this is a test

In the beginning
Men carved the stone out of quarries they named Purgatory and Hell
And shadows of the towers they built
Fell across their faces
Their eyes lit up like candles glimpsed through the doors of the giant bluestone cathedral

And now
people look up
cross roads, brief cases held up, hunched back, heads turning left right like nervous birds
fleeing down down down…
down cold concrete steps
down tiled subway stairs
past cracked glass tobacco advert displays
where once the sound of strolling loafers, parkas, slacks…
where once the thriving, now forgotten, jeans shop, jazz joint, tarax bar



Ahh Soul of melbourne

Soul of melbourne
Dirty wet rag kicked from the Markilles to the Casino
Soul of melbourne
Sold as trash and treasure at Camberwell Market
Soul of melbourne
Buried in a sack at South Kensington Railway Station

Ahh
The ghost of Joffa Boy got tired of this City
His girlfriend the Neon Skipping Girl went sour on him
And jumped the running board of the last tram car
heading down a Flinders street drenched in alcohol and religion

WHAT I WANT TO SAY TO YOU RICHMOND IS THIS…

I’ve been a local
A stranger
A street person
A rush hour tram stop person
I was a clerical officer
In your banks
And real estate offices
I dressed from your Op Shops
Bought trousers
At Espana menswear
Socks at Dimmeys
Ate souvs
Got pissed in all your pubs
Worked in all your
Modern buildings
Coles Coles Coles
Was my wonderland

Your Churches
Greek restaurants
River
Post Office
Chicken bar
Smelly milk bar
All night servos
Dry cleaning
Fresh bread
And second hand fridges

A swimmer
A neighbour
Mumbling
Arguing
Invisible
Fighting for a place
In a Richmond ritual

Looking out onto
The traffic
5.35 pm
At dusk

Restless waves
Of an incoming dark blue tide
Me on a stony beach
Shadows of past shapes
Stretching out behind me
as nightfalls


Malcolm Hill 1994

SLEEP

Sleep
You bright eyed innocent,
Chasing down
thundering currents
of meteors and sparks,
across the meridian,

Child messenger,
Bunking down your tattooed flesh
tuck your toes
within the heat folds.
Arch your back over India,
Tides heave through your hair
bliss stamped on your fat chin.


Malcolm Hill 1996

Bag Lady plays Rachmaninoff

Bag Lady walks into a cosmetics store and begins playing the display piano
shop assistants, tourists and lunchtime officeworkers gather around her, tentatively
The tight mouth
The eyes focused
Look out! She’ll bite your head off!

a dark blue suit arrives says It’s good PR
cameramen appear
women reporters comb hair over the perfume counter

offered a theatre restaurant job she tells them to shove it
she learnt classical music eleven years ago in Perth
Before her marriage fell apart

A Human interest item at the end of the TV news

" Sometimes she plays for 5 minutes, sometimes for 5 hours…"
The fickle finger of fate hovers over the ‘vision selector’ button

Returning to music she could not forget,
like a wet and hungry
shaggy dog
With paws worn and ragged

They booted her out
Didn’t let her sleep in the store that night


Malcolm Hill 2004

WINTER

We did not realise the joke that Confucious had sent us
On that autumn day in Perpetuity

The circling globe had stopped
You were messing around
With sandwiches
I was scowling, screwing up my corduroy coat

The small tattoos on your hand,
The weak sun on your purply pink skin
Making preparations for the Nostalgia Machine
Where we will now live

We had a dot of nothing
And spun it out like kittens
Any piece of wool could be our starting point
I chose an empty city bar
And hours, years later
was still there

I love the early morning
A glow I know
I roam
Others call out
"these buildings will outlive us,
sly and stationary as they are
we need a manic man with a bowling ball to chase down immortality.
The rubble is where it’s at baby.
It’s where we sprung from and ...
where we're headed to..."

The draping curtain of melancholy
Kept me in the dark all winter
Until a bare branch,
A witches etching in the sky
Led me out to a garden
To find what my instincts already knew

A daffodil will tell you that and more
If you visit it every three days

Where are you this Winter?
Is it you behind the torch in this nature park?
There’s not much left you know
They said it was too cold for the lions
See the bark on the trees,
knotted like Celtic crosses


Malcolm Hill 1996

WORDS CHASING HIM DOWN SHOEBOX STREETS

He hears scraps of conversation
walking past the pub

Words chasing him down shoebox streets

bitumen peels back
revealing more words to step on

Words chasing him down shoebox streets

The tram drivers on this route are the meanest in the City
You have to step out in front of the tram to hail them down

In the Mall
gargoyles and stone lions stare him down

Words chasing him down shoebox streets

In Prahran
the washing machines make him woozy


the front door of the terrace,
The letter box is painted caramel
A woman nursing a child answers

