rain in Byron

early twenties and I was driving down the coast

from Byron,

back in the nineties when it was thought still good to be a hippy

and everyone I knew didn’t ever want a job

and struggled with their parents.

we where stoned,

could hardly see out of our eyes,

the rain throwing itself down on my little Renault

and the wipers couldn’t handle it.

in the lush grass at an intersection

a girl stood,

dressed in a sarong and a straw hat,

and she just stood there, in the flooding rain.

we pulled up.

she looked at us nervously but Brad

ran out and

collected a fistful of flowers from a bush.

he handed her the flowers, head lowered.

she smiled encouragingly, her lips just breaking into a bemused laugh,

but then he was right back in the car.

“Ask her if she wants a lift Brad!”

eyes gleamed, wired and fearful.  “Just go bro!  Just go!”

I drove off

seeing

the girl holding the flowers, still looking up at us, receding in my mirror.

lonely perhaps.

would have loved Brad to asked her out on a date, perhaps.

“Brad!  What are you doing now!”

he hunched forward with his arms

wrapped around his legs,

and groaned, “Mother. . .  Mother. . .”

strong man

he works hard, selling bolts, nails and washers to companies.

driving around, sometimes goes interstate

on a plane.  he wants to move up, promoted to the echelons.

he sweats it out in the gym, has good muscles.

when you meet him you notice he often wears a tight t-shirt

that rises up his biceps.

I’ve seen him in a fight, he can’t fight.  he cries.

his car is one of those big utilities with big chrome roll bars

and big wheels.

I saw tears fall from his eyes when at the traffic lights

a young bogan pulled him from his big car over a failure to indicate.

the tears fell onto the intersection,

to be later driven over by endless traffic.  they are still being driven over.

sometimes you wonder if people exist.

if you exist.

if tears exist.

maybe we are all just an empty flux of energy with no definite substance,

crying over nothing.

this man’s girlfriend, the man who cried, keeps on looking at me

at BBQ’s.

Cindy has legs like a deer prancing in a forest.

Cindy has that look in her eye which says, I am looking for the father

of my future children, are you the one with golden sperm?

a proper job?

house?

lawn?

well I’ve never really had a proper job.  wouldn’t know how.

but a hard-on, young lady, I can get one of those very easily.

and I can come in five seconds flat.

her hair is in the French chic bob style,

dyes it jet  black

and is often seen in brightly coloured fishnet stockings.

she smokes cigars, strangely,

and when eighteen she posed naked for an Australian men’s magazine,

called Innocent,

to which her boyfriend, the one who cries in fights, is very touchy about

if you allude to it in conversation.

inside and outside

as you sit in your room,

your own space

with a painting on the wall you managed to keep

from your student days,

a few books,

last week’s newspaper with coffee stains

and crumbs from vegemite toast,

you sit and feel the world out there,

the weather in its non-life,

the wind,

the rain,

the ubiquitous sunlight,

the rampage of trucks and planes and pedestrians,

ex-lovers,

future lovers,

enemies,

colleagues,

the man who will carve your coffin walking around as a young boy

with a Paddle Pop in his hand,

feeling it

beyond your room,

perhaps a beer in your hand,

or a note from you neighbour’s wife,

a crossword puzzle,

an unread book about Zen you borrowed from the library,

questions,

soft breathing before a window pane.

fog.

sun

the music on the radio is sounding false again,

punk

seems more ridiculous the further time drifts

from 1977.

bring on death, the flower, and flour.

a lonely man surround by friends.

and a cat,

dog,

insects,

birds in the trees in the backyard.

people say they love the sun

but

science tells us the sun will eventually grow bored

and inhale us,

like a hippopotamus breathes in a fly

when it yawns,

or a supermodel sucking on a cigarette with those dead

‘I am beautiful’ eyes.

garden dance

as bombs fall down

on

Syria,

the mosquito screen

on

the front door

shakes in the hot north wind.

the garden outside is shaking.

kind of dancing in the wind

with

branches and fronds for arms and legs.

I hear the crash of a pot plant onto the slate

and

go out, investigate.

these darkened hills

at night the twisted branches of my oak tree

still reach for

a light which is not there;

a possum jumps from it

onto the shed,

a noise so loud it stirs a flock of sleeping cockatoos

down the valley

by the track.

no moon tonight,

and no happiness.