GRAHAM NUNN
Graham Nunn is a Brisbane based writer and founding member of local
performance group speedpoets.
Currently he edits and produces the monthly speedpoets zine.
His work has been featured in ezines such as Get Underground, Retort
Magazine, Vibewire, Slamming The Sonnet and Stylus Poetry Journal; print
zines Run Panic Bight and speedpoets and in the anthologies Text Messages,
From the Anabranch
and Love and Fear.
He has been invited to read at the QLD Poetry Festival (2001, 2002 and
2003),
Straight Out Of Brisbane Festival (2002), Triple Z's - Joint Effort (2003),
the Brisbane Writer's
Festival and various other poetry readings including feature spots at New
and Selected (2001-2) and
Orphic (2003).
His first book of haiku - 'a zen firecracker' is out now through Impressed
Publishing and is available for $16.50 (australian + $3.00 p&h) by emailing
the author at jennyandgraham@optusnet.com.au
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FORGET YOURSELF/
my electric head is calling/ i want you to shave me/ poke blood into my eyes/ drill frozen moonlight into my dirty confessions/ smoke my ambience
i am calling/ will everybody listen/ head piercer/ wife fucker/ i am whispering white chaos/ writing out lines/ you fill in my lines/ i don't carry erasers
i want to send you something/ white linen/ harem smells/ humiliating sex auxiliaries/ fistfuls of milk/ old lust kept in seashells
why do you hide/ i am the sound of dancing husbands/ soft balloons/ amorous laughter/ hair and hisses/ you can't fence my voice/ voices come out of the whirlwind
my face gives nothing away/ i am getting closer/ all this journey/ all this invention/ i can hear the wrinkles squeezing time/ spreading gossip/ the bombs are dying
sound familiar/ surely you have suffered/ been dipped in the air of our planet/ baptised with shit/ so take my hand/ memorise this/ feel safe in these words/ forget yourself…
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SYLLABLES
she used to watch the sunset
smile
and stretch her sweet anatomy
across
the longing of my eyes
until
she fell through the aging air
mad
that I had lost her beauty
hitting
the ground with the innocence
of
a single syllable
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CHANCE
dreaming of geometry
i unfastened my loneliness
and watched it slide
into your greedy mouth
our bodies dangerous and finite
courting the twisted shapes
of our emotions
balancing on each other
like two perfumed ghosts
dissolving in the chaos
tracing shapes with the fidelity
of a seismograph needle
giving ourselves to the laws
of gravity and chance
and falling like numbers
in an unlucky lotto draw
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24 HOURS
in the dawn
of dark streets
drugged neon’s crackled
in the shadows
concrete gossiped
while the city undressed
yesterday crawled back
into the gutter
and tomorrow sat on the fence
like a hungry leper
today had only
24 hours to live
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TALKING TO MYSELF
thank you for being what I am
a lumpy skull
pressing through thin hair
a costume
in need of a shave
with all the colours fading
shapeless and mistaken
struggling to relax
for a single second
washing the sweat and grease
of my house, my children, my life
from thick-veined hands
existing on consumption
with a headful of discontented screams
shouting at the unbelievable traffic
the unparalleled confusion
impersonally committed
to a poison star
endlessly burning a world
without a world
without an answer
thank you?
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IN PERFECT SLEEP
in perfect sleep
I cherished fucks under monuments
hid beneath the skins of firecrackers
sucked the magic from guns
and plunged into butterfly nets
that captured ecstasy without fun
with straps and stirrups
I harnessed whirlwinds
bathed gypsies in washing machines
watched pimpled movie stars
collapse into a thousand pieces
of noise and beauty
I was a king without dominion
a paradise forgotten
the new jew
riding in his big, black, racing hearse
I was a rotten hero kneeling at the altar
sleep had created