Profound And Deep (1974-1988)

PROFOUND AND DEEP ( 1974 - 1988 ) by Gary Frances

CONTENTS Profound and Deep.............................................................................. ..5 They In Virginia.......................................................................... .....................6 Sex ( Albeit ) Your Life The Poems Comedian.......................................................................... .....................7 Petrol Park Postcard to an ExFiancee.......................................................................8 Snapshots Grudge............................................................................ ........................9 Follow the Bouncing Ball Plea.............................................................................. ..........................10 Harry ( 1926-1976 ) They Say That My Father Is Dead...........................................................11 The Visit Visit to a Prostitute ( 1975 ).....................................................................12 A Note from the Wall Street Communist Leanne A Child of the 60's Looks at Education Results of Mini-Skirt Wearing and Blindfold Wearing...............................13 Census............................................................................ ........................14 To Production Planners, Census Takers, Marketing Men and Statisticians Our Cats In a Restaurant in

Glebe...........................................................................15 The Tribe Houdini Early Christian A Migrant in Town.............................................................................. .....16 Estrangement Arrow of Love.............................................................................. ...........17 I Want It To Be Sentiment for a Petty Criminal Woman, Man, Enigma............................................................................ ..18 Arnold Bennett : A Novelist ( 1867-1931 ) Endless Trip.............................................................................. ...............19 Correspondence from Southampton Tunnel of Love.............................................................................. ............20 Apology for not Being a Woman................................................................21 Young Man Selling a Communist Newspaper A Note from Below I Can't Write Novels Because....................................................................22 The Appin Mine Disaster, July 1979 Naive At the Back of the Classroom.....................................................................23 Crime The Easiest Lesson Staircases in Construction...................................................................... ......24 Nineteenth Century Literature A Humbug Xmas.............................................................................. ...........25 It Should Go Without Saying With a Self-Serve Nuclear Fuel Station in Mind............................................26 The Last Forest On the Inside............................................................................ ...................27 Unabashed Chauvinism Time Piece The Cynic ( As a Useless Handyman ) Sentiment for a Baby Born............................................................................28 For Somone Else's Wife Portrait of a Father............................................................................

............29 In an Inner City Suburb at Night....................................................................30 Showers After Sport............................................................................. ........31 Religious Phase Running to the Shop A Tradesman Should Never..........................................................................32 The Introverted Warrior Graveyard Visits Later Save by a Ism............................................................................... .................33 A Limerick of the After-Life The Naked Clown In Pink Trunks, In the Other Corner A Number of Punchlines........................................................................ .........34 A Letter from the Masculinists Geoffrey Ching Chow & Family Henry Victor Frances ( Defunct) Revisited On Having Been Observed by Two Different Parties.......................................35 on Two Different Occasions, Mowing the Lawn and Filling the Car With Petrol and It Being Found Extraordinary The Larrikin's Courtship If It Was Good Enough For Her The One's We Love ( 19601963)................................................................36 In the Mean Time Pub Conversations..................................................................... ....................37 A View From The Left Books & Beatles & The Green-Eyed Monster A Thin Boy, Long Ago and Sex.................................................................. ..38 The Nuclear Power Family No Easy Drive-in Equation.......................................................................... ..39 ( At the Meaning-of-Life Bottle Shop) Biographical Marriage Outside this Window, A Spider on a Web Fourteen Lines on Three Divorces.................................................................40 Poem With a Real Beginning............................................................... ..........41 ( Ending With a Supposition ) A Purist's View of Perversion Manly - A View from the Outer West Throw Poetry from the Train

PROFOUND AND DEEP The Andrew Sisters harmonize while barbed wire and battle songs surround the country ( from inside!) I feel safety now except for those caesarean cads ( possibly Chinese ) and Delilah unliberated ( I ask for a shave and massage and she gets carried away as usual )..... I'm still green and read and sad with envy for those street corner fantasy breakers

who with garlic persistance attack office blocks those havens for the handcuffed and the half-witted handicapped..... Yes, I'm inclined to lead with the wrong foot in the right mouth, and so on.....and feel disgusted when the microphone poets sing about kerosene lambs in public places living for health and home hazards..... the nightwatchman screams ( he wants more paper to take down down what I say to strangle the night ) who knows what's going on ( a photo finish between you and me ) as we stumble to the edge of Blondie and fall off these comic pages into unreality. 1974

