The Guy Pulled Over's Life at a Glance

Working on the land with my hands.

Banging my head against a brick wall.

Kicking a dead horse with my feet.

The small of her back all covered in dirt.

Viewing their deaths from up close,
scratching around, picking lint off the floor.
Sniffing around for the smell of success.

The house on the hill ablaze.

Not a negative outlook,
but a realistic one.
Steeped in observational judgement,
but realistic nonetheless.

Bar the Black Sheep

Bar the black sheep.
Too fly-blown, no seeds sewn.
Too dry, scorched earth fried.
Nothing left to keep,
Too empty to weep.

Back-burn for the summer.
Crops dead, sheep dead.
A brown bit dad badly.
Nothing left, dad dead.
The past was train wreck
and mother had rope burns around her neck.

Bail for some money.
Leased the homestead:
Land was dead, they said.
But now it good for growing grapes.
I feel stupid, I feel raped
And share the farmer’s sentiment.

Bar fly for hours,
Bitter tasting, humbling and lasting.
Wasting away in a flesh-casting of a man.
If my folks could see me now.

From Darkness Comes Light

No money, no food.
No more to gain,
nothing to lose.

No crops, no seed.
No wood for the winter,
More mouths to feed.

No drive, no will.
No hope.
Nothing but an empty shell.

No rain, no God.
No relief.
More pieces of me lost.

No bullets, no gun.
No prayers answered.
Nothing but sun, sun, sun.

More than a stretched landscape.
Nothing left here for me.

One Light

One light in the darkness.
One light in a million.
Under vermillion sky - left of the highway.
Left alone as a beacon
For when the flock comes a-running.

One light from a secret leaking house.
One light on no street.
Floating in black,
A glimmer of hope out of a bleak year.
A glimmer of water streaked.
A turtle on its back.

One light on in between nowhere and nothing.
One chalk etching on a charcoal canvas.
A crack in the window casts shadows out.
One light creates ripples for miles.
The clouds on the ground leave reality defiled.

I stopped on the side of the Western.
Out in the darkness
the starkest of lights
left the most awkward of feelings.
Kept me staring at something
That means absolutely nothing
to the motorists and journeymen.

One light at night with no sun
brings sky, water and earth together.
Their similarities bring about false epiphanies.
Brings about frightening realities
of how one light can conduct
such sweet symphonies.

Cattle Yard Catastrophe

I look to power poles
For prophetic perceptions.
I reach out to razor wire
For an immaculate conception.
Western suburbs show:
John and Jane Doe,
Looking for answers to prayers
In the belly of a jumbo.
Cattle yard catastrophe:
A pig-headed monogamy,
Superfi cially void of feelings.
I cry in front the prime-mover
Waiting for divine intervention.
I believe the way is in the pig pit.
A cattle convention,
Condemned in detention.
Look at the dirty reflection
And spit on yourself.

First published in Rabelais.

Suburbia : the utopian myth

I sit here watching children play, parents conversing over waist-high fences and blokes huddling around a popped-up Holden bonnet. I think back to my days as a child growing up in the heartland of white suburbia and I remember the long summer nights of playing cricket with my neighbours. I wonder if this still happens. I butt out my cigarette and imagine the scene of this rural streetscape occurring somewhere in Melbourne today, and I fail to conjure up a street, road or avenue where this might happen. The suburban culture that I grew up with (knowing your neighbours, borrowing milk for a morning’s coffee), has now disappeared. Lost somewhere behind the white picket fences, jungle gyms and two-point five kids are the ideals that originally enticed people to move to the suburbs. The perception that the Australian dream is represented in suburbia is critically fl awed, because instead of producing a catalyst for unity it provides a breeding ground for further division between social groups.

The basis for this division can be seen in the way that Melbourne’s suburbs have been created physically, culturally and socially. A utopian view of Melbourne’s suburbs would see everyone dispersed equally, regardless of their background, heritage or beliefs. A multicultural, melting pot stream of thought takes into account the same factors, ignoring individual differences between people. For a single or multiple cultures to thrive and retain it’s individual characteristics that make it a separate social entity, there must be a platform for social networking to occur. This networking involves people getting together, usually of the same background, interests and/or beliefs. So when looking at the way Melbourne’s suburbs are structured, not geographically, but in terms of culture relative to geographic locale, one must undergo the assumption that ‘birds of a feather flock together’.

