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