THEY They know what's been done and who's to blame just what's been said and who to see about what just ask anyone they know. 1974

IN VIRGINIA In Virginia there are murders rapes robbery and thuggery fellatio and felony a non-virgin and a bad boy yes, Santa Claus, there is a Virginia. 1975

SEX ( ALBEIT ) The words are calm and wild and if I can get them on my tongue

I'll put sentences in and paragraph your mouth so we can debate and roll naked on the floor. 1975

YOUR LIFE Your life is rather sad because after all is done and said. 1975

THE POEMS They they they they

are are are are

not struggling trapped not good approved of

they they they they

are are are are

not breathing published not living printed. 1975

COMEDIAN I am the comedian they applaud me I am Mister Personality I make jokes about Jews they who thay " dear" the sexually queer and other people I'm afraid I fear. 1975

PETROL PARK Down in Petrol Park the gangs are gathering for the last fight

goodbye Greasy Mick hello Oblivion tear down the football posts strike up the band let's get dead drunk And the poems grow like lillies from dust of adolescents. 1975

POSTCARD TO AN EX-FIANCEE Bev, Arrived today the water's fine am having a good time drinking lots of beer wish you weren't here.

Gaz. 1975

SNAPSHOTS I caught you looking the other way your feet over a cliff smoking my cigarettes taking off my hat satirizing my head with your pants down up around your knees I caught you convalescing in bed a lump in your throat ( the cancer of sentiment, I said) I caught you bemused'n'besotted at a good friend's wedding staggering around inevitable tropics of conversation like when are you getting hitched ? or have the contracts come through for the house ? you raised your breadroll and thumb to the air and called the photographer a cunt of despair ( whatever that meant, you were PISSED ! ) I caught you

in a fist-flying impulse and the mid-flight having second thoughts and then making visual puns that were never unintended I caught you with other ideals we used to have protesting too fuckin' much tying up shoelaces of settlement and strapping down memories in a valise grown battered and bulging with irretrievable blues I caught you candidly then ( oh, you're seriously married now and a mother thrice over to boot ) I caught you catching forty winks and catching up later on time spent snoozing I caught you you were laughing you were dancing over my dead body

with my girlfriend

I caught you and I learned a new joke about it taking two to tango and one to snap smoke. 1975

GRUDGE The one who runs last in primary school athletics never catches up. Every year on my birthday I get two years older just trying.

1976

FOLLOW THE BOUNCING BALL Once poetry was quite widely read now only the finer minds refuse to learn from what they understand. 1976

PLEA If I can't be dominant can I at least get on top ? 1976 HARRY

( 1926- 1976)

The next door neighbour told me as I roared in from Adelaide contrary to doctor's orders he just had to get up he said and mow the fuckin' lawn ( and I'm told he had a drink ) his energy did him in she's sleeping alone tonight and every night they'd ever had

with Dad

together we drank two dozen large bottles of the one thing he held dear I'm waiting now for the brewery telegrams but I'll accept their ignorance instead I'm waiting now for all the telegrams that everyone else has already read he would have chuckled at this cremation that's about to occur and said something like : put me in the ashtray on top of the t.v. he was the kind of poet who couldn't write. 1976 THEY SAY THAT MY FATHER IS DEAD They say that my father is dead but this cannot be true he has only gone away they say that my father is dead but this cannot be true who have I to answer to ? they say that my father is dead

oh, it cannot be true he away plastering in Brisbane getting plastered in Brisbane and just too drunk to get back they say that my father is dead I have no one to answer to not at least until he comes back from........ Is it true, Geoffrey ? You're the solicitor who handled the whole thing is Harry dead ? 1976

