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Gig Ryan

The Division of Anger

¶ This electronic edition of Gig Ryan’s first published book reproduces the text of the original publication edited and designed by John Tranter, typeset on an IBM Selectric typesetter in IBM Baskerville by Lyn Tranter at Rat Graffix and published by John Tranter at Transit Poetry, Sydney, 1980. The book is now out of print. ¶ Some of the poems have been revised since. ¶ Horizontal lines represent page divisions. Page numbers (folios) were originally centered at the foot of each page. Here they are placed top right for convenience. Those folios placed in square brackets here were left blank in the original publication. Later (2005) editorial interpolations are set in gray sans serif type (like this), aligned right. Notes are given at the end of this file, with links that look like this: [71]. Click on the link to be taken to the note; likewise to return to the text. ¶ Copyright © Gig Elizabeth Ryan 1980, 2005. ¶ This edition was prepared by John Tranter in October 2005, a quarter-century after he first published the book on which it is based. A photo of Rennie van Rijn, who printed the book, is given at the end of this file. ¶ A photo of the author at the book launch party on 31 January 1981 is given at the end of this file. ¶ The motto of Transit Poetry: Tempus fugit.

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[ front cover ]

THE DIVISION OF

A N G E R



[photograph of Gig Ryan by John Tranter]

Gig Ryan

T R A N S I T     P O E T R Y

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[ back cover ]

THE DIVISION OF ANGER

Gig Ryan was born in 1956, and lived in Melbourne until she
moved to Sydney in 1978. She received a Young Writers Grant
from the Literature Board of the Australia Council in 1979.
As well as writing poetry, she also writes prose, reviews
and songs, and plays acoustic and electric guitar. This is her
first book of poetry.

ISBN 0 9594377 1 1

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THE DIVISION OF ANGER

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[ Page 2 half-title verso: blank ]

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THE DIVISION OF ANGER

poems by

Gig Ryan



TRANSIT POETRY

in association with Allbooks Distribution

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First set up and published in 1980 by Transit Poetry
29 Glebe Pt. Rd., Glebe NSW 2037. Australia

In association with Allbooks Distribution     ph. (02) 290 1411
260 Kent St., Sydney NSW 2000

Typeset by Rat Graffix     ph. (02) 660 6605
29 Glebe Pt. Rd., Glebe NSW 2037

Printed by Panacea Press     ph. (02) 211 1089
5 Knox St., Chippendale NSW 2008

Copyright 1980 Gig Ryan. All rights reserved.

National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication data:
    Ryan, Gig Elizabeth (1956– )
        The division of anger
        ISBN 09594377 1 1
        I. Title.
    A82T.3

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or
transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical,
including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and
retrieval system without permission in writing from the publisher.

Acknowledgement: some of these poems first appeared, in some cases
in a different form, in the following publications — The Age, The
Australian, Chook Chook, Compass, Dodo, Meanjin, New Poetry,
Overland, Poetry Australia, Poets Choice 1979, Roadrunner (music
magazine), Surfers Paradise, Your Friendly Fascist and Westerly.
Published with the assistance of the Literature Board of the Australia
Council.

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[You may click on the entries in the Contents list:
they act as links to the relevant pages.]

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[7]

1

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[8]

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        BREAKING AND ENTERING

He sits back dumb
with his housing commission haircut
I can tell from here
he’s been to court or a funeral
blonde boy / apprentice crim
That shows
all up and coming
with his well-dressed clean cut
let’s deal mates
At the disco we stand around
and crack dumb jokes / I could use you
He parks the car for me
couldn’t even be twenty
with his giant dog — it’d tear
the cords from your neck if it doesn’t
know you, just got to say
the word. He knows all right
but even my mates
get worried sometimes
when they’re jumpy you know from hitting
or something, got to keep him in the yard
then. The neighbour’s dog’s a mongrel
knocked over a Triumph 750 Bang
just like that
Doesn’t know any record producers
or big-time people
and modest too he says
yanking the pin-ball machine’s side levers
What are you drinking
I can get some speed
He rolls joints for the right mood
and keeps saying lights out like he’s just
left THAT place. Come on. You don’t
really want to see my naked body
Do you
and fucks like a metronome
and calls me baby. These boys

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can go on this way forever
Slow down. I’m stoned like a lover
should be. He’s strange-eyed cool
as a dumb man
I drive him home at 3 a.m.
His mates say he’s dead-set
crazy about me wants to
tear me apart
How contemporary. How Melbourne. How solid. How romantic
Baby

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        COOL BLACK AUGUST / POINT LONSDALE

In a green house, insects bat the netted window
curtains coming gently forward then still, with proper gravity
The ocean unrolls like cloth into the shore

Trees rustle like a cough, the green house dims
amongst back-weeds, and a dog-chain sounds
through blue street mist

You climb into the dune, curved around the bay
like a castle-wall, to feel less the moth
at windows, beating for a strange hand
to unwind a window-sill

Tight air curls the open heart
now running down, slipped once, and racing
down, like a black wave, down, bones spray
the grey sand raw

A chair skids abruptly over floorboards,
scars onto a nail. The fireplace is whispering
Tired Peter loosens against cane
a limp page scatters

You will sleep in a green house
like weeds
The ocean tumbling like a child.

