When She Turns

When she turns,
He is there.
She wishes
He weren’t. 

He sees her as she wishes she could see herself.

No one
Can live
With that.

When she turns,
He is gone.






Parkstreet

One Hundred Books

One Hundred Books
You must read
Before
You die.

One Hundred Books,
But you must
Die
Anyway.



Parkstreet

Information

Elderly lady,
Confusing a bank teller
With talk of where the money came from,
Instead of where
She wants
To send it.

The money came
From her son’s estate
And she has to
Tell
Someone.





Parkstreet 

Ko-fi

Flower, song lyrics

Lyrics from a song for Jacqueline, who left us too soon.

Flower

Like a flower
She bloomed in the springtime.
She never made it
Through the summer.
Spared the chill of autumn,
The changing colours of her life,
But how am I going to make it
Through the winter?

The memory of a flower
Is not a real flower
A picture of a flower
Just reminds me
That the flower is gone.




Parkstreet

Ko-Fi

The Book Of St. Kilda

For us St. Kilda was like like one of those children's pop up picture books. You know the ones, you turn a page and the enchanted paper forest lifts up, then folds neatly away as you turn the page to reveal the next scene. Our pop up book was called St.Kilda, Architecture, 1850 to 1970, and we were the children.

Jack was a local, the genuine St. Kilda article, a Princess of Princes St. She'd owned the book since she was five and was happy to share hers with me.  

We'd walk the streets late at night holding hands. She'd show me all her old favourites, mansions hidden by orange brick apartment blocks, worker's cottages with histories from dock worker to artist to pot dealer's shop front. We'd open dusty old pages she'd nearly forgotten and sometimes discover new treasures for the revised edition we were writing together. 

It was like those buildings didn't exist unless we were looking at them. 

We'd exchange extravagant gifts of real estate. I'd offer her a grand Victorian mansion, she'd present me with an Art Deco apartment. We'd make foolish plans, balls in the ballrooms, breakfasts in the ingles, cocktail parties in Port Phillip Bay windows. We were the most benevolent of landlords, allowing all to live on our vast estate free of charge from us.

We'd walk the streets late at night, holding hands, the poorest of property tycoons, the silliest of children, then up the stairs to the rented apartment that was really ours, a cup of tea and a cigarette on large cushions on the floor, close the book, a kiss, and so to bed.

For Jacqueline.




Parkstreet

Ko-Fi

She Knows

Sun rises here
Before there.
When she wakes
She knows
He’s already
Thought of her.





Parkstreet

He’s Drunk

He's drunk.
He's as drunk as a working class bear on the first pay day of Spring.
Drunker than a sailor who just found out that hooker was a man. 
Drunkest of all the drunk, the mayor of drunk town, the heavy weight champion of the world of drunk.

He is drunk.
He is sitting beside me,
On this tram,
And he wants to chat.





Parkstreet