THE VISIT The buckle of my leather jacket clinks against the wall all the dead people are in and my feet on the dried-out leaves make noise-waves in the silence. My father is now reduced now to what once dropped from his cigarettes and the memory, like the plaque, is beginning to tarnish. He needs a little polish ( always did ) though he's never been as neat as this ! I start up the bike and leave behind 49 years of dust called Harry. 1976

VISIT TO A PROSTITUTE She smears herself with Vaseline and then asks me if I'm clean she won't let me touch her hair or kiss her disguise I can't touch her enough I don't touch her at all I can't kiss her face I can't touch her there and she only stares.

A NOTE FROM THE WALL STREET COMMUNIST

1977

A profit is being made in shark-invested waters. The diver's wife is scheduled to come out tonight. 1977

LEANNE Up till now before you, that is, when I 'd done my best when I'd done my worst I'd mentally dress them and mentally send them home. 1977 A CHILD OF THE 60'S LOOKS AT EDUCATION 1. Hammered by pneumatic silence an ear bends down irrelevant lanes of thought and avenues of rhetoric and listens for a word not of History but Encouragement. Shall we say of the Safest Bet that it is still a gamble ? 2. Confusion exists on bookshelves. I believe you say what they say. Existence is false. Meaning what ? Flat feet and false teeth exist. I know this much is true : we seem to willingly go from uni demos and throwing bricks to coffee table conversations and throwing up. 3. The Powers-that-be say YES this is a good thing (or not) for them to learn meanwhile, knowing. 4. Someone knows too much

( like in a gangster movie) and must be got rid of alphabetically ( like in real life ) weeded out if you please by weaving them into the jungle of indexing and public service. 5. We learn by our mistakes. And mistake our learning for Ancient History. 1977 RESULTS OF MINI-SKIRT AND BLINDFOLD WEARING A few hours have passed and crying is now impossible after the rape (cynics say she asked for it) the face , though , is stained for good ( sceptics say it never occurred ) a good punchline escapes me. 1977 CENSUS There are those among us who will not be counted. Those who marched to war or those who marched for freedom. Old heroes. Stainless history. They will not be counted. They count for nothing now. 1977 TO PRODUCTION PLANNERS, CENSUS TAKERS, MAKETING MEN AND STATISTICIANS An observed situation never boils. 1978

OUR CATS They drive me mad in the mornings ( they just can't wait to be fed ) with persistent meowings and crying. I mentally drop the bowl on a collective head. Once they're fed they become aloof. Conscious of Egypt they sit on the fence with perfect blood calm and easy bloody balance. At night they're safe, masters of the roof. 1978 IN A RESTAURANT IN GLEBE I taste the food and look around wondering if these people really like this Vietnamese chow or if they're just here to make up the numbers. 1978 THE TRIBE The tribe has moved to the city resulting in an inability to exercise Options and conforming at length to the Ceremony of Parking Fines more than they can probably pay sadder than they can possibly say. 1978

HOUDINI The great Houdini grew bored and one day decided to stay inside. 1978 EARLY CHRISTIAN

I am man ( anything else is God ) half-judas, half-peter. I was there at the beginning of the parable and there at the punchline. I survived the lions ( didn't I ?) by sheer reward of cowardice ( no effort at all ) the escape from devourment consumes me still. 1978

A MIGRANT IN TOWN I speak the English good. Even my father speaks the English good. We do not however understand your attiude to salami or calamari You only pretend to understand crisp-heart-disease- free meals. You cannot dance in the streets. You have freedom ? You cannot even get drunk. You cannot dance but I speak the English good. 1978 ESTRANGEMENT If my mother told me once she told me a thousand times perfect strangers aren't perfect she often said. Ever since then I've been afraid of meeting you. 1978 ARROW OF LOVE Standing on its own hero of literature mainstay of architecture

villain of psychology and when young and especially sensitive insistent in a crowded situation uncomofortable in a government bus my Achille's what's-its-name. 1978

