Syzygy

Syzygy

Syzygy

Syzygy


1   Apprehension


And how did you feel
the surface too close
and the flappers fizzing
at your tender
and vulnerable
                        feet
loaded with misgivings?
Swift overload catapulting
recrimination
the largess culminating
cinema papers boys-own-annual-ing
from post office to mailbox
and bicycle-clip braces
on the maligned bull terrier’s
teeth: an island of green
reticulated sucked into the soft pink
of the suburb, insurmountable the ratepayer’s
anguish and bravado!  the house a kraken
or bathysphere undercutting the plane,
adjunct to surface, one dimensional
suction. O fear ripples evading
sonar buoys Blue Gum Lake
receding as bores suck effluent
from beneath the arses of ducks.
Paperbarks turn black
water soils over
banks of sodden bread
and soft drink cans
this is popular viewing
medium small frame minutiae
chronic screen or inhabited pasture,
pointillist and contentious
cartooning serious ineptitudes
hatchback unravelling a bend
the lock-stock
barrelling it into sticky drink
at the bottom of the can: sure,
we feel strung up and depleted — light
even heavy and darkness uplifting,
necessitating remission into screaming
as the engine revs the flywheel
seems not to move dear o dear
love’s texts spread haphazardly over the bucket
seats — and don’t we know
they’re braggarts! denying fusion
and invading asteroids, deploying
consumables and calling
it art.



2   Fallout


A refugee from contention I load
stills into the projector
taking the negative impression
adjuncting
expression prising anger
out of its folds
the damage budding retentive
small experiment releasing heat:
remember looting these impressions?
machinery expressive and light-
conscious love scarifying poise
the tractor rocketing the clods of loamy earth
bootlegging frustration mudbrick and fencewire
circular-saws threatening Robert Frosts
and doorpost jamming two years too old
and rotting, the sun orange plastic,
perfect, the film was black
and white and the sheep gurgling
hysterically.


3   Self-regard


-ing homonculous metals chambers
tinfoiling exclusions like humidicribs
wheeling slick asphalt deletions
and stripping film, dust water licking
axminster carpet spreadsheets — what shows
in the headlights or pinheaded
spotlight? Crunch. Synthetic victims.
And the frogs croak politely
in their ditches. HALT! Good year
wet weather halts the death of a zebra
just outside a butcher’s shop. Can’t read the signs
good who gives a damn anyway?
Needed, inquire within: good management
and sensible market indicators.
Those who leave anything up to description
need not remote opinions. Morality
stinks, we keep it in buckets.



4   When the flappers tickle your fancy


opposing needs, priming pellegra
with plastic cement like jelly rubber
singing aging movies, tall tales lugging drabness
out of forums: humitrophic, water glass
or sundial gas-bagging in the shade, Ah
such is fame passing the time. The car comes.
A stretch in tails. Silk doors predella
adjuncting talent AND the driver. Let us in!
Take us entire rhomboidal all and Oolala
susurrous through disconnexion, baffling
sibilance. O my flappers, what a team we make!
And the planets co-habitate and read life
impression, you have your strict
and your lax, the cups drink too much
and the television in the back of the limo
is stuck on the same channel. The driver
is sucking himself. Take no notice.
You are my family he splurges: 
executors     guardians     trustees
receivers     inheritors
good sides half backs
flankers absorbers potentates
contrivers emissaries
agitators incarnations
lovers leaping onto the tired pile 
of my flesh.



5   The Cane Cutter


Reflex take a breath.   (   )    A snake
operates amongst rough cane-cutter’s crystalline sweat.
A particle overload.
Heavy rain bearing down
palpitating trifolate with sun and cane
no rainbow
makes an appearance.
Earthy very earthy. Miasma
camouflaged mud takes all takers
and throws back a marsh of fences.
They beg for tariffs. They like restrictions.
In the highlands water is lightning
gaping press-down and half bas-relief.
Turbine churn-out comes down
from highlife where the air is heady.
No fireflies there. Dowsed and riddled
deep deep south roots dry the bone-black
subterranean streams, raddled shapes forking azurine
on meeting archaeological light, spent swarming
the traps, for this is Ground Zero Warholing
in cyclone territory, zoning the sirens
equivocating hot dogs and pies mushrooms
pushed to the side of the plate: cadillacs
racketing Monroe hubcaps
currency cut like love
on a breezy day, hot air concentrating
in the sewers.



