I'll Be Whoever You Want Me To Be, I'll Even Pretend I Like It

I met a man who changed my life.

I was waiting for a tram, and he pulled over to the curb in his late 90s model Holden Commodore and said,

'Get in Jane, I'll give you a lift to work.'

Now, you all know that my name is not Jane, and that I was not on my way to work, but somehow, without thinking for even a second, I decided to get into that Holden Commodore, with this man I'd never seen before in my life, and be driven off to a job I didn't know I had.

When I got to the office, everyone welcomed me, and knew my name (which, as we have established was not really my name, but one I had rather hastily assumed) and were happy to show me about the place, finding it comical that I suddenly couldn't remember where things were- for example the stationary cupboard, or the lunch room.

At the end of the day, the man with the Holden Commodore (whose name I had learned was Greg) kindly offered to give me a lift home, which I accepted- and when I got to the unfamiliar house somewhere up the top end of Lygon St (which could have been North Fitzroy or East Brunswick, it's always hard to tell) he was able to show me where I kept my spare key for emergencies and I was able to let myself in.

The house had all the things I would need for my new life as Jane- toiletries, clothes, a pantry full of food, and a little pot plant on the window sill that looked like it hadn't been watered in quite some time.

Years passed, and I began to enjoy my life as Jane- I even got promoted, and all the people at the office threw me a big party, at which we all got tipsy, and Greg (who still drove his late 90s model Holden Commodore) tried to kiss me by the photocopiers, which I wasn't sure I really liked, but I went along with it- probably because of the champagne, but maybe also because, in a round about way, it was because of him that I had got this promotion.

Some time later I was walking up Collins St in a pair of heels that said, 'I mean business' and someone stopped right in front of me and called me by a name I had all but forgotten.

I stared deep into their eyes, looking for the reflection of the person who belonged to the name they had called me, but I couldn't see her.

I said politely,

'I'm very sorry, but I think you have me confused with somebody else'.

And I walked purposefully away.

I didn't want to be late for my meeting.

The Balancing Act

I'm sleeping
precariously,

bed
stacked
on top
of
bed,

which has the sweet whiff of
fairytale about it,
don't you think?

In actual fact
it smells much worse

(on account of the shoes
piled up underneath?
Or the lurking odours
that couldn't be sucked up
even if I could be bothered
breaking out the vacuum cleaner?)

I should throw them away,
these pieces of a
past life
the wooden slats
that supported
someone else's dreams,

or give them away
for another to assemble,
lie on top of

I should do so much
with these hidden things

instead of piling them high
one on top of the other
out of sight beneath me
leaving me
teetering

a sleeping
circus act,
balancing
preposterously

night after night

bed
stacked
on top
of
bed

in danger of waking violently
and falling
down,
down,
down.

If We Stitch Ourselves Together, We'll Never Be Alone

I'm waiting for him in the rain,
umbrella unopened
hair
wet and heavy


I could easily duck under the shelter
of a Brunswick St
shopfront

but it seems more romantic this way

my lashes dripping
eyes searching
every passer by
for the familiar,

'Hello, darling'.

Then, they arrive
in matching helmets,
an unexpected
double happiness

and we eat burgers
and talk about boys.

Later that night,
we're perched
on the side of my
unmade bed
collaborating over
the transformation
of a white lace dress

and I enjoy
the closeness

thick as thieves

tearing up the stitches
but
sewing something
more important
deliberately,
carefully

a friendship
of rainy street meetings
and
confessions
sharing the ridiculous
and the profound

and a white lace dress,
with the potential to be
so much more.


(For my friend Russ Pirie, let the stitches never come undone)

When Was The Last Time You Felt Safe?

When was the last time you felt safe?

And I don't mean the last time there was an absence of direct threat (wild animals, knife wielding maniacs, tram inspectors, that kind of thing) I mean the last time you felt that no matter what happened nothing could hurt you? Like you were covered in an invisible layer of bubblewrap that kept you warm and dry- preventing sharp objects from scratching or cutting you.

As if some magical force field surrounded you, zapping baddies left, right and centre if they came too close, sending them flying far, far away/

Can you remember the last time you felt like that?

When We Get To The End

Just Because Our Jobs Are Shit, Doesn't Mean We Are

It's Tuesday
and I'm
pushing my trolly through
the congested
intestines
of consumerism.

