I bought a new dog two days ago
The journey there was long
It took us through rock-strewn hillsides
Farming valleys
Through cancer
Villages with meat pies
Through loss and sorrow
Past memories of eleven years of adventures
And a stage on a village green where a musician was playing
To the courage to find someone new
To a road on top of a bsrren hill with nothing but two houses separated by sunburnt paddocks
And an Indian showed me a dog
A shaggy hazlenut dog
With big amber eyes
And a bigger heart
On the way home those eyes let me in
Two days later and he’s park of our pack
He’s already got my…

I met her this morning
I didn’t think she was real
The woman in the box
The voice of eternal morning happiness
The insanely happy voice
That grates your insides
The Craigieburn train…

I worked for an advertising agency
They hired a poet to create an installation
of poetry on a wall
They loved his work
But asked could he make it more
upbeat
more positive
then…

Twice a year
He gets out his knife
And climbs on my roof
And begins to cut down six months of growth
And I ask him to get down
And he tells me it's fine so I ask him again
I ask him if he'd like to buy my house
But he just stares at me like a cane toad chewing a wasp
But he gets down
Eventually
Because he has to wrestle the bamboo
Kill the new growth
Cut it down
Separate it from the rest
Then mulch it
He's been there for twenty fucking years
Doing the same thing
Wrestling bamboo
And I watch
Because he doesn't know that the bamboo is…