I WANT IT TO BE I want it be to be perfect pick-up the perfectly accidental encounter like in old films and books each and every caress smooth ( ni elbows, no re-takes ) lubricated by unreality and nothing ever unrequited perfect bloody intercourse orgasms every time. Perfect old age and perfect death on satin pillows together. 1978 SENTIMENT FOR A PETTY CRIMINAL Vandals are only people who want to make their marks on the world but can't. 1978

WOMAN, MAN, ENIGMA Her deception is not always what it seems. Her hair is of my sex again close to my side, the rib cage coming together we make one gender it is mystery automatic I too am soft and tender She makes me enigmatic this is part of her magic

but then, not

that we are not always one sex I am in love with Woman. I give these flowers to her, from me , for us.

is tragic.

1979

ARNOLD BENNETT : A NOVELIST Thief of Time. G. F.

( 1867-1931 ) " Oscar Wilde said

that Punctuality was the

Death, then, is the Thief of Habit "

In the presence of his eventual death it is said that they laid straw on the streets to quieten London, to soften the crudities of the omnipresent carts of commerce. A writer of pregnant pap and great produndity writing either about. or for, the fish wife ( the " interestingness " of ordinary life ) nothing considered too dull or deemed to commonplace. With no vast militaristic scenes of retreat no burning buildings with heroes in attendance no cineramic aspects of devastated ships at night no great ideal of women and children first But, instead, close-ups of aa human tumult of failure a big screen perception of coloured with the myths of

indecision to succeed hesitations guilt and innocence.

Wide angle dramas of common organisms the long-distance endurance of a runny nose the naive struggle for constant cynicisms men who always shout louder than they need to. Always finding fight hidden in retreat the all-important and meaningful in trivia justifiable reasons in faults we find irritable the tragedy of debt in what we owe each other. And, then, of the Thief of Habit who judges convicting us all eventually. Never guilty was always A.B.'s verdict, meticulously impartial to a fault. 1979

ENDLESS TRIP I am in the grey hours of Insomnia trying to make that endless trip ( I assault the bedhead, the pillow, and kick the sheets for relief ). Tormented and, as usual, thinking too much the past kicks in and out sleeplessness magnifies doubts. ( The streetlamp breaks into my left eye.) A jealousy consumes in tiredness sitting up , looking at you asleep ( why love me less than I love you?) imposssible to blame you for the rest. And then - mad, crazy - admiring you with your kiss for every question your absolute cure for every caress curling up into until dawn. 1979 CORRESPONDENCE FROM SOUTHAMPTON ( from an unmarried sister ) Letters telling of the English seasons of good job and great trip opportunities and ( " if you're not coming over, what are your reasons ?") of tearful, homesick importunities of seated at the window so watching dearest, darling Michael employed dispensing petrol in slushy snow while in the room , my imperfect nephew toyed occasionally slipping the lines to tell of him locking her out of her return ticket money in his confines of the relationship and the doubt and, then, of when Mike is nice and when he can be funny of of how this must be life and requests for money 1979 TUNNEL OF LOVE For Leanne I am here to glorify that which exists in panel vans or in marital decay

that which is tender receptive and wet in the horizontal waltz. In the folds of skin I see generations of loving and using of carnations and bruising of trying to own and losing. If reported in a directory give it its mystery define it right, call it Women's Flesh ( nee Night). 1979 APOLOGY FOR NOT BEING A WOMAN Like that two-faced freak at the Royal Easter Show I too have my better half. It's only these dominating genes that have made my clitoris too big and my tits too small. I'm impossible with Mechanics rather good in the kitchen and quite passable in the bedroom ( my sister is really the reverse ) . And what did my father once say when he caught me crying You're nothing but a big sheila, he said. Nothing but a big sheila. So ( I think now ) to be a Man's man and to never apologize you first must take the supreme test : you first must wear a dress stand in front of a mirror and resist the temptation to wiggle your hips. 1979 YOUNG MAN SELLING A COMMUNIST NEWSPAPER He is, like Solzenitsyn, at that difficult age between birth and death. 1979

A NOTE FROM BELOW " Be still, and know that I am God."

