Dogs in Heat

There are bodies writhing in this heat.
It’s radiating from the ground,
The bitumen, gravel and tar are melting
The storm-water grates are steaming.

It was stagnant four months ago
The heat static and binding.
A breath released then, seemed to plummet to the ground
Now it waivers, vibrates.
Sighs are heavy, they’re loaded.

The earth is soft like wax
Heels tack across the footpath
They sway and stick
They click-click-clock.
Wolf-whistle sounds from a steel skeleton –
Here are dogs in heat.

Sydney streets deserted
The citizens lock their doors
Wait for storm to come and purge the dusty roads.

Wolves and dogs skulk through concrete trees
It is so hot we tremble
Pant and wait for night to come.

The wait set teeth on edge
Turned feline, canine, animal.
Skin, before dormant, now grows a plastic film
It encases bodies tight
Searing heat.
Plastic film stretches
Turns translucent,
It breaks.

Releases fever
I tear my leash.
Contagious
I am bitten
And dream of wild dogs.
Snagging my tights with your teeth.
We run and tumble
Reside where wild things are.

Sleep no longer
Bed-sheets drenched in sweated instinct.
We hunt and prowl the streets,
Peer through shop-front windows
Moan and howl at bodies cased in plastic
Throats are cracked and dry
Seek a tap to drip, to suck
Packs we roam for water to quench.

I see childhood under sprinklers
In the grass,
At home
The sun filters through bottlebrush
It’s hot, the garden tap drips.
It drips still now, slow on my skin.

We are waiting for the water
To pool together
Heavy on itself, clinging
Then fall in a small-distorted balloon
Released from the underside of tap
Drop.

Wolves howl and bark,
Scuffle and bite their shadows
The horizon shivers
And city convulses, heaves in its fever.

Blink through wet lashes
Mesmerised by the muddled skin
Shirt peels like a ladyfinger
We mill and dart
Here are dogs in heat.
The city is on fire, it’s ablaze.
Feet scuff and trip up gutters
It must be summer
The street is melting.

My Craft, My Destroyer - Parts i and ii

Part I

In me there are two parts,
My content
My destroyer

My content sees flowers
Defy my destroyer my craft
Shroud shift, feet lift

I see a world of glow and roses
I write meandering thick and heavy proses
They say nothing but observe the sun
The weak and idling breeze trips over lover’s face
I gaze at stars in wonder
Stars like any other

My content is face upturned and smiling
I ponder the majesty of swaying fields of tall grass.
Of small furry animals, little ducks and rainbows.
I forget I detest the outdoors
That the sun doesn’t sear my skin
Turn red, turn purple, crackle and peel.
I forget that tall grass often houses the creatures I fear most.
That I am not the outdoors type.

Part II

In me there are two parts,
My content
My destroyer

My destroyer is demon under my bed.
Drink in my head, kohl etched round my eye.
A pair of sinewy hands
To smother my content.

I write with motive,
I execute my creations
I line them up, they face the wall and I blot them out.
Destroyer is the talented craft
The one that observes the stain on your cuff
How you shake and shudder.

My destroyer is a turned shoulder against the sun.
He would let me live than die
To be arrogant enough to continue to write
Yet bleak so I’ll never read it.

The Queenscliff

Queenscliff comes churning in
The water lapping mumbling shadow
Roused by lumbering ferry’s rusted bow.

The red line rises from the shadow slips
There is rumbling and blades below
The shadow world is churning.

Disperse in streams of black and grey
Silver-scaled, finned and dripping
Nymphs claw with webbed-hand to surface

Dive and stretch
Fall back and retreat,
To ebbing pool in coppered light
Scrabble - swim - release
Queenscliff’s sun is rising.

Days I Have Been Sicker

Days I have been sicker
Back spit-bridged, face shattered into cupped hands
Listened to my organs ripping
Terrorised my insides,
Doubled over on the floor
Vomiting bile and tears
Blanched white, agonized, gaunt and afraid
Pain sent me clawing the walls, shaking and spinning, grinding teeth on hard-edged stone
Sweating and cold, tap shivers my skin bumped through my bones and I was burning.

Days I have been sicker
Days I was in bed
Days I took drugs, dazed, prescribed, immune.
I am fully grown now
But I still feel it
Ache.

Yellow peril, foot rot, drunken haze disgraced us.
Mined the young to find a youth,
Lost your mind on trips too familiar.
There have been days when I was ill but of you,
I am much sicker.

At the Docks

There is a ship
And its side has been eaten out
Beside the water
A corrugated giraffe bends its steely neck down
To suck the wound –
Absent-mindedly.
Workers in their zebra suits
Mill by the cavity
At the docks.

At the Seat of God

At the seat of God
There is a faltering breeze
Inconstant
It balances the ancient mausoleums.

Generations here
We celebrate our linear
In concrete and marble.
Gold letters
And dusty portraits
Of gold ancestors
And their dusty counterparts

God sits here
Perched on the edge of mountain
It drops into the sea
Away
I sit on his left side –
The right is always taken.

We admire the view,
The dust
And breathe in the concrete and marble
My blood tethers me
Here on this rock
Floating in the sea
Like pumice
On the left hand of God –
His palm
We sit.