In order to live

I think
in order to live
you must learn to hate on life.

This is the crucifixion

or annihilation
of the Buddha.

The Whitsundays:
the islands,
the sun
- the world a crystal

bar the stings

for the world
yet knows
torture.

Campfires
- mates and stories and love -
are crystals too

but they blight
as we rot then die then rot.

It's not that love ain't a thing.
It's that love
ain't found in life
but despite it

by the naked nothingness
that's you

on that cross,
in that cave

with no one left to blame.

Our ancestors blamed The Spirits,
our grandfolk blamed The Jew,
we blame Trump;
bogeymen everywhere.
You've held your breath
for campfires
and islands in the sun.

But hanging off that crucifix,
it all seems such a farce;
you begin to hate on life

and breathe a bit
and feel
a little
free.

New York

New York,
I hit Time's Square
and Central Park;
I hit the blaze beneath
your ferocious ego.

And then,
New York,
I met with your nakedness.
I saw the tears that poured
down the sides
of your scars.
They cut deep in a concrete

that'd stood so self-assured.
I glimpsed your grief
and nakedness,
New York.

Passing what was left,
I thought the New World
and history,
I thought the rain.
I thought the subway,
the people,
the people who'd chosen to fall out the sky
to die
rather than be burnt alive.

New York,
I saw your nakedness
and stripped robes of pride
laid out
in the form of holes in the ground

that tried to make space for mourning.
Steel had risen here,
had waited for the day of nakedness.

New York,
we all arrive at the nakedness.
Some, through beaten, burning towers
sinking dust
through the narratives of life.

New York,
I walked Broadway
and couldn't find the words to work you out:
too large to fit an idea.

But when I saw your nakedness
- two holes in the ground,
the names of the dead -
I figured you're but human.

And now,
New York
- as large
as the rest of the world -
you carry your wound
for all the world to see
since your towers fell
to graves in the ground

and the nakedness came
in a way
it's never meant
to come.

To deal with devils

To deal with devils
or deal with silence,
to blind your eyes
or view the violence.

To chase approval
or meet with fate,
to limit hurt
or hold the weight.


To limp along
or blow your cover,
to bow and beg
or rise with hunger.


To sell a brand
or build your Zion,
to plead with lovers
or hunt the lion.

The hardest thing

The hardest thing
to accept about death
is sensing it takes
more than a lifetime
to grow up.

Art might be

Art
might be
the evidence of
god.

To explain art
is to kill it.
To live behind it
is to know the only side
that's not worth knowing.


Art
might be
the evidence of
god.


Both are felt
in cracks between
lust and sleep,
pain and numbness.


Both
are breathed in
but not exhaled.


Both are the jist
of something else
and the jist itself.


Both sound
like one another
but never like themselves.


Neither is literal,
neither is metaphor
for neither
is anything at all.


Both
are just dumb ideas
like life's a dumb idea
- at least in the absence of death.
Death
might be
the evidence of
life.


Art
might be
the evidence of
god.
For if it all made sense,
we wouldn't sketch
or curse the sky.


Is eating toast
or breaking an arm
artistic?
To clean a shoe:
is that artistic?
Art
might be
the evidence of
god
when we're cleaning shoes
for the feet of
god


whether god exists
or not.


For neither, really,
does art exist.


Art
might be
the evidence of
god
for we talk of art as if we can,
as if art's an actual thing


- we feel it, though;
we sense it's there


and sense it
might be evidence of
something else,
too.

Smoking a ciggy

Smoking a ciggy

atop a Saint Petersburg roof in summer,

tonight’s best friends are beside me

—our rucksacks sharing a room a few streets down.

Cathedrals stretch towards a sunset

that just can’t get itself to pierce the day.

But just now,

at this very moment,

my chest begins to ache.

This is old news

—the doctor back in Adelaide said it’s nothing;

said it’s just a chronic strain and not a sick heart.

But sometimes the gut

knows more than the doc.

I know, too, that my grandmother’s sick heart

took her before she had the chance to feel

my own beat.

Yet whether or not I’m really dying sooner than I’d like

or the body’s simply reminding me

that either way I’m dying

one day,

it’s not a heartbreaking kind of prompt.

More than anything

it’s just a reminder to live

whilst alive

as I chance these ciggies                 

atop a Petersburg roof

with tonight’s best friends beside me.

Don't talk

Don't talk of gender
or of sex.
Don't talk of science
at all events.

Don't talk of him.
Don't talk of me.
Don't stand for
masculinity.

Don't talk ideas.
Don't ask for proof.
Don't be so brash
to ask for truth.

Don't talk of drugs
or family.
Just bark the word
"Equality!"

Don't talk free speech
or liberty.
Just bark the word
"Diversity!"

Don't talk about
South Africa.
You shut your mouth!
Don't act bizarre.

Don't talk about
the media
or Marxist
academia.

Don't think it through.
Don't be that chump.
Just sing along
to "I hate Trump!"

Just do what you're
supposed to do.
You know the drill.
There is no you.

There is no God.
There was no Fall.
In fact, you'd best
not talk at all.