Poetry Badges - $3 each

Sitting on an afternoon
and caught in between the
softness of sleep and the day
she reaches out to some dirty floor t-shirt and her last cigarette

Bedside manner mess

She’s the woman you would have killed for once
She’s muttering to herself
to
the sirens out her window
to
the cold that creeps in under the
back door that never locks

She’s opening her mascara soft
eyes
to
black stars on her pillow
to
an ache in her lungs that
feels like hate should

She’s the woman that used to look with childlike wonder at the curls on the edges of your temples, and think that she could fall hard into it all

She walks to the
only mirror in the hall
and looks at herself
Naked and
pressing down finger blue
onto her heart
She reaches for organs that
she is certain could stop at any moment
from the breaking that she hears
From the noise that started
that first day you said goodbye at her car door


Last week she wrote on a small piece of paper;

“It hurts so much without you waking with me, that blood wine bottled heat we shared. That the breaking that i hear when i walk or talk to shop keepers makes me ashamed. That even now here in my Brisbane summer, i wear large woollen jackets over tight singlets to stop others hearing it too."

She placed it above the mirror in the hall
thinking one day she could tell him
how much he had made her make sound
so loud.

And her fingers today
as they turn
blue
feel at
that large break in her heart
like an antique clock piece
all worn over with years of use
and now missing a beat
and pulling everything out of place.

Today,
the noise is so very loud
and she thinks of which jackets to wear
and how catching the bus
will be better to walking in this heat.

God damn - thank fuck for poetry!!!

Hi you lot. So a few gigs and the like coming up, so if you are around the traps or in any good bookstore, make sure you come along or pick up a copy of Best Australian Poems 2009!! Here we go!
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NATIONAL YOUNG WRITERS FESTIVAL

Are Poets Nice? Panel
Date: Saturday 3 October
Time: 3.30pm - 5
Venue: City Hall 1
Was Shakespeare really in love, or was Gwyneth Paltrow just... hot? When
that poet spilled beer on you at her reading, was it really all just part of
her art? *Are poets nice people to know? *Of our all-poet panel, half say
yes, half say no.

and....

Un-Erotic Erotica, Put Your Hands All Over My XXX
(Reading) Sunday at 10pm in some dodgy bar I suspect (and hope so!!)
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THIS IS NOT ART FESTIVAL

Crack Theatre

The idea is we lock writers and actors together in a room for just under 2 hours and they produce work that is performed as part of Playground (Sunday night).

and...

Zine Fair

Yep ill be there, drinking from hot cask wine and eating patty cakes! Oh and selling zines and badges and stuff. Come along! Sunday 4th October. http://www.thisisnotart.org/sunday-zine-fair-oct-4-king-street-carpark/
___________________________________________________________

TINY GOLD

Also check out the pics from the huge TINY GOLD Gallery show last month at - http://tinygold.com/ where i did some large text based gold glittery love in art!
___________________________________________________________

THE BEST AUSTRALIAN POEMS 2009

Also keep an eye out for The Best Australian Poems Anthology (Black Inc) this year, edited by the big time goodness talent of Mr.Robert Adamson! I’m finally in it!! And a tad excited. Available in all good bookshops nationally in Australia and New Zealand. Check it out here - http://www.blackincbooks.com/books/best-australian-poems-2009.
___________________________________________________________

NEW WEBSITE

and last but not least... my new website will be launched in the next few weeks. It looks hot hot hot. The wonderful miss jo coltman is putting it together. You can check out her stuff at http://www.janita.com.au/

___________________________________________________________

NEW BADGES

Oh yeah there are a whole lotta new poetry badges i made up. If you want one chuck me $3 and ill give ya one!!



God damn - thank fuck for poetry!!!
www.mandybeaumont.com

A week away with friends
to a blues festival
and we’re all back
Smelling of
all kinds of sweats
and unclean underwear

We find
the new bar in town
and decide to sit right down
Start ordering some drinks
put our feet up on the tables
and talk with the owners

And it’s been like that now
for weeks
and we all keep dancing
on their concrete floors
and falling into the couches on
Sunday afternoons
to bring in the new week

And the owner starts looking
at me
in all kinds of strange ways
asking me to come
back to his house after the doors close
and calling me to see
if I’d like to go for dinner
at strange and intimate restaurants
Giving me lines of his
high grade coke in the bathroom
and pouring me expensive wines

So I fuck him
and give in to the fact that
he’s overweight
and looks
just slightly like a schoolboy
who’s mumma irons his clothes

Who’s always jerked off more
over girls like me
than actually gotten a taste
of the way we scream
ever
so
slightly
in men’s ears
/truck driver gutter mouth talk/
when they’re fucking us from behind
grabbing up
to kiss our wet like cloudburst lips
to hear their panting breath
ready to cum.

