water vessel hero
The water vessel Hero
On what foundation stands the warriors pride? What sustains him when the night is dark? What quenches his thirst in the hot desert Sun ripple and death adder dance?
Holy saviour of child melt-down
On Katoomba st winter frost glitter
Or
Overheating engine car radiator bone dry on Roadside ruined and potholed?
On What foundation stands the warriors existence?
What terrors averted?
What dehydration subversions possible in the Intellectual too’s and fro’s
Of
Traditions that hit
Left right and centre?
The water vessel held tight in heroic hand Refilled each night at kitchen tap
at
food-cooperative water sink filter
filled at noon at strangers front yard garden tap
a dreadlocked fugitive
beneath eucalypt filled with crows
or at sacred forest spring seeping from clay fern bank held up
to storm cloud sky dark in radiant human hope the water vessel
by bedside in back pack
or
left overnight in the front seat of unlocked car
there at the new day of waking!
needed
at the call to adventure
sipped
careful at the threshold
shared supernatural in the challenge
or
fallen into the mortal abyss
of
despair and revelation
transformed in the return
the last drops saved to share as sacred offering
to the dirt road goddess ascent
gift of elixir reborn
in the victory
drunk deep against the force of wind and gust obstacles
outside the front gate of suburban heaven hearth fire encountered at return
avatar of futures imagined in the ecologies complex and thriving and stable
needed when loving or fucking
limbs entwined
in the forest or anywhere
needed to water indoor tabletop garden
of succulent and cacti
in the support of friend and lover
thirsty on the way
or witches cat on the driveway tar
or
in the belly of whale or cavern or beneath the
feather blanket morning time darkness
and
underworld temptress
of cognitive labyrinth and maze
genetic hydration of future generations
and
fallen fathers
a crumbling patriarch and feminist fertility atoned or stoned in the kitchen time
dish- rack or dinner made on the table
a solitary desire
of
government zombie apocalypse collapse instrument of anarchy and freedom
with squatters in abandoned sandstone mansion facing police over the barricades
of nation-state flag
sewn into bikini or undies or tea-towel burning
in the cure of illness the
delight of fluid regeneration
of
cosmic cell hydration
in the bubble and hiss of social change
a subverted empire of imagined barren rival blockheads
tackled by a brick with eyes
thrown through shop window or at the gates of empty graffiti’d church
vain nervous anxious
ready to walk
out
front screen door beneath red brick arch
down wood step and creek
onto
crystal shard ghost seed footpath
The water vessel historic and ancient
present since the dawn of fire and ash and smoke
clay round mythic carved
with spout or jewel polished lid wide narrow brass or glass spiritual in copper beaten shape shiny
modern black soot cauldron or
seashell spiral for ceremony or
leather sewed with animal hide chewed earthen ornament with strap or curved lid leashed
fashioned in specific design
from earth animal hide tailings ponds industrial thrown away discarded in gutter or sophisticated?
marked by gods ancient or
branded multi-national profit
margin and neo-liberal
mined earth mover and
by road-side
and profound
corporate
market myth
the phallic polished red mahogany hollow strung with rope
knotted and woven
druid stone spiral carved
Crosshatched thick spout
on Paris museum stand behind glass
with
security guards and camera and alarm
or
carried in rainbow crotched bag from Nimbin a relic of kombi or Nissan pop-top and white-ant eaten
caravan graveyard
The water vessel bottle!
blue scratched enamel with smiling Buddha printed
etched in the departure
in the initiation descent and return
dented in the call and task
of the warriors pride
traversed
in
the unknown mysterys of self in crisis forced to the ground in the ordeals
of
destruction
emptied of all
a
hollow vessel abandoned
in
friends home
returned after poem written refilled for hero with elixir of rainwater
caught from mountain
house roof
in
44 gallon black plastic drum!
+ For Gary Caganof Katoomba late Autumn 2015
Blue Mountain poems
I am hoping to write a poem a day for the whole of Autumn and winter. I would like to explore the feeling of lovers – belonging to a land that gets icy, windy, misty and bleak. To find the beauty of fire and feathers. To explore the words written about lovers on the sheets – on the skin. To find a way with words through the cold months of winter. I will be publishing these poems on social media – trying to exist with a deep poetic in the sentiments of the poets of Instagram – let the journey of cold, wood-fire and smoke – bodies in beds, rain, wind and stone begin – welcome to the forest room, filled with absence, presence and mystic yellow clay paths!
Story catcher/A more powerful Magic
I recently was apart of a story telling retreat run by my brother-in-law Nicolas Yu. Nicolas does a lot of social justice work, particularly in mental health and its effects on young people. After this retreat, i feel like i can say that: story is connective and therapeutic, it is also a profound form of self advocacy and education. Story is power, shared power from within. In the ‘story catcher’ retreat we Shared three days of personal stories while sitting in a circle and also while wandering the beautiful land around the Satyananda Yoga centre in Mangrove Mountain. I was very moved by the experience and realised yet again the power of not only stories, but also the profound healing of both listening and being heard. I really believe that just being able to speak your story can make the whole world shed its skin and find renewal. Sharing stories is a sacred act. Just being silent and opening to the deep listening…
This is the poem I caught!
