Into the Snow
Having packed all his wayward organs
Justin was a duffel bag of failure.
Away from government & the kids
he thought he had tried.
The whole world may be dying
but he took it personally.
To near a little town to drown
in Vacancy.
Life rode him down
the last lasso of the last rodeo.
Hit hard, hit early
ambition frays the rope.
Still wore the hate badges
despite being told they were not medals.
Hacking through grasses
as those notions of path sniggered from the margin.
Up to the peak...............which was really
just another peak. Undeserving of a name.
Winds howled about Justin's head
the final consensus.
Somewhere in a snowstorm
a person's mind turns to regret.
It's glacial.
Justin will be remembered, episodically.
Perhaps for a year.
He's newly created space on a bookshelf or
promotion opportunities snatched as merited, overdue.
So many bodies preceded him
rot by rote, we too.
**
All Patched Over
Toomyville Academy of the Arts
was built on the site of a massacre.
Never talk about it
folks in the town don't
especially the oldest because
they know silence is a lid.
The Town Hall's piano
is made from real elephants.
Steel strings ate up a lot of air
but the sweetest excuses are forthcoming
at the Meeting, every third Tuesday.
There was this story about a wild girl.
1983 the pub was a Friday frenzy
some blokes in from the outlyings.
THEY had families too &
you couldn't gaol boys for Inevitability.
Town has a woman GP now
& "real-proper" late-night security.
There's a little gallery with Native art,
Aunty Anne is a regional treasure
(tourist numbers up each year).
There are plans for murals
pertaining to be reconciliation.
The town weirdo took too many pills.
Atrocity hangs around
long after the date.
One can still pass it in the street
& be slightly changed.
Civic Fathers know the score,
build fretfully but a subtle accretion of
half-hearted remorse & refusal
enfeebles change — for good or bad.
This is how it goes
in the field.
Judgement is complicated.
At the end of George St
three houses
folks been there all their lives.
One is hate-filled,
fireplace ablaze with perceived affront.
Next door the widow will nervously give bread
then shoo you on
to the third where you'll be invited in.
Mary understands risk
its paltry weight
alongside such need.
**
Backtown Boys High – Strength Through Struggle
I had a glide, man.
Me, never had it
but was a happy drunk —
perhaps the only time I was loose, free.
Outer suburban — the Backtown Inn was so slack
Toby had to stand on his globite to see & order over the bar.
My first massages, Oliver opened up shoulders
then other parts, come on in.
Never discussed sexuality
in our forest of want. I was 15
& everything was illegal.
Spun the bottle, played
grown-up with god
but it was just another coat.
Guilt was too much work
the only ambitions I had
were to get the hell out
& out-of-it.
I was a huge disappointment,
worked my way down. My Good parents worried.
There was a war going on
burning children
anyone could play.
That dirty world needed change
but Freedom was expensive. Still is.
Up for anything. No idea about girls
but heard they had things going on too.
There were so many moons
their scabs & pedagogy.
Flying past an unplanned murder attempt
my bike couldn't stop. I heard one piece of news
from otherwise inexplicable migrant hostel folk.
Someone from the Intervention Bookstore came to the school
talked about Mayakovski.
Our French teacher implored
we may one-day go to La France.
She was guffawed into submission.
Hare Hare Krishna too young
for peripheries, my beard was in Arabic
but the meaning was clear.
Jim's best friend's mum
had been fucking him
since he was 11. Don's parents
took me in for a few weeks…
can't believe there were no questions.
Ronnie started lighting fires,
was inexplicably moved to a selective school.
Johnno was all string & attitude,
pretty vague back then what "abos" were but
heard he became a hippie.
Special Branch took photos outside the SYA1,
their brown holden was always polished.
Can't forget an ethereal revolutionary there,
she painted placards with her fists.
My history teacher
never forgot to laugh or care.
I was too mystical to play sport anymore.
Jim's up from the south coast
enjoying his retirement.
He's big, lost his hair
but can still get a hard-on.
We sip our drinks on the balcony
of the Seabreeze Hotel.
