Below the line


Once off the ship from sector blah blah
                   <<snip snip>>
___________________

personfromporlock wrote at 23:55:
                                      Yeah yeah.
What started out so-so
quickly became the same old, same old—
                really just another there there
number, parading the ghost of his mama,

                nostalgic for the promise of Expo ’88,
longing for the turquoise lagoons of Bora Bora,
where flash as sailfish, headstrong as mahi-mahi,
muscular as leaping marlin, I … yadda yadda.

You know, the usual. Can’t say I took it in in
                                                                                         toto.
What I did read reminded me of the Berber
               I bunked with in Woop Woop
during my gap years—the faintly musical donk donk
of the goat bells. Sure it was funny, but not ha-ha

funny; more funny-sad, like the elegy for Ford Ford
in William Williams’ The Wedge (’44).
Or the porcelain sunflower seeds of Ai Weiwei.

In a dream we’re onstage at Hay-on-Wye, Ai and I. I
               play the spectral glide, the wah-wah
rhythm to his laser beam. Pew pew.

               ‘Something’s up with this game’s AI,’ Ai
mutters, hurling his console. ‘Aye yai yai,
               Ai,’ I cry, dodging. ‘Watch it ya big dodo!’

                                 ‘Pedantry’s a gateway drug! Ask John Lyly!’
                                 shouts a heckler in—is it Gubbi Gubbi?

And I would’ve asked him too, but … But
what? But Lyly was at the putt putt
practicing his trick shots with Boutros Boutros

                                 Ghali, Lady Gaga,
                                 Gigi
                  and one of the Durans from Duran Duran.
                                                              I know I know,
                                 there were no actual Durans in Duran Duran,

but what work doesn’t leak? Like the sly drip drip
against the party leader at a bunga bunga,

art is deep background, a rumoured fifty-fifty
fuck between knack and technique, the glug glug
of Bob Hawke with a yard glass, and the inevitable tsk tsk.

admin wrote at 00:00:
Stop, thief! What’s the big idea? That’s my tutu.

 

 

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Jaya Savige

Jaya Savige was born in Sydney, grew up in Moreton Bay and Brisbane, and lives in London, where he lectures at the New College of the Humanities at Northeastern. He is the author of Latecomers (UQP, 2005), which won the New South Wales Premier’s Kenneth Slessor Prize, and Surface to Air (UQP, 2011), shortlisted for The Age Poetry Book of the Year. His next collection, Change Machine, is forthcoming from UQP in 2020.

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