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Episodic Gratification
Kill the cat.
Your name is not enough.
Trust your hands.
Kill the cat.Make It.
Don't let prayers have all the brightest stars, roll your lips.
Your choice one-dayone-day.
The secret is layers, one cannot endure…
good life is an accretion of layers.
By the time you have attained
spouses, mortgages, power or esteem
there will be nothing exposed to the certainties of cold winter.
And you'll have killed the cat
which had no name
maybe once sleek
preposterously proud in its little menace.
Worse then, ginger dimmed
scars and missing teeth
but still a tomcat howl
to rake a sleeping night.
He had no humans of his own
but his kind all know the predictable call for food.
Geoffrey allowed. The approach, the grab
then throttle.A vicious, short-term fight -
scratches before a death.
This man dropped the orange, empty carapace -
it lands like exhausted breath (which it no longer had).
He could almost see refugee fleas as they packed for diaspora.
That empty ball of bone
buried in a #4 blade plot of lawn.
Next day had a paper-cut wind
his own belief in comfort
warmed the Sunday hands.
We know this choice.The end.
He becomes the intended comet
of primary happiness.
Grass grew brighter.
Everything important wins.
Each page
in theGehennic biographies -
more food, more garbage
sleep at the edge of charms.
Thieves, chains and Hugo Boss
strange children home from school
becoming just like daddy
and the wife is toning thighs
in rooms full of energy.
Two Hours
You are leaving
in a bright metal dress.
The polish, purchased pulse
rumbling sound trap
kerosene sky.
Our conversation squeals like an old trolley-suitcase.
All clerks are sick
or on training days
vacant positions.
Little truths remain unsorted
while "you're going" just stands there
above a stagnant pond of data.
There is a point
significant as
but all I feel
is the Customs stamp,
fold of paper over an optimistic passport photo.
The air-clump as hatches lock.
Kurraga City Council
The lords of local politics flyspotlit under lamps.
A desk can bluster them lazily above crowds,
stinking contrails above the craninglumpen necks
of almost-concerned citizens.
Expertise is rusted on
our mouths are angry nests as waves
corrode beneath untended sun.
There's a 1940s lemon slumber in the halls
as lesser grades sick lankly over tea.
Pyramids of waste
cacophonous hymns
cracked roads like mousetraps
with chasms at the verge.
Art projects primped then launched in a
municipal wine to an audience of three -
ossuary of the new.
Pensioners get bussed to parks
where they're mugged then rushed to hospital.
Like People's Liberation Army troops at harvest time
blue uniformed Rangers march out to reap fines from those
whose junk-pump cars go everywhere
"for the ride".
Each civic plan has kernels for the next
while good intentions seep likelimescale
in a great impotent bowl.
Envy no one this choice
when they one-day raise their hand;
Australian suburbanjihadis
on an asthmatic campaign.
Me too, complaint becomes habit
then every day is caught up
whining into nitre.
Overheated phones placate iconoclastic codgers,
complaints are passed up into space
until no one rings and no one answers.
There's just the fart-oomph of spent words
folding all the air.
Embracing Inner-Lawn
We split chip roar.
Our houses, the bridges and roads
that stain everything as they seep.
Then people are gone to work
leaving dogs to bark till their return. Tell our storey.
I rage back at angry webs ofpowerlines
then a pregnant woman by the Woronora River
proves me wrong.
Someone is jogging on the pedestrian path
slung beneath the busy bridge
that thinks it’s some kind of horizon.
The abysmal and serene are neighbours here
carefully drafting "friend-like" notes
slipped into letterboxes while the other is away.
Fish leap through air, dislodging vermin while
tasting new space.
White cockatoos drown out the pets
drag sky to the eucalypt canopy.
Mangroves don't sort their litter.
I could live here
further out
be abandoned at my desk each day
as commuters shoal.
A life’s worth of inner city
is devalued by reflections on a river.
On the boat-builder’s slips
a Grey Man etched on olive
becomes something half finished.
Ends Of Nothing
Even waves surrender.It's coming.
Our houses hug water – rivers,
seas and swimming pools.Theeyeburn
of white paint.
We are the well fed, with nice floppy hats
and flaccid thinkers' hands.
Each idea is an embryo of husk.
White sand
litters every beach, blonde hair
and the amputee lurch of upsized cars.
Real estate windows, formerly
entertainment of choice, they grin like loons and get avoided.
We domesticated our words
before intelligence.
Wisdom is a difficult plant…
only for the ardent grower.
There's a mortgage out on clouds
and even weeds fail beneath
"another perfect day".
A spinal cord of wooden steps down to the sea,
sea ate forest, bred coal.
Our levee banks will stop all that,
we've put our money on permanence
and the brokers are crooks.
Because even the waves stop. White sand is a temporary thing
whittled from mountains
by teeming sky.
Pain management for the new princes,
pale chubby arms learn to climb.
Pines know this is coming.Pets drop
dopey facades, fret
and forget their humans.
Birds won't talk, abandon
the five songs of territory.
White balls patrol the putting green beside a murderous blue.
Water retreats as argent dunes dissemble, fill all distance.
Wind changes.
Man is stuff of fire and soil,
any valley confirms water will win.
The empress of chemicals -
that moisture our bodies hold is ransomed
then released. Fire is transitory
and dirt is our slave.
Water will rise again, the "victories" so certain
it has no inkling of contention.
Even the noise of our retreat
is just a high tone beside spume.
Life rides water
the parasites of breath
replicate in any silence.
The next already grows
in a compost of hunger.
Les Wicks' books are "The Vanguard Sleeps In" (Glandular, 1981),
"Cannibals" (Rochford St, 1985), "Tickle" (Island, 1993), "Nitty Gritty"
(Five Islands, 1997), "The Ways of Waves" (Sidewalk, 2000), "Appetites
of Light" (Presspress, 2002) & "Stories of the Feet" (Five Islands,
2004).
....assembles an amazing cast of people in recognisable often dark
places. With fine detail, their domestic & working lives are brilliantly
portrayed. Anthony Lawrence
He's performed at festivals, schools, prison etc. Runs workshops across
Australia & is editor of Meuse Press which focuses on poetry outreach
projects like poetry on buses & poetry published on the surface of a
river. He will be a guest at the Festival International de la Poesie in Trois Rivieres in October
Les Wicks Web Site
Les Wicks
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