The Guide*
Ian Gibbins
You imply a pre-existing condition invoking love,
terror,
loss and discovery in equal proportions,
at any time
of the year, seasonally adjusted or not,
at any point
in the more or less visible spectrum,
as though we are holding hands, tongues, reservations,
court,
together, our breath, tight, fast, back.
Such is the consistency of football scores, a broken
wrist,
Kakadu nectar, Martha’s discarded
woollen greatcoat,
empty space, empty space,
unless, of course, you praise the consolidated revenue
from inopportune
acquaintances gathering unseen on verdant
hillsides
beside a river flowing at light speed
through the
boundaries of the Milky Way,
or likewise rouse dormant semi-autobiographical
novellas,
hibernating Scandinavian strawberries, inexplicably
vexed blue-tongue lizards,
feverish basalt embankments, count them,
deny paradoxical
intervention, write them out for later.
Meanwhile, try to bake a perfect lemon sponge cake,
to ignore
haranguing parts of speech, an onslaught of
short-changed hours
and over-priced mountain devils. Can you taste
the difference
on your fingertips, on the frayed collaborations
of your eyelashes?
Think about calculus, atomic numbers, Latin,
Baudelaire,
Jackson Pollock, the Melbourne Cup,
parasitic invertebrates,
collapse, redundancy, the shape of
communication
breakdown, obscure its brawn, its mass.
Then we will do Luna Park, the Velodrome,
Sex Pistols,
the Strzelecki Track, but only when star-struck
satellites have ceased
observation, flying foxes and migratory swans
are listening in.
Unaccountably demand a ransom, the time
of your life,
his attention, should you doubt it for a minute,
should the sun fade
noiselessly to a clear sapphire sky, another
moon-spun afternoon,
her glacially warm embrace.
Easy, really. Complicate nothing.
*The verbs beginning each section follow those in “How to Read a Book: The Classic Guide to Intelligent Reading” by Mortimer J Adler & Charles van Doren, Touchstone Books, (1940 / 1967 / 1972), Chapter 15, Section “How to Read Lyric Poetry”. Their original order has been maintained.
Ian Gibbins is a poet, electronic musician and video artist, having been a neuroscientist for more than 30 years and Professor of Anatomy for 20 of them. His poetry covers diverse styles and media, including electronic music, video, performance, art exhibitions, and public installations, and has been widely published in-print and on-line, including three books with accompanying electronic music: Urban Biology (2012), The Microscope Project: How Things Work (2014), and Floribunda (2015) — the last two in collaboration with visual artists. Ian Gibbins is online at iangibbins.com.au.