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        TO A KIND MAN

Well baby I’ve been speeding like cocaine
and I can see
for kilometres and kilometres
Will you be my Galahad. Want to see you
before I die. Can you shine
half-smile moving slowly
slipped between your hot arms
that Don Quixote shaft-light
across your brown brown want you eyes
I’ve been racing like a time bomb
— it’s just a quarter past and you asked
me that six minutes ago. Don’t you listen
not ever? —
Honey what else can I call you
when the skin’s ripped like Venetian blinds
coming down in a trim beige room
my bed’s the last moon, there’re no ‘other three’
I’m as dishonest as they
come, and as serious
Lots of new songs for you. Is it cold there
and what would you want with a man like that
well, I’m resourceful. Tell me you’re a good man
with NO intentions. I’ll even tell you my star sign
though I think astrology’s fifth-rate Christianity
if that’s your line
I’m broad-minded. Honey my body’s spreading
like a bird’s wing for your kisses
Come
Down
Soon
All my                   , for your sweet skin

Didn’t mean to say as your eyes lit up
when you saw the Whole Earth Bookshop
‘Jesus, you’re predictable.’

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Got a lie-down-and-ram-it-up man
last night. Wish you were
here

This is in morse-code. Please read
with your heart on

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        TWENTY-FOUR HOURS

Television trickles through the room, your white blood wound
He’s lying with his elbows carrying it
and his safe stare like a warden, freelance and kindly
Paper steals underneath the door
or light. I saw him reading.
but his toy hands are flat and warm
and glass won’t tell

Saying it’s nothing. He gives you hot milk
stumbling with the window’s cane blinds, and coming back
nearer. He says what’ve you been reading
checking your arms

**

At the bank, the teller says
well you can take most of it out
but under a dollar I’m afraid, no interest
and Something to do with the budget, a client cues him
The manager looks up behind his mirror-window
You can just see him if you look hard
but he gets uncomfortable and shouts graffiti
down the phone

**

I’ve gone
from the cold country
and here the ships angling like dreams
in the close water
where the sun lies down

the glass chimes tinkling in the glass wind
I think of those blinds pulled down
with death or flowers
and the woman’s wet sadness in the kitchen
her red hands praying Mother

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        STOPWATCH

I lived with a madman in a craven house
to sate me formless, tired of jutting like a broken rod,
to grow calm with anger

To let him snatch with teeth, and die
backyard heathens with a blown gate unlatched
and banging

His pale blue eyes at morning weeping slowly
like the sky, weeping, turn the face away
His pale tears down my back

For a clear afternoon,
when I would close a gate like that
and let his cold vein white on a hot day

I lived alone, discarding all the deaths sheeted
over eyes, washed by a thin man’s voice
but went through yellow leaves

And those who wait like fishermen
perhaps will be repaired, not need to cross the tyrant’s line
or listen to the pier shriek in places

My safety kicks out like a spring from a frugal chair
or a slither of child beneath stretched skin
and nothing will rub this soreness from my wrists, my bones

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[17]

2

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[18]

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    GETTING IT

    1

This’ll take the edge off it he says
with his warm tongue like the bastard
He is.
How ‘bad’ you felt the next night
with his friend. How green you are
worried like a kid, but there.

He kisses, his pale guilt blowing
like a flower. You’re luxurious, unsure.
Your eyes opening like telescopes
on a clean brain.
You’re so silly in the kitchen, like a new appliance.

At night the walls’ pattern goes rash
and Didn’t he notice then,
his eyes falling larger than a scream.
You could’ve been wrong. It happens.

* * * *

Unintelligently, he’s soft
by the economic fridge, his green eyes
green as crying, taking talk
between his serious hands, he spreads
it on the table like a telegram
that moans through wire.

You look out at the city
with your endless face shimmering in the window.

* * * *

Will you buy me a dark salmon citroen
please, with all your brilliant money,
how it smells like a bank-clerk.

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    2

You’re sitting there, argumentative as love, and callous.
Will your wisdom like an orange crane lift you silent?
The couples regret each other noisily.
A woman peers into your eyes, her children plugged
into the next room like a continent.
How she wants to talk to you, probing
— the inexchangeable man between your thighs.
Irritable as weather across the table,
you remove yourself with something orthodox.

Across the wide car’s seat, she’s miles away.
Your head severe behind the dashboard, smoking.
He’s in some pale yellow room,
the skirting-boards sealing like band-aids,
the nature-strips outside.
He’s passing regularly the unconditional rooms
where children squawk your name over
don’t they, like a fable.

Big romance paddles the water
with sticky lights monitoring it down
between the 7th Floor and the neon.
The rings of death are dribbling to the ocean,
papery and timid.
His environmental love, his city mouth,
hushed up like a tree.

Let me lie with you, your glamorous dreams,
in these clean and temporary sheets.
A car moans against the kerb
and steals me, as your suburb winds
the darkness.

The water lies down like a saint.
He sleeps like a dream.

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    DYING FOR IT

    1

Out that door when I leave I’ll disintegrate
in your backyard / a medal to live there,
into my silent address, into the absolute realm
with this idiot love trembling like a car.

He says he needs a space for being.
My alien head rigs the coloured lights,
they infect the table we go down in like a pond.
When I can believe someone else I’ll stop lying.

Into the taut blue bridge I was delivered
adrift the ceaseless water, blue as flowers,
pale blue like ‘This is fun’
where dawn is white shock on the water.

He copes with the table.
I would kill a thousand crocodiles for you.
His sincerity clacking like chainmail,
death-hot, and your dead throat moves
one dream down.

    2

Into the rupture of your blond thighs
our unease spills past recognition.

Into the colourless room, where night sets in like a slave.
Your black lung singing sleep.

You push your ocean through the needle.
How proud the city shifts the window.
My eyes, wide as an oven, still carol you.
All the vigorous dead come back. Remember. Remember.
Your voice drags like footsteps.

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    3

He hands you fun in a glass jar.
Back in Sydney, you discover the exclamation-mark,
pumping the beach-resort of his conversation.
You work hard to get them talking.
His American optimism sweet on the sky
she’s going gaga over.

Your heroic gestures fall flat.
He becomes the transience of this hour, unscathed, cordial, and dying.
I’ve got to be hungry to get romantic.
And you’re both crazy, theoretically, at last,
with that timid music rising like a mass
chanting Join hands and it’ll all go away.