Today,
Safeway is digesting
middle class mums
and geriatrics,

at lunchtime
snacking on
paint splattered
tradesmen
excreting them
into the heat
with bread rolls
and sugary treats.

I take a break
in the secluded
frozen food aisle,
relax my plastered on smile,

before being propelled
across polished floors
by the promise
of a pay-check.

Nothing more,
nothing less.

This system
chews us up
until our lives
become unrecognisable,
homogenised.

If we are lucky
we will disagree
with the sensitive stomach
of the beast,

be regurgitated
covered in
saliva
but still alive.

If not,
we become
excrement,
shit on the floor
of some corporate monster
that has squeezed us
until
we steam
with
capitalist
heat.

Take It, Take Another Little Piece Of My (Gingerbread) Heart

Things That Are Taken When We're Not Looking

A promise made
insincerely

buzzes round me
like a mosquito.

I know it's there,
waiting to settle
to take
take

it waits

sooner or later
I'll be
caught

off guard

I'll hardly
notice
as it
penetrates.

White Lace On Saturday

The Players

We toss around
tired cliches
until one
or
both
of us gets tired

and calls it off.

Stalemate.

'I'm not playing.'

Childish, I know

but when you can't figure out
the next move

(or when you know you're being beaten)

It seems easier
to
just
walk away.

Memories Of Leonard Cohen

I ask her how it was
seeing the man
whose voice narrates
the silent post coital scenes
in that old film of memories
I play
from time to time

And she unfolds
the magic of the evening
as if taking something precious
from delicate wrapping
placing it
gently
in front of me

I am as fine boned
as this fragile memory
any swift movement
or cutting phrase
could crush me
as I want her words
put pull warily away
from each exquisite detail.

I remember.

We were ugly,
but we had his music.

Time after time
he would arrive
with honest words,
whilst we would lie
naked
our heavy breathing
accompaniment
to every track.

Now,
no less ugly
but more polished
I'm here on the shelf
with my dusty memories

I still have the music
but without them,
the lovers of my past,

it doesn't sound the same
anymore.

when I shared this with her, she shared this with me, so I'm sharing it with you. we all have our Leonard Cohen memories, sung, in stanzas or unspoken. The one below is Emmy the Great's. It's pretty great.




p.s if you don't have a Leonard Cohen memory, go out and get one.

Words IIII (Just Another Wednesday Night)

Eleanor is asking for cake
and the TV's up too loud
and I'm in bed with poetry
a little light headed.

There's a mosquito
buzzing about
and I'm worried about my bare feet
(it's warm enough for that now)
getting bitten in the night.

The words,
spoken outside my window
here,
on the page,
sometimes make sense

sometimes they're just
letters
ordered and reordered
recorded.

Listen.

Maybe you'll
understand
some of them.

What Are You Doing To Prepare For Impending Doom?

I'm teaching myself to swim.

That's a lie, I already know how to swim, what I'm doing is trying to improve my technique. Be faster, stronger. I figure it will come in handy. You know, with global warming and everything. When those ice caps melt I'm going to be ready.

I'm also teaching myself to wrestle polar bears. And catch large fish with my bare hands. I eat plenty of sashimi, seaweed- that sort of thing, so I'll reckon I'll be well prepared for the lack of earth grown foods. I don't even know if I'll miss them that much.

I also have a whale-stomach-simulator rigged up in my back yard. You know, in case I get swallowed by a whale. Cos that's happened before. The important thing is the breathing. You've got to do it, even though it stinks like rotting fish down there. Which is just common sense, I guess, but there's no harm in getting it just right.

With these key survival skills, and the happy coincidence that I live on the second floor, I think I'll get along just fine. I'll sunbake on the roof, subsist on whatever swims past my window and I'll be able to do breast stroke to get anywhere I need to go (which we'll all have to do; all petrol reliant vehicles will have been outlawed by then).

Yep. I'm ready.

What are you doing to prepare for impending doom?

Going Native

I spent the weekend surrounded by great looming native trees, listening to the intermittent warbling of the birds, punctuated by polite bursts of clapping. Sure, I was supposed to be working, but it was still nice every now and then to appreciate nature's beauty whilst trying to ignore the stumbling drunk sports enthusiasts' jeers and propositions.

Then, back in my native environment, a different type of birdsong, and a small offering of native flowers. Geraldton wax, my favourite! How they could have known beats me, but I sure was glad to eat my steak in the company of these perky little petals.

