Š David Graham 2015
FALLING FROM THE HIGHTOWER
a poetic journey into the mind of David Graham performed at the Art Bender 9th May 2015 at The Lock Up
Contents Part 1 – From the Window of the Garret (gloaming) Orkney One Penny Black York He wanders listless Going Home
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Part 2 – The Blurred Lines as I Plummet The Head of Dionysus The Dreaded Mistrel An Apocalyptic Pitch streaming on the firmament aurora corporealis miniatures Sonnet 1 – Brain Damage Sonnet 2 – Sebastian Goes Shopping Sonnet 3 – You Are Cawk
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Part 3 – Notes from the Undergroud A piece will be written and performed on the 9th of May at the Art Bender exhibition at the Lock Up, 2015
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Part 1 – From the Window of the Garret (gloaming) my life is like an endless gloaming half-light weird times a clipping kaleidoscope of shifts and geometric patterns and i swagger the streets lit by lamps fighting dusk above and happy boots scuffing comments and eyes on tree canopies church spires and graffiti these are the slow times of careless streets and evening swarms of birds the cold comes on slow and the eyes make bulbous shapes; intense thick and always at the edges
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Orkney At the end of our great Northward dash they come quietly out of the deep low and humble and open with a silence that screams from the past before the clouds sparked and rang with the cries of metal where stove-song sang to the space between stars and the cold gale whispered for quiet where the people lived mystery and stood vigil over a tiny world set on a disc of water a sea that was like a blanket for those sleeping islands that stand there still – ancient sentinels clad in the greatness of stone – time clinging to them like moss before dripping away in the rain in an endless cycle of green and cold and lonely for they have all together lost the gods that made them they long now for their first summer when all the world was new when their fresh hewn bodies sparkled in the endless evening sun when they were the gentle rulers of the land where we all must come
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One Penny Black keeping it all together in the colours of a puddle red leaves, wet, grow darker memories of dyed hair and singlet bras as mournful cars sweep across the paved road coffee quickly lukes the crema moment passes today their jowls are longer dragged down by raincoats as if the damp is catching & the mud stains black but sleet only makes the palette richer & as I write the picture, glass falls like rain
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York there are bricks and then there’s ivy, but that says nothing about feeling them both with you at a place where a drunk eye can be happy with a blue streak sky with riling clouds as we drive, the trees perform a merry-go-round of chance encounters curtained by boroughs we have drunk of the river Ouse and fed on the miller’s leaves washing our tongues with stones it is an old way to be related to the growing of mushrooms
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He wanders listless He wanders listless. Away from the town-home of his bygone path. Now on a beach, whose shore has long since left the sea, he is unable to read the shifting sways of sand shrinking into mirages. He wants for the long margin that skirts and divides the endless land. He waits for the pen-hammer to smelt the lines into knowing. The smell of flux: liquid ink-metal flowing. But in the endless day, there is no rhythm to guide his footsteps, only the ceaseless flat line of static ear-ringing. Bereft of sensation, footsteps meet footsteps - the endless cycle, formless, a nowhere exhausted in sameness.
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Going Home Home is not a mansion, but an entire landscape. A realm of dreams and made-up memories, half-seen visions at the edges of a third eye. A home alien familiar: forgotten senses from childhood, fog and dew like ancient stone made new. Spider webs mis-en-abyme in attics on top of rustic portraits of a dead poet playing lute-hypodermic. But the window is open, he’s looking outside. It is time to leave the fresh earth-burrow and return to the waving sea of hills. A land of seasons dry and lush where the stars will sing throughout the day. At night the sun burns, but only as a flat disc of light surrounded by darkness. Here the West wall crumbles and mirrors shine down allies brittle with agelessness. Ancestors stare with frog-like eyes from shady alcoves and the needless hearth suffocates boiled airs. Behind the town: graves teeth the hills, old thoughts left to rot. At the foot is a forest and a creek that backs onto rust faded fences. A lovely park for picnics and fucking on the grassy rocks in dreams that become untrue. Nearby: the hut of the river hermit shakes from passing traffic.