    4

Now his voice compels you,
that futureless easy kiss, compels you outward.
Her sandy arms will wrap you
sympathetic above the longest table.
Forgive this damage, always.

    5

I will go down into the black water
and peel its wetness back into the shore
where it will shiver like a dress.
Down between the dry rock and the soft weed
is this green blood drawn.
From the close dream and the indefinite past
the black sky calling birth.

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    CRUISING

I dreamt I drank too much lemonade
and it was fatal. Everybody pointed and ran.
The man came into my room in his office clothes.
Go away I said, and I jumped out of my skin.

In the Italian cafe, I think of the wealthy.
What helicopter must have sunk into the roof
to be used so precariously by the management,
or contrived. (It’s common now)
I stare at the propeller, it shudders like a failure.
Who can eat under that?

You can see from the street they’ve added another story.
The pilot’s capsule’s been renovated, hired out
for secret occasions, furtive and giddy, so secret
we never heard. I’d find it claustrophobic
and ruin my clothes. (After the bill gets drenched,
the waiter takes it to dry in a microwave oven)
A friend told me it’s been rigged without gravity,
looking red and expensive. His mouth sloped down,
about to reveal something xenophobic. I had to leave.

Is there a word which means ‘fear of things falling on you’?
I wake up and look at the split in my ceiling.
I jump out of my skin again, glad that I smoke,
glad that I can become historical and calm at the same time,
thinking of how non-smokers taste when you kiss them,
pink and wet and physical like a baby.

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    NOT LIKE A WIFE

He questions her, his face soft with lovely money.
Be my mistress. He’s French, polite as corruption.
Yes. Her clothes are dirty. Love has made me poor.
She leans against the flimsy cupboard, wrapping her face up
in her hands. I loved a rich man
once, but I was never blonde, and suntans you know,
so bland. I never looked American enough
on the beach.

I’ll take you to Bangkok he says, the jewellery.
I can’t wear it. The nightclubs. Yes.
You could look like a million dollars you know,
touching her shirt collar, if you had it.
I can’t cook. His dark eyes soft and persistent
as flesh, wise with money he talks.
You like it here yes, you find character in poverty?
His arms snatch the whole creaking house up.
He’s laughing at the plaster. You’re so frank and evasive.
It’s alright, really, tense as a movie,
watching carlights flash above the bed.
He loved me once. You’re new, aren’t you.

The sink’s blocked in Darlinghurst.
I never could eat spaghetti effectively,
too unmarried or something.

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    IN THE PURPLE BAR

She spreads her pale legs
out across the table
and the beer
while he, the last car accident
red and tight across his eyes,
sucks her off, ungracefully.
But is she happy?

The hotel continues,
those expensive drinks. You were late.

He’s playing Billie Holiday
unshaven, but careful.
Let’s get things straight.
He buys you a cheap gin
and you want / want / want

How resilient you are.

She kisses the man, his mouth smells
of another woman’s cunt.
But nothing gets to you.

How well we cope.

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    HOW I WENT

I’m wearing my mother’s honeymoon shirt,
its softness thins in parts,
thinking of how I went for you,
total as a lunatic, my blue surgery hands
that will always allow you.

She looked prettier in it, better.
I make it hang like a desperate word.
Her eternal face I can’t look at.
My love slides in your throat
without meaning.
I will give you quiet and sleep.

This love lifts me like a bright white star
but who can stand that?
I will stain it with skin and pale grey voices,
I’ll land on it and poke it with a flagpole
until I fade into coherence,
sick at heart and no stranger.

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    IN THE LOVELY CROWD

The skinny man is throwing a little tiny tantrum
on the bench beside you, enunciating his words
stubborn as alcohol.
The woman kisses your hand, her eyes fluttering like pigeons.
The blind and hungry way they look at the talented.
(Now she looks at the tiny man)
You’ll chuck your fondness in a china-blue bowl.
If you touch, they’ll go mental.

The awareness of his kindness is oily in his eyes,
and goodnight is like a rosary, to see him through middle-age
like an X-ray. Move your hands, I’m tired of San Fransisco.
He predicts your good luck, preventing it.
The desire for purity is rarely carnal.
If I feed you twice a day, will you wait for me,
full-time like a cafe. Will you?

You want a man to apologise to.
He avoids the place now like Queensland,
as his radical politics fatten.
How corrupt you are, with your kinky sunburn
on his coloured sheets. If I’d known.
I buy esoteric things in the supermarket,
but his taste is rich and unavailable.

His sadness moved before your kiss.
They promised. Drive the blameless night,
your head hung down like a balcony,
as we inform on those who believe us,
whether penitent or international.
The man’s scenic face is lost in the crowd,
and the woman follows, vital as boredom,
and loving it.

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    SUNDAY

My father’s grave face asks,
as the heart clicks over, covered,
about the man. I’m crying.

and won’t resist, and not dutiful,
as the heart comes out
like a mouth, sure and unwilling.

and why I’m going so soon,
into the restless future. Break.

as he sees where my mouth has been
and what the skin’s been cut on.
My mother in the kitchen calls him back,
showing, Talk to her.

as the coffin stirs in the back-seat,
taking the corner like a man.

My sister takes my head against her neck.

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    CLEAR AS ANYTHING YOU’RE DRAWN TO IT

    1

The crime of his hands slips you
as he comes to the late-night bar
pointing the direction you’d never take.
The white and yellow lines split the road like a wish.

I will oppose you
with my mouth hung open like a cedar gate
into the bland blue sky.
Your cancerous citizens will never notice
as they wait for the afternoon party, dizzily.
If you talk loud enough, you’re imperceptible.

    2

Misery, a leech upon the ‘soul’
wears your green heart out
(So you’re out, being ‘female’ again)
as he enforces catatonia with his long low voice
belting the air.

