buddha is fat

our local rag surveys 5 ‘people on the street’ every day with topical or inane questions. & today they asked “should david hicks be allowed to sell his story?” of course, the popular consensus was “no way”. it appears no-one here is too concerned about the consequences of stopping stories getting out. guess that’s a slippery slope people don’t give a shit about.

in other news…um. went to see les murray read during the week. it was good; he does what he does well – i mean when he takes on ‘the land’ & gets all philosophical on it, it’s worth going on the trip with him. when i saw him afterwards i said: “we’ve (laurinda & i) been enjoying yr book”, to which he said: “well, that’s what it’s for”.

i’m gonna post a poem i wrote a while back, cos i want some kinda internet poetic dialog to get going. ron think of some comment to this – i know you will read this, so get off the rugby sites, nobody cares about the all-blacks. here (this’ll ruin my posting labels):

note-to-self

hi my name is derek last night i finished reading

the davinci code. i read it quickly & it felt great

now i will start reading something else

it feels good to read books again, to read them well. this morning

john howard appears on television, unemployment seems

to be at a very low level. john wears a child’s size seven

shoes at best. the combination of events says ‘start writing again’

(creative joy dissipated round 1992 – that’s another story)

so i start the writing again, i am going to write about sex.

all the good writers can do it

& i think i could bring my own perspective

to sex, an insecure & personal thing. yet my partner

will read my work, she is sure

to search for ‘herself’. with this thought

it is decided – i cannot write about sex. i’m fine with sex

just not the explanations. yes regression is logically bad but:

life now seems to me not philosophy, just some kind of

24-hour-convenience.

talk of convenient my friend ron lacks anonymity

& he is a haiku-hip-hop artist,

he wrote himself into my work & he is

undeniably minor, yet in a recent

email he engineered ‘bi-atch’ just for the syllabic effect.

clever in a ‘pissing in the wind’ kind of way.

the new harry potter is glowing somewhere

half-price under a chemist’s lights.

/

easterly

wrote this with direction from jen crawford / check it out:

1

you were sorta late one day & now every day. my

idle dream of holiday houses & beaches & eastern

seaboard romance becoming this bucolic nightmare.

you are the lastest person on earth at night. every

night. i prise up the floorboards. bored. three possums

have made a home there. they stare in orange.

2

muck soaked underlay; a quorum of ants

& glittered motion, several sensations

while i swing a ladder. there seems some tension

round the edge of sight as if that ever

meant the world to you. screw intuition,

just one step & then a darker few more.

the flaring marbles, the un-crying eyes

gather like smokers glancing aimlessly;

concealing purpose. they mill around, here

in the under-house & scrutinise piles

upon haystacks of mail. i fall silent.

3

a knocking at the door on high fashioning a

whirlpool of unease (most houses love a door front &

back seaside living though it’s leaving the need of doors

open as a question (time a ruptured semaphoric system too

something like salt in the air & (what is the sound of you?

you standing near the back door peering tightly over

a curtain pirouetting then with an absent stare to the grass

memory of you is like windchimes / don’t check that

digital display you know you’re unexpected every

instant (the whirlpool the scourge of literate marsupials

circling a cloistering weave (the vertical hole one shaft

of light & such a distance this desperately simple door

to freedom (imagine you a southern cop bent to the core

& me like someone urging: kick in the door / kick in the door

4

thumbs down oh common stick-insect

you’re nothing great to see,

just olive green, three inches long…

boring. & all agree.

the titan see – it rules these parts –

dwarfs most common objects.

books, ipods, & mobile-phones…ha

cringe all lesser insects!

(‘makes no sense, your queer digressions’

like, kinda what you’d say

before we met & before this time,

this night, this holiday)

but now the bugs + loamy soil

nothing if not a crux;

one forces you to look to ground

(ph a state of flux?)

