sketch of first poem from rave collection

each glued ochroma wall

of phantasm castle’s keep

wobbles – as it nears capacity –

like par-set panacotta –

people have climbed the slide

or rigged up netting ladders

traced a kind of hardwood keel across to the viewing post

where a spider-

                      eyed

                           collective

sanctified and hoarse in two-dollar incense

whorls, can see a filmic carnage being wrought

at the final parallel

of tents before the fence line, fence line

monochromatic paddocks, moonlike granite nodes

monochromatic paddocks, moonlike granite nodes

cratered

uprising

cratered

uprising

shock

escarpment, shock escarpment hillside

horizon

hillside

horizon

the tenor of

nightly projections.

ideologically naked, carnage

from afar takes the form of theatre

a tragicomedy in which things die

things, things, things, stage props

from earlier performances

or matinees yet to be staged –

dolls die, beacons die, tampons, perfume and g-strings die gruesomely

for a liquid-

                  soaked

                       visionary

his collarbone tattooed with a vedic wheel

in larger wheels, blurred by the distance of phantasm’s keep

destroys all he sees

uproots tents, upends their contents,  human contents

carnivalesque effects, five days’ packed food

carnivalesque effects, five days’ packed food

costed

highs

costed

highs

hidden

five-hundred bags, hidden five-hundred bags beauty

secrets

beauty

secrets

the tenor of

nightly obsessions.

wreck - post-workshop retune

wreck

drink the lukewarm ocean as you dive

only to surface to sink again, with scarcely

the aftertaste of a pool of dewdrop

tears lapped from the blade of an upper lip –

surface and sight the snowbound peaks

beyond Vancouver, a frosted mirage

beneath a sunlit cellulose half moon,

to turn and face a bloom of petal-like

kites handled expertly by white-haired

white-skinned nudists, feet lost in whiskery

sand, lean muscles flushed, toddlers gyrating

to djembe jazz, newborn-naked like their parents,

platters passed around with wedges of water-

melon, weed, mushrooms, tiny liquid vials,

to see grid-like aisles of tapestries for sale,

geometric as brainwaves from acid-distance

fluttering om shanti  mainsails on lukewarm

winds no longer atrophied by the inlet, a

liberty also shared by the whitewashed breaks

whose peaks wade with you crumbled on sand-

bars that seem to span from shore to horizon,

to turn and face the ‘clothing optional’ signs

and staircase spiralling up through the radial

forest – the tree log seats on which women

meditate, men sunbathe – human huckleberries

ripening on their bush, prickly with bark, to see

beaks of gulls thrice the size of those at home,

the corners of Eckhart Tolle books buried like

joyous children in the leathery thicket

of dreadlocks and breasts that powers

have deigned to allow, like poisonous

fish, to flourish in a pond so as not to infest

the nearby ocean – to slosh through the shin-deep

swale behind the dreaming, where men are lost

in laughter, a little girl between two foursomes.

all that’s true is just as

true reversed –

wouldn’t that be what all the people here

have stuck up on their eco-friendly fridges

and gas-guzzling kombi vans of the higher cosmos?

do those mountains, say, make you

shiver when you see them, or are you

warmer inside for no longer being up there?

climb the stairs, you’ll see dumb bumper stickers

and the University of British Columbia.