Each story is a death
Leaf spin hot blue sky wind
dead tree skeleton
and death adder ghost
my skin fragile stretched on bone, life blood, breath
I stand before you vulnerable
ready to break
already broken
in a lost boy place lying
curled on the wood floor
grain tree board round saw ripped
tipped off and over
and
it is my own fire in this wind
catastrophic black storm ash chaotic atomic
but there is buds
beneath the bark
bird call and tree branch fall
leaves spinning in the wind way beyond our hands
obscure obscured obscuring
old piano suburban lid lifted peered in at
felt top wood hammers red and string and saw
his head bleeding on the waiting room floor
blue and cold with policeman in hospital bed
step thru the curtain to the patriarch lost
Kondallilla
waterfall home to rainforest brother friend
stuck beneath the water locks floating up
blood death and wound in forehead
bed with radio AM nursing home broken heart
death you saw for the blind man who could not see
no longer swimming in the springtime ocean
shruken in shallow breath cocoon and cool blue death
bleed out the size of your hand now at rest
beneath red shed tallowwood bark and Gurruga laughing
And me?
I’m naked on dust, clay, stone cement
or linoleoum tile where wild dogs are
eating me
intestines muscles eyeballs brains
then my red fox brother appears
the wild dogs dissapear all except one
which he chains to a stake in prefrontal
cortex medulla pons
he says “draw on stone – wild dog dust
then blow them to the wind” but still
that dog remains and each time you speak
it eats raw rabid bloody muscle tendon artery
rips rips rips rips rips rips
tears tears tears tears tears
bone crack bone crack bone crack
it is there and I cannot speak.
but somewhere somtime somehow
there is a more powerful magic
in the heat
a more powerful magic
in the healing
a more powerful magic
in the telling
a more powerful magic
in the meeting
in the grieving
in the learning
in the walking
in the waking
a more powerful magic
in the water
in each earth step
step by step
away towards or still
a more powerful magic
in dandelion chamomile
liqurice root nettle
in embrace in touch in fucking
in gazing
in sky, star, planet and moon
a more powerful magic
shared together in peace
a more powerful magic
brush turkey, black cockatoo
burrumgay
bundaluck
red ash angophora long legged heron
and platypus splash
a more powerful magic
a more powerful magic
in you
me
bare skinned full clothed
we!
stone child
1
Bark shed fern bed
Understory
Crystal hollow eucalypt tree
Lino, floorboard and back fence
Curled up
Grieving.
My ruin.
Tea tree cascade
And
Fallen eucalypt
I was still a child
When my father died
On a highway intersection
Dragged out of the car onto the tar
Man?
And I’ve always been strong
More than you know
Sassafras, coachwood, brush box giant ancient!
2
Rock face machine cut
Bulldozer road grader
Roadside drain into rainforest gully
Moss covered stone
Who’s alone?
In the night distant coal train
Dog bark
Building from the ruins
Of
The patriarch lost
A Man
Alive in the beauty Awake to the pain
Sometimes alone
Untamed, domestic, wild
With
Shame
Apple blossom and Banksia tree.
Infinite
I’m not building
with stone
I’m doing backstroke in the ocean
At dusk
Crescent moon setting
Or
Ankle deep in the cascade creek
Barefoot
Pants rolled up!
Sometimes you hear a man speak
It belongs to
You
Both.
Wire fence and lantana blossom
Reaching through
Children need lifting
With
The stones they are moving
Man woman all human
And
Fuck spilling our blood on the garden!
Take that small hand
And walk
Together!
Wattle through the window
Teapot and cup constellation on the table.
Fire, ash
And smoke in the mist evening time.
late night washing machine
Washing machine
Vibrations
Possum thunder
Across the roof
down
the plum tree
chicken roosting
behind wire and gate
on eggs
ghost fox across the suburban streets
snoring
child
and piles of books on the table
i am wondering what you think at night?
fridge hum frogs croak
rain
On
the colour-bond.
(for Simon Leo)
The reinvention of work
I have been reading the reinvention of work by mattew fox (1994). He offers a vision of work that seeks to move from an increasingly destructive industrialist worldview/paradigm into a spirited ecological one. He advocates inner transformation of consciousness via ritual, communal and personal. The inner transformation is the place where the outer life of work and culture begins. He suggests that artists work to bring transformative ritual into their local communities. He calls this,”participatory art”, that, “unleashes energy” and works to “heal dualisms”. So i am beginning to look for this side of the arts more and more so please help and guide me to deeper understanding.
