If it's the whiff of homemade soup in my sleep,
Or the sprays of taupe orchids that line the way.
If it's lazy cloudless days on a straw mat with Milo,
Or Jobim at some absurd hour on Sunday mornings.
If it's the frequent insanity occurring simultaneously in 3 rooms,
Perhaps even the sanctuary of one's own bath tub.
If it's hours around the dining table devouring someone else's stories,
Or legs dangling from the granite counter.
I'd say the wintery nights huddled in one bed watching b-grade films,
And summer evenings with lychees and sparkling wine.

I see it in your eyes
The pain and the effort to conceal.
The magnitude of your heart
Leaves me quite lost.
Your smile,
Such a rarity,
Has shown me unclouded content.

She sometimes smirked at the cruelty of it all.
For he came, and just as quickly, went away.
He spoke of a surprise,
And for months she waited until she slowly forgot.
Like the predictable twist in all big screen stories,
He delivered the surprise in just one line.

Away she will fly
Aware of the absurdity of it all.
Chasing the reason,
A satisfactory answer for this sandcastle.

She remembers:
Dull winter juxtaposed with eyes that sparkled for the first time in years.
The sporadic rain had made her hair clump with dampness,
The wine started a glow that revealed something she thought had grown dim with the lack of stimuli.
And days later he was gone.
Leaving a torn piece of paper, and no promises.

Of school hall recitals, and musty smells.
Of creaking well-worn timber floors
Upon which nervous eyes wander from time to time.

Grand Salvo
The Carlton Courthouse
12-11-2002

Blocky crochet arrangements,
Naive textures,
The clarinet player who didn't count his rests.
There was a soothing, sometimes tingling sense of calm
As he so unwittingly charmed his audience.
For me it was the dissonance of seconds,
A beautiful voice
Of simplicity and burrowed truths.

See gig pics

A day of anti-pasto
Of chillied mussels and evil thoughts.

Walking the streets I was mad with thirst.
I saw the face smiling at me from across the street,
A genuine smile, of genuine gladness.
The unusual niceties revealed strained affairs,
I drove off huffing.

Lazy. I’ve been slack
With phone calls, emails, in stance, with my bedroom.
Inertia – like a sleepy cloud fogging up my train of thought.
Inactivity – a likely consequence of the above.

Bored. A result of overkill.
Ubiquity – of gaudy prints, pastels, and a part of every blah-trendy 20-something’s assemble.
All I want are red ballet shoes.
I don’t dance but I can prance.

A week of piercing irritability.
Undisguised frowns, silent dinners.
We’ve sat side by side,
Digesting the heaviness of the day.