Alan Gould: Two Poems

We Boomer Boys

 

We boomer boys were once The Noise but now we run to trouble,

no longer seize those victories we scored when we were able,

 

as x-rays blaze arthritic ash where hip and thighbone groove

like heavy metal musos giving choir prac a serve.

 

And bio-mass beside our beds grows capsules, powders, ointments,

retirement ceding time at last for medical appointments.

 

We Boomer Boys went tertiary, degrees in feeling sore,

our liberal arts the scratching posts where undergrads might claw.

 

We Boomer Boys wore corduroys and styles of fustian flaunt,

for every style will catch the light before it turns aslant.

 

Here’s Beaky Mick, whose maths was quick, who slowed himself on booze,

lived high on other’s money and it little mattered whose.

 

Here’s Garry Sneer, who gained the ear of critics in New York.

O deaf one, how’s the buzz as you still ape the smart-set talk?

 

Here’s Col The Comet’s flash career, its focus and its verve;

the debris of his friendships showing highpoints of its curve.

 

Here’s Petit Moi, whose self-regard proceeded jauntily

from Swagger Bluff to Hobble Lane on Cloud Hyperbole.

 

We boomer boys still find the ploys to star in raw statistics

for all our prime slot lifetimes were a lesson in ballistics,

 

one epoch shooting us to affluence’s Notwithstanding

how present times will scratch for funds to staff the wards we land in.

 

What was it gave our boyo-eye its lightning derring-do?

When life became a fuck-up, who lived high on blaming who?

Alan Gould

 

 

My City Spread Uncouth

My city spread, then soared uncouth.

Were we the Dubai of the South?

I watch the world from my rear mirror

and glimpse a rev-head’s beard and teeth,

his audio-thump that’s inching nearer

at the lights on Ginninderra.

My vehicle is a dented ute,

my mind lives in Arcadia,

where mind and landscape infiltrate

with architecture’s tactful ware

to bring the buildings of the State

where greenery might serve their flair.

That was our chance, so where our error?

Why did a vision shy its aura

to show its crudest underside,

this “Canberra-brutal” style some era

light years from my own will chide

when Gould and all his trace have died?

Look! High-rise windows take the sun

like facets of an insect’s eye,

while here’s a 1950s glare

asserts “sweet home” is desert here …

… and I will not accept that lie

when gifts from living here supply

night skies above my bridle path

the Cross, Orion, making distance

from all the cities of the Earth

that crave ID for their existence.

For here the possums trot and wheeze

and powerlines are their trapeze,

and rev-heads in Arcadia

provide the lowdown on my car,

—for vital language is our essence—

when Overalls (who lacks his licence)

tells me “Well, mate, your four-wheels could’n

scrape the skin from off rice pudd’n”,

as our highest brick impales

the weatherfronts of passing gales.

Alan Gould