Another Visitation

a broken door scores
his rage at forgotten names
and sleepless haze

the sink
his civilisation lost
and deserted
an order too far invisible
manifest in round flat
concave silver sharp
incomprehensible
and dazed

crusted insects smeared across
crack'n'blackened deco tiles

microwave mummified from within
exploded eggs and year-old beans
overflowed milo and molten meat
trailblazing ants stealing
for new colonies - or rats
scraping loudly in toxic cupboards
of chemical waste and home-brew
exterminator

a history of papers
stories never read
collecting grime on tabloid verse
stacked and sticky
wrapped in string with alzheimer's bows
a feeble shuffle and
resolute NO to any hand but hers

Hot Chips and a Coke

In this time of food phobia
eating hot chips
is a schoolboy delight
Carrying fries in a paper cup
wrapped in a grease-stained bag
I can feel the glares
stretched out from
my peers and people
twice my age
Are they silently
chastising me
for being so irresponsible -
raising my cholesterol -
anything that feels oily probably is -
as my doctor says
Or are they hungering
after my tasty bonanza
rebuking my flippant disregard
for their shoulder-to-steel
journey north to their
meat-and-three-vege wife husband kids
Don't worry I'm heading there too
Just stopped on the way to smell
the smoking oil and crackling fat
Don't I care that
I'm staring death in the face
sneers one boney man
in a suit with a
NY Marathon backpack

At least I don't smoke or base jump

People from the North Shore
who wear suits
don't eat hot chips
and drink coke
on trains

They might steal a snort on a furtive break
or claim they need a caffeine-hit-fast-fill
on the weekend with mates
but on the train in peak hour -
you watch them -
they don't -

but they wish they could -
occasionally...

it would bring back
all the freedom and escape
of after-school hours
waiting for the bus
eating chips
in pulled-down ties
shrugged-shirts ruffled-hair
jumping and laughing
stealing a smoke

Ah how the acid in coke
dissolves the chip grease
so sweetly

The Breakfast Rat

The breakfast rat
sniffed Sanitarium crackers
and turned up his rat nose
at the milk-sodden tax haven -
glue-glugg-like-mud -
stick his rat-faced jaw together with
tarry-milk-wheat-mud like viscous sludge -
he knew better than this

They don't eat the bodies of the
rat babies like the three squeals
of an illustrious Shanghai banquet
but shake out flower water milk
like good children
soft and low
gentle and prudent
as puritans in the suburbs
tending babes and leather books
while the world outside burns

Christmas Meditations '06

When did the gods stop pissing & shitting
when did they stop fucking bulls on Attic plains
when did Dionysiac lust leave the heavens for
Hades and when did we forget that god was a human shame
Aphrodite's heaving breast seduced Adonis
as she was pressed by Ares
Saturn chewed his children till their
heads popped in Goya's oil
and almighty God shafted his bolt like
some petty despot punishing and
destroying his people from Eden to Gomorra.
How did a wine-sodden merchant-kicking Christ
transcend those who created him?