Marc Murrell was born in Adelaide in 1958. He was educated at Scotch College, Adelaide and the Flinders University School of Food & Catering, Regency Park.
Sum Over Totals: Still alive (loves cats).
Snakeseyes
the waiting game. worse than at the dentist.
the day I lost my watch for the third time
& suddenly found I had nowhere to go. dawn
collapses around me like a cough. last drag on a
cigarette. the filter collapses on my yellowing fingers.
the rain you brought with you like a sultry
dog barking at summer. i swept up the mist
from Shark Island to Mosman. stirred up centuries
of grey oceanic thought. emptied out the sullen
empires of night-before-ashtrays.
backgammon russian & arabic. ‘the waiting
game’ plays. the waiting. my friends are all
either junkies or madmen. needing something
to fix their talk. around the round table. the
turntable still plays to the waking void. still
talking. the nervous itch. you watch suited
men pass on their way to the eight o’clock
ferry. our lifestyle an alien land to them.
still waiting – more than most. we play back-
gammon. with eyes like dice. you throw double
ones.
From Friendly Street No. 10 and Tuesday Night Live
Circling
We are not
exactly what each-other
wants or needs
or will be, it’s
simply telemetry when we
inscribe similar orbits
circling absent air
we avoid perfect collision
– how horrible
to perfectly understand
each-other, entirely
– it is the frisson
as individuals
we impinge upon the other
each circling
the same ‘invisible sun
of love’ (the hunter & the hunt, always)
the questing beast
my Crowleian empty cards
your Viking runes
nets imagined, or deluded
it’s wherever you are not
traced with roses, candles & hair
spelled faint with inchoate pulse
or, simplicity of curving sex
where we are both hawks
as we dive through air.
From Friendly Street No. 19
Mallee
the emptiness is not the stranded
endless plains but knowing that you are completely
alone in a desert full of strangers
Michael Dransfield
we came through the dry emptiness with sky
turned red – sandstorms & horizon Mars
like zombies we held to the wheel & thin trickle
of sound in the radio static – white dashes of highway
the optic strobe – the mindless way the dance floor
takes you & deserts you when the song you like
comes on & on like a willy-willy spinning wildly
hissing through the sheoaks & the eucalypts – the cars
headlights on in the dust scream past the wind into
rear vision past-past Cullcullaraine Lake – the eye
lapis lazuli dead as Egyptians entombed like caravans
of bloodshot tourists – primly light blueflame primus stoves
the needle falls below empty & the endless plains
become more endless suddenly – signs say kangas next 20 K’s
we don’t see any – though dust clogs the radiator & small
insects, scree on the windscreen – the needle way past empty
we fall into Merbein – a fuel bowser like a distant friend
& further to the verdant oasis dream of vineyards Sunraysia
pubs the river & shops – people friendly as strangers
can be – she with work & comfort on her mind – me
my heartbeat liquid quick like failure
From Friendly Street No. 25