Two booklets

My Lightweight Intentions was first published in Cambridge, U.K. by John Kinsella's imprint Folio (Salt) in 1998. Never-Never Books reprints this 23 page C5 sized chapbook of poems from the late 1990s with a cover photo that I took in the Graffiti Tunnel at Sydney University in late February this year. Here's a sample poem.

 This & That
  (I cite myself)

Resting like a relic
   in a field of meaning -
push the rocks around
           for transformation -
gravel rash, scab, scar,
   all
 factors that
fall squarely.
                  (like that)

those well-known codes -
  public-private continuum -
a surveyor's tripod clacks -
    the laneway, reduced
& framed,
is picturesque -
            even the rubbish
              appears artificial.

casual citations
     accumulate,
ballooning
   empirical tactics -
        o no        it's
an index of anecdote

the hypermarket
    surveillance camera
       attempts its capture -
my nearly-beautiful
            every dream,
my artificial memory
                        daily.

disease, elusive entity,
  slithers.
pale gloved hands,
yet HIV negative.
  the milky
    ampoule's contents
        swallowed -
waste management, the nightclub.

sleepless in a townhouse,
hours of
             zonelessness.
  (like this)

Peel Me A Zibibbo is a group of recent poems - five poems written for friends. It's a 14 page C5 sized chapbook. Here's the title poem -

 Peel me a zibibbo

I could go
              in any direction 
but it's best that        here and now
     I remain lesbian,
            keep my vanishing cream
  sealed.
                           I'll go south       
   eventually
                    to  follow the sheen
          of your signals, 
                             in the meantime
     my problem's       like        how to
              design a wall didact -
   serif or not's 
                    a big decision

                  *    
     
                      it's October so
    the bogong moths
                             are back
and the koels     - the October 
                       crack of dawn racket - 
         are back again too,
mauve jacaranda petals
         are stuck 
    on the windscreen wipers rubber

                  *


by now        the wall text task
             is impossible -  
                  application decreasing, 
                        attention span diminishing   -
             transparency       an aim,
     how coded the coding

                   *

imperfection in kindness 
              comes with the void,                        
   you need to
        choose 
 the 'I'm feeling lucky' google option

                  *

drinking in the cemetery
          sounds like an early
   Nick Cave song
but it's
          something-to-do,
                         it's also the subject
       of  Paddy Fordham's
                                drawing

                    *

should I start carrying
       my books
                in clear plastic bags
inside 
       my polyester document bag,
is this a solution ?
             16° centigrade 
             95% humidity
  what a precipitate place 

                       *


        shouting Shakespeare aloud
     to the sea
           in Surfers' Paradise 
   in 1964      
            after hurling your body down
   fine off-white sand dunes.
now it's 2006
     you're experiencing thanatos
 high up on a Seidler balcony.
          if you are in doubt
                  (slurp over drinks)
      what gives the false poet 
                            such confidence ?

                        *                        

awake and refreshed
               tho with nothing on the page
     
                        *

             John T phones -
this cloudy gloomy 
                        early summer day
      is         'like the fifties'   he says.   
every day ? 
            miserable childhood ?  
photographic weather memory 
       à la recherche du temps inclément

                       *

I was reading
         about the sweet potato farmers
                                 of Osaka
     living such long lives - 
                      nonogenarians, centogenarians -
when Kurt called in with his new book
                               Hyper Taiwan 
        Taiwan    -     it's  'sweet potato island'

hi Kurt,                                    hi John T,
      hi Nick,   Paddy,           hi Shakespeare,
                peel me a zibibbo 
                                        would you,
     one of you guys ?

Never-Never Books PO Box 55 Rose Bay NSW 2029 Australia

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