We’ve all been here i reckon …
Cathartic cleaning
Room to room
Do I use it?
Do I like it?
Do I need it?
Boof – out it goes
Bags of linen out the door
Lots of little boy toys
Left on the nature strip
With superseded gifts
Tasteless souvenirs
And dusty reminders
Of previous pasts
They all disappear
Over several days
Off to new homes and gardens
Strangers finding joy
In finding things for free
Hanging around in Melbourne pubs and clubs in the 1980s, being cynical and feeling sorry for myself. Ah, to be in my early thirties again! Not!
Teenage fashion junkies
Playing poor
Fifty dollar hairdos
Labels on their pants
Hip shack rhythms collide
Push through the sweat
Women yawn together
In the breaks
They wait for the split
When boy meets girl
Wishes of fulfillment
Played out on the dance floor
Coats on stranger’s tables
Melting glasses left
To stand bereft
Throb of disco calls
Ears and necks offer
Glitters of fleshy bait
For the bodies below
Cynicism blocks easy flow
Too many night clubs
Around the world
Make the watcher wary
Everything’s a game
Time loses meaning
Lust remains the same
Dancing video sets the pace
Tempts awkward dancers
With existence
In another place
(Bronte space thoughts 2012)
Vacuuming stars at midnight
From a grubby seaside carpet
Nick Drake background hums
My seventies London soundtrack
Feel sixteen at sixty-one
Rushing fast to sixty-five
Single bed room
Sanctuary and prison
Full creative life
Empty of passion
Put away childish things
Time to be a proper man
Right.
In 1977 I spent 9 months in Bermuda programming and installing a database for an international insurance company. I worked hard and played harder in those days. I also spent a fair amount of time alone and introspective, observing stuff. Like palm trees.
Who do the palms wave at
When the wind blows cool
With the rain slanting down?
Is it washing dancing on the line
To a private sunshine tune?
Or a bedraggled puppy
Racing home in soggy confusion?
Are they just moving their bodies
To nature’s ancient rhyme?
(Bermuda race riots 1977)
Smoke in the darkness
Unspoken fears
Bubble to the surface
Like scum or hatred
Anger blows away
Illusions of friendship
Reveals another racist
Jungle bunny talk
Makes me want to vomit
Out the unctuous stench
Of misplaced white pride
Ah, love and loss and heart ache. Where would poets be without it! Better now thanks. Twenty year old poem that still works, I think. Feel free to shoot me down in flames if needed.
She’s gone
Through the aperture
A last glimpse
Then
She’s gone
Tears at the airport
Happy kind of crying
Home in an hour
Found the I-love-you-stones
Just on departure time
Later in the bathroom
Blubbed a bit
Having a leak
Looking at the shower cap
Then her toothbrush
Her henna shampoo
The telltale towel
Not to forget
The well placed
Hairy hair bands
Around the doorknob
Remind me daily of her absence
From this place
Yet her presence in my life
