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joanne burns

A selection of poems

from aerial photography

the astroturf blisters, bubbles in the hollywood hills,
the forests of the world become landfill, no bushes
left to burn, to illustrate those gutsy gods
of fire, old deities grown senile on donuts
and cheap cheesyburger bites, their powers idled
away in puny farts, billions of eyes lift
to read the sky: huge fire clouds billowing
out like wild miracles, a festival at
the end of time, the aliens’ spaceship is
about to arrive,

the world dances on its
deserts, gulches, dried up
streets like a mob of
extras in an old movie
marathon, nostalgia
rules the skies.

from penelope’s knees, by joanne burns, University of Queensland Press 1996

that night I bounce tennis balls
high up through the sky
I’m not sure of the brand. it’s thirty years
since I’ve been intimate with tennis balls
but they are tennis balls and they feel good,
although the dream says they are prayers
our father hail mary glory be;
a silver white shape a hybrid of the infinity
sign, the a.b.c. logo, the double helix, a large
twisted pretzel, a ufo, appears
above me, small hard red apples
like beads from a rosary start falling
on my head and they don’t hurt at all;
I sit on the grass flipping through
articles on tv talk show confessionals
and marshmallow bombs in a magazine
called ‘the 21st century’, from new york:
the sky turns black right down to
the ground, a virtual reality kit
named lethe appears at my feet
— if the glove fits I’ll wear it

from penelope’s knees, by joanne burns, University of Queensland Press 1996

outside the sex show palace,
a dreary tenement teased out
of its sullenness by the flash of
candy neon come-ons,
a carload of steroid boofs
leap out and race up
the stairs to bundy on
for the friday night long hot
shift, the A team in their
identikit satin bomber jackets,
renaissance men each at least
a spruiker-bouncer, perfect in this age
of multi-skilling
  
they rush to their workplace
with all the professional cool
of U.S. marines beginning an invasion
or of hitmen late
for a murder
their gym bags held tight in
a left or right fist
like doppelganger erections
  
in the time it takes
a junkle to spew
in the gutter opposite
they’re back on the street
hands free, they head for the cappuccino
shop, walking as if they need a piss
but don’t know it
while the daytime spruiker in mufti
flinty and snappy as an old cattle dog
holds the fort barking ‘have a go have a go’
into the early evening crowd
in the window of the zorro café
they sit snug as chubby
babies in high chairs
the cappuccino kids, sucking up
the froth rising high above
the rims of their cups like detergent
foam in a blocked drain

from aerial photography

when the martians moved in
to alaska boulevarde they
levelled the heritage dwellings
and built homes in the shape
of ovaries; on cold frosty
mornings you can see them out
on their crazy paved lawns
gilded to the hilt doing push
ups in net singlets and
smart bermuda shorts; when
they exhale the air fizzes
with the sport of tiny lime
green triangles and their silver
beet and snow pea hedges
sway in the gulf stream breeze —
like a cocktail of fresh wind
chimes their gossip begins

from aerial photography

the first week of the new year and
indolence drops in as usual uninvited:
here’s lassitude like flat champagne flatter
than sorrow flat as the image of the year
ahead — a schedule of trivial and significant
failures making its prescience felt; any humour
of self parody is frizzled by the heat, an insect
voice rasps    make it new     make it new —
a decision to give up writing for sandwich
making seems quite positive, the first new year’s
resolution approximating common sense in quite a while yet

in a slow thin panic you begin pigging out
on poetry: surrounding yourself with texts, slimthick volumes
of verse, biographies, essays, articles, interviews, as if
you’re building a formidable sandcastle at low tide:
american essays on poetic truth-honesty-sincerity make
you want to puke
to burn the lot pity about the fire bans there’s nothing
more pesky than the pieties of american poets doubling
as lit crits up to their crowns their laurels in
certainties and eloquence, a rhetoric that’s never lost
for words, and cee-vees long as the mississippi; to grow
illiterate, mute (not to be confused with vocally challenged)
is what you crave: a big long sleep on a blank white page

from aerial photography

one thinks of all the hands
that whip money out of ATMs
quick as condoms, headache pills;
that jiggle herbal tea bags in thick
mugs like puppeteers; that fill
out lotto forms on a stream of
thin white shelves; that are
dropping shaggy track pants on
the floor beside a bed, that
press touchfones more than flesh;
that vote in cardboard booths
with short lead pencils, tied
to string like small harpoons:
that tremble at the mirror too
close to the patinas of their skin;
one thinks of all the hands, burning
teaspoons in a thousand motel rooms

