First bite

My father retired almost deaf

after decades of fixing metal presses.

He took me to the factory one day as a kid.

He wasn’t ashamed of the work he did

to feed his family.

I was frightened by the violent clash of metal

but never let on.

He was in the metal workers union,

read their paper,

the Tele and the Mirror too

but had a healthy suspicion of the headlines.

He grew up in the dark terraces of East Sydney

and ran errands down Palmer Street

for women of the night as he called them.

He was a bastard, legally,

and my mother never let him forget it.

Ten years after the final mortgage payment,

the garage door wide open to the sun,

he drinks DA from a pony glass

he pinched from the Forest Inn,

puts on a silly smile and says

“Ah, that first bite!

Glass of amber fluid, son?”

Warm wind, a song, February 2003

I feel a warm wind blowing

And it feels like peace

And it feels like anger

Against too long injustice.

I feel a warm wind blowing

From wintry Berlin, Moscow and Paris

Blowing across deserts and forests

Across oceans and continents

Across borders and border posts.

I feel a warm wind blowing

And it’s the breath of millions

It’s the breath of people in every nation

It’s the breath of ordinary voices

Speaking out strong and confident

The breath of hope and the human spirit.

I feel a warm wind blowing

Growing in fury and strength

And it’s building to a heated hurricane

That will blow down the citadels of war.

January, Balmoral

summer solstice has come and gone
without a fuss

three kookaburras are making
raucous satirical comments
on the status quo in Mosman

I go down to the harbour
enter the barely ruffled water
sun spearing through clouds

and floating on my back
look toward the south

the sky turns black

a sudden shower

Forecast

Mothers keep churning us out

like there’s no tomorrow

and maybe there isn’t

for us

I see mammoth cockroaches

picking over the rubble

nonchalant

waiting to evolve into something

more photogenic

Call me cynical but

this radioactive dust

they’re putting in warheads these days

couldn’t be playing up with the weather,

could it?

Memorial at Kuta

Gaudy flags

draped over flowers

and in the background

a pile of burnt shoes

shoes that will not dance

nor be flung off in abandon

or slipped under the bed,

will not wear down on one side,

be left to dry on the verandah

or spattered with rain

from running

through a summer storm

Talkback

a riot broke out

at the radio station

police were called in

to quell the listener response

nursing home residents

addicted to their man’s

frenzied fricatives

voluble vowels

garrulous glottal stops

dubious diphthongs

nagging nasals

and crazed consonants

surged out of their recliner chairs

and headed there in mini-buses

when a stand-in for their man

dared to let a caller ask

why

I wipe my arse on the flag

I wipe my arse on the flag

because it’s just an ocker rag,

a symbol of arse-licking

and brown-nosing dictators

and the colours are wrong,

the colours of empire and subservience.

I wipe my arse on the flag

because it was wrapped around Pauline

and it’s always over Howard’s shoulder,

because 350 people who drowned trying to get here

were deemed unworthy of its protection.

I wipe my arse on the flag

because it flutters over desert concentration camps

and prisons full of young black men

and corporate towers exalting cold hard capital.

I wipe my arse on the flag

because I like the feel

of the union jack in my crack.