When we look at Melbourne’s suburbs with a cultural magnifying glass it doesn’t take long for assumptions and generalisations about the type of people that live in one area to the next. Typical stereotypes of social groups within regions in and around Melbourne’s suburbs can be represented by superimposing an imaginary compass with the four points, north, east, south, west, over the entire map. At first glance we can already make generalisations about suburbs in the west; the racial stereotype of people living in the northern suburbs; the differences between people in the southern suburbs to those that live in the outer eastern areas. Although these assumptions may be based relative to personal experience, it becomes apparent that there is some relevant evidence behind these stereotypes. Without making a misleading or disparaging comment in regards to an area or suburb, I will ask the reader to think of areas that you know that might be labelled as Asian, or Italian for instance. These first impressions are often based loosely on a stereotype that originally may have had some value. Defining an area by the culture of its dominating populus is always fraught with danger, but is often centred on a historical perception we have from that area.

This perception is changing today. Now the early generations of immigrants are gone and their legacy is nearly forgotten as an ever-mobile community, changing socially and culturally, envelops the original culture. With their descendents at the wheels we are seeing a changing of the guard. They are no longer interested in the dated ways of their parents and their parents before them, but are contemporising with social shifts and changes. Perceptions of the role of the family, size of the family, and types of families are changing progressively and this further indicates a breakdown of segregation of social groups from one another, and destabilises the ability to pigeonhole certain regions. It can be said that these stereotypes still exist today, but weakened, with their centrality dispersed or moved elsewhere.

To investigate the breakdown of the family one can look deeper into the issues addressed by the concept of suburbia. Zoom in from the holistic view of Melbourne and focus on a particular street or neighbourhood. Remember the “typical” suburban house; letter box, frontyard, backyard, nature strip, picket fences, gardens, garden gnomes. Like the stereotyping involved in categorising an entire group of people by the area they live in, Australians have also found it necessary to identify people by the appearance of their house. Do you remember the house on your street that had the messy front yard and neglected Azaleas? Their fence was falling down and they had a car on blocks under tarpaulin in their driveway for years? Yes, we called them the crazy people. They were crazy because they didn’t put out their bins every week, or because they didn’t mow their nature strip fully. They were always aloof and no one ever saw them. Do you know the ones? Well they are all doctors now and we look stupid. We thought they were fucked up because they didn’t maintain their yard, or we thought they were mafia because they had a concrete garden. We’re always looking for that easy way to define someone without having to get to know them completely. This leads to a further distancing of communities, dividing them rather than bringing them together at the streetscape level.

The suburban house itself represents a fracturing of the family, in terms of traditional ways of functioning and operating by the way of its design. The model house used to entice new homebuyers is a good example. Once, houses were divided simply into dining, eating and sleeping quarters. Now, we find that suburban homes have become a series of retreats. These retreats like the ‘rumpus room’ have created a divide between families, specifically parents and children. Today the parent’s room is situated a far as possible from the children’s bedrooms, with designated areas for them both to spend their time separately. We can the development as the kitchen into an informal dining area where the family can come together to eat. This divide has increased by the installation of intercoms. Face to face communication is now just a thing of the past.

This division in the suburbs may just come with the passing of time, the progression of society, and a shift in ideals related to the family. Both parents are now looking for work and there doesn’t seem to be the ‘community’ we all come to think of it as. Caught somewhere between the rural ‘Other’ and the urban lifestyle of the city, suburbia finds itself in a liminal place. It is neither here nor there, and continues to unravel contradictions about where it lies in terms of its original social goal. Do the suburbs bring us together or distance us further from one another?

First published in Rabelais.

Insomnia

Sunday:
No sleep,
Half alive.
Eyes closed at five.

Monday:
More of the same.
More mundane
loss of my brain.

Tuesday:
The harder you try,
The harder to die.
Square eyes? Mine are fucking cubes.

Thursday:
Things creeping
Over my skin.
Memories slipping, Wednesday forgotten.

Friday:
Buy some steak knives.
Saved some kid’s life.
The insignificance of night.

You don’t feel like crying
When you feel like you’re dying.
You don’t want to weep
When you just want to sleep.

A Hard Act to Follow

Under construction;
Turn a new direction.
A time for reflection,
Process and function.

An old way of feeling,
A new way of dealing with it.
An old grey and wearied
Floats gently in the window.

Carve paths through the clovers.
Turn the sheets over.
Start afresh, avoid stoicism.
A mission easier said than done.

This is a mess.
I am a mess.
My skin is a mesh -
Full of holes.
It lets too many things in
And holds onto memories grim.

I do not sin,
I am a sin.
Embody things immoral,
Dreary and hollow.

A hard act to follow.