Psalms 46:10

Nature's first flower amused me all the rest became quite odious a technique mass-produced perfect ( is the perfection in Perfection ?) It's only an argument to convince you that there is ultimately a thing called God. Know by Hybrids everywhere, that I can exist. Meph. 1979 I CAN'T WRITE NOVELS BECAUSE You can always stop a poem in the middle of its breath and read it for the moment it is. 1979

THE APPIN MINE DISASTER, JULY 1979 It is a natural course of Time and, of course, of human Nature that the explosion, the disaster, woulf transform itself, cocoon-like, into an Official Commission, an Inquiry. Only, time later, when investigations find that there was no one really at fault are Sydney newspaper readers satisfied. They are no longer as outraged or as shocked as the editors reported. And when asked again how many were killed they can't, for the life of them, remember. Let me record now, before I forget, there were fourteen dead. To be exact. 1979/80

NAIVE

I am an old man. I have nothing else to do. Why can't I give sweets to children in the park ? 1980 AT THE BACK OF THE CLASSROOM In short pants we used to go looking for crude words in dictionaries. We were always surprised when we found some we thought we wouldn't find and always surprised when we didn't find words we thought we would. We were always surprised. We were always boys. 1980 CRIME It makes our world go around. It assures insurance companies of a continued existence. It keeps policemen's families fed and locksmiths off the dole. Don't our austere government economists preach that all effort should be rewarded ? And. Don't we all take that entrepreneurial risk of catching each other when we can ? 1980

THE EASIEST LESSON Of we to We It

the non-existence of God were old enough, at thirteen, be thoroughly convinced. followed a course of logic and sense. was ratified by our adolescent pain.

During the school religious lessons we felt ourselves free to satirize to visit the different denominations to lark about, to make fun of the brother. We thought it was great, a real bludge.

We thought there was no homework to be done. How hard it was to learn that this easiest of lessons was the hardest to understand. 1980 STAIRCASES IN CONSTRUCTION On Saturdays we arrive at Tony's factory hung-over from our Friday night beers holidaying from our full-time jobs. We cut the staircase treads, the risers. We trench, nose and sand the bastards. While we clean away our mistakes Tony routs the strings and fits and sears, fitting these treads of ours. The factory becomes a confusion then of sawdust in the air, errors on the ground. It's never clean there, or clear. Out of this - the mess, the acivity we assemble the flights. Near perfect. Feeding strawberries to pigs ! Tony's father says. We put the finishing touches, wipe off the glue, and give the jobs their destinations. Each splinter of wood is like a word. Each assembled flight is like a poem. 1980 NINETEENTH CENTURY LITERATURE The creatures are so shy, distant and wan I can never entirely understand how the woman affects the man. Everything's a subtle plan much discolosed by the holding of a hand. 1980 A HUMBUG XMAS A vacant time of year no fixed address for any specific person no fixed state of mind the vagrant rich loitering with intent to feel and the poor all shopped out and stuffed with pudding and beer. 1981

IT SHOULD GO WITHOUT SAYING 1. Trick There are two ways of not breaking an egg. The first is an old trick based on the structural qualities of the aforesaid object. The second is to be gentle. It should go without saying. And it's a better trick. 2. Motor Incident This vehicle is an extension of me and that's why it hurts so much. It pains me when some blind idiot has run up me from, brakeless, from behind. The other bloke's always in the wrong all to do with what he's driving at, who was here first and who has right-of-way. The sickening crunch, it's called. It always takes a third party to get you to the truth. Your friends will only reassure you "Ah, it's only a scratch, a little bump and, besides, your were in the right." It always takes a stranger to tell you that you've written yourself off !" It comes then, forget vague sympathies, the crushed protective bumper you depended on, the wrecked transport of your inner and outer veneer. A stranger can best assess the damage. You've always been able to insure automobiles even though they're " never the same afterwards". You can insure against most encounters and collisions. You've just never really been able to insure the driver. That first encounter puts you off balance. If you have faults you have to have accidents. You have to bounce. Or you're never the same again. A cliche tells us that there are no such things asaccidents. It should go without saying. Call the first stranger you see. 19 81

