Dry tropics

every minute counts

four lines a day
snap frozen

*

Lorine Niedecker,
what would she have to say
(‘pick up that bucket’)

*

my brief career
as a shopkeeper
kaput

my new life
begins,
tending the demented

*

exit gaps stuffed
with strips of newspaper
against the western chill

locally
‘chill factor’
has become
‘feels like’

*

in a pastoral
regeneration,
blackened eucalypts
might dance

for me, it’s useless
imagining
a treeless plain,
then describing it

continually changing landscapes
are way too much

sickly yellowing weeds,
bogged gullies,
cracking surfaces

pesticides
ruining pristine reefs
and so on

*

the wind gusts furiously,
the verandah lattice
blown from its frame

like living
in a light house

* * * * * * * * * * * * * *

raise the blinds
turn up
that medina music,
start keening now

*

Twenty+ Ways to Teach Poetry
Without Comprehension Questions

and

Tristan Tzara
To Make A Dadaist Poem

preparations for the poetry class

*

dinner out
at the Renee Geyer cabaret,
neon turning blonde hair pink

warm cocktails
in a harbour bar
the old beauty
of an autumn evening

*

in a gadda da vida
and other stormy music

*

a million droplets,
influenza

*

world gone somewhere,
dry tropics

*

in Bangalow
revisiting the site
of my truck crash

a new shop
has been built
in the ditch

*

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