from here on in
if I follow
the girl in the ‘your tv hates you’
sweatshirtas her motorcyclist
warms his darkly bubbling engine
ready to blur
into a field of speed,
it’s probably
one less path
to torpor for me
*
a dishwasher whirrs above me
a slab separates us-–water restrictions mean nothing
war
is
imminent,
Sydney goes sailing
*
a thousand people
are surveyed –
how many vehicles on the freeway
that traverses the sprawl
around the swamp
we want to conserve
*
under a nasty sky,
rhetorical uncertainty
dogs me
*
the 326
is never on time.
the bus interchange uses up
evening’s best hours
*
all afternoon in a car
parked at the ferry wharf
gazing at sparkling waves,
not reading
not listening to the car radio,
just looking outat the boats
and at the sea planessetting off
and returning
*
his email began
‘i thought of you while i was driving to Blockbuster last night’ –
now,
where is that ?
*
she says he
‘takes a swipe at apostrophes’
punch-uation ?
*
the kitchen man
agrees
it’s all about oil
*
a sandwich board
outside Rose Bay Afloat
advertises the sunset bar –
‘relaxed atmosphere and tunes’
*
after not having
spoken with you
for 13 years,
now
that we’ve met
you’ve got me
reading
Deleuze & Guattari
all over again
rice for a heartache,
sugars for hope.
can ‘heartache’
have currency
in expedient times?
complementary newspapers
slide under the door,
headines on the carpet –
last century’s
roadmap for peace,
so-named by pessimists,
zapped out of Gaza
this very day.
the very very day
I’ve woken up early
in Auckland,
New Zealand (Aotearoa)
(why bracket that ?)
I’m seeking some dogs
from a poem
made in Auckland
by a famous American.
overnight
a fog rolled in
to romanticise
the parking stations
along Viaduct Harbour.
I second-guess
today’s poetry class –
do you think of yourself
as an ‘Australian’ poet ?
a student will ask.
lucky or unlucky
to be born wherever it is,
some place where
peaceniks aren’t welcome
and, if foreign, deported.
where drinking water
falls from the taps
like rain once fell
from the sky.
let’s ask the peacenik
what he knows
about weapons.
where shrill environmentalists
run very quiet museums.
it confounds me
to come from there,
to have, simply,
been born there –
why not France ?
I yelled, at ten.
why not Italy ?
at forty-five.
why not Scotland, Mum ?
let’s ask the environmentalist
what he knows about dust,
about bell jars,
about zinc black sands
under green volcanic cones.
can I imagine
where I’m heading,
where I’ll end up
with this pocket-sized map
and Skytower, my landmark.
I dream my plate tectonics
to the south,
where I float
like a great big
imperspicuous slab
on these immense
asthenospheres,
I climb up crust collisions,
hoping not to drop
tontouta airport – funny-vowelled new zealanders
are greeted with small gifts of sun-block cream
kowekara – everyone is welcome
cyclone rewa pre-alerts noumea
across in sydney armchair agitators continue slinging offagainst the frenchignoring
american revelations of secret pacific tests as late as 1991 & “radiation experiments” – furtively feeding selected citizens plutonium
here americans(especially black americans) are remembered affectionately –
the ruins of bridges built for WWII pointed out on sightseeing tours
to the madeleine & pastis rivers
cyclone rewa followsthe little cyclone knocking down the big polynesian statue,
carved guardian of the hotel swimming pool
breezes are winds caught by the swiftest windsurfers contesting imagined leviathans
placid baie des citrons – stonefish leave the lagoon as soon as the sun lights the sea
in which poodles swim with madames who don’t but float with kickboards flippers goggles bathing caps like children
in misty clouds
a dramatic mountain range scraped into beauty by nickel mining,
west coast – all black sand red sea
yaté-goro – out on an outcrop a totem prevents shark attack
on shorethe citrus-sweet smell of crushed niaoli leaves
manioctarogreen papaya yamgreen coconutvanilla hibiscusorchid poincianaoleander
wood-panelled buses’ music booming the pilou beat zoom round the bays
the pilou-pilou – trance inducing dance the kanaké don’t perform commercially
beachside le snack pilou-pilou sells frites & saucissons
a successfully colonised island –
the jogging cycling army navy boys strike memorable poses at dusk – pontoon silhouettes
at the zam-zam store – tin walls striped red and blue
& savah supermarché – tinned euro food & heat-ruined wines
jean-marie tjibaou’s university – a slow construction,
as slow as independence
This poem first appeared in Pam Brown’s collection 50-50 (Little Esther, 1997)
the millennium train whips past the tollway to the Harbour Bridge
CHANGE GIVENCHANGE GIVENAUTO COINS ONLY in bright orange against a saxe blue sky.
the gigantic matchsticks sculpture, one burnt, one phosphorus red and ready, jutting up from a closely trimmed mound of couch.
a bronze frieze in capital letters, on the corner of the NSW Art Gallery – CHRISTOPHER WREN, (old cosmopolitan), (Thomas) GAINSBOROUGH – flashes by, seventeenth and eighteenth century ghosts, glimpsed like brief suggestions, or notes,
as I enter the drab tunnel towards Martin Place
on my way to advance automation, to sort a set of bookbinding cards
(discard,edit,orkeep, according,of course, to a method) cards detailed with pencilled handwriting, traces of colleagues now moved on. I remember most of them,
more,I remember their memos,
circulated notes – our names listed, stapled to a corner,
memo read,name ticked,then passed along to the next name – pre-email, and computers then exclusive to data, the binding card mimicking book spines, a card index the instrument of record.
the train squeals into Redfern, I emerge from the dim light deep under the city to see the saxe blue sky look smoggier, pale grey-brown on the horizon, from here, in the inner west, the way I walk to work,
the block – the aboriginal housing co-operative – demolished, gone. another set of glimpses, whisps, traces of people nowmoved on. on this frosty thursday morning
only a small group of revenants warming up around a smoking 44-gallon drum.
Pam Brown has published fourteen books and five chapbooks of poetry and prose. Dear Deliria (Salt, 2003) is her most recent collection. She is a contributing editor to the U.S.-based annual of poetry and aesthetics, Fulcrum, and associate editor of Jacket magazine. She lives in Sydney.
(thursday morning)