Arj Barker - Ego No Amigo

On an opening night of a comedy show one expects a few teething problems. So, there was a ticketing malfunction that delayed the start of the show by half and hour. This merely raised the expectations of those milled in the Capitol Theatre foyer. As I gawked at the eager faces something struck me: There were a few youngsters in the crowd. A fact that I would usuallydisregard like a homeless person; noticed, then forgotten, but a fact that would seem to be the driving force behind Ego no Amigo, the comedy of Arj Barker. Arj arrived on stage draped in a satin mu-mu, professing his changed spirituality. He has found the meaning of life in his own unique brands of yoga, meditation and self-realisation. The crowd laughed like children at Arj’s insightful observations, covering from toilets to tsunamis: Arbitrary topics linked together by a self-deprecating anxiety expressed through a half-Indian, half-American stoner. Does it seem a little confusing? Does it seem a little Sponge Bob? I was lost completely when, after 20 minutes, the laughs from the crowd seemed to not come from witty punch lines and well-crafted jokes, but from the exchange between Arj’s quiet, cynical and very sharp mind, and his exploding rants of anger and profanity. The adolescent crowd mopped it up with bread and wanted more. So, Arj swore more and screamed more and the audience laughed more. Let’s get serious; anyone can make the word ‘FUCK’ sound funny, but look at Eddie Murphy now. Lots of clever jokes were lost on an audience that seemed on edge, anxious of whether mum was taping Pimp my Ride for them to watch when they get home. The MTV generationwere saved as Arj finished his gig with a ten-minute movie advertising his enlightened cult. I think he just ran out of swear words.

First published in Rabelais.

Habituation Negotiation

Shirt is hanging in the back
I’m hanging myself every time
I open my eyes in the morning.
I hear the crackle of the FM.
I’m calling out to shadows through
Foggy windows in the PM.
I’ve got a problem and I just realised it.
This comes as no surprise to me
Eyes are open, but fuck I’m not coping.
Just sitting waiting for a cure.
I’m looking for something natural
To get me back on the saddle.
Why don’t I stop?
I guess I’m comfortable.
I’m willing,
I’m able…
Let’s set sail.

First published in Rabelais.

Rain on a Tin Roof sounds like Applause

I can hear silent screams
from silent dreams,
By people who look awake,
But talk sleep-like.

I could whistle an outta-tune song
for a second,
Or a minute, but not too long.
I tend to forget the words.

Looks so warm, but feels so cold.
Deception takes me over.

Bite my tongue, fall on my sword.
A bitter reception greets me.

I recite scribe meaningless,
full of repetitiveness.
But you listen,
And I’ll never take that back.

I wish people paid attention
Like the sky - never-forgetting.

I want the weather to shed
A little light on the situation.

Drive

It’s grey today.
The sleeping dog lays
With his tail out the window,
Head on top of a Melway.

Drive.

He drives to hide it.
He drives to fight it.
He drives to while away
Another smile less day.

Out on the open,
But so closed.
Pumping out the diesel fumes
With a 20 tonne monkey
On his back.

The wireless ramblings
And posted notes
Of Johnny Two-way:

Slave to the freight.

Give Way

Worried about the weather.
Distressed and second-guessing.
It’s depressing how the stars
Look down on this farce
That lasts and lasts
And lasts and lasts.
It’s laughable,
Dirty and soluble:
A manifested problem.

It is what it is.
We are what we are.
Time: refinable,
But unable to cure the insufferable.

A fable that holds the truth.
Told till you’re blue in the face.
Till you can fill this void with a space.

I am a derivative of myself
And all that you want me to be.

This Attitude

The fish aren’t biting.
I can’t be bothered writing.
Just telling you what you might see
if you open your eyes.
These people aren’t worth it.
This attitude is killing me.

Verbal battering is sapping me
like blood from a fresh-cut tree.
I’m tired of facts
when people only react with fists and kisses.
Without thought you have no brain.

I tried to call your bluff,
but pocket cowboys weren’t enough.
You’re like an invisible smile,
something beautiful hidden forever.

This Attitude comes quickly,
but lingers for days.

White Embers

White embers adrift.
White embers at night.
White embers dimmed yellow
underneath the cast
of white flood lights.

White embers reluctant.
White embers hesitant.
White embers’ desire to leave
the heart of the fire,
single-filed, denied
by white knights in akubras
knee-high in the mire.

White embers kept safe.
White embers dissolved.
White embers in tiers,
Cold stays that last days.
White embers hold together
frayed edges of those
that remember white embers:

Once wild fires,
Now tamed by the hand.
White embers once embryos.
White embers once lambs.