A Red Room Company Commission
for bruce beaver

by David Prater

& the poems having been found
your poems radiant as manly's
hi-fi stacks above & beneath us
all the memory of your mother

her house demolished & rebuilt
old stormwater drains' insides
sewerage outfalls yearning off
malabar bluebottles slobber in

the shallows small boys build
beige sandcastle apartments
the pine trees twist & rotting
eggs dislodge electric memory

sheds its leathered skin away
in a chamber reserved for you
& francis webb just like janet
frame you two are gone to cry

is to miss the point that rilke
made on lamentation & its twin
celebration when will it end?
your third letter on the same

sky blue stationery its colour
of the wind above your house
on good days those socks you
dreamed there will not have

amnesties reunions of that
chain gang smoke & blisters
the heat's sleepers fused in
blood it is difficult to think

of you as a radio DJ now but
you spoke to me in light once
my night in ultimo splintered
unwilling to drop the subject

of an atom bomb might have
looked good in my biography
but beneath it too your pain
poems huddling in ditches

shore the moment of literacy
& a poet was born out of zero
comes this split name & your
shared mania so victor bruce

what else did they do to you
in a hell the psyche flinched
your future autobiographies
like a daguerrotype etched in

golden lacquered hair styles
matted with perspiration an
awkward nervousness down
behind a couch or lounge we

hear a radio's shrill lorikeets
auckland's dinosaurs lowing
you saw them for remainders
forever poetry's noms de plume

rise & backfire on two-penny
novels a name is assumed but
this plotline's fragmented &
blasted through a hole we'll

call it time not you bruce i'm
certain of very little else now
a database's cataloguing your
every first line's pinned like a

moth beneath glass this case
has now been sealed how the
beached wire gashes at your
whitened knuckles you hear

the sea's blue roar or a fist's
victory bruce smashing out
glass it's life & as the sharks
tumble out & the attendants

debate symptoms legionaires
or avian sars for my mind you
knew of cages filled with dirty
brown birds arthur conan doyle

was there & in spare moments
whistled what was tricked into
being before your eyes melted
paint the floors of aquariums

with a littoral memory wash
flood the animals two by two
global warming or literature
lapping at the shallow end of

hope stand death's detectives
finding poems in drains or bea
miles' mad eyes show us what
was in your fist bruce the tight

seal loosened for a page or two
as a drum begins its journey to
the bottom of some harbour &
simon & garfunkel testimonials

build a bridge over your sleep to
stacks of manly's hi-fis swaying
the radio keeping us all awake
i hear the final pine signing off

---

---

Red Room Commissions

To mark special occasions throughout the year, the red room company is commissioning individual poets to write an original poem. These commissions aim to profile young, new and emerging poets from all over Australia and provide the public with poetic responses to national and international events.