Politics & loss makes one thirsty.
The school closed down in 08…
then arson said it all. A facebook page
is enough immortality.
With so much achieved
so little has changed.
There's still a war on…
we continue to fight
us relentless old men.
1 Socialist Youth Alliance
**
The Porch
Back again at your place
where even the rubbish is a revelation.
You pick up the instrument
oldest habits stop being habits. We collaborate.
Teachers said you couldn't concentrate
"dumb but pretty"
there'd be a husband out there someplace
or job at the chicken factory like your mum.
A luthier I once met explained the crazy patience
required to get those curves, how imperceptible cracks
are landmines waiting
to explode all the music years down the track.
Harmony is so damned hard
anyone can reach it, but to maintain that connection?
Plus all our lives have cracks too, you're
still in the industry
though it's been a while between recordings.................so what.
Hey — we're both grandparents now
(worried for the world)
& have laughed already before our second drink.
We sing together.
You hated the stage
could never flick that switch
where one becomes another entity up there, subsumed.
Two famished magpie parents land on the balcony.
Beyond a few rules of beggary
there is no interest in humans or a future.
A stormbird pair arrives downhill
to wreak havoc in the trees.
Your yard bleeds into the National Park
& this is a day without fences.
There is so little time left.
Thankfully it, & us, are worthless
thereby holy.
**
By the Walls That Can't Endure
Went to the centenary celebration of Lawson's2 death
Aunty Mona from down the street was there
with the freshly cremated remains of her Shih Tzu.
We all sang along second class wait here.
Down by Wonambula Creek
Lawson's name miraculously failed to appear
in his school's Old Punishment Book.
Ask Jamal about class
he'll say "yeah, got chucked out of them in 2020".
You'd be a fool if you judged.
My Chinese friend Jun studied business
& hates it now. Her grandma was a rural doctor
when Xi was a stolid boy from a problematic family.
Yellow, like it dingo. Tail like it yarramin3.
We endure all the pain
that wealth management entails
there's private school plus doctors' bills
& bloody tax won't save the whales.
It's not as if the Struggle
has altogether disappeared
though yokes of death & ageing
still rule amongst the drears.
Once taught Reva bits about literature
her parents saw the holy pointlessness
& it stopped.
Reva now drives a Mercedes
I don't drive at all.
Brave the anger of the wealthy! Scorn their bitter lying spite!
Our times remain a cage
any escape perilous
.............& pets have a longer life
.............away from the wild.
It's a shame that Henry beat his wife,
as so many pacifists longed for war.
Angel/devil women were portrayed here then & now —
seems like half the world is queer like me
but often lighter.
He once dived to save a mother
from suicide in the bay
but he couldn't go to hospital
to give reasons she should stay
in this life
of too many days.
They say that I never could touch the strings
In the meadow those weed-flowers all look the same,
but focus in…
They needn't say the fault is ours
..............If blood should stain the wattle
Have we colonised our lovers
or chained friends to a liberal fence?
Were we wrong to choose equity over difference,
back then, the old-fashioned dead-Left?
Each generation is layered in their flaws, sedimentary.
There's nothing more constringed than history.
Divergence marks us nowadays, perhaps it's just in time.
Handpicked lines of privilege, incontestable new crime.
From an exclusive 'burb & varsities
("your head-start is bigger than mine")
one agenda-ed voice of colour
shames & silences two fellow scholars.
Have we put the chart before the course?
I am on both sides
though never neutral.
So I collaborate with Lawson
because Jamal ain't got the time.
But life can never rhyme.
Gender, race, sex & politics
there's supposed to be an argument there.
Jamal just owns a nothing
& so we'll end it here.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Over 45 years Les Wicks has performed widely across the globe. Published in over 450 different magazines, anthologies & newspapers across 36 countries in 15 languages. Les conducts workshops & runs Meuse Press which focuses on poetry outreach projects like poetry on buses & poetry published on the surface of a river. His 15th book of poetry is Time Taken – New & Selected (Puncher & Wattmann, 2022).
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