Give me the redemption of work
in the white night, released and trying.
(His thoughts about it are peaceable,
peace like a stone slab shoved in at last)
You celebrate, subversive with love.
It’s all done with mirrors.

30 floors up he says you’re clever
like he’s discovered the wheel
(You said you wanted a view)
and the whole city, just right for the window,
shines daintily as loss.
I’ll place the books of hours into the cool sky
wailing and invalid, inside the brain
in words.

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    3

He’s such a bastard to you now, in case
you didn’t know. He is the test.
You ‘forget’ yourself, critically.
His beauty, evocative of nothing but itself,
makes you slow and reckless as a road.

Outside, the beautiful ruined boys walk.
Your effects have marked them, wrongly, proving you,
where a mad city grins,
its formal thrill banging like the sky.
How forlorn the plate-glass is, how mortal.

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       JANUARY

January is tearless as shampoo, entertaining and marketable.
She wraps her hair up, worthlessly.
While here, having survived Hiroshima, a cockroach sits,
smaller than a policeman’s heart.
For the pain, she says, pointing at it,
as her limp eyes stare and wander,
scuffles the sheet under her chin, and worries like a tablet.

And that young man. His eyes
romantic as aluminium strewn against a sea-wall.
Everyone had to get back. I did,
feeling like a euphemism, and inexplicable.
Everyone explains too much, as the collision of your ‘soul’
is gradually moved away. The mad boys laugh
backwards like clouds. Her voice arrests you.
I only want it for the crossword, she says.

The convalescent door raps weakly.
They’re selling graceless things,
as the gelati van tinkles past, its lurid music
swerves perspective over. Nothing I need.
The sky pulls into view like a monument.
You declare yourself invalid, but just.
As god comes up on the radar.

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    ARMISTICE

    1

His dishonour fractures at the messy gate.
It clinks like betrayal. You couldn’t give a damn.
Define anger, and I’ll tell you how I feel,
saying it as a liturgy into the massive aerodrome of days.

You go, knowing you’ll say at least 10 things you’ll regret.
Solemn at dawn and longing at dusk.
The world will tempt you like a mirror.
He can’t face himself. Is there a worse crime
than not doing what you said?

The junkies smile like ice-cream. No matter how sweet,
you are superfluous. The induced brain hums, constant and elusive.
His conversation ticks, smelling of circles.

    2

The yellow boys swim in the blue sea
bobbing like my ‘boyish’ spirit
as the wave falls back on its slick white self.
Blue sky throbs like a biro.
We’re trenchant in peace with cause over your mouth
like a hand. I will draw it.
The ship rusts water, selfless, damaging.

We will joke at the heart’s expense.
We’re winning. In the democracy of alcohol.
They don’t have to read a novel to mean it,
and your voice is loose.
We must hate the past to get through.

    3

They design you, embarrassingly, for the party.
Their house makes you seasick
dreaming of the meal you can’t afford.
The dogma of solitude will end you,
when you know your death, stiff as a wand,
like the hypochondriac you might’ve been.
You twist the night until it ceases, and fall over.

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    ENOUGH TO MAKE A WOMAN FEEL . . .

Your great gaping knowledge propped on the table,
austere and ludicrous, as someone smoothes the holes
into perfect circles. You eat the Lebanese bread,
hubcap-size in Melbourne, but smaller here.
In the park, the man’s arms giddy as a swing
asking asking. You kick your feet into the sky.
I wish he’d just drop dead.

So you sulk out, running your hand along the fence.
Where is the room I woke up in?
The TAB is gleaming like a kitchen.
A dollar each way, you’re an heiress now
but shrewd. This is how you do it.
Now aren’t the men helpful.

You watch the brick wall coming closer
or is it parliament on air? What’s he
looking so indignant about, and since when?
His green skill stopping at the lights,
that business lunch slowing the wheel square
as a weekend. You go home
and do 20 push-ups, as your android sentiments
leaf through the room. Evidence is the last thing you need.

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    THE PARK

In the phone-box, your voice poised and dangling.
I am latent with dream. Your green sickness
right through, as the mouth seizes up on principle.
Beneath the quiet tree, let me.
Where will you take your floods of grief?
On to the simple altar.

Your brain sticks out like a nail that everything’s caught on,
while a pretty child rattles with lower-income grammar
in a thin dress. She’s laughing.
And are these false tears, after all?
You’re so foolish and hungry, the apple tastes like a tree.

And for you, sweet fragile captured youth,
crying through the dark park’s gate you’ve been,
where the crossed chain catches on the tool of sky.
Your faint breath going like a bargain, futile,
as the long grief stays down in you
shining like the knife would.

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3

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    ALL OUR GODS

    1

In a quaint abandoned room
night falls, jittery as transmission.
Your exhaustion, cool and stoned, will keep you up
in the hotel, in the ex-students’ party.
He’s stinking of availability, but it goes,
his dishy way of being dumb but guess-what.
And you’re ready. I will love you like Socrates.

The junkies, with their sublime shattered faces
are distant and contained. The couples embrace like missionaries.
His soft impartial face tempts you and denies.
Which one? Immoral as the half-hearted
he works at it. Cards languish on his purple table.
Your wonderful calm sets like a limb.
Look at their rattling hearts, and his red mouth.
It’s him again, even tomorrow, looking brand-new and startled.

In the drug’s shallow pools you go
solid gold like the indoor sun,
aimless and pensive in a plastic chair,
watching the gentle doors.
Your box of moral bones is heavy
and too scrupulous,
ringing out through the naive wood.
He’s tender for it.
All our gods are mad and influential.

    2

Go on, with your little bits of love,
love him in your hopeless way,
eating the magic party food
you can’t imagine being concocted, just existing.
Your mouth, where everything goes in.
He gives you water. Swallow baby.

