Hillman

These hulls are superstructures floating

in cigar-box paradise. You take your Cuban

neat - no ice. And don't ask what an island

is doing here, amidst all this driftwood luxury.

Playing at hotels, I guess. The maritime boat

-shaped souvenir shop in trance. Or transit.

Taste testing vintage sand in this little bay

of literary pigs. There's something Havana-like

"in the way" you quickly run over your theme

& reverse, reverse your theme & run over it

again, to ensure everything's at least one day's

drive away from your reader. Capable of being seen

from a distance, tiny characters swimming in citrus

-free water where speed boats ride on Jeff Buckley

waves. The body yet to be found, or dragged from sea

-weed floor; further out than in, you land again

on beachside deck. Here, you could be anyone sipping

Singha beer or gin slings, watching a sperm whale

making love to a wave, not knowing its tail from its arse.

Direction is an after-dinner drinks thought just off-shore

listening to ol' Frank (Sinatra) announcing with his over

-wracked throat to all and sundry "I Did It My Way"

on that dial-a-voice telephone, the plastic isthmus

grasped firmly between the twin lands of speak & listen.

Just a child who everyone wants to adopt. After all, this

could be Istanbul: near enough, but not close enough, to

Mt. Ararat. Just an aerial shot of an ark. Ribs of things found

in absurdia, a collection of half-hearted dreams & disturbed

world views from which you wake to find yourself searching for

proof, though the evidence is just not there.

Summer approaches with a promise of thirst,

a presence of mind bottled at the hip, the blue-capped range

rising in the West like another Mecca to be ascended

or stripped of reason: at the end of the upper Colo River road

a lyre bird scuttles with its twin until

beneath a cross-thatch of poorly cut lantana, they disappear.

The outbreak of fencelines that has followed us

seems to have found a cure, some private act

of diminishment as the final gate falls away

and lets us through. In this tie-dyed wilderness

air mists with the illicit scent of oil burners, candles

and incense. Naked charms flop in feral cleavages

without demand. There is touch and unrestrained

movement as we are led into Eden, the unchallenged river

an unscorched sound stroking the swollen earth beside us.

In every smile there is a letting go, an idea found

in each spoken word, the utterance of nourishment

that rises up like ground water from somewhere deep inside,

or below, the torn canvas of things that have been driven

underground, and allowed to turn: a certain moistness

that we now press softly to our parched and searching lips.

Searching for Mawson

Hobart, April 2001

From the red deck of the Polaris, I feel his blue-tipped lips

press their coldness to my pale skin, thoughts frozen

like an ice scene outside the memorabilia of an antarctic hut:

nude limbs, and sauna-white mind, rushing outdoors

screaming towards another level of awakening before

the frost-bitten numbness of his fingers returned

to haunt every trace of remembrance, a land

where flesh once tingled with the sun's applause.

And at that moment of consummation, as if Time itself

had come, or ended, the act that once stood suspended

washed the stone of some distant, frozen impediment

into the keeled pools of our darkest thoughts

and needs, where we sensed like a shoal of unwatered virgins

the folly of his hope: his smooth tongue lost to a sunless Winter,

untreated timbers that stiffened and cracked beneath

the impact of his waiting, a neck stretched around

the throat of his dreams.

These untoured eyes, careless in their comfort zones

watch, and are seen, with the same

uneasy gestures pleading for deliverance,

for some ancient shuttle of desire

to thrash across an open sea and cut

and thrust its barbaric way back home until

bruised and wind-blasted it might come to rest

in this unlisted harbour; and here, it would lie between

the hot thighs of a lover's cultural landscape

recalling the roll and reel of rescue, the essence

of salvation in the energetic shape of a ship

that lost its way, but understood with a certain grace

the nature of the ground it searched for,

and the water over which it had to travel to find us.

(c) Richard Hillman 2001

In response to a request for a biographical note Richard came up with...

I'm holding a copy of an article titled "Zen and Lacan" and I'm thinking of this Lhasa-eyed babe breast-stroking in the deep Che Guevara end of the social swimming pool 2000 ks away from here, and I want to tell her that the Dalai Llama had his own telephone by 1940 - if she gives me a call, I'll be Jesus and she can be God, just so we can keep the sacred filthy and filthy sacred for one more day."



