Poems from 2017
Poems written in 2017 by Mingji Liu.
4objects 4people
2017 · Mingji Liu
Four individuals briefly shared a house together in Coburg North. They found each other on Facebook.
10-sided die. Every time I roll this plastic gem, it stumbles on the table and grins at me with empty fate.
His name was Sam. He was a tradie who regaled his housemates with his Tinder escapades. But Sam didn’t actually enjoy dating women, he just kind of did it to annoy his female friends. Sam never got into any serious relationships and after a big skiing accident in August of 2015, he deleted the app and was never quite the same.
A cleavage of rock. I found it too self-assured. But it was also reconstituted and broke, jumbled and glum.
Greg had always wanted to learn ballet ever since he saw Billy Elliot one night on TV when he was little. But his father, a small town lawyer, threatened to belt him and called him a fag. Greg never moved his body to music ever again. Many years later, he refused to dance with his wife on their wedding night. He never told her why.
The pouch. Purple. Radiant. It has a penchant for sarcasm, don’t you think?
As a teen, Evie dabbled with fortune telling, palm reading and horoscopes. After high school, she studied chemistry at UWA but dropped it halfway through. She blamed it on a bad internship at an oil refinery. One arvo, while bumming around the house, she found tarot cards in the kitchen cupboards. She stared at them for a long time.
Matted, synthetic fur. A collection of motes and mulch. It leans over and quickly mumbles: ‘ich ich ich, bitch bitch bitch’.
Audrey was much older than the other housemates. She worked in childcare and wore heavy wool scarfs, even in summer. She owned a rescue dog and kept mainly to herself. No one knew how long she’d lived in the house for. One night, the telly airs an exposé about the earthquake in Nepal. She starts crying and stays in her room for several days.
Four individuals briefly shared a house together in Coburg North. They found each other on Facebook.
10-sided die. Every time I roll this plastic gem, it stumbles on the table and grins at me with empty fate.
His name was Sam. He was a tradie who regaled his housemates with his Tinder escapades. But Sam didn’t actually enjoy dating women, he just kind of did it to annoy his female friends. Sam never got into any serious relationships and after a big skiing accident in August of 2015, he deleted the app and was never quite the same.
A cleavage of rock. I found it too self-assured. But it was also reconstituted and broke, jumbled and glum.
Greg had always wanted to learn ballet ever since he saw Billy Elliot one night on TV when he was little. But his father, a small town lawyer, threatened to belt him and called him a fag. Greg never moved his body to music ever again. Many years later, he refused to dance with his wife on their wedding night. He never told her why.
The pouch. Purple. Radiant. It has a penchant for sarcasm, don’t you think?
As a teen, Evie dabbled with fortune telling, palm reading and horoscopes. After high school, she studied chemistry at UWA but dropped it halfway through. She blamed it on a bad internship at an oil refinery. One arvo, while bumming around the house, she found tarot cards in the kitchen cupboards. She stared at them for a long time.
Matted, synthetic fur. A collection of motes and mulch. It leans over and quickly mumbles: ‘ich ich ich, bitch bitch bitch’.
Audrey was much older than the other housemates. She worked in childcare and wore heavy wool scarfs, even in summer. She owned a rescue dog and kept mainly to herself. No one knew how long she’d lived in the house for. One night, the telly airs an exposé about the earthquake in Nepal. She starts crying and stays in her room for several days.
Rye, VIC, Australia
2017 · Mingji Liu
“Listen! you hear the grating roar
Of pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling,
At their return, up the high strand,
Begin, and cease, and then again begin…”
A POEM BY ME:
2017 · Mingji Liu
Fucking Melbourne winds.
Fucking hay fever.
Fuck everything.
Snot sniffle sniffle.
– Monday, 18 September 2017, 8:48am
6 minutes of summer
2017 · Mingji Liu
A backyard siesta,
we purr with the cat.
Fanning lamb chops,
the flies depart.
Exiting our train,
such blessed coolness.
You howl in agony –
bindis on bare feet.
Ripples of moisture,
shirtless joggers in the park.
Thump on our rooftop.
Neighbours’ lost their cricket ball again.
A vision of industry on the Werribee line
2017 · Mingji Liu
Never on time, has never kept pace,
out in this hoarse and separated place,
this sodden expanse of wedlock
where the brownfields and cold sea meet.
Count the fingers in the tired grass:
hard-frosted fingers flecked with glass,
webbed with tissue paper and riddled
with sharps among the melted sleet.
<Train arriving. Please stand clear.>
<Attention. Train arriving. Please stand clear.>
Enter a carriage of jolted steel,
of teething rail and grinding wheel.
Enter and sit on a plastic seat
kissed with weary hints of ethanol.
The station swiftly sinks from sight
as the grey earth lurches into flight,
leaving behind roughcast homes,
slashed and scrawled with aerosol.
<Attention. Train departing. Please stand clear.>
<Train departing. There is nothing to fear.>
Beyond this window, a blistered field;
the birdless beach, scoured and peeled;
in the distance, a nest of towers,
an occluded and faceless refinery.
A nest of towers, enthralled in smoke,
caged together with cauterised rope,
given purpose by a hundred half-lit
torches that do not face the sea.
So sit back and gaze upon the sprawl,
watch the flames, dire and small,
for it’s hard to depart this purgatory:
this all-consuming vision of industry.
and his skin is the colour of God
2017 · Mingji Liu
Boy is GREEDY.
He snatches mayflies on the bike path,
suspended as they are like sycamore seeds
above the darkling grass.
Snips their paper legs,
their abdomens of glistening treacle.
He sews their hollow frames
into a pendant thread of wings and eyes,
a daisy chain of life and lies.
Boy is HUNGRY.
He harvests dead glass from the freeway.
Beer shells. Car wire. Shreds of tyre.