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Solemn and astonished like the Opposition,
you rap against him, cunt-teaser,
wasting all my fucking time. Look at the fragile boys,

they kiss you like a strain.
He’s busy. That’s six hours down.
You want cocaine like a millionaire.
He gives you fancy food you can stare at for hours.

Wake up in your volcano-sheets, listening
to the murderers cringe. Hold the knife,
what it could go through, as your head conks out
like dead brakes. All your little bits of heart
hold their breath. He throws rocks
in the street, concerned as an insurance company.

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    SMALL-SCALE

The nazi in your bed arranges you.
The strategy of his time bends like toothpaste.
You’re shy and pleasurable. He knots your teeth.
He’s got it all lined up.
The nothings you could never put into words.

Sure you look your best. His ugly intelligent face jams
into the sheet. His mouth crooked as a courtroom,
proud of his clumsy flesh
so sure you envy like a patient.
You’re inexpressible, you’re his way.

And when he’s grasping like a dog,
you’re not there. His clipped knowledge grinning like a jail.
You’re locked, inexhaustible. He will quiet you like a gun
and fail to draw you.

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    ALL OVER LIKE A PRELUDE

    1

You with your shining emotional hair.
He’s off to the disco, wow, get fucked by a man.
It’s Friday isn’t it. This is the itinerary he says,
one more shot, and we’re heroes.
What’s your clever story? I’m gullible as a lake,
glassy and no kids. It’s still love.

Kick. It’s your dead and doped-up brain
nothing matters to. Here, in the land of the sublime,
we’ll roar tears. He’s being extra-nice to the public,
all his frivolous and fragrant attention counts
for your crude table. It weakens with the swimming talk
we love.

The blondes are at eye-level again, and his face curves
like one big burden. Your judgement is sometimes wrong.
Let’s check with the bureau.
His fancy clothes you’ve never seen,
how his head turns and sticks like a classic.
Sign it for me won’t you with your neutral hand.

    2

We’re mean, but he’s better,
so black and white, unforgettable and smooth.
He’s hurting
but it’s nearly finished. He looks like The Beatles
but doesn’t want you or your abstract mother
sobbing the impossible.

    3

Plug the heart’s blue chamber, those pilot over-rated words.
What’s on your mind is jumped-up.
The inessential deadbeats are still there

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whispering like florists. Cry like a baby
never would. Kiss and believe it.
We’ve tried. We’ve registered
in the swinging electorates.

Now he, the last illusion, doesn’t care.
His delectable spinning blondes will spurn you
in the fuel crisis, will hold the phone, calling,
as the weird night travels outward like a blonde.
His accomplished sleeve rustles, almost wishy-washy,
but secret. Your red and rising breath, watch,
hangs inside, grows like the agenda.

    4

Out of your mouth, the bat’s hankering black wing
is premature and fierce.
It turns like a coin in clinging air.
It swoons the same deal, love.
And he’s so complicated.

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    SAYS THE COLOURLESS WATER

In death’s exotic palace you’ll feel at home,
you’ll be one of the crowd. They won’t ask questions.
They’ll take all your nightmares away. Oh sweet dead dreams
I can’t remember.

They languish. All the songs are lost.
Your brain will be one soft itch of words.
Oh thrilling conversation we can’t get out of.
You’ll be a voluntary member, able to leave at any time.

Go on, says the colourless water.
It will take you out of yourself.
And the crowd is educated, no-one starves.
You’ll be happy here. They can see through everything.

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    THE TENANT

The old bloke down the corridor was found today
in his neat and powerless room
with the empty jar of pills.
He was always helpful, except when he was drunk.
I couldn’t stand it then,
his ancient sex flapping at his legs
as he fumbled with the door like an idiot
in the afternoon. I suppose it’s the suburb
or the age. I never knew what to say to him
much. His daughters never came.
He was his own man, read books,
and had unconventional opinions.
Passing the Sao biscuits over the table
he’d dip them in the tea, and smoke.
The window looked back at the tiny room
like a Health Inspector.
You couldn’t explain to the Government.

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    BY WATER

Wrap yourself in the tight dead cocoon of your skin.
Did you think it had gone? His face
and the slither of smile all over the room’s edge.
His face beneath a pane of water.

Everyone’s nice. But who wants to get married?
The music jerks up. Outside you can look at the water.
Here comes that man just dying to tell you his aspirations.
I want to throw up. Where do they make those people?
The men are in love with dead women. I will
blow the soil from your green face, he says. Prop her up.
Who’s going to notice? The men cry in a glossy cemetery.

My fleet of dreams will see me home
from the shy charmers, from his bright death.
Half my memory is dream. I remember his third face
washing across night. You are water.
You are the shivering museum glass.

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    IT’S REAL ISN’T IT

(Poem for two voices)

          1

Voice A:    Your great gut-load of love
swelling and slobbering inside
goes everywhere like a mobile baby
gets at you like a brother.
The best man keeps you in a cranky phone-box
wanting a fuck.

Voice B:                       / O.K. So you get that

Voice A:    him so

A&B:                           handsome and symmetrical

Voice A:                                                                              and there.

Voice B:    Argue till you’re bored shitless
but it’s not a tough one.
And now in the miserable wine-bar
love works on you like a machine

Voice A:    trumping out ethics

Voice B:                                                 You’ve got them

Voice A:    And we’re getting ticklish with lust.
You had to move

Voice B:                                            for what it’s worth

Voice A:    Your heart smirks

A&B:                                                    dynamically.

Voice A:    So you’re stuck with this

Voice B:                                                         it’s real isn’t it

Voice A:    him and his monster yelling purple in the street
The timeless betraying dark shows him
like a defective toy.

          2

Voice A:    The past man steps in, glinting like a ghost

Voice B:    but cool about it

Voice A:                                         tender as a movie.
His mauve and sacrificial cheek is effortless,

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his supple joke calls you
like a white dream.

