Classic Poem

hands so cold
fingers cold
tucked under legs
sitting in insect hiss
low white noise
gas heater undertone
no other sound
nothing

almost asleep,
a car pulling up the hill

a currawong
does that shrill thing
into pink air

a huge open yawn
almost breaks my jaw

the pen that makes the marks
alters the angles of the letters

a patch
of yesterday’s chocolate
stuck to my corduroy sleeve –
a signal
imagined and interpreted

we look back
at the years in the tops
waiting to be taken out of time

red brick
wall map of Australia
grass green carpet
mustard coloured plastic chairs
clumpy piling on the mittens

mitts on the keyboard
pushing thoughts and jingles
out
to Dublin to Seattle,
Adelaide, Kane'ohe,
Faversham, Glebe

sadly notating dim trivia
me-minus-you
outside community

literary festivals
can’t help anyone
like a rehab book sale

making mistakes,
so different
from being morally wrong

in an unsettling world
it’s a rabbit life,
built the walls from Castrol cases

black tyre ribbons
strewn
like a giant’s licorice
under the striated cutting
siding on the highway,
say goodbye
to the Woodford bends

sometimes the clunky
can incandesce
but I want to know
how to vitalize gawkiness,

sometimes
I’m in my no-mind sometimes
in a technological mindlessness
sometimes nowhere near limber,
although that’s unusual

some people
just float along all the time
accumulating the placid

sometimes
when you think you’re going down
you’re not,
you’re going straight ahead
to a utopia of modernity.