Sun-stewed upon the gutter broth.
He showers her house in detritus,
throws carnations of wet plastic,
burger wrap lilies and red cup roses.
Offers a bouquet of his world,
so blindly hurled.
Boy is DESPERATE.
His dreams are radio flash and flat batteries,
weakly white and free-to-air.
His bed is wet, pillows clawed.
His limbs are yearning,
and his skin is the colour of God.
Boy is RETCHING.
If only Boy can stretch a little deeper…
into the throat of Boy and yes!
seize BOY and YES
strangle BOY
and BOY can FINALLY
VOMIT the HEART out of BOY
over this unwashed, ungrateful Boy.
Boy is PROPHET.
He feels the spine of the earth
writhe and climax beneath his feet,
the moan and sweat of the moon,
the congress of stars in the evening heat.
Boy is FLOATING.
His lips are coral, his chest is thawed.
His nails, his teeth, his genitals are gone.
And his skin is still
the colour of God.
APOLOGY, scribbled on a burger wrapper. AKA: FUCK YOU EMMA GREY
2017 · Mingji Liu
DEAR E – – a,
I am so sorry for spurting
Grease from the fryer in my skull.
I scalded you with late hour orders,
Limp as damp filet-o-chips.
My special was not on your menu,
My drive-thru voice, weightless as
Pink wrappers on the freeway,
Was not what your tired body needed.
A truck blares past us in the night.
In its lonely wake, I see how impulsive,
How cheap, how self-craving I was,
And even though my belly aches for it,
I do not expect you to forgive my hunger.
E – – a, I just need you to know
I have eaten this burger and I am
Bloated sick with sorry.
I AM FUCKING SORRY
Bird in the air pump
2017 · Mingji Liu
Why have you murdered me ?
what sins must i pay
with suffocation by glass ?
my beak is blood , my wings plucked ,
i do not understand their eyes ,
i cant breathe , i cant breathe ,
do they take pleasure from asphyxiating
one of gods creatures ?
i do not . . why is this . .
hear my soul , it hurts so much ,
throw me in a zoo , teach me to pull levers ,
train me how to dance for grapes ,
ill give you . . give . . give . .
what do you gain from my death ?
from seeing my feathers like a raped gown ?
my eyes like dead marbles ?
mother . . i cant even blink . .
i was a new guinea princeling
born to mate for life among berry filled trees ,
ill do anything , forgive me ,
human child . . moon child . . dove child please
break the glass and give me life ,
give me air ,
stop gawking , beg you sweet child ,
i dont want to fade like this ,
at the bottom of a flask ,
my claws in seizures as i
quench the rapine curiosity of man.
Bridge of sighs
2017 · Mingji Liu
When you wrote that letter of
crippling infatuation and
signed it off with a match, you
stepped onto the Ponte dei Sospiri,
the bridge of sighs
all men must cross on their
long march to life.
If only you had the courage!
(or so you recall yourself) not to
plunge for her with
impassable violence and
whirling rumination,
gut draining the dreams from your
marsh arab heart.
If only sibylline foresight
could have warned you just how
wildly your
buttermilk love, your
soft animal love, could
sour into rancid despair, into
trapped-animal desires.
But all you can do – all any
scorched soul can do – is hold these
lessons close as you
cross over the bridge, above your
gondoliers of mania, and
pray that true love
waits on the other side.
By the creek, a willow tree
2017 · Mingji Liu
By the creek, a willow tree,
In its arms, a grassy nest,
In the nest, an egg breaks free,
From its shell, a chick’s first test.
The branch is high and sun is low,
The chick is soft with tiny wings,
But there is love and time to grow,
The bird is safe – its mother sings.
Churchyard
2017 · Mingji Liu
Tracing around the faded church,
I sight a yellow oak where we
waged war with acorns.
I count a huddle of headstones,
mossy jowls who guided games of tag.
I never noticed their years before.
A puddle warbles under the lychgate.
That face (who stole it?)
This skin (pieces removed?)
My limbs, my lips, my toes ersatz.
A strange Nor’wester rises.
Poached from me, cell by cell,
replaced by changelings in
partly translated fairytales.
Confessional hobbies
2017 · Mingji Liu
Favourite hobbies include
. . . cycling . . .
getting white people to admit they also think white people look the same . . .
it is bourbon . . . and pretending to know psychoanalysis . . .
it is writing unkempt poems about wanting to sleep with confrères . . . mixing anti-depressants (prescribed) with alcohol (self-prescribed) . . .
it is wanting to sleep with confrères . . . and then hating every fibre of my being like the horseshoe crab I am
. . . it is overusing the poo emoji on Facebook . . .
it’s failing to be an active participant in the inter-sectional hurricane of identity politics . . .
and sometimes . . .
it is . . . stargazing . . .
Curios: Altarpiece
2017 · Mingji Liu
-I-
Neustra Señora de los Perdidos. A most curious altarpiece. The shepherds found her on a desolate Chilean coast, beached in the grey, the stone, the semen later of sea foam.
-V-
She was once the prow of a British whaler. A silent witness to its knives, its oils, its thrashing slaughter. Her ship was last seen in November 1820, north of the Chiloé Archipelago.
-IX-
Like conquistadors of old, the shepherds claimed her for their chapel. They cleansed off her barnacles, clothed her in milky blue and gave her eyes of doe brown glass.
-X-
Figurehead made Madonna. She wept lacquer from those eyes. All the while, the shepherds drank beer before evening prayers and went to bed dreaming of wine country.
Curios: Jars
2017 · Mingji Liu
3.
You urged me to seize the
world in pieces.
Before all its colours
returned.
Before someone released all its beautiful battered
stories.
4.
You taught me how to get it
done.
With pins & sweep nets &
killing jars.
With acetate & forceps to handle
the fragile ones.
8.
Afterwards,
you showed me your
collection.