Words chasing him down shoebox streets

Does X live here? No. Sorry.
We moved in about seven years ago
Right house
Wrong decade

Words chasing him down shoebox streets

Back in the Mall
The religious fanatics hound him
gargoyles and stone lions stare him down
He lays his face on the wooden bench
And pulls his overcoat over his head

Words chasing him down shoebox streets




Malcolm Hill 2003

WHEN LIFE WAS AN ANTONIONI MOVIE

Remember when life was an Antonioni movie
and we projected our souls onto empty warehouse streets,
Catpeople prowling the avenues at dusk,
Searching for missing bodies in public parks,
Finding a cast of characters instead.
The bewildered drunk living in a garage.
The walrus toothed cat in the wheelie contraption.
The yellow lady.

We walked through early constructions of post modernism,
practising ‘community arts’ every week,
learning music in an abandoned milkbar.
Went to a drama in a women’s prison
got locked out ,
climbed the roof
Saw the cops roaming the periphery,
moustachioed and brutal.
Looking behind, we had dragged
the whole inner city behind us on our coat tails
Lets eat dinner from the top of the tallest building !

We were all touched
Shotguns at parties,
tears dissolving into brickwalls at 4am,
mental illness lurking in gardens of group houses
next to back sheds
where unfinished canvasses by dead kids sagged
Will your stoned world intersect with my stoned world?
she sobbed in the front bedroom before leaving forever

The inner city became a fog
Sugar plum fairy came and hit the streets
Looking for soul food and a place to sleep
Went to the Apollo
Should have seen them go go go…

When it was over my nerves were shattered
I tumbled out backwards
Like a brawler ejected through the plate glass of a wild west saloon


Malcolm Hill 2004

Australian Lunch

After the nuclear shimmer
washed through
the first broadcast
from Woomera rocket range

we walked between the rocks
sifting sand thru our toes;
danced a naked lunch
with sandflies and mosquitoes
in the succulent oasis
of the Flinders Ranges

After,
We hung off clouds
laid our tongues
Across the Nullabor
Scraping the road for stray frogs
And other tasties

And divided Australia into four square sandwiches
Of ham
With Fanta
And chewed on Mates





Malcolm Hill 1996

CHANT

It’s five oclock
And raining
The newsagent closing
passengers dash across guttering

the final leg home
The milk and bread to get
The iron gate to close

Tell me once again
Are you hesitating to protect the legend ?
turn the family plot over once more
Tell me how she was born

The Chant flies out of the local’s mouths
high up into the mountains’ rare oxygen
there, laid out on the rocks
Surf splashing over her
Her Sealy skin
And Seaweed hair
her Nickname
generic to the area
a Chant
Passed between local’s
out the sides of their mouths
Chant
her name
Chant

Modern Love

Hey nerd!
Whats the
Word Package
You prefer
Look out your Window
Of flat electrodes
See the outer suburbs
You moved away from
In the Window
The reflection of your father’s features
Who pushed you through university

Hey nerd
Sit up in your
perfumed hi towers
All together like chinese junks
in Hong kong harbour
Junk bonds junk bands junk bonds!

Hey nerd
Corporate aspirant
Locked into a cop haircut
Testing firewalls
Over summer
While completing IT degree


Hey Nerd
left for the city everyday
tap dancing your way past primal nudie sculptures
in the foyer
every morning
Hey Nerd!
What’s the Word

PART 2
to brag to boast
it’s his new cotton blend coat
there’s a girl he grew, sort of, up with, down the road
Standing in her parents fly wire doorway
They cry, "the man with the golden arm has come to take our daughter away
And defer to the kitchen
Unravelling gippsland land packages

to melbourne to melbourne
she pleads she begs
sits in an icy station wagon
beneath cut and paste bricks
outside the computer college
They sink pots and jugs inside the pub
he whisks her off to the college lab
laying her on the large imaging screen
her gypsy hair trailing into the classroom next door
She shuts her eyes and opens her mouth
Her mind spinning like a jackpot machine,
his fingers fumbling at the controls
opening a gushing
into the path
of a blinking street sweeper
that could not stop
that Sunday morning
in that empty South Melbourne side street

he drove her home
a police car sat
its light twirling like a cocktail umbrella
her father chased him down the street with a meat cleaver
he retired to his bungalow
and pawed at her mobile number all winter