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He shivers in the Autumn frosts and bakes in summer’s haze. His beard is gnarled and propped with sticks. Deep-set eyes know how to escape. Salmon in the river are feeding on primordial insects and gazing at the hermit on the shore. In his fire voices message from the misty Otherworld. It comes out his mouth in mumbles and spittle soaked in fish-oil and sour beer. Hard wisdom from the old country, cut with antipodean dryness all upsidedown and doesn’t make sense. School children throw pebbles at his swearing bramble crowned head. In the uncleared scrub, see creatures mythic and untold. A great hawk or eagle walks brushing its talons on dead bark and twigs. Its wings are folding, legs are lengthening then disappears past a tree. Further in, the bush is almost impenetrable. Cold, violent eyes stare from a hairy face. Its carnivorous teeth drip saliva. A huge body, covered in hair, full of power, loathing in the darkness, waiting. Yet, in open meadows dance emerald clothed women with sunshine hair, whose beauty inspires lust and love. A kind of Elvish grace, their eyes like fresh spring water singing spells of beckoning and warning. As they move they change, hair goes red and 7
dark like sunset, flesh turns brown and then lips broaden into a beguiling knowing. Laughter is everywhere. Untouchable. They return to the betrayed earth sleeping. On the highest hill silently standing: a great domed cathedral. Shadows cast upon its sides carve languid long triangles that flick when lightning storms wash the surrounding peaks. Ghouls and skeletons dance on parapets. In the clouds a skulking demon plays them like chalk drawn puppets, growling thunder laughing. As the tempest abides the red bricks dry slowly draining into the moistened ground. The holy temple of dreams and influence. Inside it is a mason’s sanctum, but with Viking runes and weird Australian icons. A Lindsayian folly with nymphs lusting among the wattle, cherubs and dryads naked in the jacarandas. A white budda on the alter smiles with a pot-leaf on his forehead, his thumb and little finger grasp a tiny wine glass. Dionysus instructs Orpheus to break hearts in a Byzantine mosaic. Yet the marble floors are bare. There are no pews. In the wings: stained-glass portrait saints. They rein with serene benevolence: Virgil and Dante in the darkwood, bearded Milton, sad eyed Shakespeare, Goethe morose and then the 8
Romantics‌ messiahs and martyrs all. Lastly, arrayed in a farcical supper, the Beats line up in a West Coast landscape. In the copse lay statues of the local deities. The Keatsian Dransfield and Yeatsian Robertson, cracked and dusty. On the roof and dome: spectral colours in astral patterns dance, reflecting light like jewels. They change shape as they dazzle and then explode, coursing across boundaries, splitting open the fabric, escaping into the void where in empty soundlessness they fade, returning to the fresh earth-burrow. Here the waves make hills that roll and thunder and the land gives way without mirth and wonder while lion, leopard and she-wolf wander.
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Part 2 – The Blurred Lines as I Plummet The Head of Dionysus
from the realm of reaching minds to the world of grabbing hands; by the way a twig grows static between the fingers of passing traffic: there is the rise of an ancient face fresh as polystyrene – a spinning statue’s head on the dining room table – blank eyes spring a stream of husky liquid a Hellenistic drainpipe, fluid running through its curdled locks and trickling into cups the break comes only as the thread of eternal treason runs away to leave red rings, swallowed by the swirling flow the hollow vastness at the edge of a pillow
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The Dreaded Minstrel Cut me like a dollard a prince of aftertaste i take each draft like it’s not my last and dregs do not suffice. Here is the dreaded minstrel turgid at his worst riding clouds and folding like a paper bag ’round a corked bottle Did you say wine? i’m never lost for company with a red and a pen and a paper. Constant friend, you’ll only change when i tell you to. i talk to you and beat you; put you through a grinder and it only makes you sexier total indulgence with no hope of outcome
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An Apocalyptic Pitch railing, always railing against a rhythm in binary for reality reaching an apocalyptic pitch in bush or beachhead in bars and empty boardrooms an imagined chant shakes doorknobs cacophonous in the flailing wind, nascent and raspy in rheumy evening but with the air of barbaric sophistication it is heard in the lilting sway of the tree on the hill the weight of the lonely one-eyed man bending branches in a tarot card tautology singing truths trailed in the sun – a sum total of symbology – and in that dawning of pencil lines an instant is nothing but a scribble or a tipple in a pane of glass quickly lost down the beer drain it releases a whale at the Apocalyptic Pitch
