Remember causes

and affectations of effect on rain-swept city streets

and war-zones now gone five-star?

Remember anger

and maintaining rage at symbolic loss

while secretly at home with the familiar futility?

Remember sexual honesty

and fucking whoever felt like you

and confining safe sex to heart condoms?

Remember dope

and discovering the ‘real’ you

and waking each time forgetful of the revelation?

Remember music

and believing decibels were antidotes to megatons

and lyrics could shield you from the Press?

Remember death

when it belonged to rock stars

and an endless list your mother claimed to have known?

Remember revolutions

and the bloody gutters of freedom

because fascism belonged to the right? Right?

Remember social action

sitting in smoke-filled rooms with Nescafe activists

and Housing Trust women with no teeth and less hope?

Remember children

sneaking past full lives and empty wombs

to be raised in the fearful parentheses of generational skipping?

Remember parents

left on some private shelf

in case they portrayed you to anybody that mattered?

Remember party politics

and seeing neighbours become politicians

only to fall in clay-footed exhaustion at the barriers?

Remember health

when it was something other people ought to have and

you weren’t smoke-free, mineral water in hand and smiling at God?

Remember money

and how it was never going to concern you

and then you learnt the golden rule and its defensible limits?

And do you remember when the penny dropped

that the personal was the political

and you found out you had to change?

And you decided to forget the revolution?

At the Buccaneer Pub, inside the walls of the old town,

drinking with ancients like myself,

pretending to be interested in rugby,

while they pretend to be interested in cricket,

but neither of us fakes their distrust of royals

(though it must be said that the man in the top hat and overalls,

feeding his bar stool-perched water spaniel some crisps and Guinness,

is a little less harsh than his mates;

he would allow them to take their own lives come the revolution).

Drifting from a woman behind me comes:

‘I already told you what I want but you didn’t want that!’

I turn to hear her man,

all country-tied up and jacketed with leather elbows,

red of face and spaniel-eyed, shout

‘Two more of the same, thank you, landlord’

and I wonder how long it will take before he notices

she’s been in the Ladies an awful long time

and that the pub has a back door.

‘Your round, convict lad,’ smiles Top Hat.

‘Besides, we’re much better entertainment.’

For the late Sue Dixon

Nothing happens by accident;

desire is design, down to Persian rugs

on the bare boards of innocence

and a corner temple

in this turned corner, turned temple,

at which you daily worship

and give thanks for cankers conquered

and those given up.

Here are symbols stripped bare,

the peripheral and the weak discarded

on a journey which will ultimately carry no baggage;

a journey to purely selfish ends

so you can return to us for chosen company.

Your very madness permeates this space

(for you are mad to do this, you know).

Your rampant, wilful idiocy,

(unleashing forces temporal and spiritual)

mind and senses unchained,

run minor riot here

bouncing off walls, laser-like,

piercing and burning out creeping reason.

I don’t know the woman who lives here yet

but one thing is clear.

She’s got kangaroos in her top paddock

and she no longer cares to excuse

their demanding behaviour

or their menacing demeanour.

In fact,

I’ve seen her feeding the little devils.

For the late Helen Kinnear

The woman I know

would hug cactus

if God told her to

(and she didn’t have to walk too far).

 The woman I know

would blame herself

if God went missing

(as She seems to some days).

 The woman I know

would marry men

on single-minded journeys

(when she believed in destinations).

 The woman I know

would only survive surgery

with Divine intervention

(and an iced coffee transfusion).

The woman I know

would believe in me

on the flimsiest of evidence

(and question my sanity when I returned the compliment).

 The woman I know

would think the world might end

if she wasn’t steering someone straight;

(and she’d be right).

 The woman I know

would think she was clapped out at 50

but then bat on

(because St. Rodney Marsh would).

 For Helen

For the late Barb Fitzgerald

Now that you are gone

the cruelty is ended.

You, the speaker of many truths,

are no longer taunted

by a tongue in twisted battle

with a mind no less sharp

and arms no less caring

that could not be raised in love.

Now that you are gone,

I’ll have you near me always;

Close to mind and heart,

a constant in my chaos.

But in my selfish grief,

I want you here, and now,

so that I can understand

the true order of things.

Now that you are gone,

I will cling to calls in the night

and recall your thoughts

in my struggle for the truth.

But I would rather have the magic

to conjure you at will

so that we could save our worlds together,

even worlds apart.

Now that you are gone,

You’ll never wipe away my tears

and laugh rudely with me again,

in this world that travels on.

I must learn to live,

With not one more single hour

when you soothe my soul

and make all things possible, again.