6   Life-driver


Placating pit swimmers
the bone mill splurgers
credit cards bursting middle-class prognosis
dialectic good will and science
is upon us bursting prognosis
good will tragacanth
imprint forms lotus form
the new behemoth, a signature naked
beneath the ultra-violet: rex regis
suppressing atoll watchers, spreading
blood and bone over the garden. Lair-down devil
lair down! Vrooom!



7   Subjecting objects to serious scrutiny


Draining absence as blue
trance stelazine melting circulars
			  restraining the abstract
			  fingerpainting	
lithium to bind
Mono Mondrian on its platform of shape:
threatening construction on its very
printed page, corrector fluid
swashbuckling first words
formatted like a river ending
in a window mouse decorating
graphic disasters
without compassion. We impose.
Macrographic-Beta-Language.
And you don’t even have to
drop names!
			  Advertising blimps
nudge traffic controllers pneumatic
in their agitating seats,
tattoos green with red tracers
running like hits. Here, disasters
falsetto screech sus. per coll.
like corporate suicide
across the polished screens.



8   The forest, the farm. a hybrid bathysphere


Lumped or polyglotted, mixing
but insistent on claustrophobic
limits, cans of repellent
stink like flypaper.
They undercut a fluid market
holding back the fragile forest,
rending tight-as-money-talk, marketeers
would cut sleepers where they stood:
Chinese whispers like nostalgia. Downburnt
the weird beast charts pressure, breath
contrivance as the water is fire:
volunteers roll back the pasture, the forest
corals and suffers. Greenhousing
the coldest waters, peepshow languishing
amongst saw-jawed lantern fish
surface molten, stripped of its cage.


9   Inflecting ambiguity / electric trains

A type of ambiguity
that carves the hissing wires
clouds volcanic on the scarp
as kids general motor it with a mania
that drives them East: surveillance
a seance partially materialising
voices from closets steel-faced
and never changing critics
like having a field day: tracks glisten
briefly like sin in its rage
cauterising
	      rugged-up patrons waiting
for concert tickets outside
the entertainment centre
as staunch pylons share goods and flashes
with cameras and country trains, not electric
but still photogenic. Dispensation
of tickets as curricles dash past
and we celebrate the past.


10   Palpable Paludal — the defence rests

Palpable cacology — admit the document —
juggling heartburn
passing paludal intoxicants
adhesives and cleansing agents
out back the hardware store
supermarket strings strummed or struck
the plastic shopping bag dissolving
or blowing up like a lung,
thick and tumorous when breath whispers
triplicate super realist on super realist
zygal chevron zippered-up
the fire-escape rusted
and decompressed — the blossom
plucked while locked
in its cloak and cap, night-fruit
copping it sweet in daylight: our bodies
botanical: facades
as the tallest poppy
accepts the flak
its tinted window reflecting
it back, carbonaceous angels
triggering sumptuous sprinklers,
the housing estates sinking
into the swamp stomping
faddish death beats
only the well-heeled speak
borrowing cultural tid-bits
repackaged    tender    taste-sensitised
suppressing the threats.



11   Deletions


Fortitude rippling cross-sense-
a-round clip-board logic
accumulating detailing Harleys
like shepherd’s calendars in the month
of January the heat was Cyrenaic and intense
displaced vermilion weathering
irregularities like windows
and quick assimilations, pique & niche,
lavender disaster soft and not in the slightest
mechanical — BUT deletion rakes
a monster making shape from less
than its constituents, well-made enigmas
propitiatory hermeneutic and well coded,
I differ camping on fault-lines highways upending
bridges siphoning rivers neuter
crushed velvet ripped from the dash,
die bobbing infra-red night sight slick like bedrock and pylons
congealed beneath town planners forgetting mud, acronym
comfortable city lazy body lay-about
the pool pretzels beer and much more: the ‘staff of life’
single tracking compression and tidiness,
an accident absorbs clumping only
for publicity: obliquity luxuriant
first class dozer drivers machining silver spray
amyl nitrate staining fingers
in tills corporate gets-ya-goin’ up and adam
furrowing nutrition and filling cavities.



