Commedia (July)

Scaramouche enters. His mask is sapphire glass, his teeth White House white. He replaces Harlequin who, it seemed, had a halfway good idea what’s going on. What’s going on? Pantalone takes from the poor and gives to the rich. “Let losers get sick!” His right hand tweets like a crazed bird. Scaramouche obfuscates. He claims Scapino eats his own hot dogs, that Harlequin’s a bung fobwatch. Pantalone brags to children he knows hot people. July is a cliff-edge. [Interlude: Fireworks] Expect Harlequin to re-replace Scaramouche in the next scene. If Capitano doesn’t drop a stinkbomb first and ruin the party.

Wind (July)

The trees hugely noised the wind, though you had to be near to hear the force. Every branch and early shoot braced backwards or lashed, learning strength; their roots stayed, unmoved by the drama. Grasses bent rapidly green and lighter green, even when noise of the wind diminished. Sunny, but wind chill made you nauseous, so inside you escaped for warmth and protein. July calms down at afternoon window (Old English from Old Norse, ‘wind-eye’) where you look up from your book at the trees, now silently idling, and the grasses, lit with light of the greens their water sustains.

Badge (July)

ER Gash AV SF Eöns Bogus MoeIsAGimp Ill*Fate Chuzpah Safe OO=Dogs Ruse Odaho Instinct+Driven Hef-So DB ID! Athus EISR S.Apes C5 Alex GONZ Bong30 OM ManMan Heist Boo ND Porksta BWC Far:A.V. Frust-Low Busk Erica RP Benn-Apok! Dusk-Arz BDMS SPAB Heroes RM Ogre4J Erisad Roor Pilars SIGS iteens EZAEK Devo LUCID Zoot-Zoot APGRS Clam FNOK HEL5 GHC Sumz Werd *Dion* Hepre17 #shake Bosae SGILE TCT Asrem 2016Godo Hersd Segret BDM Easups! Cola Plier TARE Amoki Torns Pence Rîer Seioka Flier SMC Gruem FIT Ralen-Claw RESH SAS-TWE Pesk AG Zow Shara* Maxe Garniz! Hyn KLIPGE Moby 8@down [Hurstbridge Line July 2017]

No (July)

12% marked ‘No gender’ in the July Census. “It’ a surprise,” said Niall O’Neill (The Know Institute). “There’s a protest element, not wanting to be specified by gender, but then, what of the others?” ‘No address’: 31%. “In a war situation this would have meaning. Online the Bureau cannot determine if citizens are simply declaring anonymity. Homeless is not a category.” ‘No income’: 1%. “Most surely squillionaires who pay no tax. We accept though, citizens who cannot own a computer cannot fill in the form.” ‘No religion’: 15%. “It fluctuates. The No Brand Religion Movement (NBRM) has had an impact.”

Wednesday (July)

July, as when a capped man walks his dog the length of windswept parklands. When the sun glares, above rainclouds, its white immensity. When hi-visible workmen in cranes lift impossible weights. When lines in long array of houses show off each decade since 1860. When the sun is covered again by dark grey. When rain threatens. When, multi-branched and bare, trees live out the cold, their seedpods bristling. When train commuters stare inward at their thousand screens of small worlds. When schoolchildren return uphill to The Assignment. When an inch of music starts from an earplug, a memento of Manchester.  

Saturday (July)

July, as when it’s too cold to do much Saturday gardening but shift potted succulents into brief sunlight, or prune the sky-high rose briars. When lunch is soup, thickened with pearl barley. When Cootamundra wattle flowers heavily, the boughs resting on the rooftops they usually shade. When afternoon reads like a magniloquent poem by a central European, interspersed with ark-ark-ark of crows outside. When windows say it’s cold enough for hail.  When you sit where the cat sits in the warmest room of the house. When nightfall promises kitchen conversations, a glass of Margaret River red to warm the heart.

Match (July)

Through July, a teenage line goes through my head “strike another match, go start anew”, even the powerful phrasing of the original recording. I don’t know why, perhaps just desire to start anew. He sings of “crying like a fire in the sun”, so striking a match could mean a new flame, a new conflagration, burnout. It’s about the end of the affair, the solitary strike of being solitary again. But could mean too striking a match with someone new. Like many of his songs, is he talking to himself, or his lover? Or is he counsellor, a knowing bystander?

Insignificance (July)

65,000 years now (July 2017), it’s said, people have lived on the continent their languages had other names for than Australia. Not as long as Africa, but a figure science hands down to establish the insignificance of 200. What are our average 65 years against the power of 1000? Imagination goes crazy or despairs or resigns itself never properly to imagine 65,000 years of Australia. If we do more than simply work to live, we turn our 65 years into stories. We discover through play. We establish meaning. We make laws and manage them, all 65,000 years of insignificant us.

Dream (July)

I dream of circles of people who may have committed the crime. They move about, I could name them by name, but they are soon forgiven or exonerated, or are anyway innocent, and vanish. To be replaced by other circles of people who did not commit the crime, but know about it, and have to be named to be released from their implication with the crime. One circle group reads ‘Centenaries : the Magazine for People over 100 Years Old”, July Issue, sapphire-blue cover. This appearance and disappearance goes on, peacefully, of circles formed of people related to the crime.

