like a child, naturally
you want to make it new
to make it
powerful or pretty
and be done with it
before it’s ready to be free
so you keep it inside
and lord it over it
like you’re the god
that you don’t believe in
…
Temporary Like America
it doesn’t rhyme with miracle or austria or shit or luck or failure
it’s as lonesome as a guitar with only one string
oh my lil ol bittersweet juice-sucker through the racket of your brave sad gladness
hear me typing to ya
and i have to tell you that you did wrong and cos you haven’t learnt to dig yuhself
you’re as likely to say sorry as a baby, baby
you can deny it later and pay for it in neverland
when you’re as empty inside as a dead cop’s wallet
everybody knows america is everywhere but not everyone knows this is nowhere
and you’re like totally like not
not hot not cool not here not there a simpering goddess sipping gossip
but just before you die
you will suddenly be very young
…
Some Mothers Do Have ‘Em
they’re always busy taking calls, making the deal that could break the cycle of needing the other guy. they laugh hard, but even their questions sound like orders. they’re there, but looking elsewhere, as if numbers were mates, or the future was in the next room. they talk and drink around the issue, making their point as they leave the room, like putting your seatbelt on once you’re into second gear,
a quick sandwich on the way.
…
Heavy Petal
sitting on a road a silence that can never be loud enough
after the beach each wave returns to the mother
the body remembers what the mind forgets as naked as a splinter
you keep lapping at it with your fingers
writing in order to listen better a depth-change
mouths arranged until they don’t fit perfectly
born beautiful easily distracted
a great deal more laughter required
a fan inside the flames pain in the mirror of night
in mid-winter they warmed the room with hunger for more love
the wolves’ paws, soft like blankets the little trained ones don’t need leads
act as if you are cared for
all day felt as if behind
rainy windows
navigating the void like grief was a ballast
tomorrow, we will be elsewhere
…
Coming Down with Something
(a cento for / after Stu Hatton) reversing that wheel, the eye (stir a little p.m into the a.m.) working backwards from here where you are sleeping Chained to the edit. rain-logic a stuttering falling like a face your own face for days: an antidote. Words no longer the entertainment hunt’s through-thought and layers. Imagined too much (nothing) to notate the sunroom’s dusty vagaries. Morning under construction: slick, who they pay you to nurse your caffe forte, practice talking: ‘i like this intrusion’ the night-oath milked the forced door, systems cannot be unmade The simplest phrases have their difficulties. let’s care at least once [?that a glass waterproof] [/whose new family. Become aerial, chaos-bait. Palpate the portable ghost-head Cosmologies, soteriologies. The death a seedsman’s garden (seldom smiling with what’s said off-air re Forest of messengers as a casting of doubt I don’t know a word. is made of paper through which nothing leaves fire to be its student. to wriggle free Such gadgets and tripwires seem the preserves of a younger man. these are false portals generous in their incompleteness ‘Beyond a certain point, complexity is fraud.’ By way of finishing the thought Try pointing towards the undefined. moral highchair of what might be termed ‘ungrounded grounds’ error of taking the dominant for the universal now the sun is mighty the pale bird in the tree a pearl like a lot of people’ our mouths shaping zeroes. But come, be hushing undertow redolent of quietus. The dew on the garlic olfactory this is an age of prose! So, a business part unfinished i.e. too much) ‘let’s go somewhere (memory talks ‘If you’re not reading this for pleasure, you’re not reading it at all.’ skin warmed by the eye all borders porous spilled together each stood amongst the others’ decrees) Rampant hyper-deference. no one knows the other: who’s impersonating who have you a war name? approachable dud pills you’re not a discard you carry (some sacred relic), must be drug-code or some such you nest it in your hands knowing only the known body, the morning mopes, here we are, suffering in language (or else sunday cough) Overly generic comforting gestures trivialise the extent of the other’s sadness. dulled integrity wants a new form a half-pout / making some fresh, wild ice-comet formation whose hallucinations are these? this insomniac melted in wine might bud in the suburbs. …further heterotopias? to act a tad skylike (become a believer in birds)
© Matt Hetherington
Matt Hetherington is a writer, music-maker, gourmet Indian chef, soccer nut, bludger, and lover based in Brisbane. His first collection of all-Japanese-related forms [and fourth poetry collection] is ‘For Instance’, published in January by Mulla Mulla Press. Some current inspirations are: Timbaland, Frisky Dingo, Jess, Luce, and northern sunshine.
