we set about writing
an experimental history
for the town in which we were born.

we collected imaginary archives
and transparent maps,

re-zoning memories
as if they were

checkpoints.

we placed Geiger meters
at the four corners of the city
and listened for the sound of

occupations,
desertions
and revolutions

but heard nothing.

we painstakingly transcribed
the testimonials of lunatics,
and used these stories as
the crux of our fluid chronology

a timeline
forming somewhere
at the back of our minds,

a Rosetta stone
remininding us:

the map will have to be
re-written

and we will be the ones
to write it.

a snow storm
on stanley street

the two things
in my mind are:

emphysema and economic rationalism

when i see you

photographing the sky

with a giant lens,

a small man
frozen
beneath
his camera.

shadowy figures
with exaggerated limps

food poisoning

prostitutes on elizabeth street

shift workers

on midnight breaks with

no one to talk to on
a sunday night.

a series of tiny canvases,
each painted
with a single word,
arrive on the doorstep
this morning.

i place one artwork
on each fingertip,
there are seven in
total.

[another
day
bleeds
inertia
between
the
sheets]

my quickly clenched fist
destroys the
prophecy

words lay scattered
before the house
like newspapers.

poetry wars
were raging
all across
the country
when i awoke
this morning.

who else would think
to use the gentle weapons
of eloquence,
assonance
and irony

than men
on the brink
of romance?

upon hearing
the news
i ran out
into the street

and began breaking
car windows
with my bare fists.

i wanted to start
a magnificent revolution
of decadence,
indulgence
and pretension

i wanted to prove
the ancient adage

that the pen
is mightier
than the sword

by stabbing out strangers’
eye balls
with my blue bic biro.

it was in the fifteen
brief minutes
just before dawn
that we made our first mistake.

you braced yourself
against the wind
in my thick grey coat

and watched the frozen smile
melting
down my face.

we had instructions
written in the only language
we could understand,
but we weren’t counting
on being beaten
to the mark.

you’d bought just enough
bruce springsteen bootlegs
to get us through the night

and maybe that delirium
of testosterone
had left us
weak and spent

or perhaps
we were never
cut out
in the first place
for
the task at hand.

dancing cheek to cheek
in an empty warehouse

the floor is the consistency
of a tidal wave.

i marvel
at the way my body
assimilates

everything you leave inside of me

like an organ transplant
like growing a new heart

made from my tissue

and yours.

If it bleeds,
it bleeds.

you thought as you
picked up the kitchen knife.

All morning long
that block of ice
could not numb the life
that throbbed so reluctantly
in your member.

Lino,
the patio,
the soft afternoon light
of Sydney in winter.
The sound of the
television
on in the other room.

You pulled the dial
around to zero
Threes times
you repeated that action
your hand a shadow
hovering over the telephone.

Ambulance, please.

37 Williams St
Kingscross.

The moment you put down
the receiver,
you brought the knife
down on yourself
as well.

The first sex change operation
ever performed in Australia.

Yes, it is urgent.

There is a woman here bleeding to death.

a flourish of tongues
scraps of dark hair
and unfamiliar train stations

six hours
separates
all of your life
before this moment
with everything about to
happen next.

a raised platform,
a succession of thuds,
that may have come from
within
your ribcage
or without.

less than one week
in the city of light
and we have already chosen
brand new names
for all our old diseases.

announcements
boom out across
the streets,
nonsensical combinations
of dada poetry
that turn passer-bys
back and forth
on the footpaths,
navigating the invisible maze
of sound in their minds.

***

we’d made paintings
that breathed in our pockets,
living capsules of pigment
to carry about
like mobile phones:
stroking, clutching
whispering to.

we’d penned multiple
sonatas for posterity,
pieced together from notes
found lying on the footpaths

our final rauschenberg homage
sculptures of invisible skin
built on the frames of our bodies.

we’d birthed
panic
the colour of kerouac,
the colour of metal

deposits
built up in our blood like silt
a reminder of
substances
we had ingested or inhaled
sometime in our childhood
and would remain with us
indefinitely.

a room ringed with braille
a ceiling of hallucinations
fours storms approaching
from each corner

a memory cached in
timelapse
between
two distracted fingers
skin that moves against itself
blind to its own touch.

floating barefoot
on a sea of driftwood
i made a promise to myself
to sell my shares
and donate
the money to charity.

there were wild horses
frolicking
with women
in white bikinis
on the shores of an ocean
that glittered like my rolex.

we could almost hear music
beneath the hum of
the generator,
you bought yourself
a set of tannoy speakers
so you could amplify
your prayers
across the beach.

by dawn
there was nothing left
but the highway
and the sea.

we had abandoned the thin
wall and the roadside
karaoke
washed up against a desperate
ocean many hours ago

on that cold road
i felt the hot breath
of a mexican woman
whispering in my ear:

i can always tell
where a man is going,
by where he’s been.

that night was the first time
we had seen rain for
thirteen years

the people knew at once that
some kind of special ceremony
had been performed

the flocks of white birds
lacing the clouds
as they circled overhead

the ebb of dark music
on the wind,
moving through air
like insence might

seemed to suggest
that something
foreign
had been summoned.

***

the ball of your palm
over my eyelids
keeps me guessing
for a whole five minutes
as to what is about
to happen next.

you tell me that
all sound
comes from silence
and
all sound
returns to silence.

my lips part softly
as you speak
i can almost taste
those quiet, desperate
words.

***

we slept flat
like sheets of rice paper
beneath a sky so full
it looked as if it might
take flight
and take us with it.

no longer in japan
we dreamt of fabric
soft enough to cushion
our desires

in our minds
strolled through markets
in downtown kyoto

searching for the perfect
kimino
to cocoon ourselves within.

her face
distorted
with laughter

the glean of light
from the dashboard

halfway between his house
and the city,
all of the roads
start to look
the same.

the sky tends to do
incredible things
behind the suicide towers
at this hour of the morning.

you always call them
ghettos in the sky
but through the hazy mist
of dawn rain,
they could almost be
ivory fingers
tickling the belly
of the clouds.

his nails were bitten down so that the tips of his fingers resembled bulbous turnips swelling up from the earth.

i pressed the barley sugar between his lips, they parted with a dry crackle, revealing the cold moist interior of his mouth. i let my hand linger there for a moment, sensing his taste buds moisten as he savoured the sugary pellet, a sweet film developing at the corners of his mouth as he sucked at the lolly.

after a moment i let my hand fall away, watching the old man relish in the onslaught of flavour, his wrinkly eyelids slinking down like a toad as he swallowed.

it should sound like a voiceover
sent back to earth
from a space station
in the future.

if you could muster
the tone
of a history book
summing up this civilisation
in a single sentence.

you would be close.

***

how would you say it

if you were to tell the story backwards

if you were to turn the words inside out

if you were left only with letters?

how would you say it

if you were to devise an entire theorem

to explain pattern and form

to account for dynamics and tempo

and then break it?

how would you say it

if you were to say nothing at all.

a whole rack
of freshly pressed
perfect suites
poisons my mind
this morining.

on the telephone
your words,
so weak,
they don’t even make it
down the receiver.

they hang like empty shoes
clinging to powerlines
by their laces,
decorating the skies
of a thousand suburbs
that i have never been through.

it always seemed
such a bittersweet
metaphor

the word
eternity

written in
chalk.