We understand Free Love

assume we understand Popular as a
descriptor and not a genre

there is Pop all over these walls,
they are running with it.

making money by my body
doing regular work

the shaft, dig, shine
of ‘free love,’

ecstasy
Joni’s long ass hair

stirrup-ing a Brumby. what
lithe vinegary excuse is this!?

to touch up in your crotch.

Joni is more pop that rock
given a way at Woodstock

save her soul, or something
her market categories

in some subsistence of agrarian
routine
or an Anodyne Trust

it’s a bad dream bruited
pitchy rusted bucolics‘R Us

like make-up applied to the inside of
the mouth

my body speaks in these gestures
of a wooden house

a well shaped loaf
harvested not-native to the country
but specifically remote

and we forgot to score, so the guts fell
out
a wooden bladder
reasonable beyond measure

Woodstock
Is a moderate man

He stands in the centre
in His justification for being modest

shooting forth unit measurements

peace in pellet form emancipatory
politics

the family-as-labor
turns in on themselves- they cannot
imagine such a despicable body

stealing like a rich person shops
inherently rich like the favourite child

land requires a small coffin-grab
her toffee Switch thick as the slabs,
moderate men throw their pitted fists
into, yelping

180-decree roast and
grafting a straight line; romance
ascending, coincidentally,
incrementally,

yam fields covered over by a
deep dive in emotional repression

got know-how.

The cars are swerving round our
laughing bodies, and we
well, we’re full of anxiety

Hard to leave, hard to stay, eh.

until we all tumble down- dumpy-like-
still laughing amongst the riots. the
broken shop-fronts. the ways it could
be

…how the heel… as you dig it in

the lines on both sides, two
descending, coincidentally,
incrementally, to your junk

that leading with the hips
from the hips, towards the

Yes, Ah, oo0f,
gutters (i’m a Real Catch)

always writing like it’s trendy and
discomforting

because there’s this secret wish to
change my mind

and your sick, yellow, paisley flanks
buoyed in the world by an optimistic,
sinking anchor

to the deconstructed blundstone
the original degustation shoe

cuttle and windmill, the charred silver
skin of manna gum, wet in the rain,
metal on the fire

branded by the genres we take as a
granted.

I will abolish myself in the revolution

clarity is green and full but this is
brown and honest, like Hilary Swank’s
jaw in Boys Don’t Cry

I can draw a line between it and this
inky pot of subcultural colours

people also asked: what is a
psychedelic person?

brushing teeth too hard
exposing the nerves a little to time

you spend time dedicated to unlearn
this kind of maniacal brushing, 15
years or so

dreaming about the appropriated
vernacular

your eyes bedded in their sockets by
downy lids: this endless feedback loop

where your doggie has this come-
hither look about its hewn raspy,
outdoor-smoke smelling fur

it’s holding empty plates of appetizers,
obeying the familiar smell that
thwomps
in your groin, actually

hard not to obey,
pasture, hay, a thwomping in the limbs

so small it kind of lacked lustre,
but the hands that assembled the
whole rig are sassy,
have known me my whole life

things with tops to slice very fine
peeling every part to dismantle

tandem snorting, calling it quits in the
board room.

OK, Let’s Wrap it Up. only
Psilocybin, for me, existed

in a world where disorder is more
habitual or loved alike or deathly- not
neuro-typical- not efficient in the
kitchen

you can’t blame me for what I’ve done
(but yes, you can), for
my Bruce Springsteen cordiality

that wholesome, tightly bunched
pocket of fake smiles and smile-eyes

How’s your soul?
How’s your Mother’s soul?

bc I’ll never buy Green glass again
because I take part in if it sells enough

because I don’t fuck with poet
Laureates, their beautiful wings
sometimes rigged

I enact to Fill its Search Field for
types of grasses

like
your wooden insides,
crow’s feet exterior

a beak scratching its name
onto your inside walls

7 drops under the tongue
destined for light now

and I’d happily peel vegetables onto
the floor around my feet

for the rest of my hagrid happy litl
life.

in a way that seems natural, we understand our Free Love

its limits, its excess, its excuses, its radical queer politics, the 60s and 70s, its circulation and its jaded opulence, its feeling of the time, groping glow and after-hours practice, its private fence posts and its land distribution, its radically presumptive, wayward nature and voluptuous steady ways, its silly rascal,

sinister undertones

wrapped up like candy

fed as light.

—Madeleine Mills

Madeleine Mills is an artist living and working on unceded sovereign land of the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin nation, and pays their respect to elders present, past and emerging. When it comes to reading and writing, Mills believes it is good to be moved beyond reason, and feel a word brush against your hip.