My Room, Fitzroy

It's almost like
falling asleep at a lively house party
except the people whose voices
you think you might be dreaming
won't look in on you in the night
(or cover you up when you kick the blankets off)

It's almost like
falling asleep on a park bench
except there's a posturepedic mattress
and blankets for warmth
while your heart is as heard
as wooden slats
and your fear
mimics the chill of the wind

It's almost like
falling asleep on the couch
except the TV is hers
and you can't ask her
to turn it down

It's almost like
falling asleep in your very own home
until you realise
you're
alone.

It's Science, Or Something

I like the way he looks at me.

It makes me feel better.
About myself,
about everything.

And I know that probably
makes me sound
shallow,
self obsessed,
needy-
some days I am all of those things.

Some days I couldn't
give a fuck,

but today's not one of those days.

We lock in like Lego.
We tessellate.
It's science.
Or geometry,
something like that.

Together we are an equation
that has both a
right and a
wrong answer.

It's mathematical.

It adds up
or
it
doesn't.

Words III (The Brunswick St Bookstore, Saturday Night)

I'm walking home
in the rain
furtively clutching
my paper bag

silently
clamouring
for its
intoxicating
contents.

It's Saturday night
and Brunswick St
is filling up
with the
thirsty
the hungry
those wanting
to consume

and I can't wait to get home,

to slip between the sheets
and drink in the
words
words
words.

Words II

I'm haemorrhaging words.

Please,
someone read them.

Or get me a band aid.

23 Minutes, 35 Seconds

Fuuuuuuck!

I yell
as I launch myself through the
warehouse doors.

I'm trying to outrun the pain
but it's
catching me,
nipping at my heels
inhabiting my thighs

Curling up in the cavities of my chest
consuming my
every though.

I'm trying to shake it off me
out my fingertips
off the strands of my
sweat soaked hair

But it's living inside me
I'm breathing it,

I'm breathing it.

Face burning
sweat dripping

I can't hear the cars
on the street
My ears are full
of sweat,
adrenaline
something

Around the corner,
I attack the last few meters
as if they are the pain
I am desperate to conquer,
ferociously.

Then,
there is
nothing.

Everything,
silent.

That night I dream of running,
but I'm someone else,
someone whose strides have
defeated pain,
with the wind in her hair,
she is effortless.

Perhaps
she'll catch me,
one day.

Thursday

Thursday finds me
dragging my feet
through the streets
of Malvern East

The birds tweet.

I can't conceive of
living a life
that smells like
freshly painted picket fences
and cut grass.

A dog barks

They have the luxury
of space and time
the well kept gardens tell me

And the rustle of stooped over
pensioners
making morning love
to the flowers

Add to this
suburban symphony.

The Days I See The Sea Are My Favourite Days

I took a beautiful photo (with hipstamatic for iPhone, because I'm that much of a hipster) of the sea today. It was taken from the top of a small hill overlooking the bay down in Mentone, with some purple Geraldton Wax (it's my favourite because it reminds me of my childhood home) in the foreground.

I'd post it here, except that I inadvertantly caught a couple of schoolboys in the shot (which I was taking furtively, trying not to look like a pervert, being on a school campus and all) and it wouldn't be very PC of me to post pictures of schoolboys.

So you'll just have to imagine it.

Sea and sky and Geraldton Wax.

And a couple of schoolboys in cricket hats, looking wistfully (or so I like to imagine) into the distance.

AQUA PROFONDA

It's rush hour at the pool. Every lane is packed, I see a textured canvas of arms churning water, heads bobbing, water splashing over feet kicking furiously.

The clock says 7:45.

I'm in up to my waist, gathering the courage to submerge and join the chain of swimmers, up and back, up and back. I put it off, allowing the sensation of being half in, half out of the cool water to linger.

I'm straddling two worlds.

Above there is noise. Splash, splash. My hands itching to wrap around an iphone, a coffee, any addiction. Below is blue nothing.

Take the plunge. Kick, kick. Splash, splash.

Propelling through the water, I join the chain. My arms new strokes on this canvas, the neon pink of my swimming cap tracking alongside the lane ropes. Up and back, up and back.

What have they come here to forget? I wonder. What dreams do they wish the water would wake them from?

We swim and swim until we can't swim anymore, or until our lives beckon. Outside, dripping chlorine and shivering we are individuals once more.

