2023-4

After singing Karin’s god.
A function of stupid reasons to be mad.
A small cherished decision making process.
An incense shop.
A function of walking the city.
A stent of critical ability.
A function of the purple haze incense.
And can I grant it to you twice.
And do you know right from wrong.
And did you read what I read.
And was it an insect or worse.
And can I think that was it your abilities or worse.
And why do we read when it’s worse.
An inheritance is what we want to keep.
A piece of fabric in the shape of a cube.
A single memory.
A musician does.
A way out of the wicked problem.
A discrete series of angles forming an alienated heart.
A letter written whether or not you can read.
A trickster, in the form of a triangle, in the form of birds.
The roots of a tree and its branches.

Above the humming water under the pavement the movement on the dark stage of doom in the form in the movement in the stream of light from the sun, moon, streetlights, from lygon street flooding, in the bubble that surrounds us, then I walk back to the party into the real park when the suburban wind coils so subterranean water did hum, like the bubble that surrounded me grew in a recursive sense, the circles around us and the annual flower, a rosy thirst, a group turning into a cycle or a bubble.
The sundial slant, logical like a waterfall from a green pool with fish and tourists belonging, at 6 PM instead walking the nautilus spiral in the town square. I wrote for her whether or not she could read, the future took each exacting cue from the past, discrete, so it was all by itself.
The rushing water under bricks, unfinishing moon’s gravity wholly a series of toothy stars, what’s behind us, walking the road back in a circle or cycle to the place where it had finished before that starts when it’s set to.

It is what we want to keep. It can be intangible or a piece of fabric in the shape of a cube, containing a single spelling system written in the space of a composition. If you do what a musician does, there’s a way out of your wicked problem, encoded forwards, backwards and even in your discrete series of angles forming an alienated heart, written whether or not you can read, or are just waiting all by yourself. The trickster, in the form of a triangle, in the form of birds; in front of your eyes; and the roots of a tree and its branches. My trickster friend is counting every leaf and its branches and I come from the roots, so yeah, my roots come from you, your roots come from my tree, my branches come from the tree’s roots, and the tree is growing as well; drinking water under this stage, under which is this ground, above the water. The tree reaches to switch on all of the lights. It revealed that the set has got a piano, and a double bed, which are in a dark room made of painted panels not forever in the dark; above is the sun, the moon, the stars, and the post-modern streetlights, the branches reaching out for light above this roof above life.

The city lights get me every time, and I want to tell you why, but if it cannot be spoken, it cannot be heard, the tree keeps on turning towards the city, if it cannot be heard, it cannot be said, you can’t sing it, you can’t write about the tree, the stars, and for the city who cannot read or write whether or not it is what you love.

I had a home it’s really mine to keep - of all the moments I see and hear it, I pray that moonlike waning keeps frozen! Sing about yourself, while I do not speak. Forgot I have put it in my pocket. Haloed and forever I will do it.



Drawing of a basket of tiny kittens:

ornate light stung so i’m told, painted light moved in reverse she moved on to sweet rosemary on descent - yet maybe on delay, you trust a playwright and trust a kitten’s song in snugly dashed gold paint.

ate sweetly so biased my descent from a higher background of pews arranged in the round, in the centre is a playwright, and a kitten, and oat milk in a jug ready made for a good audience



dreams that we were
listening to
in the black hole
in the blue home screen
which screamed
it’s got something to do with the truth
i got to paint, paint you
And dirt versus doggerel

you know i’m living in your mind
surface level shit crass, sent, like harassing someone you love
explicit bounding
these days
i don’t like knowing all of it and this stuff can
be rude
it’s a lot of work to say, engage and be explicit
and then,
you fail any way
and then.

thats the good dirt
like i like turning to
and turning for
a faked phrase
what passes.
what time it is where it was asking
do you like me
the honest dirt of where it is was the spirits voices passing days were still like




1. Josie

The meme detritus that had washed up in my brain to make my cat sit in a square of masking tape is long ago at the time of writing, these days we’d see a TikTok or AI post about it.

It was very very very cold, I had my thermal underwear on, but these hadn’t been washed because I didn’t know how to use the ancient washing machine in the house. Much later it would break down and fill up with black rank water, I thought mosquitos might breed in it and it sat there until the house was demolished even later.

Josie was alright, she was happy wandering around in the garden that afternoon in the cold sunlight, poking at long grass and sitting in the breeze; I felt that cats should be outside like it wasn’t right to lock them in. She was so happy in the garden; I saw a meme on instagram that said if you taped a square to the floor, a cat would sit in it. I couldn’t quite believe what I was doing but I got some masking tape and sort of in a low-effort way, taped a square to my bedroom floor to see if Josie would sit in it. She looked at it but didn’t sit in it.

She seemed happy later, she stuck her leg out like another meme I saw and I couldn’t quite believe it, had (they) told her to do that? How had they done this? With a brain chip? Hypnosis? I wasn’t quite ready to believe they were reading my mind, I wasn’t thinking clearly of course.

Josie was used to living in the abandoned house without any one to care for her, and by then so was I. She was quite old but I thought she’d live forever, but when she was sleeping sometimes I worried she’d pass away without me looking and I’d walk up to her and put my hand on her to pat her, and she’d be dead. This never happened, she was quite alright for a long time.

Eventually I caught Josie sitting in the square but it didn’t feel genuine, like she was sitting there so casually it couldn’t possibly be intentional so I pulled up the tape and she came and sat next to me cuddled against my leg and we spent the evening comfortably with me reading memes from (them) and wondering what they meant.

Irene had posted another song I didn’t quite understand, and I knew at the time that the free association was leading to a lot of spam and gibberish in my psyche, but couldn’t quite escape it, like it was needed for something, whatever it could be I suspected it was to give me a thicker skin and sense of humour.
These were certainly needed.

My mum came to my house and took a bunch of laundry back to her place a lot later, so I’m not sure how I had any clean clothes to wear - maybe I didn’t - but at the time, it felt like floating down a beautiful blue river underground, even with the detritus, I took poetry class, the Ted Hughes poem about the caged panther makes me think now of house cats, women, Sylvia herself.

There wasn’t a cat flap so I let her outside during the day and inside at night. She slept on my bed. I wouldn’t let her in at first, because I thought she was a boy and smelled bad, but that was just my imagination. I fed her out of the cat food tins and deeper in my illness, I fed her bikkies and and egg, but cats need meat so when I got better I stopped feeding her eggs and fed her meat instead. I wonder who looked after her when I was in hospital? I think she was kept at my parents’ house.

Whenever I came back to the house after going out Josie would come running up with me to the front gate, we’d go inside together and I’d feed her. This routine lasted for some years after the illness struck me.