12   Entropy / Flesh


Spontaneous bloodstock rattles and broods
lapping power-lifted pasture amidst
the fences — narcs and passive devourers of feed
immunising syringes. Meathood gestures gantries
and ramps while Soutine feeds love in a French
abattoir la la la B grade and trendy, rattle O three-tiered
calashes, looking brutal in the halogens, cauterising
debris up-ended white posts with red and silver
dazzlers lowering their lids, slipping on damp days
into the smell of wool and hide, mopping
placental blankets with rough tongues.
Window painting stretch addressing
ambulance and attendant starter motors
commensural commercial additives
like bolt guns stunning and electro-shock
on top of the hill beneath a liver-shaped moon
draining the blood from your nervous
system-ism, the spill-down lathering
the coronets of your contact-lenses, drainage inquiline
wearing it like a glove or
coating stomachs —  STIFFEN UP LADS! the hoi
polloi tax-evading and avoiding road-blocks 
born into banking liquids that solidify
with limb-movement, the floor
approaching rapidly: a Gnostic
logion: the fish nibbles my toes
and good it feels sovereign vessels toes & lips
divisive
hobnobbing
traipsing stainless on the whetstone    outcrop
sheep-weather-alert
or battery-bound and the wind chafing tinwalls
clocking the pulse of eggdrop and peelable wool
and udders performing ridiculous labours: supreme-O
a brand name marketable, affirmations corporate
conferring garnished parsley hints, staking
first grade glue sticks  how many shares?
brokered on the floor household cleansers
banish the addictive canvas, Ah tundra vista
the canvas captures and projects
the sky shocked and hooked
Mrs McCarthy & Mrs Brown
immobilised by Tuna fish, disaster spread
like emulsified stabilised sheen upon
Marilyn’s tender lips c/- Big Sirs: Sir
of the pigskin briefcase, brylcream quinella
stated portfolio lapses pump-action
and blood-staked, entablature
en-loading your own quizzing sense-around. Smell it!
Singing western and roto broiling I’ve hooked a big one
bone black and threatening to move
quotes like numerous grains of dry powder
centrefire monumentalised 1080
vacuuming heat-sealed trophies skins
pre-packaged mise-en-scène urging texture
out of quadrature, arc the brittle black
cuttlefish, sepia toning cinemas
flensing storage facilities, you drag
something up out of memory and into sight.
Steaming black frost cleansing sun deliciously sharp
and breakfasting on the damp patio, lush tallow
candle canopying shades and predicting a good
hard-humping sunset. Progenate policedog
physiology derived and detecting goals
evaluating hereditary from ‘weaning to slaughter’
heterozygous random carcass the beauty
collapses, Santayana might have been ugly.



13   Ripples


Streaming blue divisions, sections
of the neighbourhood, the lights of Canning Vale
ludicrous sporting brilliance rainslicks
like the MCG and gracing a stadium of cages —
Movietone ships sink and planes disperse
in black strategy, walk-on parts erotically 
developing & reproducing cryptic typologies;
passion active and unassailable, declaring
intermittently, rippling like the skin 
of persons or sulo-bins rattled by traffic,
city initiated carnivale for officers
on chilly Autumn nights ekeing out nostalgia
clumped together at the same scene long after
the bang, roadgame, cosmic microwave
background radiation as the fighter plane
sends tracers spitting into columns
of uniformly spread refugees: organisation
saves none of them.



14   Trigger


Yoke the vicious integer, sun and moon
uncomfortably syzygetic: ‘Deep Throat’
shifting consensus, plead your case
and get the hell out of here. I won’t 
listen anyway! The quadrature sets limits
AND appeals X pronto. Things don’t stick
unless they’re forced to. No couples
can sit comfortably here: rekindling
love-on-a-pier, the car humming
on a verge or aiming for the country
downwind and forgetful upending the heart
off-loading blots of anger a clock chimes
in a mall of pastiche. Trigger, I fall
collecting apogaeon multiples of disorder.



