Here are some poems I wrote years ago that might benefit from a little airing. (Besides, old poems seem oddly fitting to mark the blog’s new look. What do you think?)

From the Ferry, Looking Out 

What bonds must hold
these atoms’ hands that I stand
so collected, like stamps or butterflies?

I can see my yesterdays
scattered across this river, and I wonder whether

you could piece me together in different ways
by asking the water how she would build me.

Twilight segues into streetlights. I am looking
to complete my collection,
and I keep coming back to Brisbane.

The gods made the sky a playground
and caused a drought on earth 

One ill-thought bit of sky-mischief
—Loki coasting down the steepest rainbow—
and the earth’s palette is ruined;
we’re smudged out even
as his laughter hits the earth.
Red running into orange was no big change, really,
but the hangover effect of orange
heaving itself into green was difficult to watch.
Trees blanched a muffled chartreuse,
leaves crackled as they curled like fists and
faded to a sickly brown, trunks bent
over like cripples, groaning for water,
but water’s running dirty now too,
dribbling off the end of the rainbow
before thickening into mud and

petering

                        out.

Walking the Black Dog 

He’s a big bastard, and really
he walks you, tugging you up hills,
through stagnant puddles and into
other people’s yards.
When the Black Dog stops
to piss on your neighbour’s letterbox,
you stretch the lead

as far as it’ll go

and stand back,
so he doesn’t piss on you.

(And then there’s the knowledge
that you’ve got to walk him
all the way back home.)