The only person who knows our number is a scammer who rings up with concern for malicious activity, detected at our address.  I checked the curtains but the curtains are still closed. No, no, he says, he is from the Technical Department of Windows. Like Apple. It's computers. He's been so long out there on the great telephonic highways that he doesn't realise nothing is technical. Everything is windows. The jig is up.

Well look, I tell him, my mother is dying. The sprouts are boiling over. Do something useful with your brief life! Just leave me alone.

He rings off, vanishing back down the deserted landline. I hang up and pick up again, checking the tone. I need a script for next time. Dial hard, doughty brigand. Don't forget to call home.

a dad comes running down Irvine with his girl on a trolley, careening towards the corner: WHICH WAY? WHICH WAY? he screams and she screams THAT WAY, flinging her arm out into the blurry world where I am behind a window unlatching you with one finger, bringing you to the other shoulder and adjusting the pillow. now the girl is pelting up Piddington in gumboots that come to her knees, then she's gone. you make small skittering noises and I rub your back firmly. lorikeets witter around the oak's lower branches, and a lone dog with wild blond fur gallops down Irvine, across Piddington and up Kerferd, glancing back as it rounds the bend. the girl runs down Piddington, pauses and looks up Irvine, then takes off down Irvine. I bare my breast. you pitch your body in and latch yourself. it's starting to rain. the dog is running up Irvine, towing the girl on the trolley. trees are emptying their forms, yellow expanding as a screen.

I'm surprised that I really like it. I'm surprised that I want to lie next to him, that I want to wake up in the morning, and that war doesn't bother me. I can't remember any evidence that my choices have led to war. In fact I've moved further away from war. There's no one I would kill. There's nothing that makes me feel I need to kill. I've moved to a place where I'm happy, and other people are happy. When my nipples hurt I think of him eating and the milk comes. My husband has finally got the right fittings for his barbecue.

  "If the king did not, without tiring, inflict punishment on those worthy to be punished, the stronger would roast the weaker, like fish on a spit;

   The crow would eat the sacrificial cake and the dog would lick the sacrificial viands, and ownership would not remain with any one, the lower ones would (usurp the place of) the higher ones."

Manusmriti, 7.20 - 7.21

you'd let a rat walk you on a leash you'd let a thief drop filth on the royal road your womb would house a desiccant for twice ten months then fall out at your knees for the ingrate to bat you'd host pirates and perverts lickers and the lame you'd weave your mother's hair into a bridge for barbarians to cross then watch them burn it behind them still knitted to her head you'd take orders for war from the groom of the stool and skin a ragman's donkey for a victory cloak and pay the ragman quittance with your daughter's own hand and warm the ragman's backside burning the papers of the land 

so this is kindness

working on abandoned house music (which needs another title)

it's true that her voice is not that qualified - she has worked herself into an ecstatic state, this is her pregnancy, pregnant with his return, and so she sees that return in the gaps and the decay and the collapse of systems, which regenerate as they collapse.

the guard, the police, the koel as soft as police - I don't know what to make of them except they are superseded law, the koel is the messenger - to another time.

song thread through - do I really want to go to Christmas Island? I don't think so? Is there still something to catch about abandonment? The child of the future?

they don't regenerate as they collapse; rather it's that through the collapse they are fertile. as large systems collapse, fertility is rife.

working at the same time on how to describe this book.

it is nearly done. 'it is nearly done'. been saying that for a long while. but now just a hinge, and maybe some new names. When it's done I know I will be proud. raising the bar. and I hope there will be a publisher. feeling the certainty when it's a good job is worthwhile.

there's a little section now 'messenger' which has the koel as the messenger, going to the future. I don't know what it says there. it is the nest thief, the one who is sown for another to reap.

what has it to do with the child who is against the fence. this is very present. the message is from the past. 

what we'll do is remove the dusty fly-spotted umbrella light-shade from over the bed, and we'll put there something that catches the will of the leaves outside the windows and holds it in the centre of the room. a leaf doesn't have an individual life, but it seems to, and the green at the middle of that life is what I'll feed you. that will come in as milk, translucent blue humming calculation of unthought.

when you were smaller and a life but less a person you were in appearance closer to death, nestled in against a puddle that showed as a shadow, wave, brother, yin, memory, ghost, wave that swelled for an exit and then held, organized, and absorbed in itself, was absorbed. that's yours now too, earth for the green-blue light and the song of the wagtails. earth for the air to be untranslated, straight to your lungs.

should I mention scarcity and the fires to come? but your blood is of that language, tipping and will be so while your hands find the way to your mouth. mouth wet and working in joy's animation of hunger. i've cleaned the skirting and the grout. it's rained through all of January but there's sunlight on the bed. you're on your way, you're on your way. for now, a bit of sleep.

"tiny helot thoughts"

"Become the sinewy gull
Volplaning over, among
The legions during song"

Francis Webb - "Cerletti and the Dog" - in "Electric".