15   Landfall / The Collapse Of Beauty


Loose materials patterning sundials
at water’s edge: embracing saline
trend/’/s crystalline fatigues
-loss- myriad system
-is-ation
interest vis à vis
disintegral compendiums, oil-slick
& refuse & foam casually concocting
beneath an historic swing bridge
a couple of hours [drive fro]m Perth, up-river
skiers hacking the lower
reaches
and paddocks might appear
mostly folds of beauty
— tourists understand this! — satisfying
rare inner-city creatures marooned
passive purposeful indulgently
headlines might claim.


16   Chemical


Boom-arm pod-fed nuzzles teaming foam
out over red earth: new machines
churning chemical seas in-lateral drift-a-round
phenomenally hand-in-hand with tractors
and deranged furrows rippling
heavy clods of soil
run-off creek river sea
deranged furrowing residual
        when myth hits purchase
who wants clean food?
bulimic south anorexic mid-point
        dr  i  p-fed north
deep-inhaling flyspray
and mosquito coils
fr - ie - ze dried coffee
cleaning a particularly
stubborn stove or bad guests
from a party.



17   First Blood


Tubed out of you warm and recycled cold.
Flow impedes logic cold as stain-
less steel like a disinterested object
of beauty, sun-bathing internal solarium
blood ultra’d & raddled
re: transfusion. Dizzy float extracts
inflatables, double toxicological
cell-sized machines making repairs
restructuring walls disengaged
by injective inter-ex-change
blood money breathes
franchise fantastic voyage
efficient redistribution
for this they test. byo.
branching profusely
gaining the respect
of ambulance drivers
slamming T-bar automatics gloved
and averting, petrol-guzzling
monsters finned and beautiful
gybing through your sanguine &
unguent utterings
staunch against venomous
       ‘{Dais de l’oeil revulse}’
bathe five death on red/s: (a) disaster
guilt feud bath (h)ound letting lust sport
thirsty money-stained sucker
auspicate consanguinity
rarely colourless or violently positive
genealogy suppurating
my grandfather fell
into the offal pit: Benny’s Bonemill
       circa
1923.


18   peine forte et dure


What pleads ‘I’,
in the gloom, of
bulb-blow
& ocean-carpet
closing shore
lee & lea
to hills
a sprinkle of desquamating quartz
          sun-dank
spent
                        re-flex-ive
though who owns the fragments (?)


19   Gloat

who         lives by
      lies by
and
buy re-active blood/y
mis-fortune
assigned Con tra Dik shuns
an audience despite their buying
      him drinks
pneumatics taxonomy dialectics
      & quark of despair.



20   Feedback

Charles (O)lson
‘Not one death but memor
   ot accumulation but change, the feedback is
the   aw



21   Fume


Soil tactless infuses
dust-cradles    *    objectifies
black frost on breathing land
fuming. anger military
pro fuse    Ion deficient
upper upper    flight
developing a dislike
for ‘us’: the bulldozers
have sweet tooths & fume.


22   Float — ing


    (i)

Respond
float-ing soil
heresy
and the fog
absorbs pink-quartz
thrust-drift.



    (ii)

Tractor churns heavy
despotic bones: sheep anatomy
undering edgy discs
and salty furrows luminous
night-work
driver’s red-neck hurts.



    (iii)

Fencing wire coils
snakes complex
in gullies

crops
and wild radishes
rot.
   

  (iv)

Scour stalk-base and stubble
vast rimmed fields
charred in waves,
ash-water lapping
like gout: first rains
float.



23   Narrative


(i)   telescope: passive

Up in the hills / closer: week (end) tours
not the building you’d think
[though] they’ve made
the right moves in the foyer. The
predicate fails to leave, we assume
via adjustin gth efoca llen g th
that he’s always been (t)here! Zeiss
optics.



(ii)   the night sky might be an all day sucker

take down [to] flatlands the jigger
of nostalgia — a few slides lo-priority
& secure. they call him Kid. hey Kid
cop a load of the moon} loud in his
ear pricking with chilly air. it & the sun.
orange & blue.
his father’s hand conjoin-
ing
with an ear
left spare.


