The Perfect Diary is in a week-to-an-opening format, with a work by a contemporary Australasian artist or writer featured every week.

Below you can find the works by our contributors that appeared in the months of July, August and September of The Perfect Diary 2005.

You can see works from previous months and years by using the links at the bottom of this page.

Bettina Kaiser
Childhood omen, foreboding my future life in Australia acrylic on paper

I love that
          airport-headiness.
That heightened-emotioned
          thickening
          of the airless, too-conditioned air,
that suspendedness.

The departing business men
          buying for their wives
lacy contrition in a C-cup
          in lingerie boutiques;
the arriving business men
          getting knickered-out
with racy, flimsy things
          for mistresses.

The over-stuffed toy koalas
          wielding giant felt gum leaves
          like weapons
the over-sized ken done T-shirts
the over-priced chocolate boxes
          that won't pass through customs anyway.

The bent-backed,
          dragging baggage
          almost bigger than themselves.
The red-faced weeping,
          the hysterical hugs.
Those in-transit,
          groany-limbed and grating-jointed
          on impossibly hard plastic chairs,
flicked-through glossy magazined
          and soft-washed-over walkmanned,
bored brain-dead,
          glass-eyedly inert,
even the children too listless
          to pull at each other's hair
          or ask if they're nearly there-

that waiting,
all that waiting,
time taxiing past
          so slowly by the tarmac,
all that waiting.

The mad mingling-
          the turbans
          the urbanites
          the backpackers
          the briefcases
the strange music
          of muddled-in languages,
that irrelevance
          of origin, and destination,
that suspension.

That suspendedness
          between arriving and departing
in bigger cities
and broader lives-

That all-portending
          airport-headiness
          I love.

Fiona Wright

 

A Captured Man

In the game of truth or dare
he picked truth, she asked
‘ do you live a compassionate life?’
he took two days to answer, ‘no’.

He walks steady only on edges
every corner is a closed possibility
showers in a mixed gel of curses, shrapnel
heat balm, wears the day like a uniform.

When he chose her dare, she brayed
‘come over and see me some time’
her sniper came knocking drenched in protection
pretending massage, she rubs into him novocaine.

She specialises in the poetry of placards
her house is set wild and free
with dogs deliberately untamed
they lick passion on all her enemies.

Always on the ready for his battalion
to abandon her trench, she brings love to her lips
he sneaks brandy into her dandelion tea
waits for her sleep then creeps through her ivy.

Angela Costi

Dorman Engineering, 1970

A small sky then, beyond the roller door
wan morning light and these men wearing green
overalls, their names stitched in red over
beating hearts, who greet each other before

work. That welder, the heavy man who has
seen too much sorrow, his son will kidnap
a school bus. The lathe operator lights
a cigarette for breakfast, humming jazz.

He squints against smoke, ambition growing.
Does he dream of success, his growly blues
guitar? His mate, the sheetmetal worker,
thinks of the comfort of words, not knowing

that poems crowd his future. A bell shrieks,
machines whirr into action and these men
hunch over oiled steel hating the time and
motion study expert whose shined shoes creak.

S M Chianti

Lisa Stewart  crocodile
teabag dipped in ink on paper

Nightshift
for Marion McBryde

Dwindling, slipping away, she is going home slowly
over soft, exhausted waters. Thousands of miles
away she still seems, even fleetingly, to know that it is
me, my voice on the phone that the day sister holds

to her ear. The sheets are clean, the doctors come,
go on to someone else. She is here and there and
everywhere. Toronto girl, young determined nurse,
the smiling bride. On the bier of memory she is

sleeping, the seasons of her life condensed into dreams,
into the stern waves of her own approaching ocean
that she will walk proudly down to from the cliffs,
uncomplaining, iron-willed, wise eyes on the horizon.

Grass

Empty girl I was, so far inside, grass didn’t know me

It was something unbending, only light seemed to touch

But so long as I could smell the sea, so long as salt

I had extrications, music, that fire, phase & beat

And all around the world went off, banners & avenues, cruelties

Now it’s ‘come one, come all’, a kind of sassy hoedown

The grass is going, it cracks and withers sadly, almost infinitely

But I’m becoming younger as my dead drugs strangle each-to-each

I go out with skin mixes, cantatas and some fear rocking odes

I stand or fall but now I can feel that region’s joy, the bones

Jill Jones

THE NINTH LIFE

You’ve emptied all the others
gulped or sipped them
possibly spilt, but in any case the carcasses
litter the sofa like dead bottles
kept for some private nostalgia,
relics of your travails and debauchery.

How is it that you seem not to notice them,
lie there asleep in such disdainful nonchalance?
Don’t you know how to count?
Or is yours the confidence of karmic breadth?
Have you realized that the future is always
an unfamiliar alleyway, and at least you have good eyes?

Good enough to read the post-it notes of your past—
the foreboding fortune cookie messages that steer
us away from the mistakes of the previous,
away from the extreme curiosities, notes that read:
Beware of Dogs, Avoid Naps in Driveways,
You Cannot Fly, and Never Fall From Grace.


Philip Norton

© Darby Hudson flying

Britney Spears & the Evil Bunny of Misery
or
Whatever You Do, Don’t Tell Her Everything

He used to lie in the cool curved space of his empty green bath and he’d call her on his mobile phone. He’d use his mobile phone, because the regular phone wouldn’t reach into the bathroom and he had to call her in the bathroom or more precisely he had to be in the empty green bath while he was talking to her because the bathroom or more precisely the empty green bath was the only place his two spirit guides would appear to him in the entire house.

His spirit guides represented the two sides of his personality and they would give him advice while he was on the phone to her, the object of his desire.

Representing his darker side was the Evil Bunny of Misery, who would appear sitting on the edge of the bath at his feet on the right hand side.

And representing the side of light and goodness within him was a tiny Tinkerbell size version of Britney Spears, riding a tiny pink bicycle. She would also appear at the foot of the bath but on the left-hand side.

They would only appear in the bath and only while he was on the phone to her, his object of desire.

He would dial her number, and she’d answer and she’d say… Hi.

And he’d say… Hi.

And then he would do a quick visual check on the Evil Bunny of Misery and Britney Spears and her pink bicycle both sitting at the end of the bath. Both of them had heard her say hello and in the tone of her voice they could read his immediate future. If the Evil Bunny of Misery turned around and started leaving tiny dark balls everywhere then this was a bad sign. This meant that to continue the conversation successfully he would have to either think of a good joke or have a humorous story about something that occurred to him that day.

However if Britney Spears jumped onto her bike and started riding around the edge of the bath whooping and hollering on her tiny pink bicycle this was a good sign. This meant he could relax and ask her about her day instead and she would use her sing song voice upon him like the flute of a snake charmer and she’d unravel the past twenty-four hours of her life and the bath would become a flotation tank with her stories the means of elevation below him.

And the Evil Bunny of Misery and Britney Spears were never wrong in their estimation of the tone of voice of his object of desire.

But he hasn’t seen them for a while because she doesn’t answer his calls anymore.

Not since he told her about his spirit guides. When she learnt about the Evil Bunny of Misery and Britney Spears listening in on her phone calls, this kind of bugged her out a bit.

But it’s his own fault.

The Evil Bunny of Misery told him not to tell her everything and the Evil Bunny of Misery was right.


Sean M Whelan

2003 January February & March, April, May & June, July, August & September, October, November & December,