Voice A:    How grave the floor

Voice B:                                            it’s his now

Voice A:    the small wit and the neat touch
that gets to you. Sickness breaks it down

Voice B:    touchy as a feeling

Voice A:    His face

A & B:                             the blind bright net

Voice A:     will sing beneath each tinny sky

Voice B:     Baby kiss me like an expert.

          3

Voice A:     The clock’s shrieking nightmare’s
repeating like a person

A & B:                                                         Go out

Voice B:                                                                   The driftwood air
is out like a lie.

Voice A:                                    Moan as the window does,
its view, the grave we tasted, crisp and born now
as memory. His long and ticklish skin you’re stuck on

Voice B:     nothing far-fetched

Voice A:                                               just a liquid brain
leaves you

A&B:                                    slow

Voice A:                                           and constant.

Voice B:     In Thursday’s gooey mass, the impossible kiss
is remembered

Voice A:     Not like this, it was all

A&B:                                                            throb throb

Voice A:     the real

Voice B:                        “we can never meet”

Voice A:     and isn’t that the best

Voice B:     when the sheets are wet with you

Voice A:                                                                             and once

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Voice B:     gasp

Voice A:                  forever isn’t it

Voice B:                                                    polished through like an opal

A&B:                                                                                                                         and yes.

Voice A:     The big pulse of your heart is frightened

A&B:                                                                                                  like a pop-song

Voice B:     it tails you forever.

A&B:                                                        His unfocussed perpetual face.

Voice A:     These are the things I’ve got against you.

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    LAY THE GLASS

The giant lock in my throat rattles.
I have given my good heart

through wire and blood. Is a voice gone.
Three purple wishes

on your fence of a heart.
Come down. They have taken the grey robe from me.

Lay the glass end to end. is a voice.
I have given my first hand. Is it safe here?

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    FOR GRACE / AND YOU’RE SO FINE

We pull in, early morning.
You are the flower, soft in me,
who goes, pull at the difficult door.
I hear the gate come back
into my bed, the rattle, your pale concern.
You are the final man, distracted and careful.

How grey eyes skid at my retrenched heart
to employ it provisionally, and well.
We kiss. Going down the sorrowing road like strangers,
ephemeral and rare. You’re close as a lifetime.

All the sky is rain and tomorrow, running.
We’re fixed.
The recent dream we step from like a taxi,
into the usual glass, the familiar financial year.
Your gentle look rifts into my bed.
Your grey forgotten mouth, the illness, how we crumble,
without proportion, delicate and mortal.
You are the element, sheer, the hand jarring
on the white reluctant gate.
You are the flower.

    2

And her, with her wise and compact limbs,
smiles like Easter.
In the good room, the man will carry you away
on an ambitious and derelict passion.
The cheap red crying down in you.
His thin flesh hard against the tragic sheet, yours.
He is the sweet bone in you, grieve then, your approximate arms.

She’s coming like a saxophone, jazz,
her private inscrutable pain, stay
with the man you don’t care for.

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His stadium arms, his collector’s joy.
She leans in him like an easy-chair, useful and reliable.
She will.

All the shops die, now,
his long grey cloudy eyes wrapped at your neck
like a loss. His kiss before you like an initial,
curious and perishing, weep then, for what we do allow.
Cool the remarkable night, touched on, anonymous, perfect.

    3

or dream. Genuine as a ruin, you’re
bred in me, your kiss of shadow, contemporary and going.

The long half-light will long for your
in these limited hours, divide the clock, and nurture.
How rare you are, how sorry,
as we take the dark into us, meek in the abstract,
and pass over.
You are the last man, slowed in me.
The door picks at the eye.
Dissolve the awful hands, wept for,
and watch the long light rapping like a trial
it shuts you down.

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    IF I HAD A GUN

I’d shoot the man who pulled up slowly in his hot car this morning
I’d shoot the man who whistled from his balcony
I’d shoot the man with things dangling over his creepy chest
in the park when I was contemplating the universe
I’d shoot the man who can’t look me in the eye
who stares at my boobs when we’re talking
who rips me off in the milk-bar and smiles his wet purple smile
who comments on my clothes. I’m not a fucking painting
that needs to be told what it looks like,
who tells me where to put my hands, who wrenches me into position
like a meccano-set, who drags you round like a war
I’d shoot the man who couldn’t live without me
I’d shoot the man who thinks it’s his turn to be pretty
flashing his skin passively like something I’ve got
to step into, the man who says John’s a chemistry Phd
and an ace cricketer, Jane’s got rotten legs
who thinks I’m wearing perfume for him
who says Baby you can really drive like it’s so complicated,
male, his fucking highway, who says ah but you’re like that
and pats you on the head, who kisses you at the party because
everybody does it, who shoves it up like a nail
I’d shoot the man who can’t look after himself
who comes to me for wisdom
who’s witty with his mates about heavy things
that wouldn’t interest you, who keeps a little time
to be human and tells me, female, his ridiculous
private thoughts. Who sits up in his moderate bed
and says Was that good like a menu
who hangs onto you sloppy and thick as a carpet
I’d shoot the man last night who said Smile honey
don’t look so glum with money swearing from his jacket
and a 3-course meal he prods lazily
who tells me his problems: his girlfriend, his mother,
his wife, his daughter, his sister, his lover
because women will listen to that sort of rubbish

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Women are full of compassion and have soft soggy hearts
you can throw up in and no-one’ll notice
and they won’t complain. I’d shoot the man
who thinks he can look like an excavation-site
but you can’t, who thinks what you look like’s for him
to appraise, to sit back, to talk his intelligent way.
I’ve got eyes in my fucking head, who thinks if he’s smart
he’ll get it in. I’d shoot the man who said
Andrew’s dedicated and works hard, Julia’s ruthlessly ambitious
who says I’ll introduce you to the ones who know
with their inert alcoholic eyes
that’ll get by, sad, savage, and civilised
who say you can like there’s a law against it
I’d shoot the man who goes stupid
in his puny abstract how-could-I-refuse-she-needed-me
taking her tatty head in his neutral arms like a pope
I’d shoot the man who pulled up at the lights
who rolled his face articulate as an asylum
and revved the engine, who says you’re paranoid
with his educated born-to-it calm
who’s standing there wasted as a rifle
and explains the world to me. I’d shoot the man who says
Relax honey come and kiss my valium-mouth blue.