WITH A SELF-SERVE NUCLEAR FUEL STATION IN MIND We know it's best not to smoke at self-serve petrol stations but sometimes, we do 1981 THE LAST FOREST Underneath it they found an unlimited supply of oil what to do what to do ! 1981 ON THE INSIDE Seated at the cafeteria window so comfy in the bowels of Employment the rain and the unemployed outside separated only by the roof and Personnel. Economic policies will prevail. Put the weak children on a hill overnight. The weather bureau is predicting hail. 1981 UNABASHED CHAUVINISM Wife, let's sow a seed. I need a good strong son and a daughter like a reed. 1981 TIME PIECE The essence of Time is that it cannot be tamed, it cannot be measured, it can only be named. The essence of Man is that he always tries obsessed as he is by dimension and size. It defies every intellectual definition by its very unintelligent condition We may cease but it will never end

and, here, the rule of thumb cannot bend. With measurement Man imposes limits trapped by too many exacting seconds and minutes. And then he admits, in his own ironical way that there aren't enough hours in the day. 1981` THE CYNIC AS A (USELESS) HANDYMAN Until he married, he told me, he didn't really think it possible to paint yourself into a corner. I started to chuckle and giggle and, in fact, I laughed a whole lot, for a while. But when later I returned to my wife: I found her nervously touching wood in our bedroom. 1981 SENTIMENT FOR A BABY BORN At Silverwater Prison this week a Charmaine X gave birth. A seed was planted within her and she helped it along. Exactly when the seed was planted she said she couldn't tell. 1981 FOR SOMEONE ELSE'S WIFE (to be read in a melodramatic style) And where will you sleep tonight ? First, looking to the lounge then looking to the spare room where she will sleep ! and replying THERE 1 But ( the humour leaves me now) only if the stars turn black and leave the skies only if the police retrace their steps and apologize only if what I'm wearing is not a disguise only if I were to shun the material world and cut out my material eyes only if we realize that money only buys

only if we will be happy with sad but true compromise only if all these obstacles could be cut down in size only if she would be unfaithful and let me sleep between her thighs. And so, I sleep on a lounge of sighs. 1981 PORTRAIT OF A FATHER 1. Pennies to Heaven When he found that the wife had been pilfering pennies from his jar of collections it landed underneath a tree after being thrown through the fibro of my bedroom. Such was the fear of my father that they laid there for years not a penny was ever touched only one by one by one they disappeared into the soil. 2. Stains against the Memory My drunken father threw bottles of tomato sauce at the walls. To remove the stains was to admit that it had happened. This would never do. For easily a decade we saw around these fading, red reminders. They were never washed off and it never happened. 3. When the Dog tore a Piece When the dog tore a piece from the unpaid-for lounge we kept the secret for several years by planting our bums over the hole. Or covering it with a rug. Father never wondered about the rug. Or that one of us always watched t.v.

When he finally discovered it all he could was laugh. I can't remember how we felt. It wasn't relief. 4. The White Cat I was too young to know why he was so attached to this dead white cat. I only recall mt rough father crying as he finally covered the body. Later, he cemented over it in the big Hill's Hoist project of '56. Perhaps its faults and sins were overlooked in death. I know it was like that when he died. Death excused him of all blame. 5. Neither was He all Bad When my unmarried sister came home with a bellyful of Ben he could hardly express his joy. Inconsistency has to be lived with to be believed. 1982 IN AN INNER CITY SUBURB AT NIGHT 1. The shadows are like silent street gangs and the rain like footsteps following. 2. Insecurity grows, easily imagining hands reaching through walls and easily opening dead-locked doors. 1982 SHOWERS AFTER SPORT When the sportsmaster first hinted that we should shower after footy I shuddered with a certain fear. When I first saw Dave Clarke race from the shower cubicle I avoided those suggested showers. It almost hung down to his knees.