And I keep fucking him
for weeks
cas’ the coke gets stronger
and dinners in fancy bowls
with sparkling water
are feeding me well

But the sight of him naked and
the way his sweat falls into my face
as he’s grunting like some oversexed kid
who plays computer games with gusto
/cas’ the only way to let it all out
is shoot that fucker
point blank range hard in the head/
is making me sick

So I tell him not to call any more
Not to send me small messages
when he wakes in the morning
Not to come near me when I’m at his bar
but just to serve me drinks
/whiskey
straight
up
ice to the side/

And as I’m
telling him this
all calm and soft
he’s trying
to convince me to fall in love with him
Offering me all kinds of
promises and hollow whispered heat
talking bout those dark things
and superhero
full flight
games
that get me wild

I start to hang up
thinking about the
way that this town
crawls in under my skin
/some small insect that
can’t really be seen by the human eye
but which will kill me with great force and voracity in under the covers/

The way that this town makes me
unable to leave the house for days
for fear of running into men like him
Making small talk
about the weather
whilst standing
with black roots in my mane of blonde hair
in a shopping centre car park
Smiling at his conversation
and thinking of the way
he first put me hard
up against the hallway wall
and slipped so strongly into me
His stomach slapping against mine
asking me if I could call him Sir
as he did it.

Standing in the heat
thinking of the tragedy of his
last love and
the way that when he came
he made me look down on him
trying to find some emotion in my face
to tell him that this one, this girl he’s found
is gonna make it all ok.

And I stand and think of
the tragedy that I also own
in standing
in this heat
on the end of this phone
at the foot of your bar
at that midnight meeting
falling into your bed
and your cocaine
hazy crush

Some kinda tragedy
that began so very long ago
when i began
to feel numb of it all
began to bruise every boy
who could ever matter
bruised my hair into sideboards
and my feet into hospital sheet
folds

Some kinda tragedy
that now swells into
me writing poems
like this one
and fuckin men like you
Men
that im never
gonna be able to love.

Looking up my street
watching glimpses of myself
in store glass windows
I’m finding some kinda chorus
in the way my hips sway.

And it’s a heat wave kinda day
and people I know
are sitting pouring wines
and rolling cigarettes.
10am early.
Sitting ready.

They're talking about a friend
who’s last night adventure
had him kissing a woman
his mother’s age
in the beanbag safety of the new bar
in our street.

And they start laughing into each other
and waving at me to join them.
Asking how my day is
Showing me last night’s battle scars
Telling me how I should spend time with them

So I do

And it ends up all over
in bars with expensive make overs
with strange new meetings
with hits of acid
with white sprits and a new love affair
with the boy that lives across the street
that I can hardly talk to but
I keep imaging that I will

One day...

And by the end of the night
when all over the street
people with no shoes
are asking me for smokes
or a dollar,
my legs start to chaff with the heat
and my friends
are looking for exists
ways home
and new adventures

And the boy I am wanting to love
is dancing on his own in the corner
and i see his eye’s begin to wet
when the lovelorn chorus of their tune
starts.

His body slows
Whiskey
hits
his lips

And I walk out without a word
smiling at the
men and women meeting for the first time
under the heavy tunes of the night
and stumble up my street
looking up into my own
personal night sky
with thousands of small named stars
looking down on me
kissing my cheeks
and offering me another moment

of poetry …

She’s been trying to

break away from it

for months now

Keeps coming to my house

and sitting on the mattress in the back room

Telling me how

this ain't the lifestyle she wants to be keeping

and the people she meets

are nothing but the drugs that they take

That she’s afraid of the

way her hair looks dirty to strangers on the street

How she’s really gotta split

break up the scene

study for a degree

play on weekends

outside of this town

Tonight she tells me about her plan

to throw dinner parties where

wine is the greatest deterrent to it all

How she’s no longer going

to answer the 3am calls

from the boys across the street

wanting a cute young thing to do lines with

Where the only sound in the night

are noses

down a run way

with a $50 note.

