QUITTIN' TIME

Right, I'm off to see Vikings, woodpeckers, wolverines, Notre Dame, Le Pont Alexandre III, Le Marais, Rowan Atkinson, The Globe, Trellick Tower and a few other things. Happy Easter!

LJ, March 29 201

CLICHE CENTRAL

Let's see how many times our fearless leaders mention 'we'll stop the boats' leading up to the election later in 2013. Sigh. Yawn. Vomit. LJ, 22 March 2013.

THE EAGLE IN THE DOVECOTE

Late in 2012, I watched Ralph Fiennes' mesmerising Coriolanus on DVD (just after I'd purchased a Pelican Shakespeare edition of the play - from 1966 - for $5 from Exeter General Store, near home).

Fiennes was pitch-perfect throughout. He owned his role. The way he pronounced his last words in Act V (directed to Aufidius) were chilling, thrilling... particularly the way he spat, Boy? Sheer defiance, sheer pride and sheer vitriol at the point of death! And that grand justification for his 'triumphant' actions, the desire to mark his war victories as historical truth, something The Bard also gives us with The Moor's last words in Othello. Ahhhh, I loved it.

Cut me to pieces, Volsces. Men and lads,
Stain all your edges on me. Boy? False hound!
If you have writ your annals true, 'tis there
That, like an eagle in a dovecote, I
Fluttered your Volscians in Corioles.
Alone I did it. Boy?

LJ, March 18 2013.

WHAT'S ON THE iPOD...

Recent stuff from How to Destroy Angels (pictured), David Bowie, Matisyahu, The Orb, Junkie XL, OMD, Delta Spirit, PiL, Chris Coco, Johnny Marr, Nick Cave (his latest album is No. 1 in Australia) & Paul Kelly. LJ, March 15 2013.

POEM #28

Aubade

I am up
before all things.
This autumn morning
hands us a take on
Antarctic completion.
In colourless sky,
a late satellite
like a lethargic meteorite
intersects a fingernail
clipping of moon.
Our beloved Southern Cross
is a lost kite falling
to a child's
reaching hand.
I drive past waking paddocks
stitched together with new fencing;
through pine windbreak,
the Ibiza strobe effect
of blood orange sunrise.
Here and there,
mist between crop bails
like unfinished bowls of cereal.
I pull over outside
Montrose Berry Farm.
Anti-rosella netting
on a dozen plum trees
creates a crowd of deformed brides,
enough ghosts to freak a truckie,
a cloud done with firmament.
A lone Belted Galloway
stares at a black-eyed farmhouse
then bellows, bellows.
Some road workers
in ice block colours
pull up in a truck -
one gets out,
stretches, yawns,
picks up a pine cone,
studies it as if Egyptian artifact.
I should text in sick,
turn off my engine,
tilt back my chair,
not wake up until dark.

LJ, March 12 2013.

JCDBP

I just sent five poems through to the judges of the Jean Cecily Drake-Brockman Prize, Geoff Page, Kathy Kituai and Mark O'Connor. All these poems have been previously published and they're pieces I'm hugely proud of. The award for this Prize is a cracker: $1000, a two week residency at Manning Clark House in Canberra and a residency at a castle in Westmeath, Ireland. I won't get my hopes up. LJ, March 6 2013.