					Found These hulls are superstructures floating in cigar-box paradise. You take your Cuban neat - no ice. And don't ask what an island is doing here, amidst all this driftwood luxury. Playing at hotels, I guess. The maritime boat -shaped souvenir shop in trance. Or transit. Taste testing vintage sand in this little bay of literary pigs. There's something Havana-like "in the way" you quickly run over your theme & reverse, reverse your theme & run over it again, to ensure everything's at least one day's drive away from your reader. Capable of being seen from a distance, tiny characters swimming in citrus -free water where speed boats ride on Jeff Buckley waves. The body yet to be found, or dragged from sea -weed floor; further out than in, you land again on beachside deck. Here, you could be anyone sipping Singha beer or gin slings, watching a sperm whale making love to a wave, not knowing its tail from its arse. Direction is an after-dinner drinks thought just off-shore listening to ol' Frank (Sinatra) announcing with his over -wracked throat to all and sundry "I Did It My Way" on that dial-a-voice telephone, the plastic isthmus grasped firmly between the twin lands of speak & listen. Just a child who everyone wants to adopt. After all, this could be Istanbul: near enough, but not close enough, to Mt. Ararat. Just an aerial shot of an ark. Ribs of things found in absurdia, a collection of half-hearted dreams & disturbed world views from which you wake to find yourself searching for proof, though the evidence is just not there. Ground Water Summer approaches with a promise of thirst, a presence of mind bottled at the hip, the blue-capped range rising in the West like another Mecca to be ascended or stripped of reason: at the end of the upper Colo River road a lyre bird scuttles with its twin until beneath a cross-thatch of poorly cut lantana, they disappear. The outbreak of fencelines that has followed us seems to have found a cure, some private act of diminishment as the final gate falls away and lets us through. In this tie-dyed wilderness air mists with the illicit scent of oil burners, candles and incense. Naked charms flop in feral cleavages without demand. There is touch and unrestrained movement as we are led into Eden, the unchallenged river an unscorched sound stroking the swollen earth beside us. In every smile there is a letting go, an idea found in each spoken word, the utterance of nourishment that rises up like ground water from somewhere deep inside, or below, the torn canvas of things that have been driven underground, and allowed to turn: a certain moistness that we now press softly to our parched and searching lips. Searching for Mawson Hobart, April 2001 From the red deck of the Polaris, I feel his blue-tipped lips press their coldness to my pale skin, thoughts frozen like an ice scene outside the memorabilia of an antarctic hut: nude limbs, and sauna-white mind, rushing outdoors screaming towards another level of awakening before the frost-bitten numbness of his fingers returned to haunt every trace of remembrance, a land where flesh once tingled with the sun's applause. And at that moment of consummation, as if Time itself had come, or ended, the act that once stood suspended washed the stone of some distant, frozen impediment into the keeled pools of our darkest thoughts and needs, where we sensed like a shoal of unwatered virgins the folly of his hope: his smooth tongue lost to a sunless Winter, untreated timbers that stiffened and cracked beneath the impact of his waiting, a neck stretched around the throat of his dreams. These untoured eyes, careless in their comfort zones watch, and are seen, with the same uneasy gestures pleading for deliverance, for some ancient shuttle of desire to thrash across an open sea and cut and thrust its barbaric way back home until bruised and wind-blasted it might come to rest in this unlisted harbour; and here, it would lie between the hot thighs of a lover's cultural landscape recalling the roll and reel of rescue, the essence of salvation in the energetic shape of a ship that lost its way, but understood with a certain grace the nature of the ground it searched for, and the water over which it had to travel to find us. (c) Richard Hillman 2001

	Richard Hillman In response to a request for a biographical note Richard came up with... I'm holding a copy of an article titled "Zen and Lacan" and I'm thinking of this Lhasa-eyed babe breast-stroking in the deep Che Guevara end of the social swimming pool 2000 ks away from here, and I want to tell her that the Dalai Llama had his own telephone by 1940 - if she gives me a call, I'll be Jesus and she can be God, just so we can keep the sacred filthy and filthy sacred for one more day."