old fell a poems edited

8/3/2019 Old Fell a Poems Edited

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Old fellow poems

MUDROOROO

2011



POEMS

ONE WISPS OF DELIGHTFUL DESIRE

TWO LIKE A HOLY MASS

THREE THE MIMI

FOUR LIKE TOO YOUNG

FIVE NIGHT

SIX SUICIDED

SEVEN LIFE IS LIKE A SAD LOVE SONG

EIGHT DOWN, DOWN IN THE WELL ALONG THE MAGIC ROAD

NINE CELEBRATION

TEN THE WESLEY MISSION

ELEVEN SCRUB

TWELVE DOING TIME STILL

THIRTEEN WATCHING THE CLOUDS DRIFT

FOURTEEN NOT MUCH, NOT MUCH AT ALL

FIFTEEN PAST TENSE

SIXTEEN WHEN

SEVENTEEN LIKE YOUNG

EIGHTEEN OLD FELLA POEM

NINETEEN DEBRIS

TWENTY PRESENT SIR

TWENTY ONE A BLANKNESS

TWENTY TWO OUTSIDER

TWENTY THREE I’M AN OLD BLOKE

TWENTY FOUR A SELLING POINT

TWENTY FIVE A LONG EMBRACE

TWENTY SIX BIRTHDAYS ARE FACED LIKE THIS

TWENTY EIGHT TEETH (AND THE DENTIST)



TWENTY NINE THIS MIND

THIRTY HISTORY

THIRTY ONE PERIPHERY

THIRTY TWO HOW TO? –

THIRTY THREE ROLLING

THIRTY FOUR NOTHING SEEMS TO MATTER THEN

THIRTY FIVE SOME PEOPLE I DECLARE

THIRTY SIX THE ROCK

THIRTY SEVEN OLD AGE STRIKES THE NOMAD

THIRTY EIGHT SILLY

THIRTY NINE DO ANOTHER ONE

FORTY SLACK AND LAX

FORTY ONE DEATH ON THE INSTALLMENT PLAN

FORTY TWO THE WILD CAT FELL

FORTY THREE KEEP ON KEEPING ON

FORTY FOUR WHY WHATEVER SADNESS

FORTY FIVE DEATH

…………………..



ONE

WISPS OF DELIGHTFUL DESIRE

Yeah, I’ve lost it you know, lost it

Somewheres between Istanbul and Kathmandu

In some alley wet and waiting out the dawn

Coming creeping like some fretful nigger

Yeah you know how dark you get in your mind

When the sun radiates down despair

The wisps of morning shining shining through

The zoo had a nice toy train ride

I was a kid in Perth West Aussie

Where they put me down for speaking my mind

And I had to run like well, well, like

Charlie Parker handling a riff with vile

Nasty chords flung in a melody as they, well

Turkey in the straw days of my youth

Yeah turkey in the straw days of my youth

Tapping out jazz in the new cell block number nine

Where the boys us men played out a ragtime tune

Yeah, it was nice and sunny that time long ago

Too long ago now as the arthritis hits the low spots

I ache while I try to bring this damn thing to a close

Singing a song of purgatory in the afternoon

Ah yes wisps of desire a foghorn in the night

Uhuh sing a song of sixpence why don’t ya



A pocket filled with slime, bones and moans

Four and twenty black cats whistling out a tune

Condemned for treason and awaiting the hanging

Oh yeah, for sure and when that cell was opened

Those birds sang a song of mountain air redemption

With icy snow peaks whitening their minds and just in time

I roll over and decide that it’s full all of yesterday’s bull

Yeah and so I close my mind to any racket from my brain

Not even letting a sigh in with its wisps of desire delight

And so it ends, and so it ends this silly song of no repose.



TWO

LIKE A HOLY MASS

My life should have been lived like a holy mass

Graves piled high with dead men’s bones

Singing out a hymn to my immortalised soul

Bleeding, yes bleeding on that cross of Calvary

Who put me there, who strung me high – did anyone?

Not I said the doctor I only leeched him thrice

Nor I said the soldier I fired at his foot loose ways

No one hurt him, like a holy mass the law court

So innocent of acts of contrition for the perfect crime

Yes, it is true or false or just plain out of tune

His guitar playing wasn’t, well, extraordinary

His ashes filled a vase until we scattered them

A high flying plane banked and a fine mist fell

Where he said the earth touched the moon quaintly

Touched the moon in a soft caress lightly moaning

The fragile delight as in the holy mass on Easter morn.



