Michael Farrell

which leads to new territory going
off on a wild with desire goose chase
everything bad everything funky lifts
off the roof making distinctions between
...

the blue car was too slow marcel
insisted this was a virtue so we
toured the galleries gave cats lifts
painted bodies as we passed there
...

when a person speaks to you in the water
a sexual interpretations available & if
they lift a flute to their lips by all means
call this suggestive there are other musics
...

he looked around the festival crowd
relieved to be alone he didnt see me apricot
& or lilacshirted crouched behind a stand
i noted everything he said to use later in
...

Do not a civilization make. Do they? Cozy up to the fleece of a sheep, take the lid off Elizabeth Bishop's head and get a spoon. Do not eat yet; do not swoon. There will be hours for that. First there is a long war march. Then there are other animals to press into the barn before the lightning storm comes to cook the grass and rinse it and make a mess. But this is all outside and you need never go there. Can you ride a tin? Yes, you can, says the child detective. The poet lies under the sheep, reading of Robert Menzies, his wife Pattie, and their pets. "We had a lovely weekend," they tell reporters. Just months later their cat's dead. Robert turns from the golden syrup, while deciding whether to use a knife or a spoon, the television on though it's only 8 am. Elizabeth was reading her poetry aloud into a woolly microphone. She thought she saw the top of Robert's head pass by the window.


She was thinking of the story "Marmosets" she was translating, by Clarice Lispector. A spirit moved out of the shadows and found an unopened tin in the cupboard and threw it at the window, causing the monkeys on the verandah to flee from the glass. You can hear it on the recording at PennSound. A shearer found glass in a sheep's fleece months later. "Lucky." "Why lucky?" "Lucky it didn't take your thumb off." That was what Bishop heard about it. She wanted something to give to Clarice. Something in wool or a painting. She saw the earth tipping up, as if she was falling over while looking out the window, and she was traveling to Australia via a flying tin of golden syrup, where there were sheep all ready to cushion her, but it wasn't necessary for she fell into the arms of the Prime Minister. "Tilted space age pastoral," she thought, but "marmoset" was what she murmured up at him. He could hear his wife crying that their cat was dead. "It was bloody ASIO!" she bawled. Saying sorry, he dropped the unexpected visitor on the lawn and went to his wife's aid. He spread one of the scones he'd baked earlier and made a fresh pot. "I don't want any of that ASIO muck," Pattie grizzled. Robert turned to Elizabeth to see if she could hear, ready to explain how upset his wife was. Elizabeth had found a curious black spread in the cupboard and was helping herself. "That's not food," baa'd the sheep detective. Lightning struck where they'd been sitting just minutes before. "Life is not flat, that's for sure," Elizabeth thought to herself, remembering the sheep in the window back home, and starting to write a poem. It would be about flying through the air, and strange food, and the floury arms of a patriarch.
...

what on earth
what not on earth
swimming in the caches
cat: 00,
crocodile: 00 [clock: 24
what separates is the interest in … fish are the least interested in …
of the animals interested in,
These few comments, unreflected on
Borrowed from reading, as one might
The shoes are in the shoe closet
It's gentler than … Sound, in my case …
… Still, in the words of the telegram:
we turn, as a tender button
so dependent, so produced
There are changes … in … body
The sounds of … works
spain? italy? poland?
on … streets …
did they … try
Speak plainly, and wear …
That came from (integrity, the labour movement, southern exile)
That men, washing in cold water, listening
[Lying back in the garden, the sociology of it, the mother and
the father, having studied arts / law are sociologists, you
don't work like … Destruction and formation in French politics
I want to make a space (transposed)
Structures outside …
Unfrightened by the dog jumping up and down
Thix ix not xomething dexigned to be xaid
(fragility)
Years as numbers
Today
Am …
Before, and seeing, and …
Writing of the stove, [order], where to go
Cutting lowering
A subject
That prevailed and surveyed, having taken in
You see … It's … you
That I read in the names
And it creates, having …
e. c. i. m. m2.
The letters are sufficient for now
We play the records, sit in the small cinema
hired theatre. This — none of this — is
the same. Old divisions, reportage
meaning goss — what is the goss on them?
That they are now being venerated unto death
But you are mine, sympathetically
But I will hold you at a distance
It goes on, went on, goes unseen
...

