Graphite Glory

In the evening, the cabin is swollen with the noise of train life: people shuffle their bottoms across mysteriously shaped stains on the seats, a toddler jabbers and sighs, mobile phones emit white noise that is inaudible until it isn't there and you hear its absence. Through a variegated sea of distressed Levis and breath-constricting Cheap Mondays, an elderly man in a track suit and Crocodile golf visor sucks the marrow out of what is actually not a bone but a sushi roll. The tamago slides past his lips like a tongue. The seaweed casing starts to collapse into itself. Boku has seen the Crocodile Man before... in a dream about the Freudian meaning of a well in Kyoto. Boku hopes this train goes to Kyoto... except it probably won't because he got his travel instructions from a nameless cat.

If you are doing some boxing day shopping and want something to remember this departing year by, here is "Lockdown", an anthology. My poem is called, "Susan". Because this is not the e-book, I am not sure if they have corrected the missing word in stanza one, line three. Or maybe just read it that way and think that it was omitted deliberately. Updates on the e-book to follow soon. https://www.booktopia.com.au/lockdown-melbourne-writers-group/book/9780645049503.html Description (copied from booktopia): A collection of 25 short stories and poems by 18 Victorian writers in a range of styles and subjects created during and responding to the statewide lockdown in the middle of 2020. They explore how relationships were maintained or frayed, loss of identity, and the stress of daily life in lockdown. Some enter the realm of fantasy, hyper-reality or magic realism, while others depict the experience with a more journalistic detachment.  

I might regret doing this, but here it is: "enough." I wrote this poem during the first lock down in Melbourne, Australia in (the soon to be historical) 2020. I sent the poem out to a variety of publications, only for it to not get published. I nearly sent it to The Melbourne Writer's Group, but I had a conversation with my brain, who said, "hey... everyone else hated it, so they will hate it too". So... anyway... I am putting it here. If I don't put it here now, I will have to wait until 2070 before this poem becomes mildly interesting again, and only as an artifact of this moment in time. Also... this is for the last of the revolutionaries... and the first sandwich thief... and the gummy-bear man. Yeah, you know who you are. If you're one of these people and you hate this, then... go... eat some cheese. Enough After seven hours on your feet, you still make time to pack someone else’s tomorrow’s lunch. You feed your children or your parents, because: li...

Darren:       Clean out the machine.      It's stopped spinning. Take the clothes out.      Take the doubts from my mind.      Take the soap from your mouth,      from the last time you spoke to me like that. Stop.     Like that – the way you're speaking to me.      And clean it. Karen:      Oh Susan! It's because he's      so specific      about how the machine creases his shirts.      I mean  his rationale is creaseless,       like a shirt should be.      We’re getting older – you’re almost thirty-three.      So when will you settle down and find a Mr Me?      You should learn to iron properly.      Susan. Darren:      Why are you wearing a mask at the door?      Why are you trying to tip the deliver...