(EDIT- Just noticed my typo- thanks very much for pointing it out guys! Is it at all indicative of my state of mind that i substituted a U for the O PROFONDA, or do I imagine that the profundity of my thoughts out weighs the terribleness of my spelling? I wonder.)

Words.

I'm trying to read short stories, but the problem is; there are too many words. I mean, not as many words as are long stories, obviously, but still, I just can't keep processing them one after the other after the other and so on and so forth. It's exhausting.

The thing about words is that each one is important. Each one has meanings, multiple meanings and when you're faced with a whole page of them, well, it can be quite overwhelming, trying to figure out what they mean, what they're supposed to mean, what alternate meanings they might have.

That's why songs are great. Not too many words, plenty of space between them, a few notes here and there that hint at the mood, a few clues.

And poems, too.

They're like, bite sized, yet satisfying. They fill you up, long after they're gone- after they've been uttered or read. They stay inside you.

Yeah.

They're the kind of words I like.

I Had A Garden, Once

I remember the year they died
and I although I wasn't surprised,
I wasn't any less upset
by their passing.

My once lush tomatoes,
wilting in grief
over the
sundried spinach.
The eggplant
shriveled.

I've never been much good
at feeding the things
that couldn't tell me
they were hungry.

Or maintaining the things
that are kept
out of sight.

A Tea Party

(ok I lied,

its just me
and my cup
of tea
but we
don't mind

the lack of ceremony)

Bayswater North, 7:30am

This vacant lot
lies
stretched out in morning sun

Some may dream of building here

others build their dreams

without bricks
or plans
or mortgages.

The light
reflected off the
dewy blades of grass

I can almost see
my dreams in them.

The New Necessity

'Over-share is the new necessity',
she said to me,
over coffee

and it got me
thinking about the ways we
expose ourselves

(or at least the selves we
want others to see)

as we writhe
like flies
in this sticky web.

Do our words leave us so very naked?
And is it so very brave
to bare our petty thoughts

when we have sat back
with our feet in the stirrups
of modern gynaecology

seen our insides
on a big screen

when we have stood shivering
in front of charcoal and texter gripping
scribblers?

when we have shared glances
(and fluids)
and words that although not immortalised
in carefully chosen fonts
are printed brutally on our souls
forever?

what then is the meaning
of what we type
and tweak
and press 'send'
'publish post'
or 'share'?

Are we really sharing so very much?

And what makes this sharing
seem so necessary?

Or is it the things
said flippantly
across dinner tables
over coffee
unedited,
uncontrived,
that we
truly need?

The Ninjas

I was thrilled to find these little fellows locked in a school's display cabinet. Ninjas! Kids get to do the awesomest things these days.



Then on closer inspection I realised they were Ned Kellies. And we know how I feel about patriotism.

So I'm sticking with ninjas!

The Disappearance of My Unwanted Visitor

When I woke up this morning
it was
gone

and all day long
I was both
relieved
and saddened

by it's absence.

The Left Overs II

In a somewhat ironic twist, it seems I inadvertently bought 'Love Note' candy for the trick or treaters who never came and seeing as I'm sure as hell not going to eat these sugary discs (or slip them under some sweet someone's pillow) here they are, just for you.

I particularly like the one that says "gotcha", as it seems the most evocative of what love is like, sneaky, smug, possibly violent, holding on for dear life and not letting you forget about it.

Gotcha!

Dressing Up

Just because I'm not getting involved in Cup day silliness doesn't mean I can't put a frock on.







(There were no fascinaters involved in the production of these photos)

Blistered Paws

The skin is rubbed there,
raw and red,

a rash decision
vain,
ill advised

has led to this.

Pain can be ignored
only for so long
until we carry
physical reminders

wounds
that heal
but never go away.

I walked home,
barefoot

fearing less the broken glass and bitumen

than the scars I might be left with.

The Left Overs

I passed them squares of chocolate
through the cream cast iron grate
and disgruntled though they were
to receive such a paltry offering
it seemed to please them to find in me
a grown up playmate.

I rushed out in the rain
lest I be caught out once again
with nothing suitable to greet
the four foot ghouls
with opened palms
who called out 'Trick or Treat'.

And though I returned
with multicoloured treats
(and types of chocolate
kids might like to eat)
the night brought no more
four foot ghouls
with opened palms
parading down our street.