Silence

Warm is the day
in my palm

Green is the light
in my lap

I wish I could tell you
that I love you

in colour
in heat

Like the daylight
tells me so
everyday.

(for z.)

Two small surrenders

1.
There'll come a time
when veils are drawn back
when the distant lights you see
from the plane
or the hill
or across the sea
are just pretty to look at
and don't mean a thing
no matter how hard you try.

2.
Now, I want to love you
with my eyes shut
nothing watching
but the night.
And you take the words
right out,
leave breath pouring
in

What I'd like

For the seas
I'd like a ship
old, but weatherly
with two eyes
always looking outward

Shorebound
I'd like a circus tent
colourful, but shabby
with a noble blue pennant
calling me home under the evening sky

For love
I'd like a sturdy rope
in steady hands
long enough for every journey
strong enough at each return

For the future
I'd like a another day
lengthy, but fruitful
and a chance
to see you again

For now
I'd like a prayer
Silent, colourless and weightless
for all these things
I think I'd like
I think I'd need
To live the life I want

For Z.

Independence

Today filled me up
like a full river
lying in a cup that's too small

Tonight is a hollow boat
on a trickling stream
far from the sea

Too much
Not enough

-

Some nights the tattoo on my back tingles and burns - it wants to tear itself off the skin with longing for a horizon line. Here in my room in my house in my housing estate with the view of the neighbours opposite, and the apartments beyond that, and the telephone towers beyond that, and the dirty night beyond that, and the stars that hang in it, winking and teasing. Love is in the rooms, sleeping in the beds, cooking in the kitchen. But the sea and the stars, the moon, the great big world calling: books are not enough, love is not enough. Home is not enough. Home is my warm stomach, my dying pet, waking up in the morning to find yourself planted with the roots of a tree - demanding love, trust, time, effort. Home is too much.

I feel like a box with a curse inside it, and a picture of a ship drawn on the lid like a magic seal. I look at it looking out at the world - both cure and disease.

I wonder about my mysterious grandmother. Maybe it's her living inside me.

?

I'm going to write you a poem about art
and this is it:

It's midnight
in my city
I'm two rooms
with a window in the wall
the world's in one
sleeping on the floor
nothing's in the other
except the door.

Ghosts II

You must be feeling the way I'm feeling
Cos' I haven't thought about you in a long time
You must be crying the way I'm crying
Cos' I haven't cried about you in a long time

I don't know, someone else can write the verses. All I want to do is lie here and think mean things.

Veils

Like Caliph Haroun Al-Rashid
I walk the streets of my city
I go all places

In the dark alleyways
quickening heart, fear.

With my lover
a different woman entirely.

On Jalan Haji Taib
I look up a dirty flight of stairs
I am there
legs spread
eyes on the ceiling
being fucked.

At the Islamic Arts Museum
they hold an exhibition about women in Islam
I am there
skin tingling
pride trickling from an ancestral stream.
I could wear a tudung easily
and look good in it.

My mother is doing Tai Chi
pushing and pulling me
in the dim glow of dawn.

I walk into a bar
and focus all my allure
in one spot behind my shoulder blades
The gazes blaze
and elongate me:
I taste power.

When I go home my father
cooks me dinner
and lunch
and supper
in lieu of conversation.
I am my father's daughter.
He doesn't know all my names
but for love
you will submit
to the one you were given

Alone
I stare at this body:
fire today
coal tomorrow.
Set me in my grave
or even better
scatter me over the great sea
still burning hot;
but older.
Please, much older.

The sea in the sky

In the evening
I lie on a newly paved road
in my country

The sky
is an upside down bowl
with a calm sea hung in it

Heat of the sun
held in the road
warms my back

I'm roasting naked
on a man-made river
heading to the mountains
leading to the cities
all the way home

I hug the road
as I've never before done
As it hugs the earth beneath
beaten down by the sun
which hangs in the sea
in the sky above me

As I wait for it to fall -
the sea that will take me nowhere
because it is home,

I wonder
how did it get there?

Things that are Beyond Pressure

Montien Booma: Perfume Painting, 1997, 100cm diameter

Evenings go beyond the day
Karma goes beyond what you are experiencing now
Friendship goes beyond betrayal
Imagination goes beyond censorship
Art goes beyond anything
Humour goes beyond anger
Kindness goes beyond harshness
Breath goes beyond everything
Water goes around everything
Dawn goes beyond night

(for G.)

Ghosts

I smell your ghost
A shard
or a maybe splinter
expands under the skin
hairsbreadth bruise

It passes
I walk on
Old stars, new night
Arms greet me
hold me
in it.

Circus

My life is a traveling circus
with lions
and tigers
and monkeys
and mermaids
and a fire-breathing serpent.
I have caravans
and costumes
and feathers
and rhinestones
and stage paint
and..
leather whips.
I've got a bearded lady,
happily married
and a professional clown
who is an alcoholic
I have poets
they're all marvelous
and a fortune teller
speaking in cryptic verses
The trapezers are all gay
and squabble alot
We eat by campfire
and love by moonlight
My life is a traveling circus
a very happy nightmare
I love it
and so will you.

Hearts in the city

You grow two hearts all day
one to keep full
the other to stay empty
And tonight when you can't sleep
you'll clutch to your chest
one or the other
and say, this is me:
I choose the heavy - fraternity
or the hollow - free.
Well, that way
you're either sinking
or you're floating
That's what two hearts are good for,
for being in two places at once.

