Shameful lack of blogging deserves a flogging - watch this space for more of the Fitzroy black and white wall conspiracy shortly.

Gordon Bennett's reply

jean-michel basquiat

black panther

on the beach

capsized cage
black panther spilling
under moon's sullen cloud
beach and sky are one

moveable calligraphy of paws
smell of burning canvas
tail rope whips wet clawed
fur imprinted sand gleaming

wave goes out
she leaves the beach
legend

transient and nomadic

A couple of days ago I had to go into Fitzroy and I was socked to find that the Night Cat wall, which used to be swell mash up of black and white work including the razor sharp Scythe Does Matter, had been taken out. Apparently some official mural is going up, or advertising, because the space is all marked out. Rotten loss to freeform street art though. Miss the Dylan that had been lurking there for some time.

New Year's poem

darkling – do you know
the moth whose
sandalwood wings
wait for the moon
has your eyes on them?

do you know my pens all bleed in your house
and then repair themselves?

and that this dark knight son
was sent to be your protector?
(he will save you
again and again.)

you know
this vertical beach you sleep in
whose blocks are sleeping dogs –
do you cut your hair so this can’t tumble
from its turrets? (ha!)
(a rain of Rumpelstiltskins.)

do you know your beauty’s
more immutable than
bone and skin can catch?
your words, indestructable?
we your lovers love you,
expanding the chambers of all our hearts.

do you know you’ve
turned this New Year’s Day
into a storm of butterflies?
do you have any concept of this?

believe me!
a secret.

you

are

perfect

Vale Jenny and John Barnett

Had just starting reading The Age this morning in my favourite cafe in North Fitzroy after dropping my son at school when I got a very sad call. Can't be confirmed due to the intensity of the fire, but it seems certain that two key members of the Mammal Survey Group of Victoria, Jenny and John Barnett, have died trying to escape Steels Creek. Not long after we came back to Victoria, my family and I went camping with them at Cape Liptrap and elsewhere. My daughter, then about 10, has very sharp eyes and a strong animal instinct. She found an owl pellet - a 'cough up' little ball of skin and fur. The Barnetts, making we new members feel at home, were immensely kind and knowledgeable. They gave years of volunteering and career work for the better understanding and protection of both wild and domestic animals. So many people have been touched, many disfigured, devastated by this hell of wildfires. So many animals and birds and plants lost too. We know of no worse peacetime disaster here. It's a huge wakeup call on climate change. In time, some healing will take place. New growth will, we hope, return. Nothing could make this catastrophe worthwhile. We are clutching at embers. But let's hope our sluggish leaders finally start to get the urgency of our world's need for protection from ourselves, and especially from the industries who have callously exploited our naive lack of safeguard regulations against pollution, and the governments who have ignorantly backed them at our great peril. Ignorance is razed. The climate change wolf is over the threshold. The meeting for a new lock may need to be brought forward.