The lamp broods on the table In its predatory circle of light Dust rains down on an open book The suburbs ebb into darkness Hungry and desolate under antennae Rats hunt in the weeds You thought it was beauty That shocked you to a husk All your life a collusion with dying Even the air tastes bitter Her skeletal wings slice the walls She lands and opens her eyes
Published in The Australian, July 1 2012
yesterday I was sick as a dog so I took all my drugs and turned on the tv I don't usually watch tv because I find it too depressing all this stuff I am supposed to buy and those botoxed commentators ratcheting up the fear meter cancer scares life threatening elevators terrorists &c but anyway there I was pasted to the sofa and I saw two programs with poets in them! one was all about counter-terrorism in Yemen a handsome poet whose name I didn't write down went out to tribal villages with his ceremonial knife in his belt and in a long room would speak his poems to about forty men who would chew mildly narcotic leaves while listening to the true way of Islam how it is a religion of peace and tolerance and how killing people is not Islamic this poet was a former army officer but was now a man of peace and he was greatly honoured among the villagers then I got embarrassed because the Australian journalist was interviewing some boys in an Islamic school in Yemen and all he would talk about was Al Qaeda so I switched and there was a program about The Last Poets and how poetry was about Revolution and Black Power and how poetry saved at least one person's life because it stopped this guy when he was about to drive a knife into another person's heart because he was a gangster then they talked about rap and money and how the whole thing had got corrupt and I began to feel depressed again because in both of these programs there was not one woman mentioned or spoken to and nobody seemed to think this was strange or worth talking about
