Eight short poems

 He looked at the stand of Mountain Ash

by Grants Picnic Ground and he said—

This would burn like a bastard.

You young loners with your books and iPods

I can see you, eschewing peer group pressure.

He said he saw a crane circling above Heathmont Station.

The gum trees loose down their bark

nubile young women with draperies.

Their wrinkled armpits.

The third button on her silk shirt is undone

she has lost her mobile phone at the disco barn

but she won’t ring her own number because

she wants it to come back without doing anything.

I went to touch him but he said—

No! I’ve been kicked in the head.

oh that dog—she knew when i spelt w-a-l-k

so then i spelt it k-l-a-w and she still knew

I was travelling forward and back, forward and back.

Nobody bothered me. They left me alone.

When I woke, I knew where I must have been.