Dawn To Dusk

As a Supermarket Superintendent
Sallows through the streetlight
Some Saturday morning
Shoppers shuffle themselves

First one gets out of bed
Then another and another, a dozen, a hundred
Thousands and thousands
They eat their weeties like locusts
The blowdriers and TV talkshows
Humming like wings
Then one goes to bed — another and another
A dozen, a hundred
Thousands and thousands
Their sheets and blankets and doors rippling
The city like wind
And way way out in the night sky
A tiny little star
Pleads
Oh buy me !


Snoop Bilby, aka Daniel Oxenburgh (Western Australia)

The Supermarket Carpark Of Youth

In the Supermarket Carpark Of Youth
They sit awhile (a few years)
Staring at the yellowing eyes
Of their counterparts

One day they will show no mercy
And spring black-booted onto a passing bluerinse
(mum?)

Mostly though
They walk around as though
Between rounds of a title fight
Panting and spitting, shaking their heads, drinking,
Wiping their brows
Giving passing people a ‘heavy’ look as if to say:
‘I might actually hit someone one day — and it could be you’.

One sits away from the group —
A soloist.

His big brown heeler tugging at the leash
Dying to rip shreds out of a passing Saturday shopper
His mirrored sunglasses dazzling the passers-by —

One day their appetite could become mealtime —
They will heat hate to riot
And finally throw down their

Thickshakes


Snoop Bilby, aka Daniel Oxenburgh (Western Australia)

The Man From Bunnings Warehouse

He was
Brought to life
On a pallet

They ripped off the
Shrink wrap
And he fell to the floor

He was wrapped in
A flannelette shirt and given
Some Taiwanese thongs
To wear to the bathroom

He grew up not expecting too much from life

His mum patched up all those tears
With liquid nails

And his dad showed him how to create a garden
Out of plastic

Still, sometimes he’d just had a gutful of life
But on a good day

He’d chew up a mouthful of gyprock cement —

And smile!


Snoop Bilby, aka Daniel Oxenburgh (Western Australia)

TAB Midland 12:34 June 1st 2007

He was a greyhound trainer
But all his dogs were duds

He peers from his cigarette
Eyes like matchheads
Waiting to strike.

‘This is the most high-leverage capital return investment aside from armed robbery,’ he winks

Yet the place quakes with an untenable boredom
Earthquakes emotionlessness and cigarettes

He shuffles initially and places $1.25
Then changes his mind and makes it 80c
On Impact

His eyes are like pools of sulphur spreading to the streetlights

Outside freedom menaces

Inflammable impressions on glass.


Snoop Bilby, aka Daniel Oxenburgh (Western Australia)

Wildflowers

Everywhere an animal puts
Its foot
A wildflower grows

White is a rabbit
Yellow is an emu
Blue is a roo

In Spring hills hop


Snoop Bilby, aka Daniel Oxenburgh (Western Australia)

Rites of Passage

I remember the first time I roamed the streets

Pissed

Weaving along the streets in broad daylight —

We got pissed at the bus stop
And our bottles sloshed from side to side
As we plummeted along
Our bottles dangling from our hands like bananas

We lurched and leaned along for miles
I dunno what we were looking to do —

Maybe one of us would even frighten someone!

Or disseminate them into the ether of the other world — or
Some shit —

But I had a new shirt on and didn’t want any further remarks

About dissemination splattered on it,

Besides,

I was already drawing quality attention from the way my head
Was swaying in relation to my feet and a remark about the early addictive tendencies of todays youth and a wildly disparaging remark by some jangling lip filled faces kept us louching along happily —

We circuited the shopping centre,
Then fell in commune —

Buggering about all arvo and smoking cigarettes and gettin’ argy bargy
With a post box —

Then one of me mates drew so hard on his fag he dislocated his face —

And another fashioned a suit from a $2 tracky pant from the dump bin at Red Dot tucked into a loosely fitting polyester T Shirt he got from Coles and I tell ya he looked really really —

And another of me mates disclosed through a mouth muffled with bubblegum that he had been hangin’ about the bustle of the supermarkets for so long he had completely lost track of who he was trying to be — and when his parents pushed past with a pushcart of shit — without so much as a wink —
He found himself facing a very long sentence freewheeling along completely unfathomed

In the big

Wide

World of rigmarole

Ah well, it doesn’t bother me —

One day I know I’ll be a cop!

Or at least a security guard!

Or a trolley boy!

Maybe just a guy with a loud T-Shirt?

But for now I’ll swing among the boughs of the game parlours

Smiling in wonderment — stupendously inspired

Swinging in anticipation

Assimilating into and with the extra-sensoryness of —

Shopping.


Snoop Bilby, aka Daniel Oxenburgh (Western Australia)

Revelations

(i)
reveal me to my discomfort
for it refuses logical illumination. faithful ferret
enters the labyrinth seeking
(as always) some exiled truth. the human challenge is
i don’t get to choose the prize. if instinctive
integrity presents a mirror i must
bear the sight of my own
distortion. now
we wait.

(ii)
one day in
and the landscape is revealing.
fog has been lifted by animal intent and so far
i’m able to stomach the scenery.
last night there were pains like glass but now
fear is settling. truth
shifts shards around; finally
the picture holds meaning. two-way
mirror invites reconciliation and i let breath drop
deep down in my belly, flushing out
these delicate skeletons of need
and hope. i’m fleshing out by the second and now
can plainly see it is time
to deal with what is right in front of me.
my sight has been crystal
all along, but my inability to digest reality —
obliterating.

(iii)
further along
the walls are a milder mosaic, framing
the journey with unexpected hunger for colour and truth
is now binding. i am simplified. the walls
slide past painting me into stillness and soon
i am the precipice of kaleidoscope. this is
unexpected. i was braced for familiar excavation
of woundedness and not this
emancipation upon the unbroken ground.

(iv)
now a white room
and a square table and i promise
this is not the heavenly cliche it sounds like.
this is final corporeality and i am not confident that i am welcome
here. i muster uncomfortable resolve and face my original
dilemma: i am here completely
now and have no place else to go. holding the hand of my fear that i am
inappropriate by nature i order another
coffee and take my shoes off. filled foamy cup
calls up some resilient glee and i find myself extending
unexpectedly, an invitation into the wilderness.

(v)
but it does not look like he
is in a position to join me here. not yet
says faith though i’m not sure
how much longer these quivering haunches can hold
back from freedom on the grunting ground.

(vi)
my blood finds the beat and limbs become
paintbrushes. i remember myself and learn intimacy
is a dance that happens inside and alone
first.

(vii)
some weeks later and she has popped
back out, a little over-exposed in this light, triumphant and humbling
mumbling something about beautiful black tunnels, hidden
treasure and inevitable shadows. can i grow enough
to inherit the earth, this artfully dappled dirt? she returns
me to my question, disappears back underground.


Anna Minska (Western Australia)

Fire Flames

Above high ridges of ignorance
Here I am clothed with shade
Unable to flow and fly
Above the dusty hills of my life
Yes I am voiceless

It is because of that summer Friday
That summer which helmeted me with hell
Ending shelving all my climbing speeches
I am hooked within the water travels
With my tone brutally changed

Who will monitor those abusive touches?
Who will name those disasters of the past?
Who will minister those lonely souls?
Who will heal those false stories of my background?
As their lips are swelling with lies

My skin is tight and grilled
Grilled with no record of its belongings
As the fire keeps on spraying the drought
Drought which compiles competitions
Oh yes, I am an exhibit of fire flames


Sipho M Mdumbe (South Africa)