Tells me she dreams

of the other city calling her

And I sit silently

as I always do with her

knowing that when

the next weekend comes

she’ll be sitting with the boys

in some bar stranger’s back yard

grabbing at anything that’s offered to her

waiting for the

sun come up

Sitting in the lap of

the new young boy

who’s sporting a pocket full

of that white powdered goodness

Where she’ll be straddling him

like a dirty and torn Bukowski novel

Her thighs screaming at the moon

hustling for

that cheap fix

and a taxi ride home.

Bad poets
want to be all of Bukowski
Fuckingthe living daylights
out of the young girl across the way
Drinking till they
vomit up all the pain
of being misunderstood
Poetic and tragic
Ploughing through tales
you wouldn't wipe your arse on
Screaming strong
at lame poetry readings
deep in the bowels
of open age bars,
where lesbians and bad looking aged men
in rock and roll T-Shirts
smoke cigarettes
in the only place that
makes them feel worthwhile
I say,most of you pricks who give good poets a bad name
tell us Buk was your hero,
taught you everything you know
and showed you that hope rests in poems.
Showed you how to toucha woman's cunt
with gusto and write all night with nothing but a half bar of chocolate
and the smell of the deep frying and sadness
happening up your American street.
But you'll be finding that for all your wishing
and writing on the walls
that
cunts don't want to be touched
by paled hand ended poets
wristed up
from paper- thin poems
They're aching for the good
fisting love /ready to roll around in their lips/of a hard lived man
Waiting to wipe grease up their thigh
spelling out dirty
one syllable words.
For all of you,I'll sit here and keep writing on
stolen sour
coloured thick paper
about all the goodness and glory
that I find in the bottle
and wanting to fuck
all these women up my street
with not an ounce of Bukowski on my mind.
And when you start
writing your
lame arsed poetic verse
about the hero
we could all be
if we wrote like him,
up boils the imageI have of that old bastard
/when once a movie was made/
with him sitting softly under a tree
reading Rimbaud waiting to die with the daisies
and tears
in his Herpe laden eyes.
Thinking about the love he had missed
on the way to his lonely silence filled grave.

Assume the position
Assume that everyone here wants you
and that the stomach of an angry man is riddled with cancer
Assume that your smoking habits annoy others
Assume that in close encounters, others will notice your flaws
Take night time hours as your own
Assume a safe distance from falling romances
Tell strangers that all public places hold stories
Assume that your childhood memories are your own
and that no one knows how much you hate yourself
See yourself as the only sane person in this room
Assume you can have it all
Tell others that you will
Hold your throat open with metal bands
and swallow the conversations thrown at you
Stick notes with clear tape in busways
to remind others that it is a long way home

Assume the position
Assume that this is
never
gonna
end.

And you ask me if i like it
when i watch you
your brilliance smashing out
the sounds of street cars
and the great weight of the moon

Here we are
I think
/tonight
in the centre of the universe
beginning

Where’d you get those bruises from? They look like they’re the shape of your lungs...

Dirty romance on your boots
kicks. at. my. knees.
I.cant.breathe.

at night with her skin
he starts drawing his demons
one limb at a time

at night with her skin
he grows wild in her
as she lets the folds of her
open to him
stains his lips with her
aching romance

at night with her skin
he asks her quietly
to tell him of poems
small poems of heat
that he can place
in a curve under her breasts

at night with her skin, he feels
the ripping of flesh onto her
/soft and magnificent/

“The hollow of my hand was still ivory full of Lolita – full of the feel of her
pre-adolescently incurved back…” Lolita – Nabokov

In a moment she stands leaning above me
her lithe skeletal frame exposing the
inward crevasses of her coming years

In the corner of the dark midnight room lay
my scuffed brown moccasins, a silver pipe (a present from the year past)

My lips lacquered with honeydew / hands rested on middle aged knees

I bow forward to smell the sweetness of strawberry lollies and unsettled patience,
Rest my lips on the warm sheet which is her childish chin

[We have silence between these walls]

My Lolita’s straight awkward legs surround me
as I sit in my red silk robe
she is warm, settled
she is mine

