There was never a stranger habitat than that come by accident upon. Having not been prepared by hint and idea, my habit of assigning all that I encountered into predetermined categories, ordered and thoughtfully constructed, was set adrift by the unusual circumstance that landed me.

I found myself a stranger without the careful resourcing of my predications. Of my substantial investigations into the nature and order of things. This was not a time I could have predicted.

My fascination: the inspection of cultures, from microcosm to macrocosm, from the cellular inclination of the amoebic to the elliptical peregrinations of the vaster spheres. There are musics associated. As in the bell jar. The circular saw. The bow man. A houseful of chattering monkeys. Or termites. (For those of you with a finer ear.) The babble of tongues. The language of accounting. Resonance.

When a language is foreign to the mouth the tongue finds the deviations from the norm perplexing.

the fragrance of shoreline drawls you in the muffled breath of roosting birds mingles with the singular stench of the coastal dwellers fire and fish the sweat of labour of lips perfume of herb and flower these circle on the offshore winds telling us tantalizing make for the shore take to the land forsake the burden of seaswept days lagging dragging adrift in the neverending where a storm is merciful drawing you into the eye sunk or swing the clamouring waves verticals of your despair until swung to peak cresting air you slide a stillness of limbs leaves surface smooth and you peak with the gathering infold of upness this great respiration heaving you upon a distant soil a tattered spirit moans

No-one to the east and west of me. The compass directs solitude. This body of mine mountainous, solid as the sands are sliding. A territory unknown to me. My ability to read the terrain unskilled. Tidal waters storm and calm within the inbreath. The outbreath agitates tongue with the touch of desires unleashed from the deep.

this spoken word broken on the shores with wave and wash grain and particle flexing in uneasiness dissembled made afresh in the rummage of waters your mementoes/moments of journey insignificant in constant displacement slippery in the slap and fall of lunar waters a great heart beats and you pull out of shape

I had no technology for recording. Simply the breath of my memory.

pleated sound of so many voices ruching air twitched and cleating cloud all crimped as this long hair billows glides on thought wind the sea plays out before you a plague in the drowning memory all wash and forgotten you hear these voices spindling the long strands of thought with untidy wind knotting the pauses slippery as the hangtongue desperate for the taste of too many words you were all tied up and shouting wriggling and wrenching to be breeze borne a falcon on the slipstream dipping in this seemingness slipping in the flood and waste land bereft but watertoned imagery tossing recall in a torrent halfspoken ripped in the air before the thought could form always leaning into the trace these clean sounds rake the heart rack spine wreak desire a tumultuous clawing of nerveends the frayed edge of body taut in the straining for possession this would own you your sentence only comprehensible in the tufted updraughts a dissolution marked by scorched feathers floating

When the waters no longer hazard your breath, beach.

sitting still in the waft and perfume of the characteristic conversations wash and layer sedimental sentiments in my earshells laying on the sand all washed up the sun evaporating their trace sentences on sand no more than thought on wind

I have recourse to the familiar. The white bandage wrapped to keep out, keep in. To contain my shape. The airs here fester with promises. Leak in.

The experience of the foreign tongue has oft times, once surrendered to the hidden rhythms seemingly exotic, revealed an horizon that destinations had never conceived. An amble in uncertainty contains the remedy to lockset flockiness. The echo stills and you sojourn. The pinheart drops.

**

berni m janssen is a poet, a maker: a maker of poems, texts, books, performances, sonic and visual art, events, programs & projects. Many collaborative, multidisciplinary, community engaged, ‘live art’, long-term. She works with other artists, including sound, visual and text artists, composers, musicians and performers. The work has been presented in books and magazines, at events, festivals, on radio and web over many, many years.

Another work by berni m janssen
‘murmurs’
appear in the print version of P76 Issue 9
available for $20 (plus postage and handling)
from Rochford Cottage Bookshop

P76 issue 9: Poetries of place/ displacement/ diaspora/ odyssey: On-line Edition. Table of Contents