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Pam Brown
A selection of poems
Artworld. Theoryworld. Mediaworld. Infoworld. Touristworld. Olympicworld. Foxworld. Bushworld: Oneworld
— Susan Buck-Morss, Art in the Age of Technological Surveillance
setting out,
a scarlet flower
behind an ear,
into the wide
world into
banner-adorned cities
faking
permanent festivity
*
the road
turns an angle
like the dateline does
near Tuvalu
*
once, it’s said, anticipating promise,
they murmured
as they crossed,
‘Bush’ like
‘boo schh boo schh ’
and
no reply
came
*
sprained westoxified
all-signed-up
for ‘NightTalker’,
(the wine is under
the table somewhere)
crying becomes
a critical criterion
(the flower
discarded )
*
the public sphere
is
newly perceptibly
losing memory
*
re mem ber Bam,
Arg-e Bam
ancient city of sand
and mud
collapsing in an earthquake,
the cultural heritage building
slipping subsiding,
consigning
any record
of the archaic ruin
to dust
*
the memory
is
ruined
*
who can accept
a given world,
who can
live in it?
dark grey granite houses
tuck low into the landscape
like rocks
darker hedgerows protect them
from the winds we walk into
along the coast
small red tractors
plough patches of pink soil,
across the narrow road
eschallots burst
from black plastic groundstrips
this is the kind of place
you’d locate a film
but not live in,
Godard made one here
but none of us
remembers it
bleached & tufted grasses conceal
the purple thistle
on the windswept bank
above a glinting choppy bay
a group of hikers
singing loudly
strides by
just outside the house
& here comes Daniel,
with a wicker basket
of saltwater prawns —
back from fishing in the rocks
some of the last beret-wearers
of the 21st century
are on their knees
weeding their fields
at sunset
the rye field blurs
like double vision
I could watch
a fire bird
nature program
or let it run,
ignore it & lean
from the window
into the giddying view —
so dense is the air
above the traffic
in Flinders Street
six lanes wide
& the static city
towers beyond
a dirty patch
of olive & other
greens that is
Hyde Park
or spend some minutes
scratching library labels
from the spines
of out-of-print
obscurities
in this
double-divan situation,
a sort of
irksome Larkin-land —
the bedsit odours,
cheese on toast
& floor polish
phagophobic ravers
stagger off at dawn,
drug-whacked
& whooping.
remnants shove
the milk-crate
from corner
to squalid corner
trailing the cask
in a torpor
behind the 24-hour
Shell Select,
another day
slides slowly on,
another effulgent sunset
sharpens streaming
red-dot tail-lights,
little beacons
passing through.
one of those days
i’m saying things
i don’t usually say
and
verboballistic comets
are shooting
from my mouth
like films
run backwards
i race through the rain
like a rocket
to a dance hall
men and women there
are taking off
their shirts
and
they are friendly
but I wonder
what’s inside them
ill in the head
by now
but not thinking
‘this awful music’
‘this stupid rain’
and then
there is something
the saxophone does
and I have to leave.
the taxi driver
looks right through me
and sees
the corroded rubber hose
that is
my bronchial tubes
i cough like a car
and
drop the money
all over the seat.
in the kitchen
i polish the brass taps
for a few hours.
on the table
a scrap of paper
where I have written
‘the blank bullet
in the firing squad
is one image
i am sick of’
i tear it up
and later
i feel i KNOW
what REALLY happens
between
dark and daylight
but i’ve forgotten
by breakfast
which i can’t eat.
“I
learned to read by watching
Wheel of Fortune when I was
a baby.”
C. Bernstein, Claire-in-the-Building
Upbringing, social
background, any
or much mistrust
in systems?
What’s the name
of the crematorium
which keeps
my parents’
little plaques ?
Something Gardens
probably.
Early interests :
athletics after an age
of mechanical reproduction —
duhwutt duhwutt
duhwutt
scratch music
sound fx
lust
in the manchester shop
behind
the velvet flags,
the Nietzsche
pillow cases
(the will
cannot
will backwards)
your geographic friends
confirm
you are the you
putting in
an appearance
& the olden days
of fuck & vanish
are finished
!!