I lost sense of how much
formaldehyde you used, and
I realised how trivial my
own work would be.
12.
Should I have even wanted to
preserve such things?
Suspensions.
Curiosities.
Unmended ones.
Fragments picked over
fragments.
Curios: Wolf
2017 · Mingji Liu
ONE: Wounded wolf. Canis dirus. It limps beneath the black pines, the frosted stars. Severed from the pack, it wanders and waits for the final, ragged gasps of the Pleistocene.
SIX: It tastes the sepia tones in its mouth. It smells the heaviness of its damp and rendered fur. It still feels the mastodon’s tusk against its sides. Thrusting, again and again and again.
SEVEN: Wolf-hunger burns its insides. It has been unable to eat for days. The land around is as empty as the sky above — that pitiless field of brass. It can no longer feel its extremities.
ELEVEN: The wolf imagines a bird carcass in the grass. Blanched feathers, a broken neck. It imagines a toad emerging from the bird. The wolf imagines this and moans.
Delight of seasons
2017 · Mingji Liu
Delight of seasons! Dust of Dionysus!
Liberated from the nubile bloom,
Mixed with a hundred grassy spices
Into a reeling, headwind perfume.
Hayward,
Haywinds and
Haywires.
Time to test man’s immunity lost:
Daub his eyes with blood-shot fires,
Lick with nectar his nasal exhaust.
Haytrials in
Haytimes make
Haythroes.
His soul itches in feeble abandon,
Besieged by the diurnal flows
Of wellspring, ejaculated Eden.
Delight of seasons! Song of seed!
Cursing the sun must be his nature,
Sprays and shots must be his creed.
Hayfiends
Hayfought till
Hayfailure.
Did you ever hear the tragedy of Darth Plagueis the Wise?
2017 · Mingji Liu
Sith legend so ironic one thinks it completely flushed with
dark side derision.
A tip-of-saber comment on naboo hookup culture ignores the
obvious heterodoxy of separatists themselves.
It’s double the pride,
a feint of the most mustafarian sort.
To ignore thunderous applause and clones reordered is to
become grievous with imperial revenge.
So lost, our will to live…
our coruscating transgressions…
Why climb the roots of kashyyyk or
chat with younglings on holonet?
Just sip your blue milk and gaze into the abyss.
I thought not –
it’s not a story the jedi would tell you –
We have bad feelings and unlimited power,
blaster bolts and dealing in absolutes.
How did this happen?
We’re smarter than this!
An inversion and total collapse of ecumenopolity is but
gold plating to our premonitions.
The psychosexual impulse in our midichlorians
makes each of us the senate.
Our senses liberated to light-speed within a
single moment of having the higher ground.
Ducats for poems
2017 · Mingji Liu
Rosie,
I was studying the bookshelf last night,
An odd collection of paperbacks unranked,
Realising how few poetry books it sheltered.
Such pity, for a good poem is like a lullaby
To placate the tired and pillowed mind.
Do you have any poems up for adoption?
I am even willing to trade them for ducats
Lilted in deepest gold and Spanish silver,
For words are worth an inkwell of riches,
Are they not?
eavesdropping on the Frankston Line
2017 · Mingji Liu
– He was a South Africa doctor. – I spent the whole holiday swelled. – You dare tell me about this now? – How nasty. [Laughter] It was voluntary. Now ARRIVING at CAULFIELD* – So then my dad picked him up by his neck. CHANGE here for PAKENHAM and – Horrible. [Giggle] Oh god. CRANBOURNE Services – This bit swelled too much. – Are you off? Are you working? Got a three hour break today. – We got lunch there too. – Ooo! Ooo! – Call me back tomorrow? Ok? Love you. Bye. Ok? – So cute. Babysitting. Puppysitting. – Everyone needs a pug. So cute. – [Click] Billy! – Always down the stairs. – [Shuffle] [Shuffle*] – Inspector’s here… The Inspector’s here…
Final deliverable
2017 · Mingji Liu
APPENDIX D: ‘LIMITATIONS OF OUR VERSE’
D.1 ‘General use restriction’
This poem was prepared for the Australian Government’s crumbling policy biome which necessitates the rise of professional consultancy detritivores. This poem is not intended to and should not be read aloud or skimmed upon by anyone else and we accept no conscience of care to any other person or entity (real or illusory). The poem has been prepared for the purpose of estimating the demand of inchoate writing within a client-confusion advisory practice crawling with proposals, deadlines, and missed Skype for Business messages. You should not refer to or use this disgraced practitioner’s name or advice for any other purpose
final Sunday
2017 · Mingji Liu
My mind is more than nugatory
& my aorta
more than demands
for pink fruit from our lands.
Yet strip me of such baser parts,
like a bike
unseated or unchained,
what living urge is retained?
These daily defeats, humdrums,
abiding apostasies,
remake the most lucent goals
into saccharin for our souls.
We yearn for sterling beings,
but even our loftier selves
need succour & sleep.
or is that too much a cheat?
I pray to enter May strong
enough & mind enough
to etch the honest tones
of patience within my shoulder bones.
