Call in the Sunday wind.
Lend energy to old women
whose dresses blow up
a thousand panicked Marilyns
at every backyard luncheon.
Raise kites and wreck them.
Carry shopping bags
secret notes
and all of yesterday's autumn.
Discourse mightily
on the smallness of her hands.
Put good words all around her.
Cough from your fifteenth cigarette
before creeping noon. Light another.
And, for g-d's sake,
show some tiny kindness.
Tomorrow weighs a tonne.
There's a place, off to the side of your liver,
where you keep that spiky thing;
the one you'd rather not touch.
But it worries and scrapes at the flesh wall,
so much like a fresh, crusted sore,
that you can't help but to prod.
There's a dusty place on top of the wardrobe,
you keep your grandmother's journal;
faint pastel pages, floral background.
Still a scent about it, some antique bouquet,
but you know nothing about perfumes,
so you fill gaps with conceits—musk.
There's a page, far on, in the aromatic journal,
where the thin wrist forced the pen
so hard, it ghosted several sheets.
One line, tall as five of her lighter strokes:
I CAN'T FUCKING TAKE IT!
After that, there's only recipes.
He grids the tarmacs
of Guilford every season
Head to sole in black,
thick jeans, leather jacket,
shirt done up—one pearl button at the neck
over the final layer of a tight undershirt
Through scalding days; tyrant heat
the suit of clothes becomes malodorous
Skin is flaking
from that generous forehead
Pink patches
where blood ceased to flow
Beard outward
and across, as though the wind
is permanently oncoming
Lives where purple irises
retreat into skipping wallpaper
and the food smells worse
than the smells coming from rented rooms
where you'd pay less than everything you have
The drip drap dripping of the loose tap
at night drives busier minds to pique and horror
But, to him, it is the perfect clock
All time has become irregular
He takes money and cigarettes
offered over the eastern fence
of the Woodbridge Hotel
where he often scrounges
for half smoked butts
He nods his agreement
with two charitable men
who discuss, with solemn humour
the tyranny of their lovers
and the maze mind of females
He returns, only, his honest defence
Beautiful though... beautiful creatures
And I take it he is ascended
Alan Fyfe is a writer who lives in Western Australia. He has published poetry, prose, essay, and journalism. He was the poetry editor for the first edition of the University of Western Australia creative writing journal, Trove, and, in 2009, won the Karl Popper award for philosophy. He lives by the river, with his son, very far from you.
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