Roger G McDonald: ‘Dying to survive’ and ‘Missile’

Dying to survive

Two tattooed thirsts with pints protect the pub
From creeping lace and handcrafts down the hill.
It’s elbow time. They’re a declining club;
Elevenses their gruff ancestral swill.

The old post office hoists its redbrick skirts
To flash its neon electronic knickers.
The magistrate’s court similarly flirts
With commerce. A candle of justice flickers.

Shop fronts fonted in New Antique must honour
Progressiveness. The fashion’s all stressed denim.
Smug mercs and beamers tell me I’m a gonner
In a bush town dolling up as Blenheim.

I’m pensioned to a wistful dreamery
In a village I’d exult to sin in
For the ravaged draper’s and the creamery,
Except even the tradies consult in linen.

Roger G McDonald

Missile

Sun-anguished paddocks prostrate themselves in dust.
Caricatures of trees, like crucifixes
Stand to bleak attention, bleached arms thrust
Skyward as though begging the elixirs
Faithless clouds refuse to precipitate.
Sheep mob the ute-borne hay for a dinner date.

Above, a wedge-tailed eagle sprawls the breeze
Like a larrikin slouching on a fence.
He’s truth in its full three sixty degrees.
Robotic eyes, disinterested, intense,
Scan drought’s ghetto. The end might be a mile,
Or an inch. Beware death’s meat-seeking missile.

Roger G McDonald