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it is the thought-sound that rings in testicles and breaks the best of science’s test tubes while the born-again bassoons are baking in the backroom or when the eyes and mouth kiss the tongue licks the eyeball and two lives freefall into a spin cycle brawling and crawling fawning for a desperate grasp that intimate forever that comes too quick two heart drums quailing at the Apocalyptic Pitch railing, always railing against a rhythm in binary for reality reaching an apocalyptic pitch
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streaming on the firmament the blood aquarium erupted a very long lime flavoured drink ago now short sleeves & shorts irresponsibly trap the last vestige of flesh monuments to bone gazing & the spirit of eden spot the cityscape while gnarled grandpas quote yesterday long & loud enough to let the love lower to a limbering lamp of wet dead leaves still the sum of a soul can go streaming on the firmament coaxed out from the crisp clean creases of cyber leases & greased with the grey green groove of garden gates relax your retinas and go gliding at the edges of drain drops & shoe prints with the wild ebb of sensation blasting peripheral visions there is grinning, then there’s brimming emotions like curdled milk sucking on flowers like ice swimming past footpaths this style is the shoe clipping of fools leaving the life of lasers & living in the mind as wildfire the body pulses lightning and sparks electric across the 14
technicoloured sky and skims over the shadows of the star studded statues of the sun-baked bodies and silicon follies it’s not too late to go streaming on the firmament
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aurora corporealis clipping across the northern sky an aurora corporealis called Carlin hellspont of inspiration & candid utterance between café coffee & hard liquor this rainbow Bukowski spews haiku while scheming collage conumdrums & midnight ’zines / i have a memory from the meadow of the sleeping tram where the mosquitos suck on poetry all night while the summer hours cling like dew on the roof dripping and draining up to the cricket-croak moon before slipping back to the rhythms of friendly speech with him smiling mildly through the steam of green tea infused with the afternoon’s jasmine / it is warm tonight too & the bats are crying in the trees for you they want to be in a Northern sky with lights & the spectre of Carlin
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miniatures i waifing in the static rigid hair of pretend labels, the reeking kiwis of plenitude disturbs my austere reveries ii they are alchemists mystics of haze & glooping eyebrows inventors of the swiss shower hose & the greek moustache iii my bending armchair cracked a three syllable word yesterday iv pubic icicles choke the valves beneath by tongue i wish i could say never again but i can’t
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v tucked shirt tokyo queen takes a shower to get lean vi the worm is growling for a long & dandy frying pan vii windy wine song devolves to the hunting of a snark ballad breathing for cursive thoughts a contract against ill-will & philanthropy
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Sonnet 1 – Brain Damage O to take a sledge hammer to the fettered thoughts of glassing days. It would be a turning point of a pin tight revolution. I have more spouts than teacups. It’s a costume conundrum. Only blank sheets come to my party and they never change places Only sort of sway like curtains. I’ve heard them say “that’s not blood or sideburns, just red wine flowing out his ears.” Does blood have a meniscus? Does wine, for that matter? Try long enough at one and get the answer to both in the end, it’s just a headache.
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Sonnet 2 – Sebastian goes shopping Breaking the gap between aisles an entire ocean opens its manacles, folding the line between tiles that sit in rows like teeth in cubicles and in that endless waste you look ahead and watch the humans splash and pay. It’s engrained in them, the crust of bread, the way they wash themselves and pray. White lights gleam off bottles green but inside red seas mix the ocean’s hue. While religious images flash on screens. Easter fish eggs beg you to join the queue Across the waves the island rises to a point. A synthesis, a landing, a reefs joint.
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Sonnet 3 – You are: the bright of beach sand, the cool washing flavour of seas salt & sweat before a tequila shot the gentle burn of brittle sheets. Soldiers march the bridge between our mouths. Merchants mill at the temple mount. They throng in angst, against the wasted moments. The clouds arch and make blue cathedrals clasped hands that wrench divine fleas from cats resolving into liquid, a lozenge of contention a day in the city of catatonia.
