Centrelink glimpse The lanyard wearing workers, bless ‘em, Treat everyone with polite condescension. Eerie in its carpeted quiet, the room silently screams Sadness from many painful untold stories. Hurt and broken people queue on a carpet strip Wait on plastic chairs wrapped in their own despair. Insiders/outsiders Insiders/outsiders, who’s to know? Wannabe backsliders, ready to […]
Carousing into the dawning morning with musician mates in the ninety laties. The Paradise Club. Kings Cross. Sydney. Australia. It’s early. Perhaps late. Point of view type of thing. Out of my smoky, hazy reverie I realized that the garrulous stranger was still talking at me. Shrugging off another tax-dodge anecdote, he turned up the […]
Just finished recording twenty recent poems … 19 of which I have updated on this blog, and one has gone missing … or should I say “has been temporarily misplaced”. Ironically, its the one about me being stuck in a small country town for three days after losing my car keys after a “Music, Art […]
Playing with words and travel observations in the world Disunited states New Lexicon Inertia North Provoked’er South Provoked’er Flurryda Maim Correctyagut No Work Alreadygone Cantaffordya Michigone Illofnoise Taxes Loserana Vaginia Tendency Industrial outskirts peppered with trailer parks Then come the home stores White goods furniture and lifestyle Fast food car yards and junk Glimpse or […]
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 Boof – out it goes Bags of linen out the door Lots of little boy toys Left on the nature strip With superseded gifts Tasteless souvenirs And dusty reminders Of previous […]
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 […]
(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 […]
(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 […]
hugh wade 