I would be a statue too if you asked: 2x poems by Jason Gray
MALCONTENTS PAGE (FOR PLAYAS ONLY)
Choose Your Psycho-Realm:
--> Narcissphere
Psychopath Zone
Sociopath Skies
Choose Your Character (The Other Will Be Your Shadow):
Playa Zero
Disembodied Spirit absorbed by Your Psycho-Realm
--> Playa One
Florent – Wannabe Searcher, Misfit, not Hero, not Anti-Hero
Old Sandstone House
I
…
II
scrambling across the strangling lawn
I lean forward into my hoodie pockets
new Autumn is a middle child here
this pebbled earth skirts dearth, this sibling
brother sweats the bus queue
to him, I’m stuck, still sinking sandstone
twisting a copper tap to refresh
dry aching, drooping face droplets
fake tears, bleakness not mine
I love, expand this heart park
heavy in dank protrusions, a convict rebellion
sitting in cafes convinced, scullion!
I eat sunshine, lawn loud and soft
Can you hear me? I am mobile, unmuffled.
More than dry clean digits
A M’Aussie! Koolie on-deck
pushed up and outta dank
tudes, sinking rhythms
glowing gold arm-skin
a lit vacancy, my chest cave.
I match my window brother,
hot rubber aisle tween us home
III
Shoulders built
on sandstone “““grudges”””
I am humble shadows
Bristling lawn secrets
Indian myna scuffles
cockatoo wreckage,
falling of bark shards
to fake flat earth.
Hiding between pages
And timetable apps
Dwelling populus shot
Palm burns robotic
Fuck fear coffins
Sleek shunting
Rock rap skin
Classical chagrin
It's just a building.
Go inside, unlock
rusty tongues
Dust off grins, congress
IV
I wanted to announce I have shut the gate
but my hands are still plastered, sucking
up against the rough terrain of autumn sandstone
and my spine is up against it too. Shoulder blades
though are massaged, car-keyed encounters
looming grey buildings, centring
wallflower park, stand centre-stage
No scaffold or shackle for lighting or leaf
V
what records do you keep close
sunlit daze, masking shadows?
is it surface or sediment
can we ply it as one sea stone?
VI
look I can tell you're bored
bleak happiness unbounded
glorified passive rock cottage
just tell me what you want
listen, tucked into windows
wrought sunken iron
deserted meadowless grass
I would be a statue too if you asked
see I would bound the staircase
grand old Parra shack
put up shut up.
I am boring
sleek blandness unlit
VII
I am ruled unreal time
husk of echo dust
mineral collision
staring at smooth wooden floor
afraid of noise
clutching necklace quartz
planning for unlikely fires
VIII
I can slam heavy zoo door
to make it click
I can shut gates to what’s past
I can scrub or polish history to a grim shine
I can eat and chunder beef leaf and lawn
And I can too ignore
my own chores
my own random abdomen
dusty next-day drunk
(and bend myself elephant trunk
and salivate under still tongue)
still mind military precision
I can belt myself
into a hard-heart form
Sip wine from goblet
Leave canned brine shelved
I could also push this house close
leave this hell of fallen stalks
And I will
burn museum
burn museum, I
Wick and wax quick
Will
descend
singed
fingertips
to talk
IX
I will sleep easy
unbound stone
wrapped beach
matted silt
proof to all weather
inside or outside
a definite
welcome
X
barter x trouble
seductive
suction cup palms
clutch the wall
rainbow lizard, Sugar Beach
atomised tourist
a global fragment
lapping up sun
(selfie incarnate)
seed on rock on boulder
remove tongue
carve a heartstone
atop headstone
dig a sandpit
not a grave
XI
…
XII
Shaking off the shackles
Boyhood mud
Slung dogshit
I had to unlearn everything.
These poems are an excerpt from HAUNT (THE KOOLIE) by Jason Gray.
Throughout February 2020 Subbed In is donating $10 from every sale of HAUNT (THE KOOLIE) by Jason Gray to the Indigenous Literacy Foundation. Only 36% of Indigenous Year 5 students in very remote areas are at or above national minimum reading standards, compared to 96% for non-Indigenous students in major cities. ILF makes a difference to the lives of Indigenous families by not only gifting thousands of new culturally appropriate books—with a focus on early literacy and first language—but also by running programs to inspire the communities to tell and publish their own stories.
HAUNT (THE KOOLIE) is experimental poetry about growing up bi-cultural; a neo-Coolie meditation, exorcism of racial bigotry and satire of fear-mongering, from a decolonial Mauritian-Australian perspective.
Mauritian culture is too often known in the West for the dodo: an extinct, flightless bird who inhabited the island and died out during European colonisation.
Suburban mainstream yachts grow, giant
weeds in driveways, outlaw
gutter trophies, never seem to
Like! Find water?
But: I am Black enough to hold
the Whiteness in me
on me and @-me, account without counting
a graceless film-fade into seething light
hide colour, enlighten or die
settling, whiny-rewind VHS scores
(At Aussie, we’ll save you!)
Jason Gray is a Mauritian-Australian writer who has lived mainly in North-West and South-West Sydney, and writes towards and about youth, being Xennial/Millennial, bi-cultural and a Person of Colour, pop culture and forms of media, toxic/White patriarchal and restorative/progressive masculinity, anti-racism, anti-colonialism, displacement, suburbia, home and staying kind in this late (anti-)capitalist hellscape. Twitter @jasongray85