The Australian writer ValPlumwood also believes that the nature culture split can be changed by the strategies found in Ecological writing and theory. Plumwood believes in giving voice to the more than human as a way of re-spiriting dead matter. In her poetic essay journey to the heart of stone, Plumwood talks about how writers can challenge, “The experiential framework of dead silent matter entrenched by the sado-disspassionate rationality of scientific reductionism” (Plumwood in Beckett & Gifford 2007, p18). The way to do this is to recover an understanding of matter as spirited. She calls for a project that encourages us to, “to think beyond these boundaries, to re-invest with speech, agency and meaning the silenced ones, including the earth and its very stones, cast as the most lifeless members of the earth community” (Plumwood in Beckett & Gifford 2007, p22). The writer can re-spirit matter by work that gives voice to the non-human. By doing this the writer can not only help open up space for the world to talk to human communities, but also they can help the human communities learn how to listen. This is a way of healing a wounded space. 
What we saw of the bats
Woke early and kissed you goodbye to lay in bed bleeding menstrual blood and rest your cramping belly
hand in hand with our little girl with plastic pony filled unicorn shape bag
going to the city to see fruit bats by the harbour hanging from trees
past Lidcombe on the train saw blood on the tracks behind blue tape police line and fireman with hose young man with mad eyes cross legs on the platform
made water colour pictures with our daughter on top of magazine collage of handsome ruff hair’d face man with wedding dress model legs and pet pig
went all the way to circular key and leaning off the rails watched jelly fish floating amongst rubbish and huge northern coast turpentine tree ferry pylon structures
noticed rippled shadow of cruise ship big as city buildings
past opera house peaks remember’d sumo wrestling in latex costume with beautiful American girl and photo of a new friend in Spencer tunic naked pile of people
watched seagulls catch imperceptible things amongst the sea weeds
went round to fenced off fig tree giant sculpted rock wave cascade and Gadigal woven stone shield big as a house
moved here by new Zealand artist tip truck and Gosford bulldozer quarry place
heard the laughter of children at wedding party by the pond with eel brushing the surface reflecting black bamboo.
all we saw of the bats was a picture board explaining their eviction by noise wires in list reason’d slope of text laminate
stood there quiet remembering cracking the eggs the broody hen at home had abandoned to find one fine feathered duckling wrapped in translucent sack
blood in the shell on my gloves in the wheel barrow and in the compost bin
remembered emptying the rubbish this morning and seeing a condom full of my ejaculation cover’d in land filled destinies
follow’d tight jean tourists along wave shaped sign wall invasion narrative history ending at a bunch of green bananas hanging covered in bees
a pencil drawing of Bennelong behind us and a plaque description of 1700’s European taste for the sweet and the novel
round spiked cactus at the lion guarded gates the harbour sparkling and jacaranda blossums in the distance
sound of freeway beneath
picked flowers and went to look up at mammoth bronze sculpt’d war horse Sydney basin sandstone plinth
our three year old girl with unknown native flower’d hair ornaments raided from botanic garden plant museum
into the gallery up smooth steps glittering with coastal sand specks to exchange our bags for a white number’d black bit of wood
somewhere in here we can find lin onus hills hoist pattern’d with dots and hanging wooden bats or have they been evicted too?
up and down escalators thru collections of two dimensional wall hanging paintings
Del barton erect nipple’d nature women naked with birds and five breasts in a landscape of blue named dots
told at the information desk of dismantled clothesline bats
instead
Went to see thousand year old ceramic horses from china painted earth colours on spotless white platform behind glass window with legs flying up and warrior polo playing woman fist clenched
Decided to leave and walked out into the arvo sun
Over pedestrian crossing wedding procession cars stopped to let us cross white ribbons flapping and latter almost got run down by another satin sparkling wedding dressed bride
The cameras flashing in the old sydney hospital courtyard past the fountain edge to wild bronze tusked pig
Caught the train back up the mountain
Out the window deep sandstone cliff face gorge and creek glowing orange from western sun
Handprints ancient in the cave overhangs
Looking at the blue mountain horizon a haze of bushfire smoke and full moon rising behind us in the east.
+Sydney mid spring 2012
back fence lost/back fence song
Recently this poem “back fence lost” was shortlisted for the Judith Wright Overland emerging poets prize.
The whole experience was really unexpected and strange for me. I even began to wish that i had never entered because if i won i would have to reveal that i am an imposter that knows very little about contemporary poetry in Australia. Through this process i realised how strongly i have come into the belief that creativity is growing more common. That it is becoming less about the individual modernist genius, and more about everybody having the knowledge that they possess the greatest genius of all, that of the inherent creativity of everyday life.
I have always questioned if the world needs another white male middle class story-teller. I have almost given up creative practice because of these issues that are so present in literary and art communities. I still don’t know where i stand on this issue, maybe i never will? But having said all that, art making is about expression of communities, dialogue and healing. That’s a good enough reason to keep doing it for me. Just to make sense of the world and make sure that cultural monster forms don’t swallow me up completely.
