Selected poems
Paris Theatre, a vignette
Pink sharp Paris, antic clown on Liverpool and Wentworth
Festooned with spangled flags and vaudeville shrieks
Your falsetto smile turned on nightly a show time
Of light bulb teeth strung out across peeling stucco cheeks.
Under art deco parapets drawn by Walter Burley Griffin
You sat, a leaky pontoon of kulturkampf and queer anarchy
Once loosed a radfem brigade sans brassière in proud array
Arms locked, traffic stopped they smashed the patriarchy.
In the dress circle silent Spanish cinema all blood beehive tragic
Plonked by the box office below was Boofhead pop art magic;
Plays pulled off disappearing tricks with old time beliefs
Till broadened minds slipped out of skulls giddy with relief.
Across the street the Emden gun mounted on fallen sailors
Takes aim at the pierced nipple and leather strap places;
Its barrel is shrapnel-nicked, the weapon has been shot!
One day none will hit or hurt or cower before jailors.
Now you are missing like Jill Gamblin and Chris Flannery
Relegated by the serpentine marble of the smooth Connaught
A new order spire in praise of celebrity and what can be bought;
Gravity is stood up to goosestep over utopian geometry.
Ormiston Gorge Revelation Cycle 1985
Wheels within wheels reeling in stubborn space
Spokes scythe blond stubble along highway shoulder;
Quartzite walls open and the cliffs whisper
'The Messenger you seek suddenly appears
Who will endure that coming furnace day?'
Rest in late afternoon silence, the vision quest in flight
Red ramparts attenuate to pink mauve in muted light;
Only gold could slake the Depression fever of Lewis Lasseter
Lead to an alchemy of empty jam tins and broken beer bottles
Fibula and femur disjoint, wrecked on iron pyrite reefs.
Eucalyptus papuana may prefigure the coming of Europeans
Ghost gums arc in the canyon like neurones firing manic flesh;
Everything bends to albino in this city of pressure and dust
Thirst-flogged corkwood branch twisted to gnarly lightning.
MacDonnell Range uncoils to buttress the immense blue
Sky stooping to raise the broken, spinning world;
N'Dhala Gorge is crusted in grey lichen and yellow ochre
Hugh River is a red-tail black cockatoo preening place.
At Ellery Big Hole bloodwood budcaps open at dawn
Flotsam anther oracle sailing on mica-fleck schist glitter
Slow yawn of froth retraces glacial scouring, stones murmur
'Woe to those who put hard for soft, sweet for bitter'.
Still, alone, far from mad-crowd coast humidity
Clairvoyant light desiccates then resolves memory;
Rwetyepme reclines, Albert Namatjira's purple nude
Fecund belly, round thighs drawn up against the breeze —
Mount Sonder is lying down in ruby dock and prickly acacia.
The gorge breaches here, striped spine undulate in desert sand
Pied butcher