from aerial photography

it’s still the same, signs on the grass
say don’t feed the fish, instead of
don’t eat them, still the same tired old
sports star tropes, failed golfer falls
on his sword, shakespearean high jinx on
the links, how could he be such a loser
with forty million dollars in loot his
hound’s toothed fan heartily burps, new
golf courses still consume asian
farmlands mad cow disease is still
on the cards, just don’t eat the fish
or feed them, ensuite bathrooms are
still being constructed there’s so
little time for church, family’s still
a noun, like nest of tables, to covet:
a home still provides for its
family of cars, even if everyone’s
anxious to leave they all still
want somewhere to park, lie
perfectly still on the tarmac
your poem is about to be heard
its peristalsis leisurely, and
loyal as pop up toast, a grecian
urn still sits unravished in the gift
shop window behind the six pack
traffic’s roar, its proprietor ms salome
sitwell snores into her pocket sized
koans, the figurine of the milkmaid from
Shropshire drops on her face to the floor
and still
the rain still falls

from aerial photography

i

under the house in the soft
brown soil you lean
against bleached wash
tubs wringing parrot
bright holiday clothes,
the cold water on your fingers
delicious as an Italian beer
in a long heat wave, and the
outside ferns obscure
the strength of the sun’s fierce
blaze through lattices of shade;
in this cool private world
the intimacy
of the moment seems
immense as you turn
with your full buckets deep
piles of packing cases
removalists’ boxes in storage,
murmur like totems from travellers’
secret trails


ii

the sweet silence of
this under-the-house shadows
you pegging out
your clothes, a residue
of water trickles up your
arms as you offer
your tipsy face like a brazen
bride to the fiery sun
glazing the lawn the
mango tree chthonic
green you swoon into
greek no universal
myth thoughts of ultra
violet rays are obscene
at a time like this —
the flowery end of your sarong
lifts, a kite in a sudden
breeze, and a grasshopper
lands on your wrist


iii

the watchdog, oshi, short for
ocean, rushes round the deck, he
hasn’t seen a cane toad,
it’s the beep of the new computer
game sending him into a spin —
mandalay towers, a sixty floor
hotel, where fifty mini-robo tourists,
programmed for cyber-shark fishing
and promptness, pulse crimson —
their ten second elevator’s failing
to come, while dion and cora evans,
couple forty three
in the honeymooner suites, require
urgent help with a new condom
machine


iv

disoriented, dazed
inside upstairs you rush to
be of service just like a
mighty mouse, and trip
on the dog’s ball, the
cordless phone then slam
your elbow virtually
through the screen, you hear
the rumble of an earthquake
hundreds of tiny graphics
tumble hurtle megametres of inches
to the ground      the ceiling
fans the hills hoist still
spin so languidly round and
round     is this paradise
lost or paradise found

from aerial photography

under a canvas awning, a few
metres above sea level, with backs
to the harbour the poets are reading —
their audience reclines on smooth fresh
mown lawn, swish as a cecil beaton
snap: lyric marinates the air; the p.a system
amplifies the verse right
to the water’s edge, where an evening
swimmer unaware of the source of
these bardic sounds, seeing is believing, may
mistake them for announcements
at a livestock sale or a stubborn
address from a captain whose ship
is going down

let’s apologise
write a letter
blame it all on
mista kurtz
wearing his smile
like a balaclava
organ trader, sunday
grinder, late sparerib
wallah of prariesprawl
here to audit
his clan’s pantech-
nicon ‘golden hind’ with
a triple eye    sniff
the riff of his smoking
trance seeping through
the domino parquetried
floor    raw hide
rorrohrorroh    was he able
to smell it in triplicate or
cuneiform —

who are we now
the sundrenched catastrophe
louder than a rock concert
too quiet to ban smell
the déjà vu air  busy
old soothsayer, familiarity
breeding itself ; if in doubt
swing on the whimper of a
holiday  restrain emotion’s
tatters behind the roller door
- all my pretty ones we are
packing up the patios for
storage in the garden sheds
diy philosophers plagiarise
fortune’s songbook why would
the boomerang come back

in the churning waters of the auburn municipal pool a boy is swimming like chairman mao in cheap goggles. mickey mouse donates his top hat to a rock at lourdes. awaiting instruction in the art of patient multiplication a moth prostrates itself at the foot of a fleamarket buddha. lisa simpson spins the globe on her thumb as she plans her trip up the road to oxiana with robert byron. from the comforts of their hot air balloon babar and queen celeste wave to the blue of the ocean and promise to remember its birthday. somewhere between miami and bognor regis daisy duck is preparing yak butter tea. this is a story of one eye among many. dust finds its own level.

i.

and what about this phrase ‘the silence
of  the world’, where does it come from did
you borrow it from another poet did something
hum it in your ear like an attic
mystery in the middle of a heatwave afternoon
when the air torments you with its fiery
breath and you could lose your temper
but something gives you one last chance
the phrase ‘the silence of the world’ stills
you like the breeze of a hammock slow
and quiet, a cool white feather across
your sweaty neck, or the fluff of a dandelion
floating past an orifice or two

ii.

you stand in the long driveway of your father’s home. the texture of  everything is amplified yet the air is full of silence. the greenness of the hedge is silent. you don’t know why you are there standing looking up at the sunroom window. you didn’t expect to see two girls standing in that room looking down at you. your impulse is to call for help but you have no way of doing so. without leaving the property. are they petty thieves. where is he, your father. the white bricks of the side of the house glare at you like a stunning shadow. ‘ the silence of the world’ offers no sanctuary for your incipient screams. this putative talisman of language has let you down. you have been jilted.