Financial statement
2017 · Mingji Liu
Review of operations and financial result
As a key participant in the we-don’t-give-a-fuck market, holding a market share of approximately 39%, it is recognised that the number of fucks-we-give is dependent on a narrow consumer base, with 22% of our no-fucks-given retail performance dependent on a single customer that didn’t-give-a-fuck (2015: 22%). In November 2016, as part of our cost reduction program, it was necessary to reduce the number of fucks-we-gave this year from seventy-four (74) to sixty-nine (69). Redundancy payments totalling 16.2 fucks explain the higher employee benefit expenses this year. The operating result has also decreased to 15.4 fucks (2015: 15.4); this is mainly due to the cost control measures which have allowed us to give-fewer-fucks with a lower proportionate cost base. Revenue from giving-a-fuck investment operations was down on last year (-17%), which is very encouraging and lower than anticipated last year (our expectation was -12%). The key reason for this decrease was the collapse of our online investor portal and downgraded ability to give-a-fuck. Revenue decline in our sort-of-giving-a-fuck consultancy businesses was steady, which was in line with our expectations last year. This steady decline reflects the current global ennui and the fuck reduction measures undertaken by competitors in the market. Fucks-given-per-hour have decreased during the year to 1.33 (2015: 1.33) which has allowed both interim and final fucks-given to be reduced. Our net assets decreased by 43% compared to the previous year, which is largely due our disposal of giving-a-fuck capital assets. The Chairman’s report below contains further information on the ongoing business target of giving zero-fucks during the year.
Fragments 30-37
2017 · Mingji Liu
(30)
_
midsummer snows and autumn eternal.
a lake of boiling ice.
throne dust and golden rags.
a king’s cup of dreamless silver.
_
_
the ruins of this brocade city are stubbornly nomadic.
_
a blackbird laughed at me today on my lunch break.
so i killed it.
crushed it between my toes.
_
(31)
In those ancient, green-bronzed, terracotta times, The King would beseech the Oracle of Court with Great Questions of His Reign: … “Should the Kingdom march against the South?” “Shall Peace be forged through Marriage or Blood?” *“Where will the Spring Palace be built and when should I go Elephant Hunting?” … *And in those ancient, jade-faced, knife-coined times, The Oracle would cast a turtle into the flames, And read the cracks upon its ashen shell, To render fortune out of heavenly woe! The drums of war from a nation’s fall! The fate of wonders and fall of dynasties! All was foretold by the Oracle of Court.
(32)
I hope the little child crushing stray acorns with the root of his heels finds music with every footfall. I hope girl down the hall with windy hair and vinyl tracks converts everyone to veganism with her awkward waning smile.
(33)
_
the pacific ocean is lobbying congress to be black on sundays.
red on tuesdays. green on wednesdays.
dead on fridays.
_
news cycles and dream cycles.
tram stops and body swaps.
we’re on our phones.
we’re on our own.
_
_
we’re on our phones.
we go so slow.
we go so slow.
i feel
_
so old.
_
_
(34)
But even today, in these secular, peaceable times, We too are able to beseech the Oracle with Great Questions of Our Lives: … “Which stocks should I invest in FY 2017-18?” “Will happiness come from swiping Left or Right?” “Should I get the iPhone 7? I think I’d miss having a headphone jack.” … All that is needed is a paperback translation of The I Ching, Available on Book Depository for $18.95 (International shipping included). And to call upon its wisdom requires Neither turtles nor Oracles of Court. Only a handful of yarrow stalks, Or some 5 cent pieces will happily suffice. … However, in these occidental, well-managed times, It is perhaps best to open the I Ching and ask Great Questions of Our Age From the privacy of one’s own bedroom, Perhaps while Drunk or after a Smoke, Hidden from the sheepish glow of oddity, Lest your housemates think You a Superstitious Crank.
(35)
They speak many languages in the wine-houses and whore-mills of the Cult Republic. Thayne, also called the pale speech. Norvhul, the tongue of graces. Mauor, the pigdin of the Mother Lakes.
But in the darker, more arcane canal-ways and hive-hotels of the city, one can occasionally hear exotic words of Ohorn, from the blackstone cities. Sospyri, trade-speech of the Venetian chattel ships. Or even the basilect noises of Byleshi, spoken only by those born to the damnable Kyminth Legions.
In these ill-lighted parts of the Republic, a single utterance, a single cryptic phrase can have unintended consequences. Words here can hold a desperate power. They can open locks, gather knives, or even take on a strange, nebulous life of their own…
(36)
– she stares out at
the Slovak mountains
in beauty
– her eyes kissed
with the lightest crow’s feet
– her hair
chocolate ropes
– she holds her mother’s whip
– swings her father’s hips
– woman in a half-torn shirt
gazes upon the pines
(37)
The GOLDEN CULT, also known as the STARVELING FAITH or the CHURCH OF CASCARA, has existed along the shores of the Craven Sea since time immemorial. They serve a great and powerful being known to the laity as the GOD-IN-AMBER or STARVELING KING. The clergy have also called it the GOLDEN LORD, the EMACIATED ONE, the EATER-OF-KNIVES, or the HOLLOW-GOD. Travellers and investigators that have returned from these parts report that the church is controlled by an INNER CIRCLE, privy to the starry mysteries of the faith. Only they knows the true name of the being and only they are allowed to “feed” it. Reports also indicate the WITCH-PRIESTS and LOW DEACONS of the church have started preaching from two new holy texts: THE SIGILS (a the book of freshly acquired visions) and THE SIGNS (a tome of redacted hymns and prayers). In sermons, they claim that unless their deity is properly “fed”, the living and the dead alike will remain forever liminal in the mist and streams and branches of this material world.
Fragments 38-48
2017 · Mingji Liu
(38)
Eleven in the morning. A screw is being drilled into the hallway next to the lift. SCREEEEEEEEEEE. Its demented screech floods the office. Every five seconds or so, the banshee stops, catches her breath, and then screams even SCREEEEEEEEEEEE. I fear it’s intent on becoming a permanent tenant on our floor. There is no escaping this orgasm of SCREEEEEEEEEEEE. Unable to work, I feel physically sick.