(iii)   the living planet

seeder/combine. re-building
rain-washed spreads. the water deleterious & demi.
And all they’ve got to say
Is what a wonderful vista!
Not city lights absorbing
The stars — even the moon
Looks (more) vivid. Taut.	     here
Check out sun in summer’s
				     centre
Comes the reply. I’ll bet ya!
Cannot [any] lies well in randomness?


(iv)   Expansion

lock stock and barrel
ie carrying its orbit in-
consistently.        Note: key words. access?
Proper
bucketing
they gave him.
Proper. and they’ve electrified the railway
as well.
what the hell, he drank his first wine
at communion. transfixed: Kid’s re-
call.



23   Na(rra)tive / chapelle ardente

Syz-23-key: uh oh
fetish or frou-frou
aza labels & ers on
artifize the case:
richter’s rats struggle
& quickly
give up: identify. musical casing
setted. Up up up!

Rhe
-toric plans an
invest   atations & calendars: grey
gunboats sweeping
dank rainforest rivers. patrons
of calypse & stoker
the moon drums UP tides: awash
melt-in-the-mouth} riprap.
& drawn out. ra ra ra.

isotopies
Id di
poussières
gestes
temps perdu tristan tzara
morphemic and trendy
up-
wards & categorise?

linger
mechaniser
‘senex iratus’
swiftly
sits: progression towards
a system. Yes.

Yes.

logos 
go go 
& presuppose a % of
an  *
[vraisemblance]
eschews a?

Touchy on a point
of picture & linkage = so what?
newstart with a kick
& get comfortable.

This case has potential: look,
they’ve got the drop
on you. De-
tailing
edifice &
scripture/s &
inspire-
ation:   the sun brightens
	the shell grouting
	paving the lap lap
	of motoring stretched
	waves & sandbar circumflexed
	the pillars softly set
	and sinking, coming unstuck
	on soft-served banks, upwards
	& downwind the puckered hills
	glow like the haze. A fly
	settles on a fish corpse
and dies.



23.5   Pantoum

souwester blows cold
ha ha says granma
you’ll chill to the bone
out there on the water

ha ha says granma
we gotta anyway
out there on the water
that’s where goes sun & moon
we gotta anyway
cold when it oughta be hot
that’s where goes sun & moon
burst & mix with blue

cold when it oughta be hot
we saw it in the telescope
burst and mix with blue
burnt dark like the road

we saw it in the telescope
granpa let us look
burnt dark like the road
and too close to lie



23   Lift

Ex hale and don’t re-
(in) flate
                     it’s dark
when you go out
{ing}    the fires
retract wetlands
breathe iced lakes
spoonbill & ibis
lurch-dance (in) space
{ing}     monograms
    [memory] re-
call the day, the weight
of light-lift, roll-back
sun buoyant
sienna-&-orange    luff & clouds & hills
obsessive and
manic   *    prone to out-
bursts
de rigueur
Ah! not love neat on the bus
I see {thru} your window/face
                     take
me back.



24   On

Oh ON!     loosely
never held    pivot(al) sans
       desire
on degeneration c/- object in
NO! touch me. On.


25   Urban Cross-over

Your soy-coloured teeth
moth dust skin dys
function
-al: redress:
just a question
of supply: all roads lead in,
supply: all your
working daze: shopping trolleys
con-joining
in car-
parks.   Howzat?



26   Rural Patronising

Trill & twee wagtail lift
little nervous
nell-ies
take a break
at the heart the header
moves out over good soil
rippling like radiation
an electric
storm
spiriting
up-lifts,
& the fear
of fire & need for rain.



27   Intermission

I chase a hair
over my lip
trace it
with
tongue
& shiver spine deep and
hear my insides
recoil: a glass
to the wall!



28   Reality

If it’s real it’s been photo-
graphed but not by lips
testing on recall cauterised
word(s) — slash & burn, scorched
earth realising opacity
of skin and smooth cool sight
in our hands, wounds
washed & THE LAND
never sulking.


29   Link

Speech I link. Pro-
crastinate. ‘Weialala leia’. Eh?
What did you say?
Can’t make
head nor tail.
Of it: lyric?