5

no reason for the scared flash of light issuing

no reason for your drunken arrival no reason

for any rescue attempt / i risk your name also

know you hear it / but the lastest thing i’m seeing

it’s your billow of skirts & a ladder’s withdrawal /

hammers are everywhere these days… nails dependable

sturdy & right there & with a few taps (squeaks) i am

semi-alone under floor / my new companions / they

no longer menace me at least… are now sympathetic

to the plight / a couple of AA batteries that unites us

& so naturally, i read / the possums are helpful

bringing forth what i need / it makes sense now that

every letter is addressed to you & quite fine / ‘..love

you come rain, hail or shine…’ for example, or et cetera /

my friends & i share knowing, orange looks

for an improbable eternity

/

words written of a morning

postgraduate induction day. i am the one person with a blue star & ‘humanities’ pinned to my chest. fascinating stuff. will anyone steal my intellectual property? is that likely?

& by the way what does climate change mean for the elevation & burrowing habits of wombats in the snowy mountains? what are the hitherto unthought of links between the amount of podiatrists in australia & the pandemic of diabetes? what is the role of carbon in ensuring the stubble left after harvest can be returned to the soil with no loss of nutrients? are businesses globally valued in false terms – should the shift from a focus on production methods to services be more fully recognised?

a couple of weeks ago in a hungover state i watched beaches. all the songs came back to me. you know the track ‘oh industry’? within the movie it served to highlight the difference between broadway & serious theatre: the theatre deals with social commentary, the evils of industry; broadway has stuff about tits. anyway, i keep humming this song & i want to learn it on guitar. strangely no-one has transcribed the tablature & posted it on the net. maybe i will have to sit down with the movie & learn. i am not good at that sort of thing.

received these books recently – menage a trois with the 21st century by Eileen Tabios. (really muscular stuff – she wrestles with female historical figures (semi-mythical?) & plays their voices off against her own, in the 21st century)

– Bejing Background by Bob Marcacci (i really like the way bob plays with rhyme & sound in his work, while not being to ‘cute’ about it)

– little chap by Pam Brown i’m reviewing for Galatea Ressurects, & you can read all about that when i’ve done it.

still, life

owning 90 degree of rosebushes & lacking
events. the first word spoken
is always a worry.

similarly a dog pisses on the mat:
laundry doubles as office-space. don’t
be sad, the dog has its own excuses.
tempers flare. people are human it only rains

once & a while.
we expect things, but (a glass column of
flying ants once formed like a poem)

beans are the one outdoor success:
screwing over carrots, pioneer-broccoli,
other things. nothing. creepers
overtake a miniature windmill,
it is good they do this. the clink
of bottle-tops then

against garbage bin it sounds sweet.
playing off the drone of planes. redback spiders
don’t trouble us now. there is
a chemical for most circumstances.

/

ars poetica

if you haven’t already, check out the poems at ars poetica, poems about poetry. one new one goes up each day & todays is by Chris Mansell.

I have one coming but it may be many months away -
the reach of this project is exponential.

time-travel

i want to travel through time. & the time travel fund can make it happen.

how, you ask?

here’s their answer:

Current scientific theory states that Time Travel may be possible, however the technology is a long way off, perhaps hundreds of years in the future. Now, assume it does become possible in say, 500 years. As with any technology, Time Travel will get less expensive as time goes on. Just as the price of a VCR has dropped to less than $70 from the several hundred dollars it cost just ten years ago, Time Travel, once it becomes feasible, will initially be very expensive yet it will become more and more economical as time goes by.

We establish a fund in current time. You make a small contribution to the fund, and in a few hundred years that small amount grows to a very large amount. From that fund, moneys will be taken and used to retrieve you, perhaps seconds after you join, perhaps even moments before your recorded death, perhaps some other point in your lifetime. Further, the fund may even pay to have you “rejuvenated” medically (assuming this is scientifically possible at that time,) and support you financially for a number of years. (Note: Retrieving you just before the moment of death is just one possible scenario, but one that would avoid any Star Trek^(TM) type paradoxes. There are an unlimited number of other possibilities, and we do not know what they will do, we can only make reasonably informed guesses.)

it’s only ten dollars. everyone do not worry if i disappear a few seconds before my death. i will be in the future.

laurinda, by caleb

perhaps,

so hypnotized
by the
obscurity
of what
he wrote
that he
took it for
profundity

/

7 today

happy birthday isaac…

“so when do i get the present?”

the cost of things these days…

1. vodka & red bull is just silly.

2. hanging clothes on the line: there must be a better way?

3. a library full of 1st yr students.