(39)
– she wanders curious
the graffiti alleys of
Lebanon
– the sandy shores of
Egypt
– in Jordan
she climbs a lion-shaped rock
– smokes her first shisha pipe
(40)
• Babblebrook • Candlebark •
• Foxberries • Feathercouch •
• Bumblechairs • Kittengrass •
• Whisperwall • Dreamtea •
• Hawkpost • Slumbergrove •
• Whimsydew • Gurgleford •
(41)
• bark bread • shoe toast •
• coat roast • sawdust cake •
• diesel wine • plywood fries •
• wallpaper steak • offal cream •
• ashtray salad • voided stew •
• toe burger • grout porridge •
(42)
– in Jordan
she shares a French man
– he plans on
hitchhiking from Brisbane
down to Adelaide
– they meet the following year
at Southern Cross station
– she drives him to Northern Victoria
where they make love in
a motel room
in some dusty
town in Northern Victoria
(43)
WILD LANCERS. Hunters of the Great Forest, brawlers of the Low Woods. Fearless mantis riders, matchlock rifles for hire. More at home with the howling trees than among the villages and towns that huddle the Craven Sea.
KNIFE KEEPERS. Accountants of the Golden Cult. Loan-weavers and debt-collectors for aristocrats and merchant families desperate enough to go to bed with the Starveling Faith. Named after the golden knife-shaped “coins” minted by the cult.
(44)
[[Most KEYHOLES lead absolutely nowhere. The probes and exploratory shuttles simply go in and are never heard from again. Others lead to deadly magnetars, crimson hypergiants, ancient rogue planets, or simply exit into the desolate emptiness of intergalactic space. Debate continues among the academies as to whether these exit points are located in neighboring star systems, distant galaxies, or (in the wildest theories) other parallel universes.]]
(45)
– what is a pier but a disappointed bridge?
– maybe it is not so
– but in those towns, alleyways
memories I have never been
nor will ever feel
she stares out into alps
and fills them
with tender beauty
(46)
TEMPLE COURTESANS. Temple prostitutes of the highest order within the Golden Cult. Perfumed mistresses of the embassy temples. Famed priestesses in many port cities. Their carnality is law. Their silken beds: sacred altars to nameless rites.
SIRINS. Harpy-like beings that stalk the long shadows of monk pine and wolfbeam. Known for their mournful songs and razor claws. Elusive and territorial, they possess the bodies of birds, clawed wings, and humanesque faces bound by jeweled masks.
(47)
Dearest diary ->
Today, for the first time ever, the pizza delivery guy that came to our door was actually a pizza delivery girl – or rather, a pizza delivery WOMAN! My god! It’s 2017! What a time to be alive!
Do you ever think about how we automatically assume all food delivery employees are male?
No, of course not
Because you’ve only ever thought about yourself.
(48)
[[I had a terrible dream that a powerful hyperintelligence controlled the entire HUMAN EMPIRE… It was an immense MATRIOSHKA BRAIN caged around an unassuming red dwarf. With its omnipotent cognition, it ruled over every biological soul in the Orion-Cygnus Arm. In my dream, countless swarms of its consciousness - manifest in self-replicating constructs - spread out across the cosmic string network and exacted perfect dominion over the ringholds and shellworlds of humanity…]]
Glass: Revisited
2017 · Mingji Liu
It’s salted like an open cut mine,
Stripped to slivers between whetstone teeth,
A sticky suck upon root-stem-and-gum.
I was here for you, Iscah.
Loitering in the flicker of a cinématograph,
Deer-caught with ghost moon eyes.
Mother hawked our double-jointed tapestry;
While Sister loosed a gentile quiver
Against the axheads picketing New Brighton bay.
A grandiose cliché becomes fertile in time –
Of sunflower heads, drooping grotesques,
Made gnomons to the thrashing summer.
Even now (or ever now) I ask:
Shall I join your glassy bed,
Damaged by silverfish, dismounted in divorce,
Where callow reeds prick your ruby cheeks?
Or should we split like paper boats
In shouldered dark,
As lost as moths and pubic hair
Indentured under
Theatre lights?
gristmill
2017 · Mingji Liu
when you shun the millstone
gibbeted round my neck,
when you refuse the groan
as burrstone chafes my hide
and silica pestles my shoulder,
you cast quern-stones at my pride
and turn the grinding colder.
do you realise the humiliation
scissored against my spine?
you speak deflections, say others
shall share this millstone of mine,
even though the furrows I accrue,
the dull, undressed harps I bear
were carved to spill my flour for you.
this suffocating grey matter,
your insufferable grey words,
spindle lazy about my collar,
roll grains to broken squalor.
how can I stand this? how can I stand?
a stone is a stone is a stone is a stone,
and this one gives no bread,
only a moan.
Hangover
2017 · Mingji Liu
Asleep on the couch,
A crook in the neck.
Ouch!
Jarring scribe
2017 · Mingji Liu
Jarring finger, it stings like the purple joints.
Raw and ephemeral
I bind it, ritualise it, make it unable to even type upon a board.
I think of scribes in ancient Egypt
condemned to be buried alive
when the hieroglyphs are finished.
“Beware thee who enter”
They say, and are slaughtered
To rest with their masters.
I am a jar in a scribe
a scribe in a jar he writes
in writ in chisel in spoke
Begone! The gibbous knot,
The ribbons rot
Clop clop clop clop.
Yet his words are like nothing I have seen before,
his bones will die forgotten, his words will endure.
I will last for many to come,
But my words are nevermore.
The jarring of my finger,
A warning that I cannot work
Move, fulfil motion
In injury, speak with the tongue-tips of my hands.
Alas, alas, alas,
My finger my finger my finger.
Egress -
Regress, redress this internal blood stained hand.
The sandstone pillars,
White as scorpions shed skin.
