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Giant Red Wave
In my gondwanean garden
There’s a low path and a high trail
The former leads you onto a glacier
The latter a mountain of shale
In my gondwanean garden
The plant life has travelled at length
Scaled like Armadillos
They cluster in the dry river-beds
Pacing the shore of the sea of the dead
I’m awaiting a giant red wave
In my gondwanean garden
We partake in stiff drinks at dusk
Spread out on the tundra like colonists
Toasting the epoch of rust
Toasting to our health and drinking
With an oblivian haunted thirst
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Make A Noise
If I was a Small Hawk
I’d sit upon a wire
and wait for you to arrive
Then I’d hover there above you,
flapping like mad to hold still
There I would have you pinned,
just dive in on in for the kill
I wanna woo your heart,
Make a noise
I’m gonna rule your heart
But I’m just a half-wit town boy
and I don’t know where you are
All I’ve got is white lines into darkness,
and the terror of those night trucks,
their punch of wind and glare
Springs up a Roo in the headlights,
as if I’d even care
Waist high grass on the roadside,
on the backs of highway signs
Anywhere you might spot it Kelly-Anne
Will you, will you, will you
I wanna woo your heart,
Make a noise
I’m gonna rule your heart
Make a noise
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Come About
I wanna hear horns, a smooth flurry of brass
with my guts all choked-up in my throat
I can’t fix your image fast
And the further away I get, just a sun-guilded silhouette,
Whatever you have with him, I’m gonna have to steal ya
I’m the only horse you’d ever back,
to clear the gates and run the other way
These fine wires always come attached,
running back to a dynamite boquet
Oh tonight what you have with him,
is riding rough-shod through my brain
You’re at the bottom of this bottle baby, I swear
When all the lines are down, won’t you come around
Now the lights are out, won’t you come about
I wake in a tangle of sheets,
head in hands under the rising steam
The Bats are back upside down,
and the Wild-dogs are sleeping underground
I wanna hear horns, the “all clear” from the blast
You’re a bend in this river baby,
a tiny spark caught in a jar
Whatever you have with him, I’m gonna have to steal ya
and conceal ya from the light of day,
if it’s the only time you’ll light my way
When all the lines are down, won’t you come around
Now the lights are out, won’t you come about
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Thunderbolt's
We piled seven in the cabin,
and two young’ns in the boot
Straight past the duty car, at the public bar
That old copper’s probably half-tanked too
Between towns-edge and the lookout,
Shane was driving at hell’s clip
We’re all screaming loud, passing bottles around
As if the windscreen was some horror flick
When the headlights illuminated,
that old grafittied pile of boulders
Gravel crunching in the carpark,
leave the stereo right up
Pissed and fooling around, smashing bottles down
I saw my opening and grabbed her hand
What if Thunderbolt, could have seen us here?
Layed out on his rock, fumbling at our jeans
So we did it like you do at that age,
then sat up and shared a cigarette
She asked, how’s the work so far, at the abattoir
Well you can talk you haven’t left school yet
And these passing rigs they screech and rumble
They don’t sound nothing like a thoroughbred,
when it’s crossing open ground,
when the Traps from miles around,
have come to do you in,
just how it had to end
And from this vantage point, his future full-moon clear
What if Thunderbolt could have seen us here?
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Sawdust
Sawdust, your light snow-fall on everything
Feather-sweet and dry, how you used to lie here,
in the cup of my hands
All that has been and what’s left,
you’re sneaking your way in on my breath,
and I hold that memory in
Sawdust, as I’m sweeping you up into piles,
thinking ‘bout the miles and miles and miles and miles and miles
of intervening ground
That stripped us of branch and of spine,
how the wind used to sing through the pines
And as a shadow, I’d just collect myself there
Upwardly climb, beyond your timber-line
Oh those dizzying heights
Sawdust, now you’ve gone and come apart
No amount of blood, sweat, spit and pissing tears
can make you wood again
Or deliver you back to good again,
how the drought, then the mice, then the men,
simply bored and riddled through you
and ate you clean of your core
But if I could rewind, you still might be mine
Oh that glistening heart.
If you don’t mind, I’d be honoured to come apart like sawdust
Are you comfortable, for it’s upon us, to come apart like sawdust
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On The Night You Were Born
Well on the night you were born
Your mother barefoot and padding across the floor
To a radio’s static hum,
and the smell of dinner enveloping the warm air
She was young, much younger than you are now
And you were ready so I suppose she just had to be,
Just had to be, in the local hospital,
where the pickled matrons start chanting here through the drill
And on the night that you were born
Your dad had car trouble on a roadside coming into town
He took some time to get the word
And he makes the bedside with a lightening nerve in his eye
He was young, much younger than you are now
His stomach knotting for the pain that’s screwing up her pretty face,
Her pretty face, he just can’t bare to watch,
so he takes to pacing fast laps around the block
It’s a warm still night in town (the sky is a ruin of stars)
The scent of the pepper trees and the distant barks of dogs
(halos of light in the dark)
The street lamps are alive in clouds of bugs
And a window in the building shone brighter than the rest,
tonight
On the night you were born
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Broken Hill
I often dream I’m dying, when I’m in her arms
What a perfect exit, above the slag-heaps I’d rise
Shedding all care of rocks and coins,
She’s not even mine
She works the floor above and the one below
But I need to have her talk to me,
and to watch her white throat roll
As she draws back on another fag,
and downs all my alcohol
Dash our glasses against the wall,
and pound me with her wrists
I’m a broken man,
You’re a broken girl
And aint it laughably apt
We’re in Broken Hill
I hear her laughter from behind other doors as I stumble down the hall
Up from the front bar, onto the verandah,
brawling with the boys
Those lousy drunken fuckwits,
She’s not even mine
She works the floor above and the one below
Sometime she will appear again,
and we won’t even exchange a glance
I’m leaning heavy against the rail,
here in secret hope
That it might give and we’d plummet into the pavement below
Just a broken man,
And a broken girl
Two piles of flesh and wreckage,
in the street of Broken Hill
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Shore Whaler
Well I haven’t the legs for the rolling southern seas,
the law flung me as far as here
In the on-season I’m in the blubber to my neck,
the off I’m a blabbering wreck
And the Nantucket men keep on dragging them in,
we boil them down to barrels and bones
For a seldom-seen captain pays us handsomely in grog,
fills the holds and sets-sail for home
A station of men left to their vices alone,
will drink until that station is dry
Then crashing through the scrub like a pack of mongrel dogs,
descend upon the next camp along
But I aint got the balls for the cold southern seas
This island aint compense for my shame
As long as I’m as numb as a rag soaked in the rum,
at night I’ll glow a dim blue flame
Then a passing ship will spot me on the shore,
deliver me from this hell-hole ever more
A wayward boat will find me on the sand,
and carry me from this sorry pile of land
Carry me from this sorry pile of land
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Armistice Day
You will fill your hair,
with blood-red Poppies galore
I will try to come clean,
If I make it there at all
Did I take you by surprise?
up the other end of your days
But I recognise those eyes
Thank Christ you don’t share mine
I was salvaged from a dream
I got pulled back over the bags
From the place where I got knocked
Into mud and tattered rags
Whether they’re shells or bells,
my ears they just ring
I’ve always been good for my word,
so I shan’t say a thing
But darling fill your hair,
with blood-red Poppies galore
I’ll arrive on my knees
If I make it there at all
On Armistice day
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