THREE

THE MIMI

For those, yes you, I’m talking to you brother

A mimi is a spirit tall and thin and grave sticklike

Black of course perhaps close to all that’s true

Ask me how I know and I must tell you how and why

In the darkness of the night in the closeness of my death

I am old and sick and thinking less of life these days

I awoke stared at those stick figures surrounding my bed

Yes they were mimi regarding me not unkindly

Still I actually shuddered thinking what is this

I didn’t come to this land to die, for sure not for me

Beyond in the snowy mountains of my wishes

My ash scatters in the wind blowing from nearby Everest

Yes, a mist scattering me across the mountains nigh on Kailash

So I thought but thoughts are deceiving man so true

The mimi were there grave eyes staring gravely down at me

So that I wondered if I had come returned just for them

To my homeland, my land to be put to rest in peace, amen

Yes I thought but what do we know of peace and happiness

In the dark night of a soul so lost to where the mimi live.



FOUR

LIKE TOO YOUNG

Difficult not easy too easy to be afraid of nothing much

Except the slights of fancy meeting you after all these years

I was born in a town of not much going for it, hot though

In the West Aussie morning it was cold too on our bare feet

I saw frost, not there but in a place called Narogin, better still

And there was this bridge across the railway tracks, yeah,

And this stuff was caked on it, white frost on wood, cold,

Yeah on our hands, but it was layered all over the gray planks

In that cold morning long time ago now never alone though

I am always with you sister Shirley, greet you with love

Cold mornings and two brown bodies wrestling for the warmth

Another day dawning, yes, imploring us to be good, be good, kids

Or be taken away forever and they took us for being too bad for that town

Yeah and I suppose we were but we had to grow go and see the world

Yeah, so amen to those old times that can never come again memories lost

And so am I in this city that isn’t my home still not alone, brown skin ah

I love the feel of warm soft brown skin memories always of my sister,

Shirley.



FIVE

NIGHT

Painful the body, no dice the sleep, still awake

Wishing and a hoping for a spark of love

Incandescent the fires of my mind stutter

Growing as dim as dog’s saliva barking

I wish yes that I could rise beyond my death

White and morbid King Kong’s armies mope

Yes fire is but the burning of sacked cities

The body bereft of passion enduring the heat

On Ganga’s sullen polluted perspiring shores

The flicker licks at the smelly unsatisfied corpse.

I am remembering that my death was not sudden

I lingered on after the ball had ended in whispers

As the debutantes forsook their lovely clothes for the wake

Where their mummies cried out as the gin flowed to flame

The wooden pole blazing up in a sudden flare blue fire

Who’s sorry now even though having done my time

My release date has turned to ashes and tears of remorse

As I float away on the Milky Way stream of heaven’s hope.



SIX

SUICIDED

No More Games.

No More Bombs.

No More Walking.

No More Fun.

No More Swimming.

67.

That is 17 years past 50.

17 more than I needed or wanted.

Boring. I am always bitchy.

No Fun – for anybody.

67.

You are getting Greedy.

Act your old age.

Relax – This won’t hurt!

Yes, Hunter I agree

It hurts it hurts indeed

To reach beyond your need to live

To be hateful, to be not what you want

72

This old man is not yearning for life

73

My God I ache and I am bitchy too



This Life is too long too trite and not yet over

Live fast die young and don’t forget to enjoy

Leave the aging to the squares

Not Jack Kerouac, not Hunter Thompson

But what has happened to me

I live out the remainder of their days

It hurts, but come on soon

It won’t hurt soon no more

Goodbye to all that

Mudrooroo Hunter Jack Allen how many gone now

Goodbye I’ve had my time ill-luck to live on

When we am finished with this earth

And yet I breathe, still breathe, Oh God.



SEVEN

LIFE IS LIKE A SAD LOVE SONG

Yeah, life, well, sad dreams of love

Gone awry in the butcher’s shop of desire

Dirty thoughts lying in the gutter of lust

Yeah, been there, done that and that, yeah that

Those things we all feel ashamed about in the morning

Too much booze and, well, life is like a sad love song

You know it is that sweet feeling of the night before

That sad feeling of why bother so much the night after

Watching the feelings, feeling the weariness coming down

The frown creasing it stopped on my dial

My mouth turned down and lined my chin

Yeah, because life is like a sad love song

Oh, swing it sweet and low deep in the blues

Yeah, life is like a sad love song old and discordant

With it’s all gone and there’s not much coming

My way ever again, except the hearse and the grave.