Here lies the water,
The bone in my hand.
jellie pools recreation & sport centre
2017 · Mingji Liu
call me freestyle call me wetdog call me bubbleface as i otterflap butterfail doggybob my way down slow lane slower than crayfish in chinafood aquarium i will paddlebathe the chlorine slipstream of aqua agua eau as my insectfrogseal tightplastic bulbous eyes reverse periscope down at thermae romae tiles blue so carribean blue i imagine chelonia mydas no even more exotic slimy osanshouo i forget the latin dipping abreast rather than snorkel foampad beergutter overtaking my amphibious largo which is more sostenuto than bikini showergirl or puffplay watertorus tot just focus on up down repent repeat kick kick side to side then six year old me spots shard of shit also k as human faeces in sunken planetoid out in oort cloud of shallow end he calls for lifeguard over and she has to fish it with long white net because no matter what this pool can never close.
Kata Tjuta
2017 · Mingji Liu
Rocks
Rocks.
rocks.
ROCKS.
rocks?
Rocks!
rocks
r(o)cks
R o c k s
R-ocks
r,o,c,k,s
rOCks
ROC!KS
rock~s
ro;cks
Roc_ks
R0ck5
Rocks *
* Cultural hegemony, as formulated by the Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci, argues that a dominate group cannot sustain power through threat of physical violence alone. It must dominate the superstructure of ideology and belief systems also. As such, the invasion of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander nations by Europeans was sustained not only through the use of state violence but also through an intellectual hegemony which espoused concepts such as terra nullius.
Ketogenesis
2017 · Mingji Liu
Ketogenesis:
A diet in three macros
Po-ta-to, po-ta-to, to curse upon a spud,
Let all foods starched return to the mud.
Reject your rice and repudiate your pasta;
Sinful saccharides bring dietary disaster.
Break your addiction to all carbohydrates,
A nutrient unneeded by us portly primates.
Beware your pantry where sugars pollute,
In sauces, cereals, and tins of cheap fruit.
Only bodies purged of sweet unpleasantness
Are worthy of entering a state of ketogenesis.
Humble lipids, misunderstood for so long,
An oily weapon to strike hunger head-on.
Offer an olive branch to butter and cream;
Confirm avocados have a place on your team.
Yes, there are dangers with saturated fats,
Hydrogenated horrors in old frying vats,
But ignore the damn lies about fatty cuts,
There’s nothing to fear in your cashew nuts.
Count your macros and fats will be fuel,
Converted into a brawny, bulk burning tool.
Sloughed off the farm: pork chop and lamb.
Fished from the ocean: trout, oyster, clam.
There’s protein galore in flesh of the chook,
In tempeh and eggs for the merciful cook,
Or double down on organ, tail, or trotter,
Like a paleo savage who sips bone water.
Regardless its source, nine acids you need,
Chains of amino to build a complete feed.
More protein, good fats, exiling the carb,
Ensures in springtime you’ll fit a tight garb.
Komusō
2017 · Mingji Liu
man of nothing
breathes the flute
hears the alms
thoughts are mute
man of cloth
head in reeds
feels the road
empty of needs
Latter-day sigils
2017 · Mingji Liu
| A jarred finger|
Squeeze the infant purple
|
skin.
|
Bind it, ritualise, and remake it through
cotton and tears.
| My dizzy spell |
Processed in a boilermaker from
|
black curly accusations:
|
“YOU ARE SO SHIT AT SOCIALISING”.
| Rubber band ligation |
Knocked out on Friday for this
gut-purged,
|
brusque-priced,
|
stick-from-ass removal.
| Bruxism |
It’s getting worse each night,
|
isn’t it?
|
(I’m worried the pills are doing it.)
| The unrequited 4.0 |
One a plant, two a feather, three a shade,
now I hurt from something played.
|
Broken hip, constant malice,
thrown off the back, Bucephalus.
| Our sleep |
Addresses, depresses, then
regresses my
|
hollow groin.
|
A truly unremarkable dream.
Memetic with 1995 wings
2017 · Mingji Liu
The earth is a bloodsucker, dispatched to guzzle.
.
.
Despite all my anger
I am still just a mouse in a hanger.
.
Despite my lack of composure
I am still just a rodent in an enclosure.
.
Despite all my gloom
I am still just a vole in a room.
.
Despite all the times I yell
I am still just a varmint in a cell.
.
Despite my mood on the rocks
I am still just a guinea pig in a box.
.
Despite my poor temper
I am still just a hamster in a containment centre.
.
Despite all my rancour
I am still just a gerbil in a space with no door.
.
Despite all my hotheadedness
I am still just a chinchilla detained without due process.
.
Despite my great vexation
I am still just a gopher in its own station.
.
Despite all my ferocity
I am still just a prairie dog in a —
.
Despite all my wroth
I am still just a jerboa in a —
.
Despite my big hissy fit
I am still just a capybara in a pit.
.
.
Morning bean
2017 · Mingji Liu
On Union Street,
a single roasted bean is asked
to lather a cup in coruscant black.
Blasted from a stainless barrel,
the nous of its aroma
hisses the yawning hours of our day.
As the bean surges our cup,
we wonder its humble journey:
Was it lonely
when Khalid first found it
on that forgotten goat track?
Did it feel astray
when it first docked Venice
on ships of silk and saffron?
And is it proud at last
knowing that in backstreet cafes
it stirs our lives with plastic spoons?
O little morning bean —
I have not tasted you in hours.
Opacious opodeldoc
2017 · Mingji Liu
Opacious opodeldoc,
Blood spurt out his pock.
The leeches were set,
The blood was let!
Opacious opodeldoc.
Ungracious opodeldoc,
His spew was yellow from shock.
Mercury was rubbed,
The liniment blubbed!
Ungracious opodeldoc.
Vexatious opodeldoc,
His bile was black as a rock.
A tincture of opium,
Was swallowed in odium.
Vexatious opodeldoc.
Fallacious opodeldoc,
Phlegm dripped down his smock.
So they trepanned his head,
And now he is dead…
Fallacious opodeldoc!
Pebbles
2017 · Mingji Liu
Deep in the nest of Carlton North
You confessed to my Shiraz how you
Wanted a boy to fling
Pebbles at your bedroom glass
Then a geologist shall be yours!
