness,
and dogging skins
hired and donned for
tightly prudent days
paid for
in sunlight hours
defined by the distance
of drawn in
breath
28. running (on the inside)
Nov 25
when did I turn
it inwards
the buzzing zip bang
fuzz deep
hedonistic drive for
leg throwing
arm swinging
teeth sinking into
movement
craved and always at
effortless disposal
no need for thinking only
soaring
limbs illuminated with
track runner stamina
cartoon boundless bounce back
was it
little by little a
gradual feedback loop
loop
be good
loop
behave
loop
play families nicely
loop
until
floor starer
tin soldier
I could cry
I could cry
please
sell it back to me
how to leap
perhaps
in a jar
27. rushing (triptych)
Nov 25
26. static
Nov 25
racing where
blood ought
technicolour pixels fizz
blunt like
pencil crayon stars
pulsing veins
from air that dips
off rushing
backs meeting
with collision
light years
removed from
disembodied
ears eyes chest fingers head
unspecific
voltage
throbbing
each
25. shoes shoes, silly
Oct 25
glitter is glitter
and
sawdust is sawdust
24 b. marinating
Nov 25
sad bath in Boorloo (after Tracey Emin), monoprint (lino ink) on paper
24. marinating
Oct 25
23. inventor?
Oct 25
22. sucker punch
Oct 25
it's a physical sensation
when I’m turning over
the idea of actually doing it
(out of necessity:
I can't stay here
and courage:
fuck em)
and my boss says
conversationally
I’m getting in touch with my feminine side
I identify as
tiger
RAH
he growls and pads in demonstration
a bodily response
(noted out of body)
jolt in chest
my old friend the hidden fist
ever clenched ever ready
a lumpy traveler
up the throat
making me swallow
(back to body)
leaked sourness
careful to keep my mouth
unmoving
but he registers an escaped flicker
(must)
because as he scoffs and claws
he justifies
end of year antics
I tell him
all the saw dust
and laugh a sound
I prepared earlier
then complete the gradual project
of seeping backwards from the doorway
into a busy working day
of sucker punches
just for me
21. in pictures
Sep 25
20. cane toad
Sep 25
sticky syrup (seeping stomach)
stretches like candy shop toffee;
halving only
to double,
bubbling through gut and sternum
pinning heart to the front of sagged spine
in the wake of
bulging the throat:
croaking and throbbing and
saturating
breath with molasses
19. a politician’s lullaby
Sep 25
hum to me, darling.
tell me that everything’s alright
in this crevice which we live;
comfort me
with how little
they matter.
18. Stranded Celestial Testing Institute
Aug 25
17. Score
Aug 25
16. Casualties
What will I extract to make wishes upon,
when I have at last run out of
eye lashes?
Aug 25
15. this now
Aug 25
14. dignity
Jul 25
A friend told me that last summer she saw a homeless man using his toes to collect coins from the NGV moat. What do wishers dream of when they toss their change into those slate-lined ponds? What does one ask for when leaving something of themselves behind in the guarding waters of an affluent institution? I think, for the most part, they are driven to poetic irrationality by the inexpressibly human pull of art. A surge that sets fires in stomachs and reminds us that we can participate in aliveness: that we have a place from which to see and hear and speak in this expansive world. Is each splash a reclamation of being? Call it by another name: a reassertion of dignity. What is dignity but dry sleeves, when that is the greatest kindness you are allowed to offer yourself?
How can we allow dignity to take such different shapes?
Above is the photo from Lana Nguyen's the indirect line (Un Magazine 18.4) of the NGV (National Gallery Victoria) 'moat'
13 c. hacking (optimism)
Jul 25
13 b. hacking (pessimism) [collected]
Jul 25
Izzy at Felix Coffee Co (when discussing the below): “cruel and well read”
13 b. hacking (pessimism)
Jul 25
tearing
again
never enough time.
turning pages to say yes, I have read that one, I too, thought it was a sell-out compared to their early work
(please don’t ask me about their early work).
submitting applications
writing manifestos
but
I am finding more and more
that the efforts expected to
sharpen meaning, conquer purpose,
are instead
animating
zoetrope horses.
i cannot outrun the feeling that
the galloping of flickering pages
falters faster
than double wicked
candlelight
(and reaches not
half
as far).
a broken axe beneath the washing line
12. pillow processing
Jul 25
Last night you lay within these sheets. As you blinked upwards, your knowing smile, so immediately ready earlier that evening, became something gently questioning. I caught your slippery gaze: a cautious union of hesitancy and closeness; the emergent of new vulnerability shared (did you see in my eyes the same glints reflected back?). Our poorly feigned surenesses cast off with each layer: fortresses of laughter and wit brushed easily aside. Shed to make room for the welcome softness of skin against skin. Tattoos traced slowly with lips, and fingers brushed carefully through hair. Then the bashful uncertainty of abrupt goodbyes.
Humming you under my breath. A tune I liked even without familiarity to endear it upon me.
11. a silly song about serious celestial fears
Jul 25
At first, we thought,
the moon will fill
the things we’ve let
run dry.
But widening gaps
soon emptied what
that orb
could naught supply.
So, when we mined
our moon’s lasts dregs,
we made a burning fuel.
It took us to
a shinier home,
still rich in
unpicked jewel.