EIGHT

Down, Down in the Well along the Magic RoadYeah, you know I can hardly walk these days

No running just a sort of tottering towards oblivion

Yeah, but once I could race away as fast as a stolen car

Right across the Nullabor, yeah a gas ride for sure

My Hudson was this great big Plymouth owned by my bird

Riding west from Melbourne, westering on from Adelaide

The flat land, the long beaches of the roadside sweltering

Down along the deep falling down into the southern ocean

Just falling down without a smile for the earth and the cliffs

Unable to find a simile for the land for the cold ocean just there

With my hand on her knee and my thoughts entire, oh yeah

No sea, no land, just the sun straight into my motherfucking eyes

Absolutely a bedazzlement of the senses, King Kong great ape mind

Fancying that God was there as well as home, oh yeah home

On the ranges of my silly thought feeling just as the ride hung

Piss stop and out into a toilet block an artefact beside the way

And all decorated, you know those signs: Kill All Coons

Just for being, well, home is where the heart aches

Yeah, like a cancer, well, like an ulcer in my stomach

No make believe, no love or welcome just laconic words

Pain knocking away any daydreams of home nightmaring



Oh, but then a mountain rises dangerous with renewed love

No flat land without a simile, no cold sea green and livid

No just the rising and splitting open to birth a new hope

Away from too many goodbyes and drinking so longs

Yes, and I can face my death as an eternal home tomorrow.



NINE

CELEBRATION

Celebrate my life you cats and chicks

Celebrate my life you blacks and hicks

Been there and done that and the other thing

Been there and taught my baby to swing

Ho ho and a hidey hidey ho

Held the wheel and went a thousand miles

Held the wheel and went two thousand miles

Reached my fate and drove right back but not to you

Away on a ship of fools to make the Indian shores

Oh yeah, oh yeah the Indian shores sweating like a crime

Gone wrong and you huddle waiting for the arrest to come

Sing a song of Kathmandu, sing a song of Kathmandu

Double the line and don’t let it hang down down

In broken discarded rhymes and reasons

Oh let it be or flow on into other places

Other scenes of lost loves and little bitty tunes

That keep on popping up I told you so and so

Yeah, the telling was in the taking

The taking in the telling long time Wildcat now

Long hip lines stretching on and far out, black

Into Californian jungles of howling a hard row

Yes indeed, my friends, but I survived the punishment



Yeah when they hung me on a cross and called me antichrist

Oh when they strung me high saying you ain’t him

Then lit my mother and had me burning white

Oh yeah, with blonde streaks in my hair

And a sighing from Sam the Man boy

Aping me his better as he plays a soulful tune

Then sells my old guitar to make it south to Aussie land

Where he sings a glad song in an Aussie band rocking sad

Oh let us be merry, be merry, oh gentleman please

I’m stuck in the crater hollowed out and forlorn

I make the glitter I make the sound, even the cross

Just another thief they have to hang to die, to die

Perchance to dream Yama on his black buffalo ho

Yeah the saints are going home, flying up and away

With an amen in their minds, yeah halleluiah brother

Yeah all is lost as we end on a g minor chord of sad farewell.



TEN

THE WESLEY MISSION

Don’t expect much from me with too many aches and pains

There’s one in the pit of my stomach from drinking too much grog

Cooling the burning curries that I loved so long ago

Hey, yeah sometimes I talk a bit babble out from my mind

Curse the villains and the crooks from the pain in my heart

Guess you can call it a heart attack from me to you in scorn

Oh yeah and the weakness of my balls don’t dig chicks no more

Don’t even like similes or metaphors of the flood going down

My hands are gnarled and twisted from the gummy stuff

I used to mix the sunshine of my smile, uhuh, country son

Now nothing left except the sudden sweats on my brains, my mind

This tablet for that, another God knows what the pills are for, uhuh

Yeah a grave will hold this body down pretty soon no doubt

The good times have all rolled along just to reach this hole, no sky

Watch it a rising star beyond the earth one night, yeah too right

For no hole can hold my body down smoke will float me up there

To those good friends I promised to share some good stuff with, indeed

So amen bud and watch out for the spikes of my tears raining down

Because I’m going down then rising up and up to where I belong, too right!



