Dear all,
Hi! I've been lurking on this list for a few months but given JK's
recent requests I guess I should introduce myself. I study
telecommunications engineering at the University of Technology, Sydney,
where I took a writing class in Autumn semester 2000 as an elective to
give me an occasional break from the hell that my education had become.
In my first class I found myself being tutored by MTC Cronin and what
was going to be a fairly prose year up to that point became a little
different from there on in. I wrote my first poem in April and haven't
seen any reason to stop since. My personal poetics currently consists
of waiting for an interesting idea or experience and then writing a poem
about it, a terrible philosophy that isn't giving me the practise I
need, but has produced the two poems below. Please be gentle...
best and matt
_Against Vertigo_
I have been there:
that square yard of space,
the cliff face,
Raskolnikov was there also,
we spoke a language of fire
and when I threw the bottle
it did not shatter;
there was only tempest below
but above was everything else,
at each ledge were gifts and
as we climbed and collected them
we became heavy, the earth
shifting its weight toward us,
the summit now beneath our feet
and the storm a carpet
on which we walked home.
_Specific Highway_
Crucified against the
Good Friday sky
wings nailed wide
jetstream a stigmatic wound of light
a sudden aircraft
models the holiday’s design
for my driving gaze
become bored with the sight of the sun
held viscera tight between branches
grey ribs whose charcoal drawn trunks
funnel sound into silent roots that feed
foliage dyed the olive-drab of a plastic military
scattered along the highway for the next five kays
like debris from some atmospheric collision
heat haze breaks
and breaks again its promises
as a lightning-struck stump carves itself into a kangaroo
that has escaped the typical two-dimensional fate
of its road-kill\road-sign kind
instead startling passing drivers
dreaming of a plane above.
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