S u s c e p t i b i l i t y s o n g
past one a.m.
you will have gone to bed
*
the night like a night
some moonlight
some indigo to black
sporadic traffic swoosh
no slower than the day
television streaming
comfortably
an average drama
sound down low
subtitles on
not watching
reading bits of a book
& making notes
*
the blurb –
‘the discarded ideograms of history’
what kind of ideograms
it’s poetry
it’ll be symbols
one stanza explains
‘In a movie
rain on a
window means grief’
so,
explanatory
not actually ideogrammatic
(ezra’s dictum)
in a short poem
‘riding an escalator’
symbolises the unintended
yes ok
‘discarded’ is good too
*
discarding the discarded
tired of the past
finished with recounting
*
finally
though utterly bored
with the ‘present’,
I can erase
remembered moments
or
also
which is kind of ‘as well as’
erase
remembered moments
like
setting fire to a bale
under the holiday-let cabin
forget it
never retrace steps
cancel the lot
forget
buying drugs
outside some smelly pub
crammed with bleating students
forget
fending off creeps
like
bit-part Bruce from ‘Bellbird’
(old aussie tv show)
I think his name
was ‘Bruce’ –
he liked
to pick on women
who, he said,
‘just needed a good fuck’
he was only ever
in one episode
*
the past
is stifling
I was susceptible
to it
until now
*
out early
saturday morning
an atomic tangerine
(could be ‘fiery rose’)
tetra pak u-shaped
a k a ‘bendy’
plus a few
straight neon green
straws
in
‘time-honoured’
polypropylene
orange & black
card & plastic
batteries package
old splat bit blue balloon
old splat bit pink balloon
old splat bit pearly white
balloon
several
silver wire coathangers
in the lane
everyday
casual anthropocenism
should scare quote that
& then declare
resistance
to the term
(donna haraway’s trouble)
*
how did that pop up?
add some rum
what
is
‘my memory’?
yes thanks
& ice
*
two things people say –
‘vague memory’
&
‘it was just a dream’
*
memory’s so strange
it’s mostly useless
‘driven to abstraction’
(rosemary waldrop
says)
*
‘after after finitude’
(justin clemens says)
*
your dog can remember more than you think
*
healthy
to forget?
it was what it was
*
‘interstitial thinking’
morphs to ‘hyperstitial’
in a manifesto
by ANON
why even consider
keeping up?
*
‘I know more
than I can fit into thought’
(ellen van neerven)
*
a film critic
remembers a dream –
‘a piece of furniture in a furniture movie’
an urge
to impart
that great line,
I want to have dreamed it myself
*
did she say
‘shame is my sticky thug’
was it another dream
*
by the back window
a corner spider
coats an insect in spittle
to dissolve it for digestion
on the couch again
a bit later
switch to iView
local politics
catch up on question time
partyroom
aussie noun
ambivalent about it
the house
is now
in session
parliament
not our house
*
the dream diarist film critic
is a Godard fan
*
in my dream
Andy says
‘Fonzy
he’s the guy we give our terrorist love to’
yep
that sounds
like Andy
experimental political pop
*
Fonzy –
the Fonze on tv
what decade?
& Fonzy’s
a games arcade in darlinghurst
run by local crims
*
‘you can always order
biopsy breakfast’
says the joker behind the counter
(in the dream)
*
dream movie maker
surrealist
‘age is something that doesn’t matter,
unless you are a cheese’
(luis buñuel)
that’s
actually
cheesy
but you have to chuckle
*
every film
is a foreign film
*
new cloud types
dramatic photos –
‘undulatus asperatus’
looks dangerous
&
by the way
making apps
isn’t science
just an info phase
we’re going through
*
adding Susan’s reading
to my ipod
its inbuilt
obsolescence
is imminent
ahh the precarity!
will it fail
before i hear Susan?
*
taking down the guitar
to wang wang wang
into a neuro diversity
meditation session
*
the sun has shone
for the first time
in a month
*
‘thanks very mush’
begins my email
to the proofs editor
*
the road transit authority
has covered the signs
with grey burlap
in maddox street
which way to turn
to get to
the outer suburbs?
*
in your spam –
alert: someone has just run
a full background check
on you
we witnessed
the loss of your hopes
just then
*
can’t go there anymore
to ‘memory’ (as topic)
*
film, a refuge
the cinema
is always as perfect
as it can be
even
in banality
*
turning up
the next program
on climate change & conflict
devastation
my gestures
seem insignificant
&
all I can do
*
a shimmering mirage of flame
a thick brume of sandy dust
a fresh water lake
almost totally dry
sticks
not leafy trees
*
old growth remnants
sassafras shelf
blackwood resin
timber soup ladle
dreamed up
in the souvenir shop
is that Benjaminian?
already ingrained
(off joke)
*
the message
from the plastisphere
might as well
eat our own bags straight up
we’ll be eating them eventually
anyway
*
lost interest now
perfectly banal
yet
contemporary enough
it is what it is
that’s
being beside yourself
Pam Brown‘s most recent publications are Missing up (Vagabond Press 2015), & a folio of collage & other graphics, Westernity (Stale Objects dePress, 2016). She lives in Alexandria, Sydney.