10. sci-fi
Jun 25
How often do I let what is in front of me melt away (shortsightedness that extends beyond my growing prescription)? Do you, too, begin to shut down every time you see someone who looks a little like me? Could your hair have grown out to that length by now? Is that lazy, up at the end lilt the one belonging to your ringing voice? Do you find yourself with inexplicably weakened limbs that are void of the strength needed to get you out of here, fast? A tightening chest you notice a little late because it’s eclipsed by the force of your pounding heart? Fog obscuring the mediating clarity you thought that you possessed, intensifying your unkind focus to pinpoint precision? A merciless laser beam. I am my own shrill villain. Am I yours, too?
From where did the blight begin?
9. condemned
Apr 25
Moral high ground requires disparity; to be righteous is to damn.
8. reflections
Apr 25
I see at last that an understanding is not what you seek. You probably believe you already told me, but how could I recognise the chasm between our intentions, when your responses harbored a clouded logic it was beyond my guesswork to discern?
I figured - when my attempts to bridge were met with ice - it was because I had taken the wrong approach (too early? too rigid?). But whatever I might have tried would have landed just the same. If only I had known sooner - I would prefer that fewer of my words were emptied of their sentiment and twisted into spirits I cannot recognise, let alone hope to tame. I pray they are not the type to haunt.
It is not unfair to avoid resolution, to turn away. But a different matter is the malice that peppered your returns like pointed shards of broken crystal. They cut me the deeper because I did not expect to meet them.
Though they now glitter at my feet, it is you reflected back.
corrupted file (photograph of acrylic and crayon on found object - gifted painting)
7. the one thing not made of atoms
Mar 25
I’ve never been a real person. Yet, when my human costume is unzipped, there will be no labyrinth of chips and wires to support the artificially intelligent humanoid it turns out no one could distinguish. Nor a colonsing martian instilling too-late empathy into the purposefully ignorant. I am an imposter of a different kind. When my disguise at last catches on an unruly branch or snags under a fast walker’s impatient toe, bubbles of light pink vapour - too faint to be correctly identified as red - will pause for a second, shocked at the sudden arrival of an exposé they had always anticipated. But they won’t remain in formation for long. Their feeble membrane was just enough to ground them between the ranks of actual people. Without it they will quickly diffuse, carried off into the world like dandelion wishes; destined only to burst upon contact with the lightest breeze. Perhaps dewy pastel rings will linger on the ground below, marking, for a moment, each former fragment. I'd like that. A memorial as substantial as my hollow claims to personhood.
6. admirer
Mar 25
Please,
dig your French tips into my waiting wrist.
Take a little streak of scarlet
beneath each perfect crescent.
Then you, too,
will carry me with you.
5. how to (twenty-four ungodly red candles and one irritant)
Mar 25
If I was ever going to sacrifice someone, I would surround them with the strawberries-and-cream-scented candles I bought at St Luke’s op shop for a dinner party last year. I never lit them because the smell was too strong. Even one would have put us off our food. But it is wasteful not to use them up. So, I would have my victim lying on his back, palms up. And I’d light each of the twenty-four pomegranate-hued candles one by one with a single match each to draw it out. A crescendo of crushing crimson (maybe I’d arrange them in a heart shape in an ode to each little wax form). Then I’d leave the room and plug the door with him lying in the middle, unmoving as the candles burned out, immobilised by fear - or some other substance, I haven’t yet figured out the logistics - bathed in inescapable, toxic sweetness. Succumbing at last to the red he’ll forget about everything else; past, future, outside world, all slipping away into a seemingly eternal purgatory between after school lollies and punishment mouthfuls of red medicine on poorly feigned sick days. Maybe that would be sacrificial enough, just to remind him he is not so far from that unsure but excitable little boy (and maybe rob him of his sense of smell, too). Perhaps I could summon something like two years of free parking with that. Better to start small anyway.
4. community [collected]
Mar 25
Hala Shanableh (at the P.S. Art Space panel discussion, Sumud, Sabr and Sanity – Stories of Palestine): "Community is not about identity. Community are those who hold space for you."
3. counterpart
Mar 25
On me in me consume me eclipse me,
Oh do let me become you !
Become
absorbed by you
until I am your
perfect match,
Such a lovely couple! seamless - I am your silhouette’s shadow.
I’ll stitch myself to you by my toes as Wendy did for Peter.
Oh how Wendy envied that shadow! If only her toes did not snap needles!
But I do the real thing;
I mould, watch, wait, yearn to yearn your guiding touch
so much;
that yearning is shapeless, confused, homeless;
an unlocatable fact of life as mundane as mundane.
So instead I look to you
to inflate me with the knowledge that I am inflating you.
Yes ! This must be it.
I am your obedient reflection,
look upon me freely,
I, Narcissus, will nourish you always.
Look
against my hip, my thigh, my downcast eyes,
your gaze lights me up;
casts me in flashes of vivid purple static.
I shine yourself back at you, a steady assurance that the space you never feared to occupy
has ever been awaiting you,
it and me both.
We greet you with relief,
glad at last to know which ways to twist, bend, contort.
You may, once or twice, notice our bruised hips and dented shins
(badges of our urgency to receive the space left over by your squared shoulders and pointed chin)
but it is no trouble !
This is just what we wanted
always dreamed of!
I look forward with patience
to the release of breath that will mark tenderness crystallised.
A scab needs no further attention.
Pickers only have themselves to blame
(everyone knows that)!
His and hers
embroidered towels galore !
(oh dear, is that blood, did I forgot to change the needle?)
2. pitch white [collected]
Late 24
Marvin Wallin (during an Art History honours seminar): "fire engine blue."
