Jackson

when I trim nails, shave, put on underwear; put on pants and a tight black shirt; when I read a bright-ache text or coded visual; when I drink; when I hear a punk song, a rock, a love song; when I drink; when I stroke the steel hair of my much-used instrument, make a new… Read more

21. No longer a student, I became a “real person”, as he called it. I made quiet art in the small spaces between work and what passed for relationships. I thought, I’m an artist, but I was a well-dressed middle-class professional. I made money, spent it, married a “real person”, had two children, real as… Read more

Dana lies on the leather sofa. Louis sits on the woollen rug. In their mahogany frames his painted birds twitter above the aquarium. In its black metal border her Rothko print broods beside the airconditioner. They flick on the television and watch a movie about Jim Morrison. Louis’s eyes drift shut. Jim, played by an… Read more

Having been in the pretend-New-York Fitzroy grid and the pretend-Europe St Kilda seaside village and the city upstairs yellow Hare Krsna foodroom and the Fuck Off architecture of Federation Square I’m lentil as anything looking for some place to be alone and to think of you what I damn well think of you So right… Read more

The purple-nailed, blacksuited, mad-hatted, workbooted, vodka-drinking, rollie-sucking, McCartney-bashing, Lennon-hugging, clanging, slanging, banging, whanging, smoothfaced and making up for it poems Here’s Jack White*, with Satan still in front of him and without the marimba —Ain’t that a kick in the head? Nah, it’s a bottle of vodka Drown yourself *From The White Stripes (First published… Read more

Bring me a thunderstorm at sunset Decorate my giant cranium with beautiful scary pink clouds Gather them in the west and fling them to the east— Give me a lightshow. Give me some bass. Rumble and stutter my tomtoms, distant and straight overhead so I feel it, so I fall with it. Crack open the… Read more