refractor

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[the open plain, or mesa]

Sometimes, when you're a cowboy gunslinger,
all you're left with is your boots and hat
and lariat, your trick paint horse,

your Colt and your Winchester, your bedroll,
the open plain, or mesa, the tins of beans
and strips of cured beef, your sense of justice

for your murdered kin, scalped by marauding
godless injuns, your self-reliance and steely aim
by the riverbed, your tempered and easy masculinity,

your friend the emancipated slave. You've seen
the iron horse and the telegraph cross the maps
and random states and you've seen the sunrise

on the canyons, the noonday dead on the dusty
streets of Texas, the evening cool of the hacienda
and the saloon brawls in the night. You've known

the love of a good-hearted dancing girl, yet you'll die
alone beneath a ridge. You'll leave no estate,
no child, no forlorn wife, no brethren will weep

by your simple grave. Your bedroll is your shroud,
the open plain your chapel. And all that is left
will be your hat and boots and lariat.

Petersham, 2005

First published in Cordite, 2005

Milsons Point

i.m. ‘Judd’ Fahey

Joyriders lose their bearings and cut adrift
from the slick wintry macadam hit
on a bollard like a bright thought to halt
their progress. Three slump unconscious,

but the driver stumbles from the wreck.
What happens then is anybody’s guess,
but he’s been rolled for his wallet
and his watch by the time he falls

in the drink, or so the family later insists.
For a month he’s below the bridge,
withheld in the deep green –
long enough for us to wonder; maybe he

skived off to Cairns, Townsville, Mungindi. . .
Semester commences and he’s still
not back – till three children down by
Milsons Point spinning for silvery creatures

to prove themselves by – whiting, bream,
flathead – instead snare this cadaverous ju-ju.
There, a city leapt lightly from the ships,
pegged itself to the rocks and persisted, picked up

its registers: birthing, dieing, marrying –
at night the harbour buoys wink out
but not in memoriam, not for you.

Lines on a friend's dipsomania

Felicity, goodnight; leave the fast whirl, pleading weak
or want, but random, dull and stonkered
though you were and as if to protest

once more “I’m no souse” as you slugged back
doubles of gin sans tonic for hours – you moved,
all proud whimsical resolve like a pantomime parade

toward the night, blanched to your plastic lolly sandals
by the moon’s blue damask in the city
clouds. Homeward you’re counting the footfalls

of your erratic passage drunk and humming
nonsensical, since you’re almost
gone, still young though shuffling poorly up

Liverpool St to your flat in the ‘The Hopes’,
having haggled and hocked your rings
for what was only passion

pop. Slower and slower, one night
you’ll stop and be gone more completely,
though it’s already two years since, hit

by the car on Darlinghurst Rd and in your body’s
supernatural nine metre airflight, you decided
to live but forget how; two years since anaesthesia’s

tonic aquamarine daydream, since surgery
left you believing the less felt, the less
thought, the safer and better you would be

healed and held in a bell-jar cracked
from apex to inception – you have grown
to love in the dark of a cupboard

your fissure, as once you loved

First published in Heat #8.

links for 2006-09-05

• Reading ban on leaked Harry Potter - Britain - Times Online
  Astonishing story on Harry Potter and publisher's rights: "Property rights often trump civil liberties. There is no human right to read."
  (tags: copyright copyfight books)
• Wop-a-din-din - lostateminor.com
  eminor: "Autumn Whitehurst creates beautiful vector works. Her bold use of colour allows her often cheekily themed line drawings to really leap out, creating a sense of visual serenity despite the occassionally dark subject matter."
  (tags: eminor illustration photography)
• Nicholas Blowers and the art of trees - lostateminor.com
  eminor: 'Nicholas Blowers... captures the beauty and elegance of the environment that we see every day, but often forget to recognise. He says about trees: “I see them as heroic subjects representing something noble and majestic. There is something part
  (tags: eminor photography)

