Shit for brains, we rock
around the clock, we mock
their fisting as two by two we're marched
in for a feed potatoes & carrots & cabbage & pork
& grootes & glams & maybe & if
we don't shut up they'll trice us
with ilk, with mince & cash express,
with a spoon-fed belief that who beasts
best is our better, who swallows a gaffe
gets our vote for a quote: "Deb's best
at pant swell." Remember
Digger O'Dell? How for a notion
he rang a bell? As hard by half
we petered out. As bards in jackets
of a chemical nature we slid down ropes of merry.
An acute little sod
comes back for more: Brother,
could you spare a life? I could
but my wife about that
would be oblique, wouldn't settle
for less than an accusation
of pretext. Question: by whom
was she undone & why? By Sam
for a scam: Who stood
for Berlin sat for Dresden, should have been
the other way around, from bacteria
to Andromeda being six lives, not two
as Sam said, a promise as paltry
as pudding on rye, as Himmler
in rafters, Goebbels to blame
for this Ferris wheel toppled on its side, for this Chair-
O-Plane that's thrown its riders to four corners—north,
east, south, west—where angels blow horns to celebrate
the arrival of the dearly departed, fingers in their ears,
this noise the last thing they need. That blasting horn,
I could swear we're about to be overtaken
by a Wehrmacht half-track, storm troopers spitting
dummies as they pass, will soon flush out those gypsies
who live in trees, in the elms on this quiet country road
as from a whole word to a buzz word a crow flies.
Another urinary episode, yours truly one of thousands
who, in the dead of night, will call out for a bedpan. Nurse,
quick, my life (admittedly antique) is snared by grief, is
culled from some confusion as to where I am. And
when. And, most to the point, why. But as always
she arrives too late, too busy chatting
with the sound effects man. Your rolls of thunder
aren't authentic. They need more crack, more Zeus
with a whip.
Butch favourites
on the mark, get set, go... their divine anatomies
set adrift, so slow; is jelly roll
all they know?
That every shoe
is worn by someone is a fact
that I know. And ditto glove: Take that,
& that. Fifty slaps
by my count, & more to come, more cheek
to turn, a lesson apparently
that I need to learn as I float merrily (Marry me!)
down a river of my own creation, another
urinary episode.
Philip Hammial has had twenty-three collections of poetry published, two of which were short-listed for a NSW Premier's Award. His poems have appeared in nineteen Australian poetry anthologies & in magazines in nine countries.