I’m living like a fisherman.
I’m living like a fucking tramp
I’m living by the light of moon
and under the blue light heroin lamp.
I’m living like a footy star
I’m living in the way of cars
I’m living my collisions
Living my decisions.
Living the conditions
that I set for us.

I’m living like a poet.
I’m living like I’ve blown it.
I’m living like I’ve wasted all my dosh
and got nothing left to show for it.
I’m living like Scrooge McDuck.
I’m living, I’m the living FUCK
Trying to screw the world on some deal
Or some messianic seal
that I’ll break
Because I’m living like a saint.

And I’m living like a Brother.
And I’m living under cover
of searchlights and traffic moving
on Mustamae Tee.
I’m living by the river.
I’m living for my liver.
I’m living to a quiver, and a slither and a fault.
I’m living by the law of asphalt.

I’m living by the sea.
Living for the SHE
a thousand years in the making
I’m living for the taking
and the earth all a quaking
in the shadows of the trees.

And I’m living like a disease
Living where and when I please
I’m living in the way a virus lives.
I’m spreading my plague.
I’m making way for the way to come.
I’m living from sun to star to sun.
I’m living like a philosopher.
I’m living like a man.

I’m living by the sword
But dying by the hand.

I’m living how a bugbear lives.
I’m living like the dreams a fever gives.
I’m living like someone who needs that and this
And I’m living like a shift
In weather, in tide, in the faces of the moon
I’m living like a preacher speaking of doom.

I’m living for all the things we haven’t said yet.
I’m living to rebuild the destroyed and the dead.
I’m living like a corpse.
I’m living like a racehorse.
I’m living on the water’s course.
I’m living. I’m living.

I’m living like a nation
and that dream that is dreamt by patriots
Fought over by bronze-clad men in chariots
Sung and danced to by marionettes.

I’m living like a man in a show full of animals.
I’m living in the dark heart with cannibals.

I am living like a beach.
Living each day to each
And stretching my heart to its limit
In view of the morrow.

I’m singing that it’s cold outside
its cold outside, it’s cold outside, tonight.
Tonight the stars like ice hang in the sky
and its cold outside, its cold outside, its cold.

I’m drowning, you see
in the warm sea.
Stripped and starving
and darkling.
Its cold outside, its cold outside, its cold outside
tonight, its cold outside,
I’m singing.

My memory is getting cruel tonight,
cruel tonight, cruel tonight,
And my heart like hangs like a weight
my fingers shake
My memory is cruel tonight, cruel tonight,
cruel tonight, it has
broken
me.

I’m giving in, giving up, moving out, moving in
trying to press my skin to the hand sign of
the world, dressed in white, imparted with great knowledge.
And its dead outside, it’s dead outside
its dead quiet, it’s dead quiet,
the quiet is like it’s dead tonight.

And it’s cold.
And its cruel
And its quiet like the dead outside
and the stars are wet with crystalline dew
and they’ve been hung out to dry, been hung out to dry,
been hung out to cry
in the heaven that weeps for none tonight.

The tear that is shed in love tonight,
the things said about love this night,
the tastes I have had of wine this night,
lips I would kiss on the other side
of dreams I dream in the cold tonight,
and its cold tonight, cruel, quiet and cold tonight
it’s cold tonight and I feel like

a faded man, out of phase, out of step
a jaded man, out of heart and out of breath.
a created man, out of god and out of a womb
a faked man, out of man and out of doom
a naked man, a forsaken man, a played man, a made man,
the main man, the same man as yesterday
a named man, named the same yesterday.

It’s cold tonight, it’s cold tonight,
it’s cold today, dawn has come
but the warms not here
and no sounds come knocking at my ear
its cold and cruel and quiet tonight
its cold and cruel and quiet today.

But I still love the green eyed lady.
In the cold tonight, the cold tonight,
I’m singing, that’s what I do,
Singing the sky in black hues
It’s cold and the stars are among the
dark clouds too
singing
loving
you.

You’re kissing the tracks left on your skin by your last lay like they contained some precious nectar and you’re a stingless bee.

You’ve been drawing the curtains closed at night sooner than you used to and your neighbors can’t smell the oily meat you have been cooking.

You’ve smiled a harsh smile and delivered your sweet justice.

Your outrage silenced a quarrel.

You sit at the dinner table telling stories of mostly how someone offended you.

You will clasp silently you yourself as you are encrypted.

Your tomb will weather the beat of a hailstorm.

You thrust your tongue into another’s mouth.

You took my breath away.

You held hands, in a circle, at the altar, the newspaper photographed you smiling, hiding your scars.

You will bathe naked in the deep waters of midnight.

You fucked someone you didn’t know.

Your phone rang, you topped up your credit, you bough a sweet pastry.

You lost yourself on these streets.

You will consult a fae-eyed clairvoyant to commune with someone you resented or didn’t understand.