Back Fence Lost is a poem that i wrote while living in Katooma. I had just left living on a rural property in northern NSW and was confronted by the shift back into a suburban lifestyle. All everyday things are full of ecological interactions. All these things we live with are openings and beginnings of stories that cascade forever.
In the form and style of the poem you can hear how much i love my favorite poets, especially Allen Ginsberg, Walt Whitman and Gary Snyder. BUt It’s also written from reading the poets, Kath Walker, Anita Heiss and Yvette Holt. There is also the feeling of co-writing with my peers Julie-ann Henninger and Simon Leo, who are the most important and brilliant poets for me because they share a personal journey of life and growth with me.
The poem was edited and rewritten from its original form which is about 200 lines to fit the 50 line limit of the Overland prize. I have posted both versions of the poem here. let me know what you think…
Back fence lost
Rough-edged palings warped bent nail shadows and twisted grain,
chicken wire half dead bean vine climbing full of seeds and light breeze moving,
afternoon shadow decent of cross beam and 5 + 3 hardwood upright,
once upon a time made with string line and spirit level
now an ancient relic leaning:
weather-board white grey dusk light through the cracks,
brilliant in the moon-light with arch of Milky-Way arm spiral above,
crawling with snails in the wet dew night.
palings torn from the old eucalypt forests,
uplifted volcanic ancient hotspots and leaf litter of thousand year old hardwood
giants
in an under story of lace work vine clothes dangling from canopy to buttress,
on a cold windy ridge top
log truck spitting up dust against the bleeding angophoras.
hillsides burnt black smouldering root-balls and the etched road access of compacted and grader
r I p p E d l I n E s.
This arvo with hand rested on the back-fence wondering,
what kind of sport is this anyway?
head thrown back in lycra suit racing across the roof tiles with billowing smoke and rafters
collapsing behind
cheering in race day hats beneath blue and white stripped umbrellas as soldiers move through
bombed streets in old pattern SHM respirators and ZFK-58 suits
Standing on Olympic podium with chin high ignorant of garden fence complexities,
Hitting snooker chalked balls across green felt war zones with roof collapsing and woman with sick
child begging on the street outside.
looking up see the sky rested on the pavers crooked against grey fence shadows
still listening
to
neighbour mowing lawn over back fence
l l l l l
O O O o O
s s s s s
t t t t t
in the wood grain
h O l d i n g
the shadow eucalypt tree rusting nail eternity.
(This is the longer version. It’s a bit more honest and i think it’s better to read.)
Fence song
1
Late summer beneath light rain on unbalanced weed infected pavers,
It’s 3pm and I’m out here wondering about the world.
Look up at old fence and hear the neighbour gallant on the other-side struggling with lawnmower
Sounds like a beast of a pull start cord siezed by rust,
I am thinking about suburban backyards and my display cement
How many fences in this town?
How much separation?
How much old-growth destruction for land claim’d bound airy lines?
Could we pull the fences of the world down with rusted jemmy bar and hammer and climbing
children?
Reclaim the commons of humanities sensual belonging:
Make sure everybody has a home, land to grow food on and a place to fuck wildly amongst the
Strawberries.
2
With strange neighbour alien mowing grass
I touch the fence-face with curious fingers…
The rough-edg’d pailings warp’d bent nail shadows and twist’d grain,
Chicken wire half dead bean vine climbing full of seeds and light breeze moving:
Afternoon shadows decent of eros cross beam and 5 + 3 hardwood upright,
Straight! Plumb! Level!
Once upon a time made with string line and spirit level,
Hammer’d, Saw’d, Chisl’d fit together neatly,
Now an ancient relic leaning,
Weather-board white grey dusk light through the cracks,
Brilliant in the moon-light with arch of Milky-Way arm spiral above,
Crawling with snails in the wet dew night seen through window ghost panes knot’d and reflective of
Strangers,
Caress’d and clamber’d by morning glory!
3
Later I am sitting with a splinter in the palm of my hand for an hour looking at Arnhem land painting in thick
Missionary curator mediated book cover,
Near the garden fence on plastic chair unfolded!
Ancestral mother dancing ochre patterns and spirit healing on the back of x-ray serpent render’d on bark scroll.
How many thousand years?
How many moons, suns floods?
How many cyclones, fires, droughts?
Old ancestral dancer in the deep unknown desert on the sand holds down nuclear death,
Dispers’d radioactive elements, Uranium, Plutonium Strontium-90,
In world wide power station facilities,
Those chemical elements dug up spread annihilation for children, mothers, lands, disrupted power by tsunami earthquake nuclear meltdown on deep earth fault line,
In the rain drifting the biosphere in clouds fallen in soil,
Gives Mona Lisa bone cancer!
Rots Venus birthing!
Withers van Gough sunflowers!