ELEVEN

SCRUB

You know some people find the bush enchanting

It’s made of the stuff of their dreams, like wow

They walk along a roadside watch the crows squawk up a tree

Long time gone now, long time gone from that scrub

Away from the mind, never mine, silky city thighs in the broad

daylight

Oh yeah, born in the scrub, lost in the scrub, through with the scrub

Dry as my dead man’s bones, dry as my weeping willow eyes

Oh yeah, no miracles of flowing water, a dry road

A dry track and dry people in a dry land, oh yeah

Too much water makes the angels sing God’s tune

Too little water turns the voice into the croak of my devils within

Without moisture the sun setting scarlet on the land

Too hot for comfort, too bright for soaring eyes

One day I’ll think and it won’t be there, no scrub

Not even a little patch in my mind gone dry of life

Finish off: London Bridge is falling down, falling down

Whenever and I end far away from that scrub I loved.



TWELVE

DOING TIME STILL

For Charles Manson

Old man aching in his bones nowhere to go

Old man once upon a time had a life of a sorts

Well it was the time you know the times

When an ex-con with street smarts could, well, have a life

Familiar ain’t it, but how long can you last

Prying eyes and prying minds just add a murder or a few

No blood on your hands, it’s on the moon in June

And silly girls and boys with awful notions of revenge

Still, you do the crime and you do the time, crazy ain’t it

No way no blood just abeing there with scary eyes

Funny story so familiar just don’t get in their way

No family, no friends, no working nine to five

Oh yeah and now you’ve passed your use by date, too old

Too silly in the mind no regards for their fateful games

When they took you one day and put you face down in a cell

Kept you there until your mind was putty, not for their fingers

No way, no way, still they play these silly games of fate

Not knowing how hard it is to get a bed and three squares

Yeah when you’re an old old lag best keep inside

Nice warm downright cozy and they don’t laugh when you walk by

Uhuh, that’s respect and you’ll have it until you’re dead and gone

Away to that burning hell you may deserve for being you, Charlie.



THIRTEEN

WATCHING THE CLOUDS DRIFT

The sky is, well, like a toy balloon puffed up with snowflakes

The earth, well, is something I used to write about then, yes

Long ago now, how time vanishes into the aches of old age

The suffering of, yes then, yes when, well, it was like that

Yes, the mind is bleeding dry a withered wreath, oh yeah

On the graves of those times I thought I lived in youthful sprats

Essaying to snarl, poised on the cusp of father, dear father whoever

I never knew you, but now I’m like you too old, too ailing, too dying

And soon dead lying on the ground staring up and away and down

At those clouds puffing up and breaking open my heart imaged

In that once I lay with you on this green earth and put you in a poem

Once, yes once, I dreamt that I was different as we made the trail together

Once, no more onces, I’ve alone, over and over and over , done with

Into the open grave I fall staring up at the moon smashing down

Breaking my face that has lost the ability of seeing too much too late

And simply grown gray old no more even dreaming of the past

And as for the morrow, what’s that my friend when you’re dead!



FOURTEEN

NOT MUCH, NOT MUCH AT ALL

Oldness creeps on with itching fingers questing guessing

It’s there from the medicine I take to keep on keeping on

Why, I don’t know I’m just this itching on my wrist, yes

Now on the side of my hand, just this itching, both hands

Now it blooms in blossoms rare just twitching making out

That being here is all there is in this this - what universe

What multiplex what hope for the future, just death

Away from this itching now at the back of my neck, no pain

Just this, this constant shifting scratching, the door of death

Now at my ribs itching, just itching to get in and lay me low

Deep down so that when it goes I go too forever, yeah

An aged life is this, no hope except cessation, yes cessation

From this itching life, this constant itching, too much, scratch it out.



FIFTEEN

PAST TENSE

I have moved beyond seventy, what a difference a year makes

I have grown too old, as bald as a Dixieland jazz tune, Fats Waller

I have become ancient, neither a mariner nor a ballad to remember

Once I ran from merry land to Fat Fanny, now I stumble aimlessly

Once I thought, ah yes, forget, what was I going to write, uhuh

Oh yeah, in the sk y there’s a turtle flying, hard-shelled and tiny legs

No, once I clutched mythologies and even played the guitar

Rock on baby, now ready to lay my burden down groaning

Peaceniks whisper to me that there ain’t no arrest at all, imprisoned

The twists of my restless nights evade the sleepiness of tousled heads

Too long, far too long, no rest for the dreary I ponder bad dreams

My mind is a snake writhing across the landscape of wakefulness

Dragons slither and fight and evade the stings of outrageous collisions

As the pebbles in my mattress groan at another turning into a dawn

And I sigh as I ready to wander through the day bleak and painful.