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4

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    FIRST WIND

The black dog, the creeping newspaper, the trees
are following me. A cool change drags the sky back,
those geometric stars, the stuttering first wind.
There is no rescue-party, no victim,
all the black grass chopping at me here,
and the third stretchy eye dismantles itself
in a civilised pond, its water timed like a computer,
the idle readout and the unemployed.

Alcohol is tugging at the car,
a searchlight will leave you,
there on the mended wall, unscaleable, a dream.
The fancy singing murderers are rich and patriotic
and would rather be me or you. They start every sentence
with “I”, they’re all ears, they have plenty of time,
and can’t wait. The light’s sour stream is faulty, articulate.
The crazy newspaper and the falling bin
aren’t symptoms. Cars queue for a red house,
and a see-through heart you can hold,
television with one view only, the poor picture, the sorry rich.

Cry for the crooked egg, the crooked apology
stoking at its shell. These are the results,
and that skyscraper with its blocks of light
gives you the score: the matted flickering window,
the black strike, and the loveable failure
with no illusions. Our pink unthreatening lucky hands
have given up fiddling, are reckless in an introverted way
like bankcards. Into the windless house
and the airy brain seeps a wall:
a headline, a function, a grief of surrender.

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    AFTER HOURS

He coughs in the lounge-room, another night
thrown in a sober chair, his premature sadness
makes you ill at ease, evasive.
Another night at the Cross, but he can’t afford that
anymore. You with your oxygen mask and that lethal insect-spray,
anything simpler and you’d be looking at heaven,
instead it’s a meal at the August Moon,
reindeer embedded in the wall’s glass,
a man who doesn’t look at the menu.

Every night, late, he watches television, the rubbish,
and tries to sleep to it, a screen kiss
or some killer with 1940s layers of consciousness,
close puzzled shots. He’ll get involved somehow
and complain if you’re there, precise, mistaken, repetitive
as an alcoholic, trying to prove his innocence by quoting
the world situation, proving it.
He’s sprinkled like powder in the chair, his reasonable office-clothes,
his lapsed left wing.

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    WHEN I’VE RUN OUT

The slackness at your mouth’s side makes you fit
like soma, with no resources but each other.
This spectator-life, wistful as a ferry.
He wants someone to play with.
That essential, but messy, loneliness: we can put if off.
We can kiss the private mouth, too near the brain, the eyes,
the screw-on face. You’ll dive for him.
You won’t look.

Interchangeable, he must be, with blobs of pearly love
and a habit. / I told you.
Cry for your brothers, their wrecked and favourite hearts.
Slight pressure on his skull just makes it easy.
With a head full of holes, sad ash for you.
It was never really. Your voice scatters speed
like a thought. I think of you when I’ve run out
of things, the money, the sessions, the tugging water.

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    HIS LOOK

His shaded eyes bend black
down your face, the boy he is now, breaking,
and they, seeing madness (is it?), move
to restaurants and deals, the best yet.
The caption of his hand spells tomorrow
dabbing at your wet skull (some heartless main attraction).
Are you heated again, unworthy?

Not for the shelter, tell him,
but for the seasons mark you. Summer is drawn back
as a red dent, your local happening blood
is here, your membership declines. And what you guess
would be as good, the one-off thing, the unclean act.
His look is sturdy, irrational.

How your conscience kills.

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    IF YOU’RE GOOD

They have set up a kingdom of false families,
the boy cooking and his blue shining eyes,
the woman at the table, the lost pathetic carol.
We have nothing in common.
We believe in ourselves but not this.
The raking kitchen has piled you here,
its square light hitting darkness like a shot.
We have taken our mothers’ gifts, the money,
the religious card,
complacent, bored, forgetful as an international treaty.
The ceasefire-Christians bandaging the head,
the intellectual reformists full of sweet will.

The celebration’s crude vitality packs you,
the jeering woman laughs like a fence. If you’re good
you dream of waterfalls and keys.
This is the symbol. All the whistling men.
You can just sail through. Her blue competitive eyes
go soft for the man.
You draw 7 triangles, but it’s their catalogue,
and a cranked-up ocean. Dive.
The misanthropic house may be an ambition.
Your anger breaks like plaster.
They’re gentle. The world is good. Collect.

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    ONE QUICK GETAWAY

You die of a heart attack like a football-player,
but miss the front page, or a foundation
named after you. That impossible bet.
Your brain roars like a unanimous vote
to do these things, the cold shower, the alarm.

Being drunk and miserable’s not really exciting, but he’ll learn,
The lead twists in his face like a climate,
and in his room, the plan. His cold queen of faithful
carries an appropriate drug and lasts forever.
He uses the not NOW tense
three times in a row, and you’re dreamy.

You may as well be an index, listening to people talking
to their dogs. He goes Christian and means it,
as you mess up the pool table.

In the afternoon’s glad sun, you follow a thin track,
her voice splashing in your brain like a modern idea.
(We will graph the blob between your head and our old drugs)
Not even a kiss, you’re flying, his hot neck and her dense love
add up to tourism on a minor scale.
I could’ve loved you etc.

