Friendly Street Poets

London Fields

The night my girl flew to Paris
the phone rang and I thought
it’s her but heard the voice
of a man I did not know saying
I had fucked up and he knew where
I was and was coming to get me.
His voice had a Kray Twins sort
of truth and sneered as I said
I don’t know you I’ve never met you.
I’m coming to get you he said
I’m coming there to get you now.

That we lived in a flat atop
a large Edwardian home and thus
I had two front doors between me
and that voice was of some comfort,
though not complete. Some days later
when our old blue Triumph Herald
was stolen and police found it
a few streets away the wiper blades
twisted oddly like the arms of a man
imprisoned in a dungeon somewhere
down the East End or so it felt.

I got casual work in Fleet Street
left the Reuters building at dusk
got off at Highgate. By the tube
was a pub The Woodman where I drank
a pint or so then walked the dark
Queen’s Wood ten minutes to my door
love poems in my head for my girl
as I strolled beneath the trees.
One night voices hard and close
I heard two men crashing through
the woods walking fast with purpose.

Years later home in Australia I read
of Dennis Nilsen a former army cook
he had killed fifteen boys and men
picked them up in The Woodman
drugged killed and butchered
buried parts flushed others fed
entrails to animals got found out
only after neighbours complained
of blocked and smelly drains
in his flat in Cranley Gardens
at the end of our street.

(c) Larry Buttrose

Caution – This Office May Damage Your Health

It’s the tea room gossip that irks ya
It stings and blinds ya
with its “he said” and “she said”
And “you’ll never guess” and the bloody
“Oh my God! Oh my God!”
“What was she thinking?”
You thought at first they were all drab and grey
But it turns out the place is like a Bangkok brothel
It’s the tea room gossip that irks ya

It’s the mobile phone ring tones that needles ya
They frazzles and dulls your brain
Bleating from unattended desks
Tinny tones of the latest TV soap theme
Or over and over again some comedy show catch phrase
Possibly mildly amusing the first time
Irritating the second and then increasingly exasperating
Until you swear you’ll bring a sledgehammer in tomorrow
And smash the bloody thing to smithereens
It’s the mobile phone ring tones that needles ya

It’s the meetings that drives ya to distraction
They numbs and deadens ya
The ‘purely for decorative purposes’ agenda
The action items never to be actioned
The head spinning pointless Powerpoints
with ballistic bullets and apoplectic arrows
As meaningless as a mission statement
And sleep inducing presenters talking to the wall
It’s the meetings that drives ya to distraction

But it’s the clichés that finally does ya head in
They blisters and rips ya
As you’re listening to a heads up about world’s best practice
Getting incentivised to leap from behind the 8 ball
Through a 24 by 7 window of opportunity
Into a whole new ball game on a level playing field
Moving forward, at the end of the day, in this rapidly changing globalised
environment
Yes it’s the clichés that finally does ya head in

© Mike Hopkins

Falco Berigora

(on the Strzelecki Peaks)

It was no gale
but plumb amidst
the roaring forties
and at seven
hundred metres
on that island
where all trees
leaned strongly eastwards
the wind bit chill
through summer cottons.

To lunch and talk
we lay on naked
granite, in shelter
of melaleucas
tough and fully
ankle high,
forcing their roots
in narrow cracks
through meagre rock-
crumble and leaf-rot –
when from the east
a bird swooped up,
brown falcon poised,
wings wind-fluttered
scarce two metres
above the peak.

A moment she hung
against the wind,
then turned and in
her turning drew
her wings closer
and stooped down
the northern drop.

We ran scarce twenty
paces to the edge.

That black streak
flattened her flight,
swept out above
the plain beside
the flecked sea-crawl.

(c) Murray Alfredson

The John Brack Exhibition

stepping into the art gallery time machine
back, back until we were children of the fifties
there, uncle Lennie, given up the drink again
Pop’s got that protective lean
using his shoulder to deflect any criticism of his boy
I don’t think Nan’ll take any more nonsense
though she’ll feed him well enough

‘hey, I didn’t know that John Brack knew us’
my sister said, as she looked at herself in the back seat
with our brother, who never would sit still
and Mum wearing her tired but tolerant smile
another Sunday drive through Fred Williams landscape

I watched the crowds in Collins Street once,
while waiting to meet my son.
hadn’t seen him for twenty-two years,
but was sure I’d know him, a mother doesn’t forget

quick-step into the sixties
taffeta and tulle and a too-tight grip
the mechanics institute, local band, 60/40
and us all prettied up, starlets on Saturday nights
dancing into our dreams

we sat for a while, watching the viewers
she closed one eye, made rectangles with her fingers
‘I’m working out where to put the lines’ she said
so I squinted too and framed them up
and suddenly I saw them, stories
contained in lines
all the John Brack people looking
at the people in the paintings
ready to step in

except for that young woman, dark hair coiled
who’s just flowed out from a Beardsley print
and the bloke in red dust boots who posed for Dobell
whose rounded lines are no softer than the landscape
and that young man standing, still as anything
who looks as if he should always be dancing
as in his stillness the whole world turns

but the rest of us fitted, interchangeable
with the people in the frames, whom you might think
were captured, a moment in time, but they were not
they kept stepping out, telling their stories
which were
our stories

Veronica Shanks

Past Conjugation of the Verb Marry

I married

I married a white knight

with a slow horse

on rough terrain

I was the bee in his helmet

He would sleep in his armour

When he finally took it off

I saw his heart had been given to another

His cause was for lost love

mine for safety

Pearls and black roses

A bad omen they said

Not knowing I chose, loved them

A curt affair

His genes full of generations-bread and butter

Mine of passionate, cruel stones

Forty two degrees in the shade

Sitting tensely in formals

cracking our Crème Brule

Driving from the church

he asked for the cricket score

You married

You married

noun not verb

White whipped candy, French nails

fake tan

Your mother on oxygen

Had to see her first born

married, if not well

Under the tulle, her grandson

a happy family fracas

trimmed in lurid lace

She died anyway

How your milk

must have curdled

at the funeral

What will you marry next

to have her back?

