Davey Dreamnation

Even as the dust begins to settle on We Will Disappear, there’s no time for a busy poet like me to rest. I’m proud to announce that I’ve got a new chapbook out through the highly-esteemed Vagabond Press, whose editor Michael Brennan runs the Poetry International Australia website, and who is, by the way, a [...]

i got frisked in fukuoka/ like a dog i just woofed and rolled over/ i had a date with a destination/ had to get to the bullet train station/ validated my japanese rail pass/ calculated how long it would last until/ I had to get off to get on to get off/ to ride a [...]

Audience of subway strangers. Stagger at them! Pelt them with praise! I’m Ko Un, and I’m drunker than a poem. This text, pirated, sallies forth upon the bristled breeze. Ko Un! Standing in your shadow magic. Spam, originating from the Republic of Soju, hits me fortnightly. Ko Un! Standing by the door, laughing at advertisements. [...]

i got mao’s text around eight -
i was sitting in some dingy bar
watching boxers spar on the tv
i’ll be late don’t wait for me
so i ordered some more wasabi
peas & massaged my stiff knees
dreamily it’s always like this
i think because mao’s the one who’s
always late (mentioning something
about make-up or a facelift in
a mausoleum somewhere [...]

thunderheads line up across the bay
as airbirds wait their turn to taxi
pulses of energy enter these bodies
coming out the other side breathing
prevaricating at the petrol station
as the passers-by smoked cigarettes
the atmosphere was on orange alert
but the radios played old gangajang
humidity creeps through the gardens
as hummingbirds get the final call
jasmine supplies dangerously low -
tearing off every [...]

“It          remains possible to believe there
was          nothing anyone could do about
the          melted bottles, burnt coins etc … as for the
corpses          lying in the streets and wreckage
of          Nagasaki, we tend to forget how
the          body resists history; we pretend that
Koreans          look different, or
that          victims are all the same, even when they
remained          silent, we could hear their voices,
scattered          across the unbelievably blue sky, hanging
in          trees, or from twisted crosses, [...]

who will carry me to saihou jodo*
what to bring there what to wear?
   take me to the top of a mountain
   leave something behind to forget
who`ll build another kogetsudai+
fire my body at the silvery moon?
   leave something behind to forget
   falling into orbit & spinning space
who`ll throw me into ginshadan~
drown all my past in the wet sand?
   falling into orbit [...]

breaks it down & pulls it out & blows up
with a sonic whoo-hoo! boy wheelbarrow
atlas pines & the guru josh (splat matter
terminal bohos & sprinting programmes
colossal frenetic spaced-out & sane like
a metaphor for similes or a goo-shaved
belt-buckle international collateral dam
age of aquarius you confused with “hair”
tied back in a pony-trail sideways babe
don`t look back be [...]

There`s a train that`s stopped moving, in the middle of Hokkaido, in the middle of the night, in the middle of winter. The sound of a thousand snores, a thousand sleepy sighs. The rumble of a passing train. The one the driver`s waiting for.
There`s a train that`s stopped moving but any minute now it`ll tug [...]

Snow globules hanging from the trees, like silvery pollen or the larvae of worms. Rice fields smothered by six months of snow, their feeder canals obliterated, the shallow stream a black slit in the hollow. Houses dwarfed by their new snow skins, train stations drowning beneath the sky`s white tears. More snow than I have [...]

i was born in a silence car
with only her heartbeat for a drum
no ringing bells or false alarms
i swam through the day`s eclipses
i was born in a silence car
but the sounds infected my tiny ears
& the world gushed into that tiny space
where first i breathed and lived
i was born in a silence car
underneath the surface [...]

you never did cross it but still it remains
a pair of spectacles submerged in the river
on one side lies the pleasure district:
neon and ribbons, arc-welded limbs
the scintillation distractors
on the other: some home
or one light that was gutted then torn down
extinguished by passionate hopes
between them, one heartless bridge
a fiction beneath expatriate memories
the mind`s dim canals …
of [...]

cold sweats in an immigration queue
i`ve everything & nothing to declare
hand trembles as it pushes a passport
over the ledge into the hand of fate
a process designed to inspire nervous
twitches/ recognisable warning signs
asked for evidence of forward journey
(as if mere mortality were not enough
then subjected to a crotch pat-down
luggage rearrangements & repackings
an apology & our tidy [...]

ian fleming eat your heart out
a beetle hits the lane running
then bursts into the blue road
all its legs up atomic powered
sound a whee! about to explode
three hours flat busan fukuoka
along this navigator`s spine -
past those sea anemone islands
ploughing up the roadstead like
nobody`s dymanic business multi-
currency bi-lingual & all edges
not a plume in sight (even the
sun [...]