An erotic [tragic] scene affronts you, dear reader

I want inspiration
anticipation
I want hard fucking
blood draining
asphyxiation
Real love smells:
hair bleach
semen
stale beer.

these things always seem to happen to me
in the front seats of motor vehicles
When heat strangles the air
pushes moments upon my acned skin
and lets manufactured relief rest on feet
that walk abandoned sidewalks at midnight intervals
these are silent moments
when I laugh to myself and say
‘that’s not going to happen,’
but then the gesture opens up-
fragments of sharp light brush my forehead
and the scenery changes
like a good healthy surge of reckless sport
it hits like an arrow that cannot be pulled from the flesh
and I note the red marks on your neck impressed by want
a week after consumption
/back room glass canisters filled with tales of you by my side/
we meet again
You will take note of oncoming traffic and quietly ask me for relief
which will drown out the silence that sits between us
and often gets lost at traffic lights

I am the long mouthed southern girl
who dreams of Dolly Parton excess
and softly spills dirty wordsl
like –
come down
and tequila breath
and
for money, milk is waiting
down the throats of unsuspecting
beer drinking cowboys.

She’s sitting on an afternoon
Seeing shadows rolled outside her window,
where cheery bright arsed men in day suits
walk over the dreams and promises left on her cities pavements

She reaches out to some dirty floor t-shirt and her last cigarette
bedside manner mess

-she’s the woman you would have killed for once-

She’s muttering to herself
To
the sirens out her window
To
the cold that creeps in under the
back door that never locks

She’s opening her mascara soft eyes
To
black stars on her pillow
To
an ache in her lungs that
feels like fire should

-she’s the woman that used to look with childlike wonderat the curls on the edges of your temples, and think that she could fall hard into it all-

She walks to the only mirror in the hall
and looks at herself
Naked and pressing down finger blue
onto her heart
She reaches for organs
that she is certain could stop at any moment
from the breaking that she hears in the silence of night

Last week she wrote on a small piece of paper;

“It hurts so much without you waking with me, that blood wine bottled heat we shared”

She placed it above the mirror in the hall
She looks at it every morning
like this
whilst her fingers turn blue.

You got that…

At 75, I’ve got a fixation for death and how many moments I’ve got left until she comes a’ knocking at my chest. I’ve got a case under my bed stored with my best suit, clean socks and a dirty movie for the man that reads me my last rights.

I’ve got cold night shivers.

Fourteen years of a government hand out and I tell you – this man ain’t leaving you anything but some kin of a lover that you never met and a collection of green bottles in the yard shed next to the radio playing Dixie tunes.

You’ve been thinking that for all these years, while I’ve been giving you hot milk bedtime stories and sending family Christmas cards to your sisters in the States, that I’ve been saving these small cheques, thinking that I’d be the first one to go. That out of these living in fibro units and in places where I move you too, that you’d get some kind of windfall – a jackpot – a shot at a better life with a better man and buy that house boat at the Marina that I promised you for all these years.

But you got it wrong, fucked up your odds, got a bastard that cashed away every god damm cheque for a home visit from Tony’s Whores every time you went away on your girl’s bus trips. And there ain’t a penny left. Just some disease ridden hands on an old man, that have held down the noise of woman half his age in our bedrooms front window for too many years.

You got that…

She’s been trying to
break away from it for
months now

Keeps coming to my
house and
sitting on the mattress in
the back room
Telling me how
this ain’t the lifestyle she wants to
be keeping
How the people she meets
are nothing
but the drugs that they take
That she’s afraid of the way
her hair looks dirty
to strangers on the street

How she’s really gotta split
break the scene up/
study for a degree/
play on the weekends/
outside of this city

Tonight she tells me about
her plan to
throw dinner parties
where wine is the greatest
deterrent
to it all
How she’s no longer going
to answer the 3am calls
from the boys across the
street,
wanting a cute
young thing to do lines with
when the only sound in the night
are their noses
down a run way with a
dollar note

Tells me she dreams of
the nearest city
calling her

And I sit silently as
I always do with
her
Knowing that
when the next weekend comes
she’ll be sitting with the boys
grabbing at anything
that’s offered to her
and seeing the sun
come up with strangers
in
a West End back yard
where she starts to
hustle for her next cheap fix
and a taxi ride home.

Crashing into you
is only hours away
Like whiskey hitting my lips
Drugs hitting my blood
Reckless/Sport