links for 2006-09-04

• Yuko Shimizu - lostateminor.com
  Yuko Shimizu - ‘illustrator, educator, and not-so-prolific-at-this-moment fine artist - has been drawing ever since she could hold a crayon, but took a long time to actually become a professional artist’.? - eye-catching japanese-style il
  (tags: japan illustration art)
• PingMag - The Tokyo-based magazine about "Design and Making Things" » Archive » Shin Tanaka: paper toys meet street art
  Shin Tanaka is a paper toy creator. When he started creating paper models and templates for all his favorite sneakers he couldn’t afford when he was a student.
  (tags: design paper-art)
• Geodesic copy on Flickr - Photo Sharing!
  Tilt-shift example on Flickr.
  (tags: photography technique)
• Lensbabies >>> Selective Focus SLR camera lenses
  Lensbabies are used to create a fake tilt-shift effect.
  (tags: photography lens gear technique)
• Fake model photography
  Fake tilt shift in photoshop.
  (tags: photoshop photography howto technique)
• MAKE: Blog: DIY Photographic Emulsion
  Voxphoto says, "Will digital photography kill off film? Not soon--but if worst comes to worst, you can follow this simple chemical recipe and start coating your own glass plates."
  (tags: photography howto technique)

Fay Zwicky launch

Received the following from UWS Writing (on behalf of the Poets Union, HEAT at Sydney Grammar and the Writing and Society Research Group University of Western Sydney):

Giramondo Publishing

invites you to the launch

of the new poetry collection by

FAY ZWICKY

PICNIC

to be launched by David Malouf

immediately after Fay's delivery

of the Judith Wright Lecture

'Between Two Worlds'

at the 5th Australian Poetry Festival

this Sunday 10 September at 4.30pm

in Big School Room

Sydney Grammar School

College Street Sydney

info: writing@uws.edu.au

Should be a great launch, though sadly for me I'm not able to make it along.

More on Fay Zwicky at the ALR site.

links for 2006-09-01

• Simon Armitage Web Site
  Blog of UK poet Simon Armitage. Heard him on ABC RN this morning and he made me laugh. Always a good sign with a poet.
  (tags: imported poetry blog)
• . first light .
  Kim Winderman lives in Southern California working as a graphic designer
  and photographer. "...unsuspecting patterns in nature... the
  unpredictable behaviour of all living things."
  (tags: photography)
• RN Book Show - 1 September 2006 - Review: Fast, Loose, Beginnings, by John Kinsella (transcript available)
  The Book Show reviews Australian poet John Kinsella's racy, not-always-pretty, anecdotal memoir of his meetings with some of the great and shambolic men and women of poetry.
  (tags: imported poetry abc rn)

public static void main

The cancer the iridologist spotted
in my speckled dead give-away iris
kept me wondering about the private

school, the company car, the how-to-succeed
posters in the lobby – those saturated
prints shot on a Florida golf links – the hints

the boss littered about his latest
Monday briefing, about analysts excess
to requirements. And kids; our precious kids!

Our sweet high-Summer headlines
suffocating in the car boot, while we circle
the block, calling out their names, Jason, Matty,

our dear little Children’s Television Workshop
tie-in buying, our wild Bill
Steamshovels, and how I started out

a poet, ambitious, thinking my wit’s
the very gimlet for jimmying the public –
their mostly static gimcrack

notions – started out against all myths
on the purpled main, but this hectic
myth of my own. Well I’m startled,

frankly, at my pencil and all it wrought.
Now I’m scoffing down lunchtime novels
like a trencherman teacakes, trying

to remember, to recall. . . while all about me
brickbats and backpats punctuate
the void. Still, I wouldn’t subject you

to a reminiscence.

First published in Heat #15.

Hunter Valley river

Jimmy in the river at the Kater's farm
Originally uploaded by adrian.wiggins.

I can't remember the name of this river - it's near a friend's family farm. The image featured on the 'cover' of Cordite #23 - the O'Malley issue. (where I carried on as Flannery O'Malley):