Laurie Duggan

Blue Hills 68

          bamboo
circa 1980
          ‘would
explode, if a match
were lit’

          so things began
a memory of air
igniting
          as sugar

eucalyptus, that blue haze

heat
          reflected
from a wall

Blue Hills 70

acting as myself in a washed out landscape
a mask, half New Guinea
half outer space, on the front lawn
dodging the sprinkler

the trajectory of my uncle’s car,
fast frame, Melbourne to Eildon: the reservoir
chill, unplumbed,

ghost trees at the edges

Blue Hills 72

Uphill from the rainforest
craft turns in on itself:

no local manufacture
of things-in-currency, rather

the mass-production
of quaintness,

rag dolls, soap and straw,
old suitcases, poker-work boxes.

Buildings at this altitude
allude to cuckoo-clocks.

Blue Hills 75

Precession
             the light
at 5 am, moving
into the room
             to shift
a hemisphere, awake a different hour
the broken trail on my palm
might signify
                reflections
from the opposite bank
to take on trust

the nathan papers: 2

cnr Kent & Liverpool Sts, breakfast
Chinese English, its charm
‘Mellow Real Estate’
‘Eating World’

I thought ‘maybe this is too long’, but then I thought ‘it’s too late to stop now’

children going mad in the camps

dogshit bag

a woman with very long legs, as though on stilts, her trousers too short.

smoke hovering behind those on their way to work

is the ‘city’ of ‘poetry’ a ‘city of poetry’?

Wynyard bus station, 5.15pm. alcohol made waiting so much easier. ‘something to do with your hands’ (but so is this writing, if perhaps less discreet). opposite the Occidental, the limited stop buses to Avalon and points north. York St, 63-43, the AWA building, deco and 60s facades

lost places:

the Green Iguana (Newtown)
the Prince Edward Hotel (Darlington)
Nicholas Pounder Bookseller (Double Bay)
but not Nicholas Pounder

the moon through haze, 6am

‘where armed men
can behave abominably
without fear of punishment’ (Amnesty report)

sunlight (the park) at the end of the street

MARTIN LUTHER KIRCHE AD 1881

a doughnut at an angle looks like a black pudding

the pop movie/video trope of the group running into shot

the contrast between how bands appear adult in the video and young in the interview. is this the difference between self-image and outsider perception?

Coltrane’s great 1950s title: ‘midriff’

at the MoS café. winter air and daylight through the columns. the harbour evidenced by visible sky between buildings

rush hour (Grace Cossington Smith)

‘real’ coffee

even in this city a distant train siren

superscript

no radio

upstairs from Charlie Chan’s Pool Hall (currently under renovation), an arcade that funnels and veers left, of clothes, dry cleaners, Chinese snack food

the bare grey of these streets, 8.15 Saturday morning
the part-stumble, part walk of small children and robots