Marbl’d David’s cock flush’d crack’d down museum toilet!
Monet’s haystacks disposed black toxic rain burnt!
Turns them to earth.
4
Old spirit dancer wake my young body!
Wake flesh blood dormant spirit warrior and forgive my ignorance and push my face in the dirt to greet my own ancestral dancers of other climates!
Before anhilation!
Before the children’s bodies are eaten by cancers!
Before the sacred land is murder’d and lay’d bare!
Before apathy and despair burry me in mounds of asphalt concrete and toxic ash!
5
Fence origins:
Palings torn from the old eucalypt forests,
A mountain range of beauty 3000 kilometres long from tropic to curv’d southern snowdrifts,
Uplifted.
Volcanic ancienthotspots and story’d cultur’d geologic wonders.
The sacred memory of creek-bed and the erosion of slope by cyclone torn trees.
In the warm afternoon sun, I am remembering mist rising from subtropical ecologies and ochre filled creek banks, the leaf litter
of thousand year old sentient giants,
Communities of rich interactions and deep strength sunlight filtering through thick vines
Hanging.
the eucalypt forests of old growth hardwoods giants in an under story of tree ferns,
a lace work of vine clothes dangling from canopy to buttress heart shap’d skeleton leafs,
creeks clear and fed from springs in the moss cover’d ground,
tree spiral figures embrac’d in the branches of worlds spreading in spirals of galaxies and leaves roots dug deep chew’d on by serpents,
curl’d around the trunk tongue flicking at the moon deep in the tree of life,
how many seasons?
How many winters of frost and snow?
How much dormancy and how much times of budding?
6
I am remembering when i saw a pademelon feeding at dawn on fern shoots,
Eucalypt silhouettes on a cold windy ridge top:
Log truck spitting up dust against the wounded bleeding Angophras.
Hillsides burnt black smouldering root-balls and the etched road access of compact’d and grader
ripped lines.
Walked amongst the forest logging debris tall trees gone lay down across a stump as big as a bed,
I found a glider dead torn apart still in it’s hollow felled by chainsaw and harvesting
Machine:
Full of maggots!
7
This afternoon with hand rested on the back-fence, once alive in a forest community,
now leaning against a neighbour separation device.
I am making a quite prayer:
Old tree hold still the ground!
Hold the atomic annihilation beneath!
Wake my ancestors cell forms and genetic ephemera!
ancient spirit power!
Show me the spiral branch of warriors and the graves where they feast!
8
What kind of sport is this anyway?
Head thrown back in Lycra suit racing across the roof tiles with billowing smoke and rafters collapsing behind,
Cheering in race day hats beneath blue and white stripped umbrellas as soldiers move through bombed streets in old pattern SHM respirators and ZFK-58
Suits,
Depleted uranium casing baby deformities,
Hitting snooker chalk’d balls across green felt war zones with roof collapsing and woman with sick child begging on the street outside,
Standing on Olympic podium with chin high and forgotten garden fence complexities,
Finding god in church on pews or a with a hairless child woman with chemical melted hair, tanned skin and black silk dress,
Jumping high in metal studded boots on the back of someone falling down to catch an incoming atomic missile!
9
Down with the fence!
Talking with the neighbour he agrees!
Says: Knock it down put up steel colour bond one!
No!
That’s just another captalyst nightmare mining atrocity,
Replace it with metal galvanised uprights for black spiders to hide in,
Remove the rustic shadows of bent nail ecstasy silk thread leaf dangling homes,
Take it to the tip and dump it out of the car wash polish’d utility,
Burn it in a pile over a privet prun’d manifestation,
Write holy laws in the ash and breath the smoke.
10
Looking up i see the sky book rested on the pavers crooked against grey fence shadows
Still talking to the neighbour over the edge of fence controlled chaos
Could we pull down native forest wood saw’d fence to make communal garden beds?
Grow food and boycott the supermarket slave driver subtle and paver of fluorescent death,
Tomatoes leaning pick’d by small children hands and cook’d for dinner,
Find chicken pecking snails for dinner holy saviour of silver-beet destruction,
Find freedom in penis climbed and caressed by lovers hands!
In Breast and clitoris aroused by gentle tongue or fingers,
Because enjoyment is a deep human need, not a capatlyist destruction tool.
Save the earth by playing football, basketball or cricket with friends
By listening to poets!
By fucking and teasing pleasure from free loving bodies,
By Chinese checkers, backgammon, naught’s and crosses!
Don’t need new TV!
Or microwave!
Find our peace cooking on an open-fire beneath a sky full of distant suns!
Sing with guitars or drums or cooking pots!
surrounded by healing medicine herbs!
Wood grain eternity holding the shadow’s eucalypt tree of life rusting nail infinity!
Map the journeys of stars or snails!
Dance ecstatic and refuse to be a consumable unit!
