Barnaby Smith
WELL TRODDEN
1
swamp pheasant mounts the carcass
of white goods
sensuously in the clearing
scattered
with hikers' bulging knees
performing:
yeasty overcoats fall from
shoulders cultivating
a view gamble on
waterfalls
too loud sitting
with camera
ferociously poised
wilderness the
cavernous belly button
pressing mouth
through moth-coloured cotton
inhale / exhale
2
the night’s meeting of
soot and spew contemplated
by harlequin tattoo
and yellowing tongue / still-sleeping
Maenads coughing,
kissing bitten lips
she is pink –
like feet cut on oysters
yawning:
she moves a leafcutter nymph
to your
ankle knob
3
what animates?
pollen
matter & map
to spark of life / accumulation
of pauses
learning to kick the ball hard at that fluttering thing
arrival:
cued from restless evers
camphor will penetrate
the old cars
we are pre-emptive
4
the genus escapes me
but not the hum
of its wordless
equivalent
underlying:
palmed off as conversation
until seeming becomes being
in inappropriate clothes,
engorged
bundles of wet, left stable
in taxonomy
classification
idle as blood
5
geology in fact
for a rummaging
absence of fire
muting contested vistas
until at a pinch
after days of obstructed effluence--
everybody's lawns cascade into
the valley
laying bare doctrines of
gullies (and glades) / enabling
compassed migration in a bottleneck
and opportunity
to reconcile with strangers
HAPTICITY
a
algorithms determine the falsehood of dirt,
fractured architectures blurring gravitational
reality
I get taken in by the illusion of depth--
except you, this morning,
eminently thing-like…
might sit as the street laps at the living room
just feet away
unwelcome here: in crossing lines of symmetry
there is repose, so the city tells itself, even in the ripest
hours, when the Jets have won or some weather event
b
on chipper streets new brickwork is glistening as jewels: ephemeral
sectoring soon to be overgrown
the fluted panels scrawled & mangled--
dumb physicality of buildings
murmuring on in protected sleep
& squelching fug of afternoon
a silent platform now invaded
by the myna —'the large conspicuous passerine'--
of compassless feeds &
malaise of song
so for big evenings at home
we create machine senses
to be convinced of charm
in the real out there
1
swamp pheasant mounts the carcass
of white goods
sensuously in the clearing
scattered
with hikers' bulging knees
performing:
yeasty overcoats fall from
shoulders cultivating
a view gamble on
waterfalls
too loud sitting
with camera
ferociously poised
wilderness the
cavernous belly button
pressing mouth
through moth-coloured cotton
inhale / exhale
2
the night’s meeting of
soot and spew contemplated
by harlequin tattoo
and yellowing tongue / still-sleeping
Maenads coughing,
kissing bitten lips
she is pink –
like feet cut on oysters
yawning:
she moves a leafcutter nymph
to your
ankle knob
3
what animates?
pollen
matter & map
to spark of life / accumulation
of pauses
learning to kick the ball hard at that fluttering thing
arrival:
cued from restless evers
camphor will penetrate
the old cars
we are pre-emptive
4
the genus escapes me
but not the hum
of its wordless
equivalent
underlying:
palmed off as conversation
until seeming becomes being
in inappropriate clothes,
engorged
bundles of wet, left stable
in taxonomy
classification
idle as blood
5
geology in fact
for a rummaging
absence of fire
muting contested vistas
until at a pinch
after days of obstructed effluence--
everybody's lawns cascade into
the valley
laying bare doctrines of
gullies (and glades) / enabling
compassed migration in a bottleneck
and opportunity
to reconcile with strangers
HAPTICITY
a
algorithms determine the falsehood of dirt,
fractured architectures blurring gravitational
reality
I get taken in by the illusion of depth--
except you, this morning,
eminently thing-like…
might sit as the street laps at the living room
just feet away
unwelcome here: in crossing lines of symmetry
there is repose, so the city tells itself, even in the ripest
hours, when the Jets have won or some weather event
b
on chipper streets new brickwork is glistening as jewels: ephemeral
sectoring soon to be overgrown
the fluted panels scrawled & mangled--
dumb physicality of buildings
murmuring on in protected sleep
& squelching fug of afternoon
a silent platform now invaded
by the myna —'the large conspicuous passerine'--
of compassless feeds &
malaise of song
so for big evenings at home
we create machine senses
to be convinced of charm
in the real out there
Copyright © Barnaby Smith 2019
Barnaby Smith is a poet, journalist and musician currently living in northern New South Wales, Australia. His poetry has appeared in Cordite, Southerly, FourW, Best Australian Poems, Australian Poetry Anthology, Meniscus, Transnational Literature and others. His arts and music criticism has appeared in or at Rolling Stone, the Guardian, Australian Book Review, The Quietus and others, and he records music as Brigadoon. www.seededelsewhere.com