Instruction —
reveal your
apparatus !
(oulipo !)
!!
Demonstrable ire —
the property agent,
an entirely
flappable
lapsed anarchist,
becomes exercised
over the paltry
& is caught up
in terminally puerile
platitudes of growth —
‘ growth! growth! growth!’
!!
Howling
in the shady arboretum
of the Great White City
tournament grounds
illumined by laser
the weather
is wonderful near dark
a tennis duo
lobs
lime-green balls
onto mondo grass,
hardy worldly grass
& no faith
in amenities
between Chinatown
& the Powerhouse
a white plastic scuff
lies on the foot bridge.
Into the breeze
which is a wind
contrails disperse
like blurry cyrillics
!!
The small
somatic problems
of middle age
if you throw
your hair
into a fire
the brightness
of the flame
determines your longevity,
if it doesn’t burn
you’ll drown
After 40 nature
has finished with you
!!
Atoms of language —
in bed,
text-book lover,
a silver paperclip
is your only trace
(labia puffy
like figs)
Art is mostly
showing off
the cleverest
decoration
the buildings
in the distance
look like bottles
asphyxiation drives
us out
& the keroseney taste
of carrots ,
‘her cinematic oeuvre’
sounds like
her breakfast
We appear to be reduced
to apostrophe : the elegant
Gee Whiz
interstitial thinking —
everything’s
a particle.
preferring the gist
to the opus,
on return, I wonder,
if this was a foreign country
would it be more interesting
to be here ?
to be finally asleep
& dreaming, like yesterday,
the day lost to jet-lag,
in French —
“je suis perdue”
& must find a place
called “rue Guibert”
where, in waking life,
I’ve never been,
nor heard of,
imagining
the spicy Indian Ocean air —
the constant alizés,
trade-winds
that drive you crazy
buffet the house,
the mango trees,
& knock
big juice-logged jackfruit
to the mulchy ground
looking for traces
of Charles Baudelaire’s
exotic fabrications
in some tropical
banana flower,
liane de jade, reeking vanilla,
or Johnny Walker bottles
filled with honey
at lunch-time
at a waterfront camion bar,
or maybe in the loquats
& Malabar samoussas
from the sleepy street seller
just near the mosque
everything here
from long ago,
the ancient erupting volcano,
everything
except the cars, satellite tv,
play-stations, the world wide web,
net-draped cliffs,
unadorned concrete
anti-cyclone construction,
every other mouldy thing
— 17th, 18th, 19th centuries
Leconte de Lisle’s nose
knocked off the statue
in the church square
where a slender Créole
picks take-away scraps
from white pvc boxes
in the bin,
she must have fucked-up
& slipped past
welfare enslavement
born here, buried here,
Leconte de Lisle,
that old Parnassian —
the hymns and odes
inspired by steam power
and electric telegraphy
leave me cold
pure art or social art ?
that hesitation
quickening
young Rimbaud’s disgust
Baudelaire,
at 20,
persuaded by his parents
to take a voyage
meant to temper wildness,
to save him, said the step-father,
from “the sewers of Paris”
when shall we set sail
for happiness
he squibbed, years later,
and invented the east
he never reached —
ditching
the journey
for these two small islands —
îles Mascareignes
in Pamplemousses Garden
by the long rectangular pond,
giant, flat Victoria Regis lily pads,
Baudelaire writes his poem
to a Créole woman
of rue Guibert,
Port Louis,
I write mine
in St. Denis.
the black viola is a kind of purple, really,
as is the black tulip
imagine giving
the poems of Thomas Chatterton
to a teenage existential communist
who’s already
slightly rebellious and slightly sad
but this is a dream
or the technique of calling it that
or the topos —
for instance,
(in a dream) Guo Jian is boiling
crayfish on the Ile des Pins, the telephone
is ringing, a clock’s melting
all over the tablecloth —
the outer limits of the island
are lit by meteoric showers
at the same spot the pilot
crashes the sea-plane
en route to lunch
?