Play table tennis on the reclaimed fence paling table beneath the peach tree spring blossoms and watch the fairy wrens chase their fancy blue breast’d hero!
learn each others names and sing songs of deep earth healing!
discuss political paraphernalia and bury newspaper politicians in piles of compost and chicken poo!
+ Katoomba autumn 2011
The great gastronomic revolution of 1952
The great gastronomic revolution of 1952:
Ate dreary food:
Living off tea, bread and butter:
Pale and bloodless little fish or fruit:
Red meat:
264 lbs per head per year:
Bigger plate mound of meat than USA: England: France: Germany!
Meat coupon scale on the wall.
Butcher shop community place:
Red meat religion?
1952:
A revolution in the kitchen!
Demand for salad industrial cafeteria:
Anti-chauvinistic cuisine:
World war post migrant national diet, jugged wallaby:
Roast brush turkey Sundays:
Sea slug soup:
Baked paw paw, wonga wonga pigeon, turtle fin and prickly pear jelly:
Kangaroo tail soup:
Cures for indigestion in southern colonies:
Coffee grown on the river in cairns:
Sri lanken harvesters on 1900 plantations:
Flannel shirted black gum booted pants tucked in:
Aesthetic pleasure of corned beef:
Casserole, steak and crayfish:
Regular haunts, Pavlova, lamented lamingtons.
Meat pie national dish:
Sold fresh:
Frozen over long distances:
Truck driver supermarket transport on highway one:
Factory meat pie perpetual despite the onslaughts:
Half a million pies a day:
Throughout the state:
Councillors cross the road for fine cuisine:
Chamber cafeteria shunned:
Mocked in some circles:
Whipped:
Looked like smoke:
Sealed, respectable, invalid:
Heroic:
Banished.
still liFe wiTh crOoked Tea pOt, chlorOphyl aNd OchRe
I have been having lots of fun painting and drawing. (I feel like my poems are drawings because i use the sense of sight and they read very visual/descriptive). I have been recovering a lot of the pigments i have collected and playing around with chlorophyl. It is nice to work with greens again. It might seem strange, but i have 
been playing with still life. But it’s not so still! There are phsycic resonances in these things: After conversation: the left behind objects like teapot and cups carry a story: a potent narrative: Vase with Banksia pod and brushturkey feather sticking out: the feeling of spirited handprints reaching across and out of the table, the life of ideas and plans: simple things, who is going to run the bath for the children: big things… How can any sane human being cut down the old growth forests of Australia? The deep love of ourselves and each other that we find when we really connect: the presence of shadows, hurt and the dead: possibility… when we talk about good ideas and begin the journey of nurturing them into life.
Climbed up sandstone weather eroded rocks
patterns like oceans
of memory
the song
of
bare skinned dances:
My daughters six year old feet
covered in yellow clay
and crystal sand shards: She made faces and looked deep
into
the valleys
hundreds of meters below.
A creek line cool feeding a forest of vines,
we are looking at old sassafras trees,
they have leaves
the same colour as her eyes.
-Flat rock caves spring 2011
I started working with natural pigments as a teenager. A close friend taught me how to collect and use tree sap, you put it into a jar with a little water and leave it in the sun for a few days: (thanks to that special person). That set me off on a decade of painting with clays, ochre’s, chlorophyl, charcoal and tree sap: at the time i didn’t think about what it meant, i didn’t have much money and these materials were freely available. As i worked with these natural pigments i became interested in environmental activism and politics. To collect and use natural pigments is not only an attempt to liberate myself from industrial capatlyst control over creativity: it has been a journey into belonging to place: spiritual belonging: and the politics of colonisation that exists there. Recently i have enjoyed learning about others who also work in this way, especially Blue Mts artist Scott Marr: Have a look at his work… it’s really interesting.
Under rusting tin roof
tall
spotted gum iron bark
coiling
terracotta
star valley vessels
ancestors
dotted
earth
skins
talking drinking
a
cup of tea
smoke from the campfire
+Anakie, Nymboida
Connective Aesthetics
Suzi Gablik in her essay, ‘Connective Aesthetics’ talks about a move away from the modernist mythologies in art making. The individualist artist working at making their own vision of the world. Gablik c
riticizises the modernist approach and suggests its growing redundancy. We don’t need more artists making individualised products, but artists that work to “affirm our radical relatedness” (Gablik, p2). Artists who seek aesthetics based in, “less monocentric mythologies” (p2) are redefining cultural myths. Gablik writes, “Art that is grounded in the realization of our interconnectedness and intersubjectivity – the intertwining of self and others – has a quality of relatedness that cannot be fully realised through monologue: it can only come into its own dialogue, as open conversation (Gablik, p4). Viewing art is no longer about artist/spectator binary, it is not just about the individual author.
