Boogaloo down Broadway

 

Over the river

 

A rusty new sky

Being birthed

Over sleepy silhouettes

But I’m not sleeping

Oh no

I am moving towards you

Making my way back

To you

To the place where light

Dances

And long shadows conceal

To reveal

To the streets that

Vibrate

Underfoot

And the lines that stretch upwards

Towards convergence

Where green comes in sharp bursts

And the light of beauty

Duels playfully

With crass neon seductions

That never sleep

And I am not sleeping

No

I am making my way back

To you.

 

 

 

Words and images are my own.

 

©2018

Slow train to dawn

 

 

The storm eaters

 

The guilty moment hanged

Suspension before the tempest

Sweet anticipation in high humidity

No sound

But ragged breath

No sound

But insects banging tiny

Heads on window panes

Distant buzzing

Unregarded

The slow tracking of a limb

Increased heartrates

Uncurtained midnight

Sky

Breaks.

 

 

Words and image are my own.

 

©2018

Fire #3

 

 

 

Alpine Ash

 

Fire brought the light

And burned down the house

That was ever the deal

Sometimes, that which drives back shadows

Sets the curtains alight

Its all consuming nature is an ever-present threat

However

Fire can also temper steel

When she came, she set a bushfire in my mind

That tore through my body and soul but

Left me standing

Stronger than before

 

There’s a type of tree – back home

With seeds like stones

That can only open when the raging flames

Reach the canopy

It takes a literal conflagration to achieve germination

Throwing out life

Into the midst of utter devastation

We two are like that tree

Finding new ways to live

As everything around us withers

And dies.

 

 

Words and image are my own.

 

©2017

 

 

Burns them black

 

 

 

Words and image are my own.

 

©2017

Lineman

 

 

The song in the wires

 

We lay entangled

Throats dry as lime kilns

Fathomless emotions

Pressing on our forms

Physically spent

But minds electric

Charged beyond capacity

Like a new and illicit love that

Burns through a telephone line

No taint of guilt

No dirty shame

We are birds on wires

Humming notes on the wind

A perfect two part harmony

Our song of belonging.

 

 

©2017

Pets

 

From ashes

 

This bushfire that has engulfed us

Continues inexorably to spread

Now almost everything from our before time

Has been consumed

Reduced to a blanket of fine ash

Ready for the first stiff breeze to scatter it

And still these wild flames seek more fuel

Soon even my country will be gone

And all whom I have known

Ash in the wind

This is what the Phoenix knew

To seize your heart’s desire

You must walk naked into fire

You must be purged of every old disappointment

And systemic failure

Every foolish choice

Every clinging mistake

You must burn the old skin clean

Only then can you step into your new life

And make dream flesh.

 

©2017

The unforgettable fire

 

 

 

Flammable

 

 

Did I choose?

Was there choice?

I looked up and you were there

Like you’d always been

And we just continued on

With that life, we’d never lived

I discovered your hand in mine

And couldn’t see the join

Where I stopped and you began

So I just kept walking

‘till you asked me to lie down beside you

With a book of matches

And a gas can

We never sleep

We just die over and over

Of exhaustion

And third-degree burns.

 

 

 

 

Words and image are my own.

 

©2016

Fire #2

 

 

 

How long can we burn

Before we’re consumed?

How many hot-breathed words

Until our ears become singed?

Every night as the bonfire blooms

I brand you with searing fingers

You blister me with flaming tongue

Liquid fire like lava

Gasoline to the flames

In the smallest hours

Bright embers dance above our bed

Smoke blurring the corners of the ceiling

If a tiny atom, broken open

Can unleash the sun

Then two imperfect bodies

Can bring the firestorm

Each conflagration ends the world

And every morning it’s born anew.

 

 

Words and image are my own.

©2016