SIXTEEN

WHEN

Oh no, not again that silly flight into the past, crazy man

Was life the blessed thing I decided it to be, once

Rose petals falling down on my parade, don’t knock it

I can hardly walk these days, my heels stab spikes

So let it be in this cold afternoon of lost desire, hang loose

Let there be, think once again no pain in my thighs, hah

Let there be no aching where the cancer it is eating, oh no

I dream of Jeanne with the light brown hair, better believe it

There truly was one true, so don’t piss on my past, oh no

I had a girl, I had a few but the future, no, it blights, it bites

And I dream of other times and what nightmares, oh yeah

Down in the valley wails a prison song, a prisoner once I was

But I was younger then, wasn’t I and life was what?

Well worth the doing, worth the punishment, maybe I guess

So let it be, I’ve done my time and now I’m old, too old

For kicks in that red dress I loved too much, so long ago ago.



SEVENTEEN

LIKE YOUNG

I know that I’m not like young when my bladder leaks at night

I know I’m not like young when my lines stretch out moaning

I know I’m not like young when Chuck Berry sings a sad 85

Years of lonely tunes, of when you and I were young Maggie

Just reeling not a rocking, the sun is down, down, down, sunset

The night is flowing but not with wine, no memories, no oh no

Yes Gerry Mulligan, ancient and old muffs a chord change

Oh God, you we, you I have to keep on keeping on, all gone

No flash, no energy just old age smoking hash, Lebanon

No, like old missing the times, mixing the years, what ho

Remember, no, Lord Byron and school days so far, gone

No, in front of me lies the grave a dark figure beckons

Yes, I walk to him, keeping my cool, well, like young.



EIGHTEEN

OLD FELLA POEM

Time, time, time gentleman, you’ve lost touch with your senses

You used to swing the swing, walk the walk, talk the talk

Now stumbling, tripping, tottering towards, well, kingdom come

You went there did that and now there’s nowhere to go or play

My feet ache, I’m short of breath, I dribble and I fiddle

Oh me oh my watch out, half blind all is gray shades

Of, well, we came, we saw we went and grew ancient, too old

Too befuddled to even imagine an attempt at dance of delight

We hardly notice the flowers growing and the seeds decaying

Yes, yes, all is just about lost as the ship of fools arrives

To stun me into a vacancy of, well, a silly old clown with, with

Mustard on his whiskers voicing too many mutterings of defeat

Yes, I tell you it’s so I’m close to death, the dark cloud

Yama’s buffalo waits for me to step on or into or run away from

Whichever, I can’t escape, I am alone and I shall die alone this night

Or the next, sometime sooner rather than later, a long goodbye

Too short for tears, a few groans and I fall into the blackness

No nothing to be seen, not even darkness all dim and gray

To this old fellow, this bag of bones, this bleak Beckett mind.



NINETEEN

DEBRIS

Thoughts the locomotion of desire turned rancid, poor

Old and alone, settling into senile fancies, free of guile

I don’t think that I am lonely, filled with disbelief, yes

I seek the phantoms of a past, no, fancies, dementia

What, when, where, aged bugles blow nose dripping

Silly me, I can feel my mind deflating, you know

What inflates is the belly of my spirit writhing

Burp, blurp, blurp the blimp from mind spaced out

Cross cutting the rafters seeking a Burrough’s sound check

Nothing heard hanging together, some things fall apart

The earth is a junky laid low with the tremulous sighs

Life, Moby Dick is not a splash to conjure delight, smile

Awhile sitting on this park bench and yammering away

Talking, chatting, no one’s there not even me, lost

I could tell you a thing or two, but I forget the third

Maybe the fourth, I don’t know, sun warmth sweetish

Why are they staring this old man, he plays one, what

Eh what, is something wrong, not with me, tottering

Swaying not knowing where to go, panic haste waste

Yes, action, no be as calm as the dying day corpse

I manage a dignified scrawl as I stagger away, slowly

Age weary bones and brain and where’s my grave

Oh ho, oh no, single tracked minded of the aged gone demented



And they take my arm and I forget my self reasoning

They will guide me to whatever destination they aim for

A home of a sorts, a slow smile dribbling on my chin alas.