PART 3
three years later he found her
she was working behind a clapper board
a short movie with the graduates of the old photography school
she did not know him among her new friends
but he flashed his degree in computer technology
and she felt the glow of his second generation migrant dream
They agreed
their rushed and awkward beginnings
a recessive ritual
from the old country they’d never been to
sophistication was settling on their shoulders like dandruff
these cousins in clover

she made it clear the masters degree was essential
no baby til HECS was paid
for one day she would have choose between her digital editing skills
and visiting her mother’s mother in romania
she got temp work
they worked late in corporate towers
eating tea from oblong cardboard boxes with chopsticks
laying out future plans
an IT consultancy came his way
a tutoring position for her
in between – dates and movies but mostly nights in,
watching reality TV
in minimal décor

PART 4
the wedding;
aunts and uncles squeeze into photo frame
nephews in light blue suits
distant neighbours
now sworn comrades
arms embrace
uncles and aunts embarrased them
the grappa and vino flowing
setting up a backyard rhythm
spilling into the street
the satellite dish above
the wedding car
slapped across the nature strip
god bless this romeo and juliet in a new country

a house in the better part of an outer part of town
a long way from their parents
a gift of a trip overseas
a short stay
at camp USA
motoring in red MG and picnic hamper to Washington
sending cards to lists of friends
at farewell drinks her career
took a right turn
–offered graduate management position
on their return
she checked her artistic aspirations at the door
of the local council
Becoming known for her pale complexion
Skinny as a rake and teeth as sharp
Nervously she faced her committee
every month

Their house as plain as dry biscuits
Sundays spent gardening and moving heirlooms
Two cars and two phones
He restless for advancement
laid out the IT appointments every Saturday
She lucked out with a transfer
a major project to oversee
While he worked late most nights
driving home on the freeway alone

PART 5
So it was a shock one morning
stepping out of the bed
Discovered his body a lead weight
A nervous breakdown diagnosed
Tests revealing no other abnormalities
His mother cooked him a vintage stew
Quite common for migrant sons the visiting doctor remarked

His leave entitlements strung out , his position collapsed into another
until One morning,
Fumbling with his pajama drawstrings,
he signed for a package from the company

He got lost at the local Centrelink
Where he found the faces of his father and uncles waiting in the queue
No benefits
the house half renovated
Her project having flown,
all major indicators posted
Now settling into a management chair
A rising star
While he
watched birds in the garden

Never one for the group
like his father
Who was lowered into the heated ground later that summer
With his crimson cheeks, his bird like mouth silently screaming

Discussing a proposed project site she met Garry
Who told stories, Australian stories
Tell me more stories You do it so well, You make me laugh she said
They checked out the proposed site of the new development
from the front seat of the council car,
under a gum tree, by a playground
her hair swinging across her face for the first time in years
He unbuttoned her suit buttons one by one
As she leant down and clenched the zip of his trousers with her teeth
tightly

PART 6
continuing to diminish
napping each Afternoon
His weight blew out
But in the end it was his sister
Who got him a part time post
teaching at The community school
Computer technology
On Tuesdays and Thursdays
To juvenile misfits
The school seemed a jungle at first
But the kids loved to hear the tech words
in his soft hungarian accent

The suburban house is doom and gloom now
Its That morning
That waits for him
Having called him at the school
She can wait no more
She explains they have run their course
The issues are complex but they unravel easily that late morning in the pastel loungeroom
He shrugs his shoulders and slumps into a silent lump on the couch

PART 7
Christmas –
relatives
she’s tossing her hair
now straightened
back,
the windy backyard
How will she manage they cry
You’re so skinny
She leaves pleading stomach pains

Far away
he is driving on a freeway
listening to a tape
self improvement
The cars weave figure eights around his
Its late Xmas afternoon

His car
one of so many cars
Their house
one of so many houses
Buried in this Eldarado

But now
a beam of light catches the corner of a city tower
splats across his windscreen
splintering into fragments
While she sits alone with her personal organiser
– smoking - her new habit
in her new, anaesthetised, apartment

RICHMOND time COLLAGE

School uniform up against white weatherboard fence
A brown car parked on white concrete by brown brick flats
Berry Street still as it originally was – a slum

Four sunken houses in black and white
A vietnamese newspaper folded out
Hairdressing salon – black and white linoleum squares
Richmond rockers stand outside with skulls on their belt buckles
pushing a panel van into a pink mulberry bush
An old greek warrior lies wounded in a goal square
painted on the road
A slum mum’s rusty tap still vibrating

Down by the river at the butchers picnic
A Chinese family sit down to dinner
a Timorese troupe sings a welcome
Offering melons at $2.99 each
And glowing jesus’ for sale


2 slum kids push their jumpers over their hands
And roll marbles down to the Town Hall
Where our forefathers
Stand in togas and munch cigars
The Great Hunt had begun
The first wagon train set off from under Dimmey’s canvas awnings
slashing its way across the woodchip landscape
Past some dirty rotten brickwork
To where an armoured car awaited it’s fate in the long grass
The stains on the walls here are prodigious
Like a school of whales had once lain there
But they didn’t leave the graffiti ‘Keon Traitor!’ in 1956