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Cawk in the course of inventing catastrophe this doctor recommends a steady destabilisation of your sense of truth therefore stare into the warped eyes of your reflection in a metal kettle stare until you see as the pot sees watch as the skies sway from side-to-side and the stars and streetlights are indistinguishable the windowsill dips and lets the ground come in carpet and dirt make a dirty carpet as a doctor i must warn you - in this state when you go to spout beware aware that when your tongue gleefully flaps a seed will sprout underneath it, drawing-in saliva, growing limbs and leaves and hopefully a flower that will, in time, become a fruit and if you are prepared to share this fruit of your mouth be prepared for someone else to eat it but if you’ve spent your days staring at computer screens & newspapers or worse, newspapers on computer screens that fruit will come out like an unsavoury brown nut that not even birds will eat but maybe, just maybe the warped eyes of a kettle will produce something interesting a long red seeded chilli that will sear the tongues of those game enough to try it and cause hot gusts of air to exhaust from their nostrils, their eyes will glow with bloodshot and their intestines 22
will recoil & squirm a frontal attack on the bowels of reason your mind is a spoon that can & should be bent hang it up as an ornament and sell it at an art market it’s better off there than counting dividends or watching commercials (no matter how critically) if anything the more savage you lie the better it would be for everyone so spin great big green ones “if a man fucks a pig you will get pig-babies” “the cure for most problems is to masturbate more often” “the labour & liberal party are two different things” “the most nutritious way to eat mincemeat is raw after it’s been frozen” such quips are drips in the pond but large ones fill bathtubs it’s like sitting up in the middle of the night & releasing a thunderous “cawk” with only the dull thrum of the refrigerator to answer and as you stare into the darkness of your room you start to hear its words: “itsagoodtoeatthesootthatcomesafootyouunderstoodthat whenyoushookandhadalookan-cut” neither of you make any sense, no matter that fridge – is a carbon criminal – and if you follow my prescriptions you will be a cawker,
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stand above the rooftops and cawk freak flag flying, angel haired hipsters dying, make friends with mosquitos, talk to parking metres draw a perfect circle, never jump the hurdles wondering where the days went? thinking ‘bout the environment? holy, holy, holy smokes that rots your brains out holy, holy, holy idols that knock ya teeths out holy carlin, holy susannah, holy gormley holy, pete, gina, saidition, cluff daddy holy bethany reeves holy elise jarvis holy mark whitiker they’ve chalked cawks braver than the toothpick sugar natzis and the glamour rung bourgeois hicks hiding behind razorblade glasses and the sit-com phonies hosting panels on the benefits of dry humping classes they’ve chalked cawks when the heat haze glooped the sun on the sea and when the jasmine shot its pollen in the eyes of magpies and bees and when the salad tongs played a saxophone tune on top the analogue tv they’ve been cawking even though they’ve never heard the word, sometimes not even cawking with words, but cawking
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absurd little posies through prescription milk that comes from giant birds cawking in the moonlight of streetlamps, cawking up the hunter river in a rune trance cawking in their mother’s silks, cawking cawk cawking cawking for a hot piece of leg on a warm summer’s day cawking the vicissitudes of victimhood cawking for when everything feels really real for what’s in a cawk? any other noise will sound as deep so cawk you will & cawk you must and in the end in cawk we trust in the course of inventing catastrophe this doctor recommends a steady destabilisation of your sense of truth but i’m not a doctor
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Part 3 – Notes from the Underground How to get Bent at the Lock Up – composed at The Art Bender 9th May, 2015 It starts in a state of cell rot of carted artworks and Australian forest smells. An acrid burning reaches me the burning of lamp light. The empty stage is set in want for an audience to climb the barricade and break this cell where I thought I was manacled. “Welcome,” I cry. “I welcome you all.” I scream to maintain your attention as environmentalists roar like so much static. And then the hordes come and we banter and play grooving to each other’s rhythms as the night takes hold. Art Bender. What the hell are you? Some kind of devilish pelican soaring across the Novacastrian sky, disgorging paintings, fillums and multi-media installations from its bilious beak. I have recently fallen from a hightower, relatively unscathed and found myself in a sea of art dwellers.
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Pig’s breath on my shoulder and Candice smells of a myriad scents - mostly good. & the blue wren appears & whispers sweet nothing a floor filler to be sure. But where’s the substance? emotions are more complicated than economics but with a pinch of salt can be deliciously morbid something to remind you to be kind to your mother unless she was one of those sea faring women immune to land-lubber methodologies. it’s getting serious now people are here and they’re all so lovely if only the toilet in my room had plumbing. potato cunt, what’s wrong with you you are a drunky. we love your mind and body. … suffocating and disturbing
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foggy wisps that pass through lowering the tempo but creating a groove
two words that are actually seven along a wire sparkling amber & resulting in
that is the anomie ^ growing disorder no more shall the people cherish the purple their minds reeling from that padded cell into a free form revolution a Marxist devaluation ultimately boarding the ship of absurdity this broken town where we get our coffees in, where we spend hours so reknowned in memories some times forgetting that we often make something new 28
& when we do, we realise that along the line it’s pretty fucking good.
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Contact: David Graham at david.graham88@hotmail.com