next night you dream again. you are in the graveyard of your father’s garden. all the plants the flowers the trees bushes have gone. decades of nurturing just vanished. the soil is a bleached, messy brown. dunner than you would ever have imagined. as if there had been a nuclear winter. some unexpected chemical warfare. where are the giant pine trees that loomed over all like deep green sphinxes. here comes that lovely phrase ‘ the silence of the world’. so unlovely now.


iii.

you’re walking along the street
in fairy meadow, the faux heritage
housing estates gleam like
cardboard cutouts, the mountain in
the distance sits in a trance
like someone who’s thrown her spectacles
away, humming a pastiche of old pop
songs —  a voice behind your left
ear whispers ‘the silence of the world’
like puck on his way to the bottle shop
which is where you’re heading, and
then you see it in giant letters at
the traffic lights  —  ‘the triple cheeseburger
is back’ —  where have all the dairies
gone —   the roar of the traffic slices
through the fields of fairy meadow
like a holy war


iv.

‘the silence of the world’ sits
in your ear like a pocket
of sea water trapped there
after a long swim, language
is not so much a virus as
a pirate, no reassurances,
verities, no clark kent
in the phone booth, ready
to rip open his shirt and rescue
language make it believable, safe
as houses, sure as trust, there
are no phone booths big enough
and these days clark lies
dozing in the hammock enjoying
his redundancy payout, eno’s
‘music for airports’ on the walkman,
quietly rolling a budweiser across
his palms like a globe of
an ancient world, underneath
him cerberus dreams of a bratwurst
burger nothing will prick up his
ears — ‘the silence of the world’ —
all the mysteries have fled
from eleusis so many busloads
back

the problem is always which way to
proceed — the road less travelled has
been parqueted with biblical pages
( i’m not sure who wrote them or
even their size) ; the avenue of
kitchens is all out of soup, the bread’s
been wired with listening devices                                 
and the cul de sac’s chockabloc
with radiant lambs; the traffic lights
are so moody like bags of fast
food, no signpost will show the way
home to mother’s, is that lear or
cordelia waving binoculars on top
of that cabbage palm tree; the anodyne
highway has cancelled rehearsals
until further notice the guidebook’s
relocating to the closest landfill;
so if you feel anxious as to
which way to travel you’ll
have to velcro an ear to the ground

from vital statistics

it’s hard to give up the biscuits
so tightly sealed in their shiny
white packets, the cryptic
glyphs of saos and jatz: cunieform
of the antipodes; can you hear
the fall of the auctioneer’s hammer
the national museum has made
a bid — we sit and contemplate
the soaring price of mothballs while
silverfish rehearse on the
velvet lounge, hear the leaves
scrape on the spidery windows jealous
ancestors plaque sandstone
walls, please treat the diaries to
ten coats of estapol and make
sure the magistrates plait the lawn

the door opened and the big dark manifested. the inherited row of hat boxes shifted in its dust. tissue paper around the millinery began to panic. hearts were not fluttering as they should. the roof smelt fierce that week in november nineteen sixty seven. all that summer the cliffs smouldered. her future lay in sunglasses and small beds without pillows. she remade herself as an orphanage. refreshment was quite unpredictable. later the canoes arrived.

no words to say it. no words to unsay it. it walks like a legend across a lover’s grave. hymn of gunshot in a burst of rain. myth wakes to a glassy afternoon where a long page returns the story of your other life. postage stamp island. postage stamp heart. his handsome staircase splintered on the rocks. small square of chocolate gift wrapped in a memory. gift wrapped in a curse.

the burden of dreaming, the bed a huge net dragging the monster octopus of story that lunges through the head at night: the corpulence of the drowning psyche. who, what, are these  people, these shades, these feelings, places, likenesses, that tangle one up like a bad load of washing. this shamozzle of the long night.

tentacles shoot out new episodes, plots and subplots in the hours before dawn. who is the octopus — the dreamer or the dream. grubby stories, leviathan lore, cheap little anecdotes. you turn in the bed, and its creak documents another story. the glare, the smirks of strangers, familiar places, rearranged by the psyche’s cruel interior designer. you know the loci by name but they look different. as if you are awakening from an anaesthetic.

in dreams irony does not exist, even suspicion, perspicuity is a struggle, you suffer physical pain if you try to break out of the dream. the dream and its fleshy, multifarious burdens insists you remain naïve, compliant, committed.

but for those who have been blessed with dust allergies there is a way out. if you find yourself near dusty spots in one of your dreamings try to get as close as you can to these sprinklings or mites. within breaths you will feel it coming. a huge sequence of sneezing that will blast you from your deepest slumbering, with a shower of clear ink, writing invisible gratitudes across the lightness of air.

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