Love, Jack; love, jack
The mask that masks too much
The spring resounds, announces
Accidental
pressing on mind
Not philosophy, feeling
Not the song, the circle
Jousting? No, and no reproof
I will never be standing by a bar
a boy's head in my mouth like a brick
The photographic mysteries
the darkroom in the secular world
Christ as the Devil, a pageant
the north
the lack of north
When we are anxiety on a pin
Rushing our words to the chirograph
god of war
radio termites
They fall on the village of San Francisco
leaving the goat to die in the snow
hohoho was an expression of those days
def honey
You couldn't cough your guts up
yr not so refined
alabama
Fruit by the side of the fox
Aloha Medici was his name
but he went by Jamie le Grande
apology
apology in stone
The heathen demon and the other demons
That I give you 2 wishes doesn't mean
I'm not sore
but come
To the crater
and throw off your garter
The austere flamingo
Did you think you would never wake up? Your pillow
is asleep, your bed is asleep. All the books
are snoring and dreaming of each other. They're
surprised. William Carlos Williams writes a letter:
Dear Louis … Yrs Bill. In the cabinet of minor crows
one is shuffling, ballooning to majority. Videos swoon
like ants to coffee; hemispheres twirl like hats
The peasants have bodies that belie their suits
Trucks run through wooden fences that are never
repaired
the chair; the cherry
tilda swinton climbs an oak tree with a grapevine, a beehive
The doctor said the level of oxygen in the love was normal
...

the blue car was too slow marcel
insisted this was a virtue so we
toured the galleries gave cats lifts
painted bodies as we passed there
were some whose souls we entered
briefly & saddened like weevils
in an opened cheese remained
illdisposed to heroics haircutting
ate nothing so this is the moon
marcel remarked gloomily the life
forms are disappointing i dont
understand what god was getting at
leave god out of it i said
annoyed at last by his trilby
twitching watch the road baron
he replied there arent any moon
roads anyway i thought you
were driving out of petrol time
to abandon vessel lay low hope
a cattle farmer comes along we
can steal his wife horizon his
bitter expressions well the first
figure to come along was an army
deserter we were too sentimental
to harm we lent him a cork
shelter a phone that remembered
princes number ned kelly shrieked
mp we continued without holdups
...

which leads to new territory going
off on a wild with desire goose chase
everything bad everything funky lifts
off the roof making distinctions between
minimalist & excess absurd we can
learn to loathe all forms everything hands
down from grandparents if youre unlucky
greatgrandparents can make you gifts
of separation guilt poverty general
meanness particular cruelty you can
tell ive gone over to the poor white side
of the equation ill throw it away when
ive sucked the blood out of the old
mattresses the lying photos are a far
removal from religious revival i can
pile up detail on unnecessary detail
i can list the chooks & cows by name
that i abandoned for a life of random
now everythings under control again
im not going out like i did last night
like a flashing siren like a regular moron
pretending to possess something resembling
rhythm dont follow me im heading
for a cliff im brewing with resentment
ive a presentiment alls leading
to plastic in the afterlife cheers
...

he looked around the festival crowd
relieved to be alone he didnt see me apricot
& or lilacshirted crouched behind a stand
i noted everything he said to use later in
a poem in which the silent changes might
occur how right he was the spoken word
seemed to lift off the page live alone
or in camberwell i saw him write youll notice
me ill be the one not wearing a red sash
how right he was were enlivened by stories
comparing ephemera why ask a plague
of locusts by what right like me he wore
return to sender sideburns & carried the aim
of this government cattleprod these were mere
favourites when everything he said said i
am he he wasnt what was he he wants to
go it alone but at this time of year the
best place to see eclipses are asylums
as i grew bigger sweat patches & my desire
to smoke affected my lungs i thought his
lips formed in french what he was saying
in english with a fluency monolingual
ventriloquists could only applaud by stamping
their feet & screwing their papers up
page by page & throwing them onto in
amourous & arrogant tribute to those
whose unfortunate gestures couldnt be represented
here today the festival stage i paraphrase
j a the spectacle not the spectator was hung
i hold up my prod & ask please im willing
who did & were you like when young
...

when a person speaks to you in the water
a sexual interpretations available & if
they lift a flute to their lips by all means
call this suggestive there are other musics
coincidentally that day you see the first
vermeer you remember girl with a flute
called a masterpiece why would you
dispute it & if you in your ignorance
though perhaps rightly compare the songs
you heard this morning with madrigals &
fitting the words undergound overground
wombling free to the tune & you compose
a poem & coincidentally & unprecedented
in your experience you remeet the instigator
that is the fluteplayer during the composition
even though youve no cigarettes to offer only
movie chat & water talk the person who entered
your emotional life & your poetic life on
the same day as vermeer seems today more
like a black & white print than sexy paint
on canvas you keep going towards the water
having gained more than lost you tell yourself
that youre not a little child youre not a little rat
...