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Peter Minter

Three poems from Empty Texas


 
 

      Gravity

I can think only
two wheels taking the forthright jump
into parallel, to
                        Come On

up here, Accustomed to Corners, that urban smell
of wish and self-pity
almost glamorous as he dances to the radio,
not touching water since her hands, unwelcome
such small senses of existence

or the knowledge of consequences, maximatosis and rhyme

her astonished narcotic delay, her thick coriolus
and what makes it here
bend in the flow

curving then to that apple
lying on the lawn,
            
            your lover's voice
setting out the few tree, foots and ranches, the dead water & the know explanation
pressing the earth so

Stand outside and eat it like an apple,
Rise off of Reality! certain details
who hand back the future
                  insulated by spirit
and flesh,
her theory of excess.


      RevEnfant

The day's evil ends, county of soft air and airport bars
where dog's hair slogs out the horoscope
                        floats atween logic
            nor the Other View

for-why he heng hys hed adoun to have
such sorwe and not be ded

Looking Around Wildly, don't be fooled where it ends
                  nor where the separations begin again, leaves
bending shadow reach out  &
lose the waterways, dream pages of doubt and fertility

Doesn't  look good,  another  'beware the charms'
wave of mud, zip-drive
waiting for restart &
shafts of moonlight

as if there are two drives large as a man, hurtling and cursing
The Bullshit Artist
slips back to alterity & craving
the brilliant reply, tornados appraising
that was the open door!  the poor love
            hidden for Years as she flies off
once or twice
before the killing sheds.


      Unperturbed

That possibility, you said,
            of hierarchy, substance and will,
your questioning insight and blindness,
            all the mad proceedings
      as you remind me of Peace, Consolidation,
dart forward into evening

as Songs trace the hole evening
       insight of seed heads,
the centre of colouration, the moth's ride into eucalypt epiphany
      pollination cross-referenced
with your incompatibilities, that Starry Sky and shade of shade
            or less than Drugged Beasts

O Helen,
what consequence the suburbs of flora,
            What Precious Liberties or Gestalt
loop over good dictionaries
                  as buzzwords, the balcony for coats

& that occasional appraisal of doubt,
            redirected into dispassionate refreshment &
      the blind, original stones,
            that animal of pleasure

We correspond thus: this word's matrix and border,
      the windows of our house here & gentle &, the Morning Light.

Morning,
      your lunacy another cloudless route
                  where days appear &
            we describe ourselves, again
      here at last,
trying to forgive what we have made
                  beneath the other vines.


 
 

Photo of Peter Minter




Peter Minter is a Sydney poet, editor and publisher. His sequence Empty Texas was published in 1999 by PaperBark Press in Sydney, at http://www.geko.net.au/~pbp/. You can read another poem from this sequence in Jacket # 1.


Photo of Peter Minter by John Tranter, 1999

 


 
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