RACH 3 DRAFT1

(a long performance poem - undergoing draft - with a view to read as spoken accompaniment to RAC 3 Rachmaninov Piano Concert No.3)

here in this sound
we sit and glare
can you feel the cacophony
the nipple-poking fancy

bold and hard at the corporate sunset of us
in the incessant blue of clouds
a next-of-kin confession
a sirus fantasy
and we fly
alone, together, us
you
yeah you
and me
us

dig these fucking notes in d minor
punching the side of my face
like tucker's piss-weak dance
before home-ec on a 37 degree arvo
the bitumen quadrangle hell of it
a national anthem of cunts
my ear bleeding like a demountable

and i can't seem to grip the clutch
in this dream
as the hill steepens
and we drift we drift
the ridiculous vehicle soars
and these notes
these notes
patter like busted gympie panes
the surge towards brisbane
the fitzroy
the torrens
the gascoyne

and from this box we're watching a hilux surf awkward
to the ditch of main street
stacked like a pile of stale pasties

so now at funerals we sit in circles
of 21st century silence
these keys at my head

and the gun turns in my hand
the reluctant barrel as clean as it can ever be
the sight as square as product
the toussle

and in this vanishing stance, i said
without the point of yellow smoke or red-wine reason
in this remnant land of vodka talk
we walk
in glum scale
across once tuart lands
into coastal plain
a final freedom
without traffic, those cars now long-standing
these echos of shelves
of stocked selves
not needing a grey-beige note
and the movement blends from
one static ladder-point to the next

our global footprint
the size of sucession

they drew maps in sand for us
and the winds tore our faces
like a ceiling of crime
in the newspaper font
the online spectacle
our concrete memes
now part of us
neither veiled nor bikini
our ripped torso manifesto

or a cycle of words to bleed
rubbish in shadow
as no bin trucks gather on corners
no footpath without knee-high oats


each new noise a form
an acacia signia

and we march in splintered packs
unaware of the taste of each other
this plastic wrench at our throats
this stench of memory
unable to share time

the sweat of long-dead relation
the toll of heroic abdominals
of bicep perfection
a golden-tanned erection

and outide windows
they find another rock
resembling us, like us
a bit similar to ours
this new similarity

a spherical singularity
like bought teeth
unstained
from decades of nicotine
and tannins

but the look in her eye
the colour of a pilbara ute
some sacred monstorsity
never a cluster of spinifex stories
watching the snakes swim past in fear

up to my thigh in you
i'm a speed-dating goddess
waiting in turn to fuck your head
one table of bullshit at a time
this school of tangible fucktardery

i watched you being born once
from the safety of my body
unable to bear the gun club comments
the blood of birth in my fingers
the doctor spread you
like a humidicrib gesture
my hands never leaving my arms
elbows intact

DRAFTING

theres an off switch,
theres a road ditch,
theres a tenth stitch,
theres a cool bitch...

there's a spin pitch,
theres a new niche
theres a cool glitch
theres a black witch

road train, with my name.

Animation by Luke Brooks of my ARTillery poem

aung san suu kyi

and there she sits
in steel regimes
cross-legged at
the glint of corrosion
this infection
this scarred remnant
of 1000s of years of
aristocracy

aung san suu kyi

where torture is an institution like
militia is just another bedtime story
as the dented baton
cuts into foreheads at gates
in streets, in monopolised medias
a litany of slave-crimes
men bruised and hungry
and dead children soldiers
in a broken democracy
a fallacy of fallen women

aung san suu kyi

that this profit-driven sickness
this fear is not of fear
but fear of corruption
where food is medicinal
and when mouthing freedom
gets a searing metal alloy at
920 metres per second
to the back of yr head

aung san suu kyi

this place
my economic free-will here
right now - just words
of no consequence
as the tears slide to the keys
my button-clicking activism
making a mockery
of those that trod the path
that stood on fences
that complained and assembled
that ran at the barricades
that stood in black masks
that wielded these guns
and fists of verbs at policemen
that this is for those
who shout our politics
on steps
on trucks
on walls
in lunchrooms
and malls

aung san suu kyi

behind western iron-ore
our blunt-force trauma
dug from desert places
we dig it and sell it
they make guns from it
we dig graves from the stolen grit
that our holes will be remembered
for shopping in sunday droves
in patterns, packs
of dying children
in shopping centre displays
the blood dried on my hands
before I could wash off the
tainted connection
to the trade deficit

aung san suu kyi
aung san suu kyi

and the interest rate
plummets
to the point of
no real interest at all
in the plight of
the others
the fuck-off-we're-full mentality
the if you-don't-love-it-leave philosophy
driving 500 metres to buy unnecessary
items from depleted resources
derived at by southern crosses
in nightclubs, where the first rule
of fightclub
is get pissed in air-conditioned utes
and fight for yr plasma
seek solace in the tubes
that slick wet skin you like
the perfect tanned, homogenised
meat palace

aung san suu kyi
aung san suu kyi

and yet in myanmar
they speak in whispers
of freedom like it were
fuel for fire
fire for life
and yet the generals
of industry here
we support en-mass

the silence of our bloated lives
that their children
never walk in a straight line
to death

aung san suu kyi
aung san suu kyi
aung san suu kyi
aung san suu kyi

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antipoet - allan boyd
november 2010
for ARTillery

Marksman, Kevin Gillam & antipoet