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    SOME WOMEN

I can’t get the women out of my head.
They want things. They look into your ‘soul’.
Together they have sewn one for me.
They have hung it on my window, their pink myths.

I can’t tell the women to go away.
I tell the women to go away.
They are at the door like children,
with terrible parents, nausea, and conventional eyes.

In the mirror of her breast: the gap,
the slot, the picture.

The women carry their mothers’ hearts.
They sit in a circle and talk.
She looks at the father of your face,
she looks for the join, the red fuse.

They are going out of my head.

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    THE ELECTION RUN

The band, loud as the coming war,
leaves you twitching, unable to keep still, deaf,
as she walks like a cold shower
and makes you listen, her voice raised like an idol.

The conscription leaflets are printed quietly, half women,
the government’s profound token. In the paper
we have kill pictures and the psychological benefits
of voluntary work.

You take on the bar, but it takes forever.
She’s impressively nervous. She leaps behind the windscreen,
her look kicks the engine, the bad road,
her startled passenger hands.

Our position is here. Behind the textile factory,
your luck reddens. In the paper,
right-wing satire is wearing thin. The serious country
takes two columns to get that way, and dark print.
Your vote is distributed like income.

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    AS THE NATIONAL TRUST DOOR CLOSES

In overcast summer, she has come back to die
with her poor hair, and the modern chapel.
Will drag you down from your fabulous harbour views,
her threads of voice you’re bound in,
and will sit with her, kneel, watching the voice trail and forget
and remember and die.

Close up the heart, continue. The swift Venetian glass behind her
and the precious door are taped across your eye,
will stand up in the selfless dark. Her voice in spokes,
the weak cheek crossed. Her brain is opening like a purge
in your dead hand. Go with her, stay, and the poor pew,
the mouth’s white mortal jet.

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    SUSPENDED ANIMATION

    1

He’s handsome enough sure, but that was the first thrill.
I put it down to speed. Anyway he’s got flaws,
and you don’t fit in to his fluffy little brother universe.
His sisters line up on the stairs with their exciting clothes,
their we-just-got-through accents. He checks the needle like a watch,

with more care. In a good drug, you think it’s heaven,
and he may as well be perfect.

There’s an exact line between him
and this clever one. Watch the line
dance and halve you. His arm disentangles in reels of air.

As you park on the wrong side, it’s convenient,
his plugged-in face gives you a medley of disco tunes,
boring, but you’ve got to dance.
The clever one goes on and off like a switch.

Will you take everything away then?

    *

Waiting for the ruffled crowd,
they want to please everyone. Lie down in the rich upholstery
of our chrome contract.
As a blonde, I’m more faithful she says,
asking for half-lies. How do you do it?

She arranges her gown. No-one would know
the wedding broke like a plate. She arranges
her heavenly child and presses a glass cone
over his head.

Dulled with conversation the men saw listlessly at the table.
Your wooden head floats. I’ve never met
an interesting person.

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Her yellow tongue can’t wait, her arms burn
like an expressway.

    2

You’d murder and feel bad, remorse like a hangover,
but do it on some jerky modern principle,
shaking your actions free from the why-not pillow-case,
monogrammed, imported, and cheap.
We all carry guns and are likely to be murdered
after the party. The hostess is subdued like true religion
and keeps the walls dark for atmosphere and the food quiet.

He strokes your back,
his blue ambulance hand tells you what to remove, guessing at sin
in this shakey metropolis.

for you, the weepy alcoholic,
or you, the troublesome light
glows. Cut out and forget
its strong sheet and the evil dream seem bland,
waiting for a vacancy, trying to learn the dead-step
till your veins run.

    *

It doesn’t matter, an inventive life or an amnesiac, she’s
plus five and half a star with
details that stick. Her popped and sliding eyes
could have you spellbound, the gentle knee, the infant prince
will offer you pure white

in the country’s smack capital. I was good at school,
oh precious child, reach for the volume button, evaporate
and watch. He leaves the car doubting for the mind’s lame hum.

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    3

The cult following disperses, angry, dissatisfied,
tired of themselves, wanting god, wanting a refund
on all those reflex desires. Your hot breath
floats in the stifling air. It’s nothing.
It’s all first-names. The idiot admirers remove
the mirror of your face. Show me. Show me well.
You go beserk on the phone, the imagined loving ear
admits no contradiction.
the listening-thud you go round like an oval.

Here, the exaggerated crowd
are wiped out, almost. They’re stirring
all their thimble ways. Preserve my hands,
my relay-heart.
She twirls her chips of hair, and keeps time.
This boppy anguish you could dance to.

Do you know a year called 1968? I used to live in it
he says, but we’re impatient, the anti-car tears
into Sunday, the backward party, promiscuous and dead.

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    ZERO MASS

    1

The whistling unbelievers have passed this way.
They work for the most private industry,
are recognized by few. Their cause: to mark
like television does, its lurid heroes
turn to each other in their seats,
respond like a poor script.
They will drop by
with acres of advice and good things
and a frail questionnaire with multiple-choice answers.
They’re thoughtful.

    2

In love with his former self, the clone is dramatic,
popular, his sandy tears have moved a whole row
to sway like a phalanx. He’ll help you out, modestly,
his face pinned like a badge on the future.
His head’s ointment belongs to everybody like free speech.
It helps if you lie.

    3

The man’s slick temporary lying truce
stands outside. You’re glassed-in like a phone,
your paranoia standing behind you and pointing
its kind obliteration like a drug. When you come down,
you can’t breathe, force-fed by a younger sister.
Here, the martian life swells in our ration of air
like zeroes.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Gig Ryan was born in 1956, and lived in Melbourne until
she moved to Sydney in 1978. She received a Young Writers
Grant from the Literature Board of the Australia Council in
1979. As well as writing poetry, she also writes prose, re-
views and songs, and plays acoustic and electric guitar.

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