Simon Taylor

things could have turned out differently you might be forgiven for thinking but I wouldn’t presume if you’d taken another path where the way forward was somehow clearer instead of walking in deliberate error even while knowing better it would appear to me you had nothing nothing left

Australian poverty the children who look after the children every so often an adult shouts from indoors sunlight breaks the brick-line in a sharp diagonal and the kids’ toys and the barbecue and the washing basket and the lawn scuffed into leprous tufts by dogs and men lie sad bright and unattended

The facts are these blue and red strobe riverside and in Sandgate blocking a sidestreet So we drive home from what Jo called wet wild and willy world having picked up after a short wait beef-fat fried cod and chips each put in a cardboard box a paperbag sealed with

blunt caws of raven hack the morning open for the sharper melodic procedure of butcherbird on the dripping     hanging carcase black men prefer dreaming while the white men’s dreams are a       coloured a coloured film   over waking eyes American suburbia a slick of oil pouring on the land    a

watch my tongue the dumb land rose clay red shuttered blocks of Moreton Bay in the optimistic gloom in the bright oblivion