20150421

Brentley Frazer



THE CYBERNETIC OPAQUE
The flux of life is pouring its aesthetic aspect into your eyes, your ears
   — and you ignore it because you are looking for your canons of beauty in
   some sort of frame or glass case or tradition.  ~Mina Loy


HDTVs bleeding in a field
(the outer man beneath an inner balcony)
widescreens leprous as snow
(phosphorus gas and powdered glass)
before dust undoes her belly
our bellicose peripheries
the unattainable millimetres
out of reach.

Photographs of laughing
machines. Elementary shouting
up from the digital beach.

Take control assign yourself some
privileges modify your own CSS
make the breast a political statement
again. Your stylesheet has a scripting
error. I simply cannot be seen with you
in public.

High stake games.
The highest stake
in the captive house.
Kill
the crowd.
Reality curls up
follows the sun
around the garden.
Agent for Change.
Surveillance footage
follows last hours.
Evasion advisers
spy agencies broken.

Unlock the code with genital secrets
lose advantages
expire
like intrepid vandals
out on the horizon at sunrise
               Mina’s dove wing
fallen in sugar
               stirs her latte
with a feather.



WHEN DID THE DANCE END

                Worm on the ruined carpet
an hour before Oscar choked
to death on a bowl of pasta
the argument got heated
                from the tequila
          and his particular brand of machismo
got lost on me

because it’s not
even a worm it’s
                a moth larva

and I’ve seen this drunken dare
a thousand times

and never envisioned then

          (how could I? Would I want
                to?) the tiny hands reaching
out for his dad.

          Outcrossing insects on a nuptial flight
innocence like piles of wings on the windowsill.

          So I saw on Facebook this chick who with
I once spent the most debauched summer
and the way I remember her
          —hippy braids
and beads wearing a tie-dyed satin slip
always forgetting her panties

          driving
in the rain listening to Floyd in a paisley
painted VW, weed thicker than the exhaust
gaffer-tape from theatre class holding down
the hood...

          what happened to that girl?
All that self-loving, no wrong

          turns left to take, no undiscovered country.

          And where did I leave that boy?
          On a bus
stop seat somewhere I bet, like a beaten
paperback with missing pages
          exhausted
on the long run from the familiar.




Brentley Frazer was born in Queensland in 1972. He is widely published Australian poet, literary critic, publisher and editor. His poems and other writings have been published in Australia, New Zealand, France, U.K, U.S.A, India, Japan and Slovenia. In 2010 he wrote an MA thesis on memoir and authentic voice under the tutelage of true crime/nonfiction author Lindsay Simpson. He is currently in the final stages of a PhD (poetry/experimental literature/creative nonfiction) at Griffith University supervised by the poet Anthony Lawrence and the writer Nigel Krauth. He was editor of the ground breaking art and Literature Journal Retort Magazine 2001-2013 and is currently publishing editor of Bareknuckle Poet ~ Journal of Letters. More information at www.brentley.com.
 
 
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