Summer, & Nothin’ Gets Done

She climbed barefoot through the bedroom window
and licentiously stuck a Bob Marley record on
“’cause it’s summer,” she said “and nothin’ gets done.”
And the beer tastes like water,
and the water tastes like cryptosperidium.
as good taste takes a back seat and yobs don shorts and thongs
as the Goths sweat like pasty faced martyrs in the storms of vivid white.
And Westie kids pull bongs in a parked Monaro at Bondi Beach
as the local wax heads watch on and sneer as they dive bleach blonde into the ocean.
And the dead flesh of European foul rots in the flat heavy heirs of Suburbia.
as families get together for Xmas that p’haps were better left apart
and uncomfortable questions get asked
about bank jobs, boyfriends and barbituates
as the blood fills their brains and the beer and cheap Chardonnay fills their veins.
And bottles get smashed in the faces of Byronites
as working men attempt to make up for one year of enslavery
with one night of unschooled decadence.
And works in progress go on the back burner
and no one can think straight for another six months ’cause its summer, and nothin’ gets done
And we sit back in a little black flat in Erskineville
watching the happy mozzies and cockroaches fly through the air
as they think how they never had it so good
or at least for as long as their caramel brains can remember.
And as the day wears on and the two of us become one with the sponge of our mattress
thanks to the fetta cheese of our sweat
we listen to the local jazz show on the radio and exchange Berocca bacis
’till I convince you to reach for your mobile phallus and call in sick for the afternoon shift,
then let a smile creep across my dial as I hear you answer your dim-witted boss with
“’cause it’s summer, and nothin’ gets done.”

Benito di Fonzo

 

 

The Aeronaut

Height is my metier,
And my chosen direction is up.
Loft is all, and my eyes
Scan the blue with the
Cautious, loving, reach
Of one only partly alive
When landed.

Air is a huge, empty quickness
Of mind. A nimble solitude
Of the senses, vaster than any dream,
Of any kind of mind,
Can encompass. I am a dart,
A coloured dart,
And I live here. Tiny wings
Attach to my feet and hands,
So even when below I float
Slightly above ground level.

‘Above’, ‘beyond’, ‘over’ and
‘Away’. These are my cries and
I call out to other fragile, feather-figures
Weaving a path through the
Spools and eddies of invisible,
Life-giving currents.

‘Bird-man’, ‘bat-boy’, ‘winged-thing’.
Such names have attached themselves to me.
But if you needs escape the clod-clutch of your lot
Reach out to me.
And light as gossamer,
Hollow-boned and wind-slimmed,
I will bear you up into a horizon of such endless, elegant blue
You will never want to exist apart from it again.

 

Julian Meyrick

from

MODERN MONSTERS
NOT LOOKING

We have no use for your Medusa's head!
Aristophanes Peace

Minds sinuous & frenzied
burrowing or alkaline
women corrode our peace with wheedled truth.

Great tales brewed by barmen’s pens
the shiny shields of power.
Our stories breed like reptiles & only our wives
see us short pants, school bound.

Wrapped in waxed paper, plastic bags
our mighty pricks are play-lunch
beneath indifferent gums.

 

Les Wicks