A fool to trebuchet your double glaze!
Find me stones to commit such a fault
How about this pebble?
Quartz-starred and porous
This inky, blue disc?
Igneous – I’m not really sure
What about this rock?
Shaped like a frag grenade
This petrified clod?
I dug it from the tomato bed
Or this brick?
Bricks are made of pebbles (aren’t they?)
In dearest honesty
I’d rather fling my own gastroliths
Than dry swallow your Friday
Night misadventures once more
I tingle with petty violence, yes,
Anything to stop you
Flirting with my wine cellar
Petrichor
2017 · Mingji Liu
‘Petrichor’
Mother blood on an agar plate
How can such officious
Pyrex word
Know heady
Fragmented joy?
I am not well
Enough to learn
The séance of rain
Finger tapping
Spirits off parchment earth.
Yearned deep from dunia
Dukkah within land.
First rains release
A childish sigh
from country Victoria dirt.
playing blizzard sounds on YouTube to bury the sound of her voice
2017 · Mingji Liu
Bbbbbuuurrrrrr
Hhhzziiiizzzzzz
– hahah
Bzeeezz Bzeeezz
Wyyyyyrrrrrrr
Pippiippippipirpiriirrr
Oouououu Wouououu Wouoouu
-weekend
ssSssoohohohoo Ssssohoohoo
nnNNNuuuuMMMummm
-he’s
ooOOOiiiimmmmmmm
-he seems
yrl yrll yrrrllll yllllllrrrrrrrr
RhrrrrrRhrrrrrrr
– nice
Zzzzzzhhhhhhh zhhhhh
Wooooooooooossssssssh
Returning home from Warrnambool.
2017 · Mingji Liu
The clouds blind white
Mindless on the wall.
The clouds sterile noon
Brandishing the sky.
Like cotton inside my couch
Electrified and pure.
A part of me died
Holding it with my eyes.
When I saw your marriage
A part of me fell into white.
Sabato St trees
2017 · Mingji Liu
The rocking chair creak
of old windward trees,
their arthritic arms reach
the blue sky and speak.
A dark, sun-dried hand
with green nails of wax,
plucks moans in the air,
on strings laced with sand.
I once heard the claim
magpies sing for pleasure,
now in your backyard
I learn trees do the same.
Sharing a moment at the fire pit with someone who wants nothing to do with you
2017 · Mingji Liu
Flicker-washed, your auburn hair,
Shadow-plays along your nose,
We share this fire, lashed to its glare,
We follow its dance, its leaps and lows.
I steal a glance across the pit,
I smile across the flames to you,
Your hoodied frame, your face half-lit,
The embers inside, I wish you knew.
Why am I warming for your gaze?
Yearning the beauty that you hold?
I fear I burn with a besotted blaze,
Blinding me with char and coals.
We nestle in as logs turn black,
The night is chilled and hour late,
But the sting I feel is ash-cold lack,
As I recall the boys you date.
A fragile moth zigzags the air,
A little Icarus drunk in flight,
The crack of wood – A sudden flare –
The moth is taken by the light.
I slide myself onto the lawn,
Roll a Winfield, let my lungs decay.
I need the smoke to forget a swan.
Your smile fades. You shrink away.
She dreamt she was a heart of paper
2017 · Mingji Liu
She dreamt she was a heart of paper,
Paper so sheer that even the timid breeze
Would crumble her with a mother’s touch.
She dreamt she was a dandelion child,
Gliding above a sea of starry grass
As she floated towards the vacant lot.
Like others, she shared a dream of falling.
Like some, she never caught the landing.
Her dreams were tended on fragile fields,
But she would rise to morning frailer still.
silence is an endangered thing
2017 · Mingji Liu
H ollow ed
I nside .
E verything’ s
R an sacked,
O blite rated,
G one .
L ike wise,
Y ou r
P oe try
H a s
S topped .
N o t
E v en
V io lent
E n counters
R etain ed
M eaning ,
O r
R emain ed
E nter taining.
space and stars and shit
2017 · Mingji Liu
the STARS | they all spit down on you
the MOON | she aims her piss on you
while the SUN | that feverish yellow child
whores and steals the young and mild.
these milky scars | this river of salt
they’ve sired such a brood of drakes
their wings are scale and guilt and ache.
great worms once roamed forgotten lights
they bedded nebulae | seeded the sky
ate the cosmos up and slowly died.
you wonder if peregrines still exist
roving the webways | the dire gulf
errant beyond the heavens herself.
(sky beyond sky!
lies upon lies upon lies!)
the STARS | their spit is all on you
the MOON | her piss is down on you
you hold a SCOPE | a spiteful glass
there’s something spoiled in the void at last.
Temple Park
2017 · Mingji Liu
In April, Temple Park
whistles with the sleepy rhythm
of an idle swing.
The basketball court is empty.
Elm trees hang their shrivelled green
on warm, throbbing winds.
A necklace of water hits the bark,
scouting the advance
of a brooding cloudhead.
The picnic recedes
with a bump of strollers and deck chairs.
In tide of night, the tawny frogmouth
squats dusky silent on a power line,
barely regarding the silhouettes
walking their dogs.
The 20th day
2017 · Mingji Liu
on the 20th day our humble Lord
was on the verge of resting thrice,
yet I have scratched a score of verse,
one poem each day my sacrifice.
seized I have this literary month
with greenest zeal, imperfect sight;
committed to wield my puny pen
for April entire – to write! to write!
venerable rome marked this day XX,
like teenage byes on wayward notes,
but kisses don’t aid Parnassian trials —
a war of books, of letters and quotes.
spite creative fatigue, compose I must,
last the challenge to push through;
thou must live the poet’s praxis and
above all: to thine own blog be true.