TWENTY

PRESENT SIR

Flung into the present denied a past the sun sinks

No one to bluff, they write me as they think I am

I am owned, dissected and foolish me I can’t comment

They know me, my past, I can only claim an eternal present

I walk as a lie, put there by rejuvenated outcasts coming in

Yes, yes indeed I am denied myself, they know me falsetto

I walk alone, deterred from mixing with my unkind kin.

No more shall I mate or make with those I considered fine

No, indeed no ore in the mine, no water in the well

No handshake or eyesight for this refugee of the spirit

Remaking myself, leaving out entire words and sentences

I know better now, present I don’t want to be with you

Maybe Bob Dylan, maybe His Holiness Karmapa, love

Let the lights flicker out, let the rituals be unperformed

Let me be as I am which does not include you he, shit

The washing machine cleans my stinking act of unrepentance

Yes, I have nothing to forgive or give you not even a sad wink

From old eyes half blind peering only into misty death

Hey ho the wind and the rain and a hey nonny nonny hey

This is the place where the sigh fades airless the world ahead

There are no words, no despairs, no cravings from a self denied.



TWENTY ONE

A BLANKNESS

A vacuity as unpopulated as the land in Cuballing

Neither spirit nor book, newspaper or news report

The wireless beamed in Smoky Dawson and what else

The Lone Ranger and Tonto; The Shadow and such like

Whatever came came; whatever went went away

To other places, the capital city of Perth so far for one

But where I was born was only blankness, vacuity, nothing

I had no reason to exist, no father to call my own, nothing

Yet in old age they judge me by my absent dad, by nothing

Judge me on the scale of their imagined morality, by nothing

A Senate committee marked my school morality as immorality

As a place of cruelty and sexual perversion, ho, yes, nothing

Mark it well, don’t worry I am not accusing now, I’m nothing

Too old, too decrepit the sun still shines on, well, on nothing

And all I do is sit letting my thoughts run clear on nothing

Freeing from their truths and logical traps, yes indeed nothing

A clown in my dotage unentire, simply nothing like Cuballing.



TWENTY TWO

OUTSIDER

You better believe it, you better believe it, outsider

Outside where the desert blooms but no roses flow

You have to believe, he wasn’t really you know, yes

We helped him to glow, a gentle boy, vicious, yes

You better believe it, they wrote a book in detail

His sins, his lies, his prevarications whatever, forever

He was like that, really, old and lonely, sad and lost

Willfully searching for the holy grail in a pipe full of hash

You better believe, drunk or high, doubtful tense, yes

Quivering and moaning, shitty is not a simile, no why

You better believe it yes slumming him inducing a truth

A limping walk to go with his stuttering voice, known

An unromantic woven net of ill-hid desire, unkempt

You better believe straight from the mouths of his wives

Sighing, implying, what a risk to his sister’s truth, yes

You better believe it, a Burrough’s cutout meaningless his soul

Pretentious, a gesture of contempt, a hip sneering

To the slight movements of dust powdering his mind

Indeed, senile, a belief in the supernatural drove him on

And away from my door, he was dying to be heard, not alive

He stank from the vapours of the grave, indeed, yes, he stank

You better believe it, or disbelieve it, what matter, he’s gone now.



TWENTY THREE

I’M AN OLD BLOKE

I’m an old bloke, kind of lifeless, frail and fading, fast or slow

Ain’t got no secrets to hide or even scold, not a mite left at all

My mind is incense in the morning vacant by the afternoon

Far gone in the evening fully awake to the nighttime gloom

All the windows tightly closed, the door barred, locked

Though I ain’t got a thing left to lose, lost it all a while ago

I potter about but my sight is fading fast enough to stumble

I feel like a jackass one that dropped too many a load, yeah

I’ve peaked and overpeaked and even been bashed, senseless

Yeah, my voice is left to howl at the moon, bloody red indeed

Don’t let the f lying saucers come to give me a sense of mystery

Where I’ll soon be going ain’t no sign of birds and bees, indeed

Just a smoking and a whispering, no secrets anymore, I hit the weed

And lost the calling, somewhere beyond my last sprawling nosedive

Into a hell that didn’t keep the home fires burning, so what home?

