Two Poems
Philip Hammial
Ballet Mécanique
As subcutaneous as picket-line plumage, ring-barked
spruikers spew peacock sludge on victim theory, all
in a night’s work. Bastards, we cop it sweet
in the offshore sense of inept papacy in a room all doors
shredding relics, surveillance videos paused forever.
Bastards, they climbed my boat, took my bucket,
filled it with calf horns, cuckcoldry livid with anti-
vivisectionist double talk. So what you mean by
honour song? Dosage nil? Reshuffled consolations
admonishing sales-pitch? As sad as the milk (sour)
of human kindness taking another hit we get the stunts
wrong, again/cut. At this rate there won’t be a wrap
until the cows come home – a tracking shot
focused on… yes, you guessed right: milk, its process
(progress) as reliable as real estate coming clean
on the history of that gussied up whaling station, ours
for a song. It must finally
become serious (Marion). We’ve had our fill
of your tickertape nostalgia for in-harness road-kills, every
loving spouse out to conjure a perfect death for Jack
or Jill, joy ride thrills as cheap as cavalry
as the credits roll, any hijack much preferred to this
would-be wonderkind soundtrack with its squeals
& catalogues of woe, chuck-a-wobble English
drowned out by moratorium, more junk for Lady Jane’s
Séance Museum, free entry, no exit. No excuse
for this post-coital grave stink you’ve been warned:
bathe in shuttle, in metaphysics, in remedial
pawnshop whatever it takes the denouement (in case
you haven’t noticed) is already upon you, talk-back radio
settling your account with a cortege of closed-circuit icons,
you & your poppycock icons shuffling the light-fantastic.
Wild & Blue
If it wasn’t for those cutthroat priests
the flip side would have been the right side: the
last escapee from Pablo Escobar’s zoo not caught
in the foyer of the Excelsior, a rhino if
I remember correctly, or was it a leopard? Pray God
about creatures, that Creation let them roam free, not
caged for gawking at.
Looking down
on us: the collective eye of ten thousand chattering
starlings getting ready to roost on the roof
of the Lucknow train station. Which reminds me: have
you seen the new Bollywood hit Love King Murder? – that
scene where they’re listening to Death’s ting-a-ling? Bring
it on, whatever it is – another seven minute war with its
big air where quick-smart you get told don’t
Bogart that joint (rifle barrel), consideration
for others. If I had my druthers I’d dodge these
kill fellows & run with the cowards.
Not
dead yet? So when? – time issuing
prayer emanating from correct posture in
no-harm place, never too late for the start of making
sweet sleep, sheets
thrown off
for body worship? At last a healing place? – Radio Noir’s
chattering to settle us? No, this is a war place, healing’s
(hearing’s) over yonder on platform 10 where, wild & blue,
they’re tuning in to Death’s ting-a-ling.
Philip Hammial has had 26 poetry collections published. His poems have appeared in 25 poetry anthologies (in five countries) & in 108 journals in twelve countries. He has represented Australia at eight international poetry festivals, most recently at Granada, Nicaragua, in February 2014. In 2009/10 he was the Australian writer-in-residence for six months at the Cité International des Arts in Paris.
