This will hurt me...

Boys can be stupid. Sandy Bay Rowing Club, Sandy Bay. August 2012. Higher Ground by Caryl Phillips. A sadly familiar tale repeated three times. The pain of a subjugated identity and the damage it does resonates. Bleak stuff. B+ . Memoirs of a Porcupine by Papa Kibandi. No full stops, no colons, semicolons. No punctuation but commas. Also, the narrator is a porcupine. Not for everyone. A mashup of African folk tale and general craziness. C .

Oh dear. Sandy Bay Road, Sandy Bay. August 2012. Wordless Wednesday.

Phallogocentrism. Davey Street, Hobart. May 2012. A poem... Detail of My Sort of Light , Ander Monson Now I know that everything is a body, so even the snow and the sand and the blood rivered down in the snow, and snowed on again so it's buried is a body. All things are bodies in photos— detail of the left side of a breast and the arm's pit—detail of the sled slumbered under by the storm's leavings. Detail of my sort of so-early half-lit eyelid light that bodies are near to invisible and touch is no longer the sole way of knowing, and outline is all that there is. Detail of your body as it does its morning leaving thing. Detail of what light there is on your skin. Detail of land- scape of let me in please and coffee, warm when the weather's action on this body is less than ideal. Landscape with pear. Landscape with weather and part of a breast in the frame.

Little boys and their little toys. Sandy Bay Rowing Club, Sandy Bay. December 2011. Boys and their penises... will they ever learn to get over them. Judging by the graffiti around these parts, it is highly unlikely. On this theme, I share with you perhaps my favourite poem about the phallus . The Fury Of Cocks , Anne Sexton There they are drooping over the breakfast plates, angel-like, folding in their sad wing, animal sad, and only the night before there they were playing the banjo. Once more the day's light comes with its immense sun, its mother trucks, its engines of amputation. Whereas last night the cock knew its way home, as stiff as a hammer, battering in with all its awful power. That theater. Today it is tender, a small bird, as soft as a baby's hand. She is the house. He is the steeple. When they fuck they are God. When they break away they are God. When they snore they are God. In the morning they butter the toast. They don't say much. They are still God. All the...

This monolith thrusts confidently and proudly out up the heavens. St Johns Park, New Town. April 2011. Everywhere I look the phallus . Phalluses to the left of me, phalluses to the right, I am even seated right inside a phallus as I type! I look out over a vista dominated by (you guessed it) the phallus ! It doesn’t make a man half uncomfortable…

Reflexive phallogocentrism at play, Salamanca, December 2010. I have speculated before about the tendency of petty acts of graffiti to centre of the wonders of the male sexual organ . Indeed, barely a day goes by when one cannot spot a crudely-scrawled todger on a wall, lamp post or any number of random concrete erections. Today culprit obviously can’t draw all that well, but their spelling is immaculate (although a little smiley face as the dot on the eye would have been a nice touch). What drives these phallic fanatics? These dickey doodle desperados? Envy? Guilt? Shame? Pride? A profound lack of imagination? Perhaps this is what they mean by 'doodling'... Meanwhile, still at Opossum Bay...

The make power poles from concrete too. East Derwent Highway, Geilston Bay, October 2010. My beautiful babies, and my beautiful and sexy wife, are all now at the airport awaiting a flight to that filthy city of sin: Sydney. It will be a whirlwind visit, but nonetheless I shall be without their company for the best part of THREE DAYS and TWO NIGHTS! As would be expected, I am at a loss. Stricken, heartbroken and utterly forlorn, all that I have for company is this here power pole.

WATCH OUT HENRY! PHALLOGOCENTRISM!!!

Now THAT , my dear boy, is a PHALLUS !

Phallogocentrism is alive and well in North Hobart! One thing that strikes me about this town, is the abundance of large chimneys built in bygone eras. At some point I will collate them all and release a book! Yeah, that's what I'll do, release a book entitled Hobart: the home of the Victorian phallus !

Even the splendid Mount Wellington is blighted by the curse of the phallus. No, it's not a nuclear ICBM primed and ready to put New Zealand back into the stone age. Nor is it a TELEPHONE tower enabling spotty teens to cyber bully the delicate little flowers quivering in front of their tiny keypads. No, it's dedicated to the wonders of television and radio ! Without this baby, the good folk of Hobart would have no idea about Falcon the balloon boy, and we wouldn't know that Michael Jackson is dead (or is he...?) But it is Theme Thursday , and I am not here to talk about television, as the theme is TELEPHONE. It might not surprise you, but I hate the TELEPHONE [it's number thirty seven on my list]. I hate answering the phone (I generally don't unless I'm getting paid). I hate the way that they ring, buzz, beep and rattle. I hate people that go on about their phones. I hate telemarketers, teleprinters, telegeography. Man, I even hate Telly from Sesame Street.

Hurrah ! Theme Thursday is upon us again, and my tendency to pick the image and the title before looking at the theme has again seen me located precariously between a rock and a hard place . Despite what you are all thinking, and notwithstanding the firm, proud-looking member above, the theme today has nothing to do with the sexy world of horticulture. Not one jot. No, today were are talking COLLECTION, and when I think COLLECTION I think “ phallus ”! Huh?!? Phallus . Well, more precisely, the cruel notion of phallocentrism , or – if you like – the COLLECTION of phalluses that poke and prod their filthy way into every facet of human society! It’s no point blaming Derrida people. Yes , he was a filthy-minded Frenchman with a predilection for intellectual masturbation [there’s that phallus again], but bear with me here... Phallocentrism is the notion that the operative principle of culture is male-dominated . MEN! Just as the phallus is implicitly – and more often explicitly –...