The First
2017 · Mingji Liu
The First to see it must’ve been a child,
or someone turned child-like in the
stumble.
She would’ve been bounding under Joshua trees,
practicing leapfrogs over sun-raked rocks.
Chasing after a crow, perhaps?
(Against mum’s wishes, of course.)
Racing the desert till suddenly
she finds herself on the edge of sky itself.
Tiptoes on a precipice, where the earth in front
simply fell like monsoon rain.
A thousand years later, an interloper mapping
passage down the Colorado would ink its contours,
call it Grand.
But she was here before,
the First to tremble at its soaring wound,
the First to stare in wonder at its dizzy cliff walls.
She wouldn’t have known what to call it,
only that it existed. Sheer canyons of imagination.
The Gardener, a response
2017 · Mingji Liu
A response to The Gardener by Mary Oliver
Every heart knows hardship.
Every face feels loneliness.
Look at my hands,
brown and calloused.
Look how slowly they tend your garden.
I have learnt the pain of nettles, and
the bite of winter’s earth.
I have raged at the death of tulips, and I have
grieved for saplings, drowned by rain.
If these roses are my children, and I
their simple father, then who should you be?
A friend? My employer?
Sister?
This gum tree
2017 · Mingji Liu
WE slept beneath a gum tree once,
Under its oils and the scribbly bark,
While the cold stars
Coursed like blood between our fingertips.
Adrift in that Brindabella night,
I felt the dew trace the contours of my breasts,
And smelt the buttermilk smell of your semen on my thighs.
I could even feel the salt of your stubble
Shivering on my tongue
As we lay, half entwined, on a bed
Of gumnuts and leaf litter.
Under that dark glow of leaves,
You whispered to me,
‘Marie, Marie,’
Of memories and time
And time enough.
‘Who were the lovers that made the universe entire?’
The answer escaped me.
‘Where are the trees that crack and whip like bone and sinew?’
Again, I could not reply.
Like the trees,
My response was only silence and
Time and time enough.
TODAY, mother called again.
Ten o’clock. I was still in bed.
‘Marie, Marie,’ she said,
‘There’s a bushfire on Mount Bimberi.
Did you see it on the news this morning?’
Yes. In my mind I saw it all –
A bowl of fire, laced with white silver,
Burning deep into the uncut earth.
‘I heard there were children in the area,
A Scouts group. Isn’t that just terrible?’
Burning deep into the quickening earth.
Even under these linen sheets,
I hold the fever heat
Of your fingernails on my neck.
Even within these sallow walls,
I bear the coolness
Of dry leaves under my feet.
Weightless, I crawl out of bed.
Voiceless, the branches tremble overhead.
ONCE, in a half forgotten dream,
I stood before a softly burning city.
It mocked me with its mewling light
As I pleaded with its tumbled walls.
‘Why did you spare Rahab?’
I cried.
‘Was she not I?’
I cried again.
‘How could you be so cruel?’
I screamed.
How long and sweet she would have burned
As tinder and flesh for the soldiers.
OPEN your doors, O Lebanon, that a fire may feed on your cedars.
NOW I am as the lovers who made the universe entire.
I am as the trees that cracked and whipped my bones, my sinews.
Staggering through this lullaby of seasons,
This heat death of starry nights,
Collecting the dew among the leaf litter,
Collecting the dew against my breasts.
Is there not the bush on my skin?
Is this not the answer you wanted?
Marie, Marie,
You told me,
Of memories and time enough.
Marie, Marie,
You whispered,
This gum tree is charred.
Tram stops.
2017 · Mingji Liu
Chimes its bell. Space-doors open.
Beep aboard (and mind the smell).
Still room left. A simple reward.
Shuffle in tight. Rumbles its heft.
Earbuds in tangles. Try as you might.
Folks bump in. Without any wrangles.
Kid on his phone. Commuter’s chagrin.
“No longer inside… the Free Tram Zone”
People slough away. Vacate the ride.
Can finally relax. After a long workday.
Taxicab streaks. In front of the tracks.
Tram halts on a wing. Then shrieks:
“Ding! Ding! Ding! Ding! Ding! Ding!”
Verses of a kindled brain
2017 · Mingji Liu
A.
COULD THEY FEEL THE DEMONS I TRACKED IN?
B.
CUPS OF TEA LIKE BOUQUETS.
C.
SOBBING ON THE FLOOR AFTER A DESPERATE DINNER.
D.
SPINNING DISTRESS OF THEM BEING TOGETHER.
E.
A TENUOUS RED NOTEBOOK AT CHRISTMAS.
F.
GIRLS WITH FLOWER NAMES BECAME BIRD NAMES.
G.
TERRIBLE REQUESTS TYPED OVER AND OVER.
H.
WHISKEY BLACKOUT FROM ABJECT WANT.
I.
LOST MY SOUL IN THE CAR TO WARRNAMBOOL.
J.
TRAUMA AND HR MEETINGS.
K.
BECAME GIRLS WITH FLOWER NAMES AGAIN.
L.
PAIN ONCE MORE OF TWO PEOPLE TOGETHER.
M.
AM I TOO WEAK FOR THIS STATION?
Wolf-hunger
2017 · Mingji Liu
Learning how to live without.
A cliché apart from class of pain:
No fibrous harm;
Nor hope inflamed;
Withheld roots, disease of brain.
Wolf, he’s learnt to howl all three,
Traipsing solus the sunken pines.
Yet beasts starved on outcaste shame
Are wretched still on halcyon days,
Muted mutt to riverbird whines.
Maelstroms drown his mind,
Omega to a Lucian joke.
These portent waves
Asperse his bones;
His fur, a faithless cloak.
This endless wolf-hunger.
This echoing dog-want.
Can he eject its lowsome mewl?
Emptiness will eat the wolf.
Eternal, he will feel its haunt.