Unexcelled Yoga Class

considered foundational in the central tantric
yoga of burning the inner fury-fire from the navel
centre of the yogin, to melt the innermost subtle
drops of awareness, which then flow down to suffuse
the throat and heart with bliss

while chanting
misunderstood words on a roll
up mat

or making a daisy
chain into a necklace to wear
like a nurse

back in the old days
when uniforms
were pristine and flowed

like Tasmania's water
not to mention the landscape
in the 'Lonely Planet'

guide for tourists
thinking the town I live in
is not an attractive one

especially for subtle awareness,
the kind that opens
the throat

is found elsewhere
despite a man from India
deciding to teach yoga

in the room
next to the orange
one where you place your hand

on a special machine
predicting physical ailments
you pay fortnightly visits to be fixed.

(italics - taken from MANDALA - The Architecture of Enlightenment,
Leidy and Thurman)

Letters

slip from his fingers
as careless
as words he said he didn't mean to make waves
crashing winter when they walked
on the beach
she said she had drowning
dreams without mentioning she floated so far away
she wondered where 
she went and how and if she would return
and in the end she didn't
although his jealousy
said she should which is more
or less
typical at the end of an affair.

She Named Him Hermes

It wasn't that he was mercurial
although he liked to think she fancied
his intellect,

the idea he had winged feet,
that he flew through the night and by morning
looked so mild

curled up in his bed,
you'd think he was harmless, a child
laughing as he wriggles his toes,

benign as any new day before being saturated
by the secret of change
taking her to hell. 

He bruised her arm, then used his Hermes cunning
when he said the slave
bracelet she wore was the cause.

The moon rose out of the sea like Aphrodite.
Hermes didn't notice
the siren

throwing red light inside
or the knock on the door by the police
who watched as he packed,

leaving skid
marked underpants
steaming on the bedroom floor.

(The moon rose out of the sea like Aphrodite - George Seferis)

Island Of The Betel Nut Tree

You trigger salivation
like a curry
paste from Penang

which comes from the modern
Malay
and means island

of the betel nut tree.

Betel nut
has a mysterious
flavour

a little like chocolate,

gritty like dirt.
A morning chew
wears off my mid-afternoon

leaving an appetite 

for other forms of olfactory
communication,
the sort which makes me swear

you're more important
than you think.

The Resting Place

Behind the fifth left
intercostal space, 8-9 cm from the
mid-sternum, or about 4 cm below
and 2 mm to the medial side of the left

mammary papilla
lies the apex
of his heart although I wasn't thinking
this when I lay

listening to his heart beat.
The word atrium came to mind
and for a long time, I couldn't name
the rest of his heart.

It wasn't until he left
my house
to go back to his
I had an afternoon nap

in the place he said he was too satisfied
and would try and find some angst
but he came back
almost smug like a half-smile

with lips half-closed
when I thought the muscular
connection known to exist
between the atria

and the ventricles is different
from the silence
of the resting place, the moment his heart
is so still his mouth

could be his belly
the way he talks
from the diaphragm