In the end, someone will speak for you when words fail.

In the end, you will be silent and watching the gulls float on rising breezes over the bay.

You took my breath away.

And we swore
to kiss
under the stars
and their shadows borne in waves.

I told you
‘this is the certainty from the melancholy’
And I was certain as the waves that I loved.

O- thee and thou and thine
Beloved, beloved of mine
I am thinking, so lately
That this idle form
is but folly and foolhardy
against the tide.

And in torrents of darkness
come thick, come hard
I have made a silhouette of my heart
which was broken up by moonbeams
distant lightning and daydreams
that came in on easterly winds
to make their love.

I have made love in dark places.
And chased, on morning, the whispers
tried to decipher them like a code
I have chanted great verses
like they were holy words.

And
just once a day
on the shore
by the sea

I have been seen
to weep.

Wade out far and weep.

Because
the wind doesn’t chill me
it kisses me and leaves me by.
The sun doesn’t shine
it just kisses
and leaves me by.

So I have sighed
and let the breath of my body go
over the waves
and out, with sea breezes, to blow.

Memorandum;

Oh

bless

this foolish romance

of mine.

Oh

tide

and distant, setting star

bless

this foolish

and selfish

work of my

heart

&

misguided soul.

Oh

nightfall

fold

around me

and sing

in chimes

please, oh please

bless

this romance

of mine.

Mulberry Hooch

(For Joel and Isaac Perkins)

Out on Queen St
under stars that, like sparks in the scrub
seem to cackle
at the
absurdity
of it all.

And I’m hanging my head
like a shaggy dog
from the taxi cab
window.

Cursing the demon drink.

“NAH”
He says to me

“Send you into outer space!”

We sing
Ground control
To Major Tom
But we don’t know the words.

All I can smell is mulberries
I remember being nine
and picking them
on Stradbroke Island
to eat with crab.

I don’t even
like mulberries.

My mouth
tastes
like sin.

Yarr a bloody liar!
And III’lll yet see ya on fire! Ya pants that is!
You’ll wish! You’ll wish

He says to me “You wish ya’d never drunk it”

Says me ‘Whoda thunk it?”

And we yell to pretty girls on the train.

Four and a half years
later.
A lonely
plastic bottle
of the Mulberry Hooch
the rocket fuel
the furniture polish
the drink
unfit for poisoning your enemy,
a single
lonely plastic bottle
remains in my mate’s top drawer.

When his brother turns eighteen
in a year or so
We’ll open it.

One big plunge
into
hard learned wisdom
and
obliterated, ignorant
blissdom
that comes
with growing up
and getting older
far from the night-streets
and Mulberry trees.

Here you find me with my eyes open.
Here is the place where sorrow has spoken.
Here the thunder seal is ever, ever opened.

Here is the great well of human feeling.
Here is the sigh in the gum trees that sounds of longing.
Here is the song the slaves were singing.

Here is the surrendered belongings
Here the shouldered cross.
Here the price of greed.

Here the holocaust.

Here is the place mistakes must be paid for.
Here are the things I have bled and wept for.

Here you find me a naked man.
Here we spat in God’s red face.
Here we took down the devil’s graven face.
Here we swallowed the bitter pill.

Here we huddled in the chill.

Here is the rumbling of industry.
Here the smoke is rising.
Here the war is fought.
Here is the dread face of ARES.

Here are the children of the mother we gave rabies.

Here are the groves on fire.
Here are the spires.
Here we marked the stars.
Here we drove cars.

Here we fought and bled on the stone.
Here is the place I have wandered alone.

Here we have eaten.
Here we have been flogged and beaten.

Here we read the Gospel- it means GOOD NEWS
Here we looked at the moon.
Here is where a man once howled.
Here is where I have lived.

Here are the things freely given.
Here are the places the nails were driven.

Here is the crucible.
Here is the fire.

Here is the name.
Here is the Son.

Here is the place
Here comes the hour.

Here is the storm, the switch and the power.

Here is the man.
Here is the fool.

Here is the tyrant.
Here is the tool.

Here is the world.
Here is the kingdom.
Here it is come.

Here is the hangman.
Now it is done.

Here are the slaves
Here their song sung.
Here is the tale spun.

Here is the silence.
Here its begun.

Here is the fury, the fever, the shadows falling.
Here the lament of the lost time is calling.

Here is the loneliness.

Here are the answers.

Here is the rain.
Here are the ransoms.

Here is the apocalypse

Here is the bridge.

Here is the mile
Here the taken inch.

Here is silence.
Here is silence.
Here is the world of men.

Here is silence
Here as silence

Here I am with silence, the world broken,
the seals open, my eyes open.

Here is silence
And here is its end.

Fellow literattes, survivors of the fallopian highway and existencial decadence. These are some other words of wit, whimsy and romantic reassurance from one poet breathless under the shadow of midnight.