personal local elegies

(i) a first elegy

are death & yes you are finally tendered,
quaint hands, teeth, floating outside your over-reaching,
quietness & noise your coins your coinage
we are waiting & you, too, are waiting for us,
everything in motion he can't detect,
shoulders hunched against the wind on george street,
lost & happy & sad to be going where we go, we all go,
you, the sky, the sandstone,
two people kissing in that toyota & the lights changing
or a train leaves wynyard station february 25 i miss you & ted
we will never see him again & the lighter falls
to the floor, bounces under the seat, life is full
of slight difficulties, regular service may not be resumed
at some level we know the ferries aren't always leaving
circular quay by fluorescent light my eyes
refuse to focus i annoy the attendant it's right there
on the board i'm sorry i can't read it & the street slopes uphill
i don't believe it's a metaphor & i wonder if stoicism
is really passive-aggressive free internet access join now
which way to the hostel i think it's down there but i'm not
the street suddenly clear the bright windows draped in money
you had simply stopped despite the tubes, the cables
& downstairs your car i drove for hours & then
getting on with it we are here now within your face
my tired jacket hello everyone my old griefs curling
like this cigarette i'm not smoking avoiding
a phoney resolution it stops nothing ever stops
i walk past a telephone

(ii) personal stereo

why won't you dance with me?
i'm not no limburger.
- the B52s

33 degrees leads to spousal abuse
& the arc to which the parliament aspires.
somewhere in asia your notion of geography
is meshed in traffic, & it's the sheer
implausibility of the thing that keeps you moving,
assembling another day from your tired stocks
of metaphor & healthier delusions, the kitchen
neither hygiene nor threat of guests
will make you clean, & when the fires start
the exchange rate rushes in with a bucket
& everything's apples for minutes at a time.
even your fey empiricism must come to an end -
past the yeeros shop & the mobile phone dealer
a heap of kids are leaning on a car,
feeling each other up. this is a general message
to drivers on all in-bound services:
the sky, the buildings / your delicate face.

(iii) a responsible attitude

marrickville in fast-forward, the sky
full of - not flame - what is that?
artifice? art?
it is 8.13am & i am never tired.
(the dreams help, invisibly.)
where is the sun rising right now?
all this & so on as we hate & a car
disappears behind larry will our noses break or bleed
& these pressures beginning to buzz again heinously
as though we are parked at the stop
instead of driving in ever smaller circles
after (the manner of) truth.
i doubt it will ever arrive unlike email
which is "flooding" in much as noise
from the renovations transmitted
through the building's structure like a string
hauled into the sky approaching marrickville.

(iv) sydney to townsville
for kay & lucy

7.41am, the in & out café, sydney.
the morning rain has washed the homeless
from the streets & railway square
has that 'gateway to the CBD' look,
precise as the dioramas displayed
in the window of the S.I.T.,
which is how i imagine my life,
traversing the dress codes & tiny grids
all laid out in matchstickland
or the house of shells,
where the captions say things like
"goofily naive space" instead of
"visual marketing" or "merchandising layout
for contemporary music retail."
we enter the landscape that the head
transforms & muscle memory writes
7.41am, the in & out café, sydney,
where it is 7.53 & the rain
is dampening the cardboard & glue
as i go to work, thinking of you.

(v) a dynamic of impatience

is this trying to establish its own gesture
apart from the established order? is it an attempt?
your lungs fill with incense - tobacconist & gifts, est. 1983.
bulk billing & our services include surf music
& the towel falling slowly to the floor. take our hands.
a mistake? our hands? the lights at the end
of addison road. but which lights? at which end?
your lips, pouting. this moisture.
take my coupons, my mixed business.
the post office rises like a hint
& i'm watching the back of your neck, not the television.
two schooners & something a little more private
if you've got it. would you like a receipt?

(vi) next april / far away

i was born in providence, rhode island
in 1934 in november & i have thought of you
with great sadness every day of this life.
it passes, they also pass, heading east
outside the mattress factory as contrails
suggest the direction of mascot, a 737
hanging close to every petersham roof,
the reservoir on new canterbury road.
is that a pet or the prime minister?
families explore the car-as-home-extension theory,
locked into their own concepts of landscape
as i am mine, walking south along bowen road
(or is this fortitude valley? lygon street?)
"hey hey daisy mae, / where are you now? /
are you coming to stay?"
hot enough on king street to turn the goths
a lighter shade of pale, the sixties settled
over everything like a shroud. have you really
been dead for thirty-four years? for twelve?

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ted@magicdog.com -- 31 July 2000