Friday, October 30, 2009

Pollen with eyehooks

Blue sky as kettle boils.
Housemate in silk PJs
'Ah, you can smell the blossoms!'

i am out of hayfever pellets
(this is how i eat them,
by the handful),
eyes watering, preparing to
ride through clouds of
pollen with eyehooks.

itchy, patchy, red and white
squinting, while the rest of Melbourne
roll its limbs on lawns
in short shorts at lunch time.

Thursday, October 29, 2009

Lollypop on Gold

'Do you live around here?' he asks, at the pedestrian crossing on Alexandra Pde.

'Yeah, just down there.' The lights take ages at Gold St. I'm taking my time getting to work. Usually there's a cute girl ahead of me laughing with the lollypop man - the elastic cutting into her flesh a little at the hip. Today we're alone together in peak hour traffic.

'I hear Glen at the pub got stabbed last night,' he says.

'At the Leinster?'

'And his missus. He was closing up,' he says.

'Are they ok?'

'He's pretty bad. They caught two young blokes, one was 23, the other 17.'

'Any motive?'

'Robbery, I suppose ... hang on ... okay you're good to go,' he says, walking into the stalled traffic to bawl out the driver of a white four-door who had crossed the line.

Five minutes later I'm waiting for my tea to steep in the sun outside at Mixed Business. Geo beat me there - damned long cycle pedestrian crossing. She'd driven past the cordon around the Leinster ...

'Junkies. Probably junkies,' she said, sizing up her coffee.

'There's some left in Collingwood?'

Wednesday, October 28, 2009

hungry on the train

A litre of raspberry soft drink
chicken burger demolished before Parliament
small box chips on middle seat.
Short curls pasted to sloping forehead.
Ears pinned back to head
a fine pixie boy in man drag
with a plasticine-thick brow bone
and mono-brow regrowth.
eyes hotwired by cayenne grill.

slightly pink shirt, collar open
over three-button suit jacket.
Dad's shoes, black wool socks,
quiksilver backpack.

Must be halfway through an IT internship,
those long fingers like tentacles across the keyboard by day
pressing chips to teen-thick lips
on the way home to second dinner
somewhere before Epping.