He married

He married, as was the custom

A suit, speeches, the pressies

a day’s notoriety

Lots of grog to loosen

A chain he already despised

The certainty of open

legs and ironed shirts

He loved his house, the kids

the car, the view

Lamingtons in the lunch box

Pre-wired for the burbs

But they forgot to teach him

the dangers of fantasy

We married

We married oil and water

decorative statements

odd socks, budget and actual

We married mismatched sheets

ends of roof joists

opinion and dissension

ideas of the other

We married anyway

They married

They married like they married before them

Lonely, bored, bedazzled by desire

Because part of them feels whole

inserted in the other

It is logical, ludicrous, popular

They married for the long plough

rocks, stumps and droughts

Taught their boys how to hate monotony

Girls, how to darn, clean and mend

They married for love of marriage

What God has put together

let no verb bring asunder

© Carmel Williams

Too much Mary Jane

there can be too much meaning
I have trouble with the good green herb
because everything is so meaningful
red cars for example
or three objects in a triangle
words out of context from more than one book
also the CIA or the Queensland Police
who use that hoverfly to film me

but it is good, the green herb
taking a deep lungful of raspy heat
coughing and spluttering for the good cause
of another state of mind
a change of, increase of, consciousness
necessary
if we are to change the world anytime soon
I’ll get around to it
just after I have this little sit down
in the corner with Jack Horner and my knees

I have found that if you smoke it
all-day-every-day for two years
meaningfulness
becomes a little hard to work out
as if something —
I can’t quite remember
but if I could concentrate
and put all the clues together
I would understand

but right now I wonder
what those ants are carrying and why?
they know things

I would know things
if I didn’t keep missing
whatever it is

Belinda Broughton

UNTOUCHABLE

Looking outward to the stars
I sometimes try to understand
the tangle of myself
within all this.

Between untouchable distance
and the folding of air
our bodies are
just serendipity.

The night-time of sky
still fills my mind
and redefines the earth
that holds me.

And in this cool, blue evening
I too can seem transparent
with sensing my way beyond
the deepest stretch of thought.
The disappearing sun
the floating moon
are in my breath.

They say, when it’s add added up
we stand on almost nothing,
held by the imagination
of the smallest things,
which court each other
constantly – that’s all.
Our foothold an illusion,
a magus trick, just
the folly of a trillion tiny things.

JO DEY

MODI

Was it because you only painted nudes
in long voluptuous everlasting paint
swishing almond eyes, sheer erotica
expressing Woman as co-equal conspirator
– not just as contributor, almost for-the-first-time?
Art history treats you hard and plays up
the “Bohemian” and forgets the famously handsome Italian
Stylish, even in poor clothes – and always the perfect gentleman
as you complacently laid your head in the gutter
– you gave away more than you ever sold
swayed the likes of Beatrice Hastings, Max Jacob, and Katherine
while zeppelins bombed Paris and cynical intellects just got
bombed, or fled to Switzerland to invent DADA.
You demanded more wine, brandy or turpentine
and ignored the War raging while charming your models with
fantastic ease
and they tried to rescue you, tame you
– after 80 years you still make women jealous and man envious.
Your ‘best’ friend and dealer waited for your demise to
‘push up prices’ – paid you in canvas and drink, so
your last self-portrait saw through the narrowed mask
– an equanimity – holding your palette – your bronze corduroy
jacket and pale blue scarf – a subtle touch of ironic pity
For a detached self finally burnt free of passion.

Because – it all became too much – Because Modigliani,
you couldn’t be Jeanne’s “father”, and because she loved you
loved you, loved you – like a closed alley,
Because you had to kick the streets of Paris with Utrillo
and sold your Winter clothes for Drink –
Because life was a gift you threw away with talent?

And the real tragedy was Jeanne’s, two days after your death of
pleurisy – when with unborn – she plunged to meet you
like an ultimate signature.

Marc Murrell

POETS IN BURQUAS

I see a bird

pale, criss-crossed with blue
stones in a wall
a slice of mountain, hazy
a square of sky.

This blue burqua is my sky.

Except
unveiled through my window I glimpse
mountains I cannot visit
and sky
I cannot walked unveiled beneath.

This I cannot write to you
because
I cannot write.

Margaret Fensom

SIDEWAYS

His brain functions superbly with shapes and numbers.
At four, in church during the sermon, he drew from memory
an Egyptian mummy, with miniature mummies inside her,
in perfect symmetry; and Darth Vader of menacing stance
bursting with technology – each phase intense,
lasting months, even years – pirates, archaeology, police vans.
But he can’t piece together the jigsaw of people;
at school he’s taken to kissing other children on the lips –
videos show this is the way to give and get love.
Little girls are surprised; parents recoil with horror,
a hostile father accosts the boy’s mother, who then
instructs him clearly
Don’t touch anyone
Next day after school, stiffening, she says casually,
How did it go today?
Alright he said I didn’t touch anyone
but it was hard with my bag in the corridor
going sideways.

Ros Schulz