I like Suzi Gabliks ideas. I am sure there is more to it than i can understand and probably heaps of critique. When i first read her book ‘The re-enchantment of Art’ i changed my way of making art work. I no longer just make paintings/drawings alone. Most of these works have been in collaboration with my partner and children. I have an easel set up in our main living space, where the Tv would normally be, we often make art together and its fun: we learn about each other and create the visual narratives of our home and the journeys that converge there.
Looking down cascade gully of sassafras: Coachwood: Listening to w
hats old: Dig it out this way: Mix: Fine red dust: in the water crystals
down the track past boulders and tall turpentine trees
seed pod space ships: nettles overhanging the path: climbed up naked to stand in the falling water: then: collected some nettles: to make tea at home with my lover.
+Royal National Park
Rusted rio rod
red
hot in campfire
burning
holes in green
bamboo
smell of resin smoke
ghost
measured
into
key
or
wild flute melodie
+Waterfall
Beauty, wonder and good energy for the earth.
Re-spiriting matter/more than human
In the green studies reader, the Ecocritical theorist, Lawrence Buell defines Ecocriticism through what he calls the, “environmental imagination” (Buell, L 2000, p1). According to Buell, It is the ‘environmental imagination’ that attempts to understand potential environmental crisis. It is also the ‘environmental imagination’ that seeks strategies within culture to stop environmental destruction taking place. Buell writes, “Environmental crisis is not merely one of economic resources, public health and political gridlock” (Buell, L 2000, p1). He is suggesting that approaches to environmental crisis are not limited to the most obvious arenas, that there are other ways that this perceived crisis is being approached. The ‘environmental imagination’ is one such way. He goes on to write, “The success of environmentalist efforts finally hinges not on some highly developed technology or arcane new science, but on a state of mind: on attitudes, feelings, images, narratives” (Buell, L 2000, p1). The ‘environmental imagination’ does this by inspiring change in the way people understand nature. It works to create culture that values the environment with care and responsible connection. Buell suggests a number of approaches that Ecocriticism uses to achieve these aims under the umbrella term of the ‘environmental imagination’. These include art forms which: Seek reconnection with place, a re-visioning of the future to be a place of cultural sensitivity and ecological care, and connection with the experience of other people and non-human nature.
Deer were introduced into the royal national park area early in the English colony for the sport of hunting. Later after the area became national park the deer had survived and thrived. Environmental concerns decided that the animals were damaging the local ecosystem and hunters were given licence to remove the deer from the park.
HUNTED
Sleeping
on the beach
beneath ocean size storm
clouds
a herd of deer.
Headlights of a car
coming down
the
hillside
The red spotted Angophoras
twisted
by
the coastal sandstone
and wind.
The deer sleep
on
a hill of sand
bone
and the campfire
shells
of
molluscs
-Little Era Beach
KURADJI
Wind Swept
dunes
cockatoo screech
over the dozers
and
road grader
fire and smoke
Skeleton found by brothers
rested 5000 years
or more
being torn poured with bitumen
still singing people
together.
-Sandon Point
The Australian writer Val Plumwood believes that the nature/culture split can be changed by Ecocritical writing. Plumwood suggests giving voice to the more than human as a way of re-spiriting dead matter. In his poetic essay journey to the heart of stone, Plumwood discusses how writers can challenge, “The experiential framework of dead silent matter entrenched by the sado-disspassionate rationality of scientific reductionism” (Plumwood in Beckett & Gifford 2007, p18). The way to do this suggests Plumwood is to recover an understanding of matter as spirited. He calls for a project that encourages us to, “to think beyond these boundaries, to re-invest with speech, agency and meaning the silenced ones, including the earth and its very stones, cast as the most lifeless members of the earth community” (Plumwood in Beckett & Gifford 2007, p22). The writer can re-spirit matter by work that gives voice to the non-human. By doing this the writer can not only help open up space for the world to talk to human communities, but also they can help the human communities learn how to listen. This is a way of healing a wounded space.
Road-kill
We meet
dressed
in fur
our own
and road kill.
clean and eaten.
The forest canopy
is
skeletal
remains
under our feet,
covered in mud
covered in earth.
I am smoked
by campfire,
dreads full of seashells,
we are returning
to
cook lentil stew
in our kitchen:
coming home
to
sleep -dance our reunion.
-Dundurrabin/Nymboida
Home songs
“Many people do not quite have their own song and dance. Current music is too much a commodity, too much in flux, it cannot dye us. We are not quite sure what our home music is.” Gary Snyder, The Practice of the wild, p24.
Being part of a colonising race, (pure Ozzy mongrel), has given me a legacy of confusion. My own traditional song has been lost. This personal/family/land displacement has come at the cost of indigenous homelands, massacre, theft, the stolen generation. It’s a two-way destruction. I am stuck with the spiritually redundant capatlyst/industrialist culture. 
Recently i heard the Australian activist john seed interviewed on the radio. He believes that he is part of an older ancestry, a joint ancestry. The Cenozoic era is our common heritage that we share with the earth as a whole living being. He asks the question, should we throw away that heritage away just so we can buy a new TV or microwave?