30:   re (con) structure ing / damage
control



(a)   Ponge c/- or à la Fahnestockß

      ah
      ‘In this undergrowth, half shade half-sun
      Who thrusts these sticks between our spokes?’


					river white burnt & scullcraft
					taunting drift downtide, down
					in the mouth & down towards
					the centrifugal drag, & towed
					& motored the sherry stained
					ramps, I cry & laugh and palpitate



& can



not right & moralise
& catastrophise & lies
out & about before sequestering
downs the spout & closes
the ment (al) gap: lash
out



			          no longer & yet
locate a shell of me like paving stones
zippy brass em[boss]-ing names
but not mine
god
willingly
the swells of pleasure lurid
& not a little jealous
of another era





				seventy miles from here
				where on lordly manors





clean hope
for forgiveness
but no more
blood below hook & rafter
becoming dirt





but
no more
cast in plaster
moulded joan   of arc     or jocaster
in revolutionary colours
caged & carved
                          biblical
red velvet fierce companions
perfect
eyes are missing
cont-
	      rol is
or has             been
dam(ag)ed:


					quartz or nacre
					lose lustre (less)
					minutiae
					packed & labelled
					analytic & rolling 
	      				     fencewire
					plugging gulleys



certain
even



               lichen covered rags
scrunched & welded
ARE dead parrots
sauve-qui-peut
    (!)


The point of impact
fabricates & inde
pend  {ates}   enances  —   a disc plough
or slave cylinder
mixing mediums
with disaster
intra-personally: saltwash,
the creeks are storming
the river
& the crops are
waterlogged — melaleuca & salt scars
collaborate in a bundesfest
discordant
visits politely
call    ING    music
out-back. the tractor				[‘wends its weary way]
no longer bushbashing
but suppurating spray
from soil, frisking
clean air
& tourists
warm in town					(as
						Uncle Gerry
						talks to Les Murray
						who compares
						Bunyah with
pasture
& a trio
of harmonists
make a go of friendship
without a tenor
providing a damn good
afternoon tea. You won’t hear
cheques bouncing here. rather
sinking sand
& cockatoos.

& yes, we can hear the shutters
a-clicking & the chortle
of buses cruising down
the town’s main street.


a stickler in a yella rain-jacket checkin’
the water troughs out in the rain
always wishing more sheep shelter
& the precise quantity & placement
of precipitate, as the tractor
sidles up to the silver fuel tank
& drinks.
this, I know. & re-
lease. the tractor is a star!
out here.


hot lead is introduced
to Crater Valley. Not True valley,
more of a deep deep creek between granite
and sandstone sweeps & high language shot & sheeted. crumble
lipping down to the York Gummed floor
& sheets split as sharp
as plough discs. of course.
For Crater Valley is also
The Valley of Foxes.
& they come, cousins & weekend hunters
& deplete.
& the need for locusts
as the third bell is raised
in its tower & God spits yellow
is begrudgingly ac-


                                                        cepted.
& earth-tear
(as) families quake
stationwagons, earth snake
deep down & ripping up



								Alien






hatchling.    old barn down
and (the) wells drained:
fresh gullies
ground thunder


groundwater thunders (complete)




despair
backstroking cross-lane or cutting the windrows
of THE childhood nightmare    I look
to the STREET
for a % -age & Age
& free (of)
tracasseries/     replete



(b)   & Ponge / Fahnestock:

        ‘As also for
grass to straw,
or to the calamus for writing
to the pipe of “inspiration”
(...and to the straw in the “cocktail”,
in the tall glass of the “long drink”)’





							&





the ‘&’ is OUR angel.



Eh, balance up
spreadsheet
& paint on the carpet,
selling out
& making my almost (self)
<clear>. Eh, SPEAK UP
with subtlety:
I’m here & your practising virtue.




Eh, SPEAK UP
I can’t hear & listen too quickly:


							he shook the box
							and could NOT
							guess the contents.



Tractor parts.
Splinters from
THAT wagon wheel.
& a copy
of






						POETRY











			M  a  r  c  h     1  9  6  6









Mary Ellen Solt: ‘Flowers In Concrete’
‘Magnificent
Aureoles
Rousing
Insensate
Grief
Oh
Long
Death
Suddenly’      #      here bottlebrush trees
drag blood out of cemeteries.