I’ve seen a lot, been to the zoo and saw the critters there, yeah

That’s something buddy when you feel that life’s too blue, for sure

So no secrets anymore they’re all been told, sold and explored, yeah

A convict boy I grew to manhood fingering my scabby scars, so bloody

what!



TWENTY FOUR

A SELLING POINT

Yes, I decided that I was ready to sell myself at any price

What use of principles and points of order, morality indeed

The first bidder could have me body and soul or simply soul

But I waited and waited beyond the used and abused date

Not worth a cent, not worth even a hindrance or a sigh indeed

The literary stakes were overfilled no place for an old brumby

Nackered, worms in the stomach and his knees long gone

His hooves all cracked and his teeth all gnawed down stumps oh

No use for the brumby, too tough for pet food, too weak for work

Let him forage as best he can, no price for such a thing indeed

Drive him away from the watering hole far from the broadening light

Let him lurk in the scrub, maybe a quick shot to the head one day

Blam, end him without a qualm, he’s lost what utility he once had, yes

Not even worth a place in the history books even as a symbolic freak

A wild wild horse seeking to price himself into the domestic market

Oh yeah, oh yeah, sing a song of the poor pony not worth his hay,

play

A tune of lost horizons of what once was a fine steed of grace,

no way!



TWENTY FIVE

A LONG EMBRACE

Ho body how long have we been together

Through warm nights and stormy weather

Raindrops and just sleeping in the park

Ho yeah sharing a flagon, stumbling on the run

So, yes, long long time snake thighs twisting

Paining, hurting, aching to be free and away

Yes, I know you and you know me and together

Too long, too slow, now one day to be parted soon

I feel you, no you made me feel you, I’m not you

Your dimming eyes, your aching feet and legs

Your slow walk towards the gallows, your neck

Already I am moving away from yours truly

Your hands, your fingers, your sighs, your pills

Drugs just to make you well or numb, not me

Sad but true, we are wrenching apart, body, yes

I am separating to gaze down at you, dead meat.



TWENTY SIX

BIRTHDAYS ARE FACED LIKE THIS

An aging sod there’s no room for another birthday, another sign

Marking out the road taken and how short the way ahead, so close

But what goal, what indeed, but less of the same, no more, too much

The aching feet, the groin hurting, my God is it the cancer returning

No, no, no, when did I use it or lose the taste for sweet love, gone gone

I never even wonder, watching the girls go by, nice too young, too far

Happy birthday, what a song of sixpence, beg for it too many times

Whatever plot there was, lost the thread, the dialogue, sweet nothings

No birthday cake, no presents, no company perhaps a ghost, past times

Recalling gaiety, friends, a full glass, joyful faces no more, enough

The present lacks a memory of - the pain strikes at the heart, oh me

What can I do, just wait, wait, just let it, him, Yama come one day

No happy birthday, just a moaning from my aged spirit, too old

Far too old to dream of anything but the cessation of me, my body

And in the nighttime gloom I ponder the lack of sleep, sad thoughts

Of this my day, but hey happy birthday to me, I’ve come this far

So hats off to me and sing a happy birthday tune, yes, yes

Forget the gloom it could be my last, this gloomy birthday

It could be the last one too true for sure, mate, too true.



TWENTY SEVEN

NO BODY CAN HOLD ME Am I this body, this aching thing surrounding me

Am I really these pains and hurts and wheezing lungs

This aching in the groin, this resurgence of cancer

Tissues out of control, but whose control, not mine

This body did its own things without a yes from me

Revolted when I sought control and pissed whenever

I was drunk enough to let it wet my bed, yes indeed

Could I ever order it around, make it mine, oh no

It grew it matured, waxed fine and decayed without

Any urging from me, it used my mind for its needs

Laughed and cried and even did the jitterbug, oh yeah

It had its fun while I watched somewhat amused, sad

Now it is old, fragile, can’t even walk straight, almost gone

Now no body can hold me down, no grave to call my own

Soon it will die and I will feel the last touch of its flesh

So long body, so long as I fly away from your cold cocoon.



TWENTY EIGHT

TEETH (AND THE DENTIST)

Doctor and dentist and all inbetween when you’re old they always to be seen

Too many times for diminishing, one and two and three and out they come

The teeth that is, how many gone how many left does it matter in the gloom

Yes, I’m almost at the end of my teeth, my gums will cave in next indeed

I have abscesses and holes and craters and need an opo and a nyd whatever

I don’t understand a thing, but I can watch my teeth in x-ray on the T.V.

