it is a warm Friday night

it is a warm Friday night

in September

and

I suspect a hoard of my friends are

unconsciously

hoping that by going out into the dismal bitumen

streets

of inner city Adelaide

amongst the amateur drunks

and ice fools

that somehow their routine suburban lives

will be transformed

into. . .

I used to live in this hope.

twenty years later I have learnt from experience

that it either ends with sex with a weird chic

or

a late night lonely taxi

and

pathetic bedroom wank;

the world never delivers.

(stay home, fill ya fridge with beer, dial a pizza).

a man and a cat

the night is as naked and impoverished

as a jail cell,

poor me,

poor cat poking its head through the foggy window,

poor history of men without women

and never enough distraction.

in the city the clouds are nuclear orange from the street lights.

I huddle over my dining table

seeing

Indian faces in the grains of this polished rainforest timber.

the glass of wine is empty,

dirty,

blotches of black dregs drip to the centre and pool.

the cat meows,

wants to come in;

to what? I say.  you can have the whole house!

out here

under the wet light of this floating moon

I abide

nowhere.

eagles sleep in their nests,

snakes collide.

and to this thin veneer of grass

my deck chair, my paddock chair,

will succumb to the black mud

of also ruined sneakers.

all the cities of the world have grinded to a halt.

out here

mist
is forming by the oak tree,

roads are severed.

stars

I had only known her

for

a few weeks,

we visited the valley where she grew up

and

had a drink in an outdoor bar

on the edge of a creek bed

that went through the town.

“In winter,” she said, “there is often water flowing through,

well not always.”

a plate of fries came out and she didn’t touch them.
that was how thin people stay thin, I thought.

I heaved into my burger.

“my daddy wouldn’t have thought much of you I’m afraid.

you don’t really do anything.  I mean people can’t eat a poem,

people can’t eat music.”

she looked at me accusingly.

I smiled and ordered another bottle of chilled wine.

she was a beautiful girl.

we became almost drunk by late afternoon.

the sun set so harsh it seemed like a bushfire in the distance.

as we walked back to our campsite

the stars had come out.

it gave you the sense of being situated in a giant universe.

Suzie became expansive,

could only talk about the stars,

could only think about the stars.

“I want to move back here, this is where I grew up!

I had forgotten about these stars!

I would live out here only to look up at the stars at night!

I don’t care about my job in the city anymore,

I could work out here in a café or something.”

in our tent

she

interrupted our lovemaking,

“what are we doing together, we don’t even love each other.”

never comes

walking beside a creek at night,

a beer in hand,

you hear the frogs and the crickets and mosquitos;

and you know the part where the foliage opens up

but this time

no moon or stars

but the complete blackness of an overcast winter night.

the shadows made by your torch creep and hover,

the slight gurgling and sucking of the water

sounds like the drowning of an animal,

like a sheep or a fox.

you make your way down to the farmhouse.

piss. 

shit.

go to sleep.

the morning never comes.

good honest job

I was financially screwed,

had not

a cent,

and when I asked my millionaire uncle for a few bucks

to pay the rent

and keep me off the streets for another week

he said, “kid, you need a good honest job.  I know someone.”

so he drove me to

a petrol station

which was

off a side street in a foothill suburb of Adelaide,

I stepped out of his Mercedes

and he introduced me to Dan,

then left.

Dan had a scar across his cheek,

a fat belly

and walked like a giant penguin.

later he told me he had killed two men,

which was the strangest thing anyone had ever said to me.

I was sure my uncle didn’t know this.  any job to him

was good, decent.

a start.

you worked your way up.

you got married.

you had children.

so I had to man the counter.

people put petrol in their cars

and then they came in

and paid for it.

I took their money or their plastic,

rung it up on the till,

then they left.

pretty easy.

sometimes lots of people came in at once

and

told me their pump number,

then threw the cash down

on the table

and walked out

and I’d forget which pile of money was for which pump,

but I’d work it out in the end.

twenty-two and

broke,

malnourished,

dateless.

and all this work and Dan wasn’t paying me.  training he said.

when my training finished he’d pay me.

but I was doing the job, I thought, nothing else to it.

days turned into three weeks

and still no pay.

I rang up my uncle.

he was furious

that I said such things about Dan.

Dan was an upstanding citizen, a business owner,

a fine golf player,

a patron of the Arts;

he said I was no longer his nephew, and hung up.

at this stage my rent

was

a month behind.

electricity cut off,

living off tap water

and

a diminishing 5kg bag of potatoes.

maybe I was just lazy.