1982 RELIGIOUS PHASE It can't have been too short. It was my whole life. I was meek. I was to inherit the Earth. When I discovered for a rich man to than it was for a I gave it away as

that it was easier pass through the eye of an needle camel to go to Heaven a bad joke. 1982

RUNNING TO THE SHOP Walk to the shop, they asked ( but I ran ! ) for a loaf of bread or a bottle of milk or two bobs worth of lollies for yourself. When I returned and opened their bedroom door I saw not to live by bread, milk or lollies alone. 1982 A TRADESMAN SHOULD NEVER A tradesman should never take home his work. Our house was a gallery of half-finished works attesting to frozen moments of fatherly energy. 1982 THE INTROVERTED WARRIOR I played by myself all the time with my stick for a .303 and a plumber's pipe for a cannon. I was both comrade to myself and my own worst enemy.

No one else could play the games I played. I sometimes let the other side win. 1982 GRAVEYARD VISITS Occasionally when we visited Nana and Pa they'd take us to places of people long since passed away dead parents of cousins we hardly knew. Not that it was grotesque. Only boring, meaningless. 1982 LATER Understand that everything has a Before and an After. What happened Then grows a Later. Try putting the past behind you. It's impossible. 1982 SAVED BY AN ISM Cynicism has its services. It has a small place in me. All I could think of when I turned off the gas was that Life, whatever its meaning, wasn't worth committing suicide over. 1982 A LIMERICK OF THE AFTER-LIFE There was an old man named Cec whose fingernails persisted posthumous it was quite ironical for during his chronicle he's chewed 'em and chewed 'em to bits. 1983

THE NAKED CLOWN Isn't half as funny as the one with the rubber nose. But when he tries to convince you he's serious you really piss yourself laughing. 1987 IN PINK TRUNKS, IN THE OTHER CORNER We were being male chavinistic when they heard us lowly talking about the Supplementary Sex but the Women weren't upset they thought we were talking about us ! 1987 A NUMBER OF PUNCLINES In a disused part of a Marrickville factory lies an old yellowed copy of the Daily Tele HOW MACKAY WAS KILLED is the headline while inside there was a bingo card. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8.

About as useful as ever I thought that made it obvious You've got to be joking You win some. You lose some. Winner detailed, losers left Losers detailed, winners left You already know You already know who. 1987

GEOFFREY CHING CHOW & FAMILY When I was a kid in a backyard adjoining ours his family used to keep chickens. Nearly every Sunday they'd kill one It was just great to see them running around with their heads off.

The chooks. 1987 HENRY VICTOR FRANCES ( DEFUNCT) REVISITED My father died. It upset me. For no reason at all. I cried. 1987

ON HAVING BEEN OBSERVED BY TWO DIFFERENT PARTIES ON TWO DIFFERENT OCCASIONS MOWING THE LAWN AND FILLING THE CAR WITH PETROL AND IT BEING FOUND EXTRAORDINARY fo

r mike and connie I am therefore I was. 1987 THE LARRIKIN'S COURTSHIP How my mother and him came to meet is how I came to be. 1987 IF IT WAS GOOD ENOUGH FOR HER It was bad enough that he beat the shit out of her. Worse that he never touched us. That sometimes seemed to hurt the most. Like we were unloved. Or something. I could never be the man

my father was. My father was.... 1987

THE ONES WE LOVE ( 1960-1963 ) My whole body twitched and thrilled to any part Marilyn Monroe played. Who could have foretold that three years later I would be in love with four men. ,

1987

IN THE MEAN TIME 1. My Mother A photograph depicts a woman on her guard and sour a classic picture of rejection ( of dejection she couldn't know, of insolence she wouldn't dare ) life she cold barely comprehend in the disparate, desperate thirties ( in the mean time) she was taught white bread and sugar ( cannot understand our attitude to brown our wholemal way to dietary perfection ) the photo shows a woman worn and twisted a life with vitamins unlisted. As simple as that' Just a full stomach in the mean time. 2. Meaning of Life

