is stridently hanging on for dear life from the Big Clock hand reading 12:30 twenty floors up in NYC dangling a gibbet jig on the ledge beneath his girl with the bob cut screaming soundlessly as he catapults past the big businessman whose fist is foreclosed like a bank on their undying love which against all odds is saved as he grabs at the flagpole angled stark as an erection from the side of the building on the way through the office window only to upset the cooler and startle the typing pool then back down the zigzag emergency exit skittling the fire-bucket to snatch the fire-hose & bungy jump down the side of the skyscraper while the keystone cops are toppling in omnibuses furiously toward the wrong address at odds with the clanging fire brigade a cavalry charge amongst a confusion of ladders & outsize helmets pointing the way into the fray continuously as down drops Harold free falling as only a spider can to be pulled up short one foot from the side walk under the canopied foyer entrance as darling thing hurtles into the stripy canvas awning where Harold catches her in his stiff upheld arms to the astonished joy of the hotel porter
Conrad & Wells & Co.
Great to have met Joseph Conrad or for that matter, HG Wells, who said, Lets go upstairs and do nice things with our bodies, and who did just that to take a tilt at the waitress. I saw them once, Conrad & Wells, in a photograph, standing together. A courtyard setting beside a few bamboo chairs. The hour was mild in a black & white afternoon. Trees, too, green galleons shipping oars in Autumn. Conrad had, perhaps, cast off the last line of a novel: the indigo lump upon the horizon is an Island: behind it the sun spilling its treasure trove: the rent sailcloth of a sea-squall. Anyway, he could still smell the coast wobble from the deck of the Tartane, her weight to the wind. Wells, maybe, was thinking on socialism & science, and in some melancholic way of the waitress, she all ascent. By what conversations did they measure each other, these two voyagers who possessed that sense of the bigness of the world? For Wells, an electrical spark that arced across the white page, and for Conrad, each word creaking on the blocks, the woman pale before the moon, her eyes black as tornadoes at sea.
Hoppalong Cassidy
nearly topples as the Jaffas rumble down the aisle escarpment which in no way disturbs Bully Boy in the back seat corner of the matinee session on a Saturday afternoon flick with it might be Bus Stop Bev with one leg hooked in surrender over the front seat that youd think shes getting shod or something judging by the whinnying which could be some sort of scuffle but then Hoppy regains the ground & the white Arabian stallion muscling to middle screen his ten-gallon hat gum stuck atop his head & his pearl handled six shooters bristling at each hip as he thunders round the dusty back lot who has just saved the stage coach with the backward spinning wheels out of last weeks cliffhanging disaster when over it went packed with the good townsfolk but it didnt all saved by the man in the black velvet with the silver studs & turkey gobble voice much to the hand pumping appreciation of the circuit judge too old to take the high jump & this real paternal dude takes it in his stride is off next week in search of the Lost Dutchmans Gold Mine as legend has it but not for long while Bully Boy will be back sweaty as a farrier with Lemonade Lil to catch what he can with Hoppy sure is a friend indeed when a friends in need
Bob Orr
I called back down the unawakened dawn of the Tasman sea and along the East Coast from the pre-dawn light of my sleep, I called out Bob Orr soft as the punch of a howitzer to the Hokianga harbour & still further over the Waikatos billiard-table green paddocks. I hailed Bob to the Great Barrier Island & Orr to the Little Barrier, but no answer came chasing after. I sought you down the Harbour Heads & Hauraki Gulf then all about the Waitemata. I found a Thunderhead big as a container-load of sorrows & nowhere hard by were you toiling. Bob Orr I called from Meola Reef to the outlandish fishing-tackle cranes along the docks; to Jellicoe wharf, Bledisloe wharf, Marsden wharf, Captain Cook wharf to the Admiralty Steps hoping I would find you gazing out upon the glaucous slick of trawlers, or catch you guiding a snub- nosed tug under the Western Viaduct. Bob Orr I called down the unending roadsteads to Motutapu & Rakino Islands, back behind the wave screen at Okahu Bay to Freemans and St Marys Bay. And as I called into the Schooner Tavern & sought the drear interior of the Wynyard Tavern & the sailors talk told me you had fitted and trimmed your craft against every dire prediction to set sail on that other sea, Bob, the one that has no name & no horizon & is drowning you.
Dave Spencer
lived his life like barbed-wire is what an old girlfriend said, man of the river. But then, life finished you off bit-by-bit though couldnt pluck out your dingo-bright eyes. Lets face it, you were pretty much an arse-hole to those who knew you. Most of us just bash the trees without seeing the kangaroos. You saw living mostly for what it is, a part-time job with bugger all security; the occasional softness of a woman, maybe, and of course grog by the bucketful. What was it you saw at the last, Dave, when passing through the ripped canvas of a thunderstorm, lightning flashing down the Hawkesbury, a good belt of rain after?
You Dont Remember Dying