These issues are really central to my art.
Art becomes a way of deep enjoyment for the spirit, this is its healing aspect. Don’t need a new TV because we stay up late playing music, songs we write or our friends write, drinking fresh herbal tea from the garden: paintings are dynamic teaching narratives that transform us as we wash dishes, rinse the sprouts, knead the bread…
By its very self-sufficient nature: art making is a form of activism because it feeds the spirit: fulfills that deep human need to sing and dance, to communicate with the whole body: to touch in relationship the tender places.
In 1910, the African-American boxer Jack Johnson knocked out his white opponent Tommy Burns in one round. The boxing match took place in Rushcutters bay on a make shift ring in front of thousands of white Australians: Captain cook discovered Australia! (he didn’t notice that land was already occupied by a cultured people). In the 1790’s Pemulwuy lead the Eora, Tharawal and Darug people in a resistance campaign that almost got rid of the English colony.
So here we are, trying to make a home, trying to belong: trying to find a home song and dance.
Toxic culture/Earth written
The work Toxic Culture, describes the death of my father. It is also questioning the use of a commercial acrylic medium, positioning it as an inherently sick media. In the words of Suzi Gablik, “Modern individuals do not see the earth as a source of spiritual renewal, they see it as a stock pile of raw materials to be exploited and consumed.” (Gablik, S. 1991, p77) In this work I am suggesting that acrylic paint media reinforces a toxic culture and an exploitation of the earth. Art critic Robert Hughes has pointed out “What strip mining is to the earth, the art market has become to culture” (Hughes, R in Gablik. 1991, p146) Working with this media reinforces a capitalist colonisation of the imagination and art making.
In this painting, the cycle of death is represented by the flesh coloured figure standing on a road that leads to the figure of death coming from out of the hillside. It is important to note that they are also linked by the cigarette that they both share, and this completes the circle that links the dead with the living. The crown symbolises the father and the fall of the father. This can also be read as they demise of a patriarchal society and suggests that the figure that is alive is taking that cigarette not to smoke, but to stub out and reject.
I have deep emotional connections with my children, I fear their pain in the context of a sick culture and hope to hold space for them in the world. To find a father/patriarchal figure that nurtures a sense of belonging to a sacred earth and a culture that treats it so. The Austrian painter Hundertvasser, who also worked with some found pigments, has said that all he wanted to do was, “liberate himself from the universal bluff of civilisation.” (Restany, P. 2001, p?.) Working with found natural materials, pigments and some post consumer waste helps me to counter the arrogance and cynicism of our culture. It also helps me to liberate my imagination and to activly re-imagine, through cultural embodiment, healthy networks of sacred connection.
These paintings were made in collaboration with Ember Peace my 1 and a half year old daughter.
“Love is the reality, poetry is the drum that calls us to that!”
+Rumi
Fence song
Text is seen as being more than codes of English language and extend to the movement of the world. I have attempted to translate the texts of supermarket and fence into poetry. By juxtaposing elements of visual born information, syntax is realigned with the complex interactions of the world text. There is no naturally clear way to think or write this. Rules make no real sense of this world text. The text of supermarket is deeply and radically fragmented, thus the language and its lexicon/syntax must also be a radical formation of fragmented and juxtaposed words. I ask myself how the covered up blooms of forests and indigenous sacred sights meet with a policeman pushing a shopping trolley who is walking past coffee grown in a South American slave trade deforestation advertising cover-up. Allen Ginsberg writes in the introduction to his collected works (2007), “Syntax punctuation Captilisation remain idiosyncratic, retaining the variable measure of nervous systematics” (p6). I also claim the disclaimer of a universal idosyncratics based in the diversity of nervous system language systematics. My bodies ‘nervous systematics’ order perception of the mundane in a complex song of ecological interactions. By doing this the mundane is aligned with the depth of wonder and grief of a mysterious unexplained cosmos. It is also aware of the politics that limit it, define it and harm it.
I have also worked with an interdisciplinary hybridity. The text takes the shape of the body, female/male subject positions are negotiated against the back drop of the mundane. The text takes a non-linear form. Text can be read up a leg, on a breast or even realigned in the shape of penis, neck or finger.
deep space tracking antenna
“real wealth consists of things of beauty and utility, of surrounds inspiring to live in”.
-Emma Goldman
I started this painting the other night, i am interested in relationship and the journey of lovers: there is always somthing to learn about the people that i love: Realising that i have trouble communicating because there is heaps of fear that gets in the way of being able to see: Looking through a book called “discovering the universe”: i found this object/technology that is coded deep space tracking antenna and being able to relate to it: decided that is exactly what this picture needs (look close in the landscape beyond!) being someones lover/partner/friend is a lot like looking into deep space: seeing the most mind boggling things: things that are incredibly beautiful and humbling!
earthpoesis 