The landscape was in decay
The landscape was being developed
The CUB factory emptied its swill out into Victoria Street every morning
Where a band of Phillipino dancers twirled umbrellas
and bags of rice lined the footpath
The fire brigade and their tiger
Rushed to the building
But it was old and crumbling

The Hitman lined up his violin case
to take a shot at the precious tiger cub
as goths and imps with bat wings
crouched in the shadows of terrace building tops




Malcolm Hill 2001

HISTORY HORRIFIES

HISTORY HORRIFIES
There he sits,
unslept,
like a rag doll,
in his grandfather’s tattered armchair
he recalls
the long haired ones,
flying across the sinful dust every night,
hyenas in their sex wagons,
performing the cruelest tricks,
putting those desires into him,
leaving him naked on the moonlit railway tracks at 5am
who became illiterate millionaire rock stars
in their mansions.
Hiring their fathers as butlers.
Whipping them
when they spilt the drinks tray;
keeping their mothers in the scullery
There he lives forever,
in that deserted railway station,
where the screeching never stops
and the carriages never leave
And now,
considering the lateness of the hour,
he thinks of his family,
rising from their beds at dawn,
and voraciously grinds his teeth to dust





Malcolm Hill 2003

mens fashion

MEN’S FASHION
I aspire to be a man in a suit
With a plastic bag
By the roadside at dusk

This is how a man should be
This winter
Traffic flying past
On its way home
to the family evening meal

Like my grandfather
A resemblance to Henry Lawson
Down by Circular Quay
A man in a suit on a roadside at dusk


Cranky
Determined
impulsive
Mad
Talks to himself.

He says,
Leave me out in the paddock and let me go off m’ head
But they forced him into a car going to Melbourne
He was clamped in and electrically shocked

He stepped out of the moving car
And took off
Wandering the streets
A man in a suit with a plastic bag
By the roadside at dusk


Malcolm Hill 1996

weekend love

WEEKEND LOVE
We had a weekend of it,
walking, talking,
kicking the stone
around the beach.

Our jeans wet,
Knees grazed
large bare feet
tangled
With long hair and large breasts.
Later, miserably soaked,
gleeful like teenagers

A pause
An adjustment to the spectacles
A kiss that missed
Hmmm,
Let’s let this weekend
Wash through us

At the end of the pier,
We scrape our breath bags,
Howl out a tune
To a freighter
That honks back
Small boats,
canvasses pegged down,
shift themselves
according to the brooding clouds

Tugging at your windcheater,
I throw out a line
What do we want?
Companionship?
Attachment?
Wet windy weekend love?
But the wind jerks the words
From my mouth
and dumps them in the bay
At least we could say
the sea and rocks
were lusciously black and gray
that day




Malcolm Hill 2002

The Columbian

can you believe it said the greasy haired café owner who was drying a plate and looking at his order book on the bench no I cannot said the new zealander waiter who was trying to reheat a cappucino and was on his third so he was tight lipped and skating around his head was Last Night .What did you do Last Night Oh we tied one on It got quite out of hand and Derek oh fuck you should have seen Derek Later

it was Late when we left said the new zealander images of his girlfriend bridget flashing and himself coming out of the movie what movie did you see asked the ownwer and he said it was The columbian oh I haven’t seen that how was it it was very columbian yeah right but good yes I heard that we wanted to go and see it but we ended up staying home well it was good up until the end when it got silly well its meant to

be silly isn’t it yes that’s what I heard he’s very good in it even tho he’s sleep walking who’s that sean connery is he in it oh well he’s only got a small part but it’s the best who’s that other guy which one you know the guy who played.. in that movie where they’re going to chinatown or something .. oh yeah an he’s in this room and this other guy comes in and he blows his head off or is that the one where they have to get the painting back by midnight or else their dead and it just goes off

LIKE A ROSE

Your love

is a car wreck
in a suburban paddock

I am a knight
Riding down truck routes
And country byways

My horse is a rat
Gnawing at the
infesting weeds

While I,
an auto repairman,
lift,
from that burnt out shell,
your heart,

which I carry,
across a black sea
in a yacht,
with a mast,

a crucifix

To the City of Silver Light

Where,

locked in a prism of glass,
beside the City mineral vein,
your heart is
Restored

My parents
Begin to feel
the cold shadow
of a woman
crawling the city streets
at dusk

But they,

like City statues,
keep their mouths shut,
For it was they,
Who sent their child out
to bring home
The Woman of Their Dreams

And each night,
In our royal tent,
We devour each other;
like cats,
in the hot desert air,
on my bed,
which is strong,
like oak