Laurie Duggan – (duggan)

Laurie Duggan

One-Way Ticket

what I have written I have lost what’s recorded so much paper and celluloid the 1974 of desire moves through its lack of movement a moment a memento amen a memory stick a stack of disks a pile of maps * worn down by detergents I’m cleaner and smaller every day * the rain it raineth on a dull tin roof the anthologies arrive the wars continue mere anarchy etcetera 3 a.m. (or 3 p.m.) the worst times death & taxes photocopies of everything * What I thought was Mo was Osama Bin Laden (the face on a half-tone poster) so where is Stiffy? (and who is a friend of the groom?) * spin & spam vs. art, dust motes that lightness, something almost not there those undeniable venetians that would argue a pattern a flying-fish glued to the refrigerator a space under the stairs where memory sits * circular paths a wrought-iron gate . . . distant apartments pipes, wind-vanes funnels walking figures backwash along the rocks old military medals account books chess pieces a tripod electrical wiring a stop watch a slide-rule mathematical tables a microscope calling cards a red coat on a green chair the smell of fish fresh marinaded * cut & paste: a generation thing? mine?     the beginnings of insincerity?     embrace of the artificial? * there’s little sound from down below a mattock perhaps at the edge of the pool a moment to do nothing bow wave of the ferry slight aircraft noise a chair is not a chair . . . beached timber smoke over Mt Gravatt the tilers insert metal pegs in the bottom of a wall hammers echo across the river already a heat haze at 8 a.m. * waves on the ceiling tidal movements * an image of tired people in an airport lounge painted by Michael Andrews: The Last of Australia coffee $3.25 black & white lines dark wood in the 33rd year &c; (58th) the body within its limits or without * be grateful for stairwells for art at altitude (a Martin Sharp playing card circa 1980 in thanks for East, a tapa print, collapsing Cuban tobacco barns on a green slope * after the encomiums a bouquet an apartment of flowers a fluttering screen papers in bulk letters I may never read again a month before jacaranda season * points of light shadows gusts a lifting floor a door an orn- ament * over the fold of the map driving on the wrong side of the world

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