Frightful diseased stumps that make me shudder and say the doctor’s worse

Not much left of time of body of nerves can I make it through the night tonight

I feel glum, I feel even smug that soon I will never be as I am now disheartened

Too many things wrong, teeth falling out and splintering and decaying

Too much, no part of this disintegrating body of mine, feels me, no, no

How can it be, I never saw or even knew those abscesses, felt a little painBut they existed in my mouth and I could tongue them into hurt sometimes

Sad or blue I sweat sticky from my medication, I even pain ache a lot too

From my illnesses, from my imagination, from Yama standing there close

Death’s door is creaking open as in a silly frightful movie, creepy, yes

But to me the whole thing is happening, this death that I sometimes yearn.



TWENTY NINE

THIS MIND

I don’t know, I can’t think about it, somehow, somewhere

Maybe about here, or there, perhaps just about now

Or was it yesterday, I can’t recall, a huge ship, a vessel

Of some awesome description held me fastened in chains

Yes I believed it though they insisted otherwise, why, well

I can’t remember except, did they order me to forget when, yes

Yes I believe that they surely did, at loggerheads with the world

I attempted to write a foregone collusion to my life, I surely did

And believe me, if you will, it took some doing, a coward always

I slipped away into that foregone collusion with the night time lost

In a hurricane of despair as I sought to topple the - I don’t know

This mind, it imagines things, it does I don’t, not a thing entire

It thinks, it tells me things, I harken then dream away far way

When I am not here, will it think, will it ponder about this subject

It formed its thoughts entire to create a possum running

Up the tree and down the tree and across the road, squashed

A smear of skin and flesh and bone and thought I’m dead, dead

Yes dead to the dreams of this mind entirely beyond its thoughts

Its feelings, its objects, its desires, caterwauling and complaints

Yes indeed I have done with it never ever shall it be me again ever.



THIRTY

HISTORY

I guess, I guess, I guess life is like a saxophone solo

Why not a tangling guitar, a hotrod automobile, yes

A sleeping old man dreaming everything as all sorts of kitsch

This that, the faded sepia photographs of sentimental times

Oh let it be, a good night’s sleep is hard to find these days

It comes in little winks and sorts of nodding off, yeah often

So where has all the good nights gone away to be blinded

Light and rosy, I don’t know a darn thing these times ever

It’s all out of kilter discordant trumpet wailing sex lost

Yes souls seeking for the road that leads to where it ends

All there, all entire, all finished without a damn goodbye

I’ve lost my marbles and we used to call them dooks, ho

History, life its all too kitschy, history, lost times, old times

Faded times, did they happen or did not no matter indeed no

What more to say to write, yes, the thudding bass is my heart

Is these words bouncing in ragtime along from A to D flat

Yeah, d is for death is for dying is for no more, nothing at all

No regrets, I’ve lost the thread and needle of any desire for life.



THIRTY ONE

PERIPHERY

Never ever being centred neither here nor there

Neither a stay at home nor a hopeless wanderer

All my days they have declared me wrong never right

Indeed I hesitated to step into their world, the invitation came

I never ever wanted to be them or theirs, bow-bow-wow

Never a fool they wanted me to be this or that, I said why not

It’s their lies and if the bed is bent how to lie straight indeed

What minds they derived to torture me in Christ’s name. ho yes

Thirty pieces of silver was never the going rate, better led than dead

Oh yeah such times that rhyme with slime and miming out what else

But the seasons of their gloom and despair at Colin always late

Never early enough to please them and their wiles and styles

I drank the blood of the hopeless and the inflicted and took on their burden

I saw how we were treated and essayed to make right the rhyme and reason

No, don’t believe of his mongrel kind, he’s neither this nor that, for sure

The pleasure of their words merely aping my going back to the periphery

Where I hung out with clowns and danced the fanciful steps there

Where they know how to live, but the life is short or turgid so I escaped

Into the mind of a monkey man who laughed and told good jokes indeed

He was a masterful villain who could survive beyond their scornful taunts

And outright words of hate and lost weekends of the drunken kind, oh yes

Don’t laugh, don’t cry, don’t ever seek to be understood misunderstood

Find a sanctuary and learn to say your prayers out loud, try forgiveness.



THIRTY TWO

HOW TO