But you need to have just one
for walking
working
loving
and living
- properly, that is.
And you need to remember
one heart
has four chambers
connected by echoing hallways.
And you need to know
this heart is a city
in all the cities you'll ever walk in

...Yes, even this one
in which you loathe the days
that breed dualities
and love the nights
that dissolve them.
Yes in this city
I'll put the sun in one chamber
the moon in the other
rain in the third
and the last,
I'll keep for you.

In this city
I'll have only one heart.

For z.

On being loved

Today
it's getting harder and harder
to be loved
don't you think?
On the street
in the room
we all feel new
back to not knowing anything
back to sharing your own solitude
little moments scraped together
parceled out with someone else
some for you
a little for me.
Loving
is resistance,
burning.
It's what's needed.
You do loving.
Being loved on the other hand
seems slightly ridiculous maybe?
No one deserves it
You don't do anything
You be loved.

No, it's not easy.

My friend Steve Smith

The day breaks the heart;
night soothes it.
Driving home at night,
protected and alone,
rain refracts the city lights
making them register as pinpricks
in an inner loneliness.
I think about my friend Steve Smith.
We met randomly.
Old, old.
Tattooed - colourful.
But clear, like watercolor.
No, stronger. Maybe ink.
When some people talk
you just listen
Because it's like they're colouring in your outlines.
Trust. Friendship.
Two days in the wandering sun.
And the memory
drops like a brass coin
in the hollow night
In the city that breaks people's hearts
I think about my friend Steve Smith.

Steve Smith, [Untitled], 2006, oil on canvas, 37 x 47 cm
from Ray Hughes Gallery, Sydney

Unfinished

From here
I learn what I'll never know
on your shores.
I learn to
love you
without bitterness
easily,
like spring
like the wind that speaks to the surfaces of the sea
I discover ways to
be in two places at once
whole in spirit,
utterly resolved.

(for z.)

Light and Shadow

It is a strange indulgence to uncover past shadows in order to better appreciate the current light. Sometimes I get a dark, ugly look on my face thinking of the times which inspired this little ditty:

Legless

I know a man
Who keeps a cage
He's the pike of the lake
And doesn't age
I know a man
Who keeps his teeth
He's a shark in a cave
And doesn't leave
I know a man
Who waits his while
And he waits and he waits
With a smile
Now it doesn't do to worry
Because you know
When you're hungry
You'll go get some meat
And when you're legless
You'll just walk on borrowed feet
Now it wouldn't hurt to hurry
Because you know
When he's hungry
He'll come get some meat
And when he's legless
You should worry about your feet

(May 2006)

Aftermath

There is a phenomenon in this particular profession known as Post-exhibition Blues. The day after the opening of Sensors I woke up with so bad an affliction that I until then I did not believe such a strange combination of relief, desolation and exhaustion could exist.

It was as though one had emerged from a personal battle unhappy and in pain, but not knowing the source or nature of the hurt.

Of course I am only now coming to terms with a private blow to the spirit caused by someone's recent departure. I have heard that when the body detects a foreign or harmful intrusion, it works quickly to contain/separate it in order to stop it from causing harm. In this case it seems that the mind is likewise capable of such self-preservation. At the time I scribbled in the margins of some drawing or other I was working on:

Leaving is like flying
Staying is like swimming.
Both conditions governed by a different gravity
than walking.
Walking: it's never enough.
But when you're not doing it
It's all you can remember
It's all you long to do --
To land.
Walking: it's what we were born to do
With our uncompromising,
unforgiving, two-part bodies
It's the best way to relate to nearness
The hardest way to judge distance
and learning to do it
isn't as easy as it seems.

I found that the moment my mind judged that it was free enough to confront things other than the exhibition, some deep, stored-away unhappiness came bubbling to the surface. It was quite shocking, especially when I expected to feel good with finishing what I had to do and having done it with reasonable success.

But! A visit to the hairdresser has made me feel (and look) a little more human. A visit to the physiotherapist, (who also dispenses such level-headed advice as: when you work long hours for a long time, your body's store of dopamine is depleted; also your spleen accumulates toxins and that's why you feel so bad) and a full, undisturbed night's sleep later - I feel back on track.

I've set up a blog for the show, which you'll find to your right. It's not finished yet though. I'll add images soon.

Thank you for everyone's kindness and support. I'm looking forward to debt repayment, to fun things, to begging the forgiveness of my two mutts who have been positively pining away for lack of attention and to my residency in Sydney.

Kisses,
B.

Evening

A few days ago my brother left for my old haunt, Melbourne. The airport always makes me mawkish and strange, or should I say the trip there and back. Especially in the evenings, past the tyranny of the day, and the sky is so gentle, the clouds incomparable to any other place on earth. Something stings a little inside, it is that thing that keeps me here, a complex love. Not that I stay because it is home, but because a few minutes in each day, I feel as if I am at home. Over the years, one hopes these minutes may to stretch into hours, into days, perhaps into forever - but you know it will never be that way. A few minutes is all one can hope for.


Days run
but evenings walk
across the sky.
And the sky is a net cast over the earth.
We are caught, each one
in epic circles, homely affections.
Love pulls
what homes push.
In all places
I sit by working,
stand by running,
run by dreaming.
Home is not a place
it's a time
where you walk
simply by walking.

(for B. - I miss you!)