( A Lack of)

Random access to computation is authorized only from Above. Whole armies fight against this notion. ( This Ocean ). And use whipping boys as posts to exact revenge and simulate responsibility refuting, in the mean time, social science and services. 1987

PUB CONVERSATIONS Practical considerations count and a parrot-like philosophy does in a pick-up context for prick or a cheap cerebral search for cunt. 1987

CITY VIEW FROM THE LEFT ( on the stockmarket crash ) Down in the wank of the CBD ( none could call it a heart ) where the acronym crowd abound can be found the sound of men moaning from a loss masturbators who make money from money who have never in their life lifted a brick. The pricks ! Their moaning is the means for producing my mirth. 1987 BOOKS & BEATLES & THE GREEN-EYED MONSTER My interest literally began with The Beatles just to find out what they meant a 1,002 paperbacks later I still can't understand ( why ) She Loves You. 1987 A THIN BOY,

LONG AGO AND SEX

A thin boy long ago and sex with his long brown hair and glances and no experience in these matters at all wandered in often and wondered what went on beneath your blouse

but that was/was long ago that was sad to be so long ago now today it's different now he doesn't care has grown out of this and that the thin boy has gone to fat and natural despair two children together and a life apart. We have our selves to testify to that.

1988

THE NUCLEAR POWER FAMILY ( a tribute to the mad max movies) A dirt memory of cooked skin on sordid bones to fold and flap and dance to cling the ever ever after after math to scrape loyalty from a mistress you never have fucked shefucksyou. 1988 NO EASY DRIVE-IN EQUATION ( AT THE MEANING-OF-LIFE BOTTLE SHOP) Only xryptic literature to tantalize the naked eye or cryptic death to similarly satisfy the semi-literati. 1988 BIOGRAPHICAL MARRIAGE

Relaxed men often class me as highly strung but never well h u n g and my wife as a bit wonderfully wound up. It's two offspring we have just the same. 1988 OUTSIDE THIS WINDOW, A SPIDER ON A WEB Agaonst the night sky enlarged it seems to have escaped from a 1950's flick hanging there like a special effect this innocent danger, this conservationist, has to die because I worry about The Kids and what else. Aeresol insecticide I'll use and phuque the ozone layer ! *

*

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The evening breeze blows it like Events, like the even-handed blessing of Time. 1988

FOURTEEN LINES ON THREE DIVORCES Respective trilogies of marriage disrespectfully ended by the emerging trends of dissimilar inner-city rights denim politics, short, spikey arguments and gelled enthusiams; by the cost effective nature of hot take-away Fridays nights by leafy lunches set by an indifferent quarter-acre mate by the breakage and cleansing of crockery and kids and/or that complete shopping/hit list of offspring and real estate; by all those generic expectations now branded Bloody Unreal by drunk-walking husbands and onlookers who get the knife by soft second-hand romances and war-torn sex manuals by the conflict between video ease and a moving picture of life. This promise. That failure. These unexpected proceedings. With the comedy safely published in dusty legalese the judgement in this human series is to be continued.

1988 POEM WITH A REAL BEGINNING ( ENDING WITH A SUPPOSITION) Artificicial plants open many conversation pieces in many talks around town at concentric circles ( those bed-ridden, debasing bundles of laughter jarred with joyless-mess

)

seduced and then sedated by cynicism pencilled-in after-thoughts are mumbled and later gently disregarded as, perhaps, too conscientious. They roofrack the Truth and mangle the marigolds driving off in Toyotal indifference as we are often bound to do. 1988

A PURIST'S VIEW OF PERVERSION A statistic of bodies are wet some with sodomy some with celluloid sweat those coolish eyes those half-cocked smiles those hour-long collisions with other hips give you the shits. Only the actor's pseudonyms and hurried goodbyes restore normaility to this censor's eyes. 1988