S. asks
‘how was your “holiday” ?’
(not very Barthesian of her is it ?)
— as if leaving Sydney
to spend two weeks on an island
in the South Pacific Ocean could only be
a “holiday” —
as if an absolute function
of oceanic cultures
is to provide a “holiday”
&, according
to Barthes,
writers don’t have “holidays”.
why waste time ?
?
why waste words ?
?
enter —
a topos of entertainment —
there’s Barry Crocker
& Barry Crocker’s son,
if I was on
advice-giving terms
with Guo Jian
I’d suggest he do
the Crocker family portrait.
Guo Jian from Duyun —
a chaotic southwest Chinese city —
from the Peoples’ Liberation Army,
from Beijing, from Tiananmen Square,
from underground
Yuanmingyuan —
a topos of parodic locale
compels Guo
to paint a leaping monkey
escaping every garish picture
entertainment topos —
(monkey’s bum)
Barry Crocker,
from loonery to croonery —
(the biz),
would probably prefer
a studio photo, wouldn’t he ?
his son might too —
in black & white
or toned a silvery blue —
enhance the bland, dad
the topos of the b&w photo
begins —
“ Black & white photos
tell the “truth” —
that’s why
insurance agencies
use them “
?
the topos of the gothic university precinct
predictably sets the parameters
for, in fact, several topoi in one essay —
clever zen
(should do the trick)
&, preferable to the pump
of imperatives
or somewhere, over the radar,
monkeys leaping into air
a topos of modesty — twenty-first
century protopersonalities unite
(humbly)
little delirium the first
a woozy clarity
adorns
all liars —
sucking
a nettle lozenge
in peril
of being
found out
(the lowest fear)
& so intensely
self-enclosed
maybe you’ll
implode,
your
diction’s
eccentricities
increase
with each fresh glass
of vile verdelho
& you make
a dark confession
I’d prefer
not knowing
little delirium the second
is nearly
as bad as
a eurovision song contest —
an awful something
grips the crowd
which, turning ugly,
boos
a feathery-minded
politician
announcing
his proleptic vision
to a world
of shrunken
bandwidths
where
everyone’s called
‘andrew’
& you have to
bring a plate
little delirium the third
a Tibetan jalopy
rolls across
the silvery sky,
the Sea of Tranquillity
fibrillates
& those
algae-coloured
hormones
make you sick,
your stability
collapses
like a stinking
puffy fungus
the longer i write poems for you
the shorter they become
Acknowledgements
(all book titles are by Pam Brown)‘Anyworld’ was first published in Cordite magazine
‘In Brittany’ was first published in eleven 747 poems (Wild Honey Press, 2002) and included in Dear Deliria (Salt Publishing, 2003)
‘Leaning’ was first published in 50-50 (Little Esther Books, 1997) and included in Dear Deliria (Salt Publishing, 2003)
‘I remember dexedrine.1970’ was first published in Small Blue View (Magic Sam Books, 1982) and included in Selected Poems 1971–1982 (Redress Press/ Wild & Woolley, 1984), New & Selected Poems (Wild & Woolley, 1990) and Dear Deliria (Salt Publishing, 2003)
‘Twitching’ was first published in 50-50 (Little Esther Books, 1997) and included in Dear Deliria (Salt Publishing, 2003)
‘Mascarenes’ was first published in eleven 747 poems (Wild Honey Press, 2002) and included in Dear Deliria (Salt Publishing, 2003)
‘Drifting topoi’ was first published in a chapbook of the same name in the Rare Object Series, Vagabond Press, Sydney 2001 and was included in Text thing (Little Esther Books 2002) and Dear Deliria (Salt Publishing, 2003)
‘Vapours’ was first published in 50-50 (Little Esther Books, 1997) and included in Dear Deliria (Salt Publishing, 2003)
‘the longer i write’ was first published in Café Sport (Sea Cruise Books, 1979), included in Selected Poems 1971–1982 (Redress Press/ Wild & Woolley, 1984), New & Selected Poems (Wild & Woolley, 1990) and Dear Deliria (Salt Publishing, 2003)
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