Computer (July)

Modern times. When I touch the screen it's gluey. My fingerprint vanishes before my eyes. A thousand sites beckon my isolation. The mouse is brainless and blind. Second times, when I smudge the dream it's choosy. My opinions vanish, together with lies. A thousand bytes make up relations. The cursor is losing it's mind. Foreign chimes when I budge the button called Movie, my memories varnished by melodies. A thousand rights kick into motion. The volume is kind. July, which I reach so easy. My self taps Logoff and glides towards outside's green emotions, fog and sunlight for permanent signs.

Alley (July)

Dear Pamela. Visited the Alley. Why? Ten digits one end. Ours at the other. Object, to knock them down. That's it! Using a planet ball. Mine was Neptune Blue. Noise was prevalent. Digits decimated like thunder. A bower and scraper set them up again. You tell me. Added to which, noise. Intended to help us feel involved. Cage has theories about this. The Alley hadn't heard of Cage. No one could hear anything. Lights went out. Scores suffered. Floors of fairy lights. Strobes to read by. Scores kept by computer. Accuracy assured. Uranus guttered. Jupiter striked. Honestly, Philip. July 2017.

Mars (July)

The real absurdity of the American Vice President, this July, touching a Martian tincan labelled 'Do Not Touch' is not the superficial cartoon, that goes viral online. It's the absurdity of us knowing that this world is our only world. That we are born, work, eat, drink, love, hate, and die here, not on Mars. That the wildfires in Portugal, the broken ice-shelves of Antarctica are the Vice President's only world too, his responsibility. That it's what he and you and I do, with our human finiteness and possibility, that will decide Earth's future. Mars can take care of itself.

Town (July)

Wednesday drive past freeway turnoffs, blue hills. The gorgeous town surrounded by gorges. We're driven to the madhouse, but their ghost tour is closed. Endless wait in tearooms while staff go for more pikelet mixture. July light dignifies golden granite buildings. Every flowering tree is represented in jars at the honey shop. Time for the bookshop when the girls find the clothes shops. Wine cellar closed Wednesdays. The historic church is all in order: ten minutes silence. Pies at the bakery. Like kids in the lolly shop, all of us. 'Old Goal' where felons did dwell, and do. Home again.

Object (July)

It's a morning in July like others, where a change of air does us good and we take down 'Later Auden' (Mendelson) from one of the solid bookcases and open to 1958-1973, over breakfast coffee. The room where poems are made is a place where "silence/ is turned into objects, " even these picked out on a keyboard, glowing now on a screen of sheer sunlight. He was a wordsmith, what they do, and doubtful about word pictures that describe the lime-tree at the window or the chooks foraging autumn-wintered leaves; but not the prospect of a walk through town.

Cat (July)

Snooks and dark have a ‘k’: Snooks is the dark one. Moxie’s cappuccino-coloured. Snooks is sooky, his teeth hurt, and he misses his owners. Moxie is aloof and her fur is creamy. Snooks is smoochie. Moxie scrutinises, as though we have done something wrong, again. Snooks, after extra fresh meat, is wont to turn into a tyrant. Snooks and Moxie watch the chooks, Lydia and Phoebe, with indifference. Snooks and Moxie chatter madly when rosellas appear in the garden. Snooks always rests on top of maternal Moxie, when they curl up together. July is a dream by the auspicious fire.

Throes (July)

An editor will be on the lookout for throws of passion. Good chinaware flies through the air, not throw the air, with resounding passion. Or perhaps just sounding passion, as the chinaware only smashes once. The throws go out the window, the whole jealous suite of belongings, even the longings that used to be, loaded on the phone. Whereas throes, like much of the world’s longing belongings, is Middle English. Those twists of turmoil and tempest always come plural. An editor, deadline last July, is in such throes, being thorough, as to think his or hers singular, but isn’t thrown.

Ageing (July)

The numbers (50,60) mean the same as at 20, only you’re not 20. At parties, on PT, there are as many younger as older people. You are ‘older people’. The young rave up. It’s like America on 4th July, free enthusiasm, but you wouldn’t talk quite their way anymore. Ageing’s in the body, that’s when you’re 60: nice, slow, life is beginning. You listen to Motown, or Mozart, and it’s not old, it’s just more then. And it’s now. Only ever one health scare: that’s a fortune. Own it. You think more of those you loved, and those you love.

Glasses (July)

They get in the way, not reading. I notice them obstruct my view, redundant window frames. So wear them little as possible. Put them down wherever I find myself. Which is why they go missing. All the time. What’s the secret ingredient? The fine print needs magnifying. I can’t read what’s happening in July. Where are they? Walk. Have a way of moving around. Sneaky. Not on the opened book. Not on the silver tray, s’il vous plaît. Glove box. Search ends at window frames: lovely wordless colours. Show up when least looking. In the pocket of the other coat. 

Need (July)

Our need for survival, we’ll accept any terms. Our need to get somewhere else. Our need for sustenance, never to be underestimated. Our need for company tempts even the hermit. Our need for shelter may occupy every waking moment. Some don’t have time, or the luxury, to sit back and enjoy the night lights, lights that indicate our needs. Big office windows glow fluorescent in towers. Bus lights sparkle as it turns a corner into darkness. Supermarkets blaze inside broody carparks. I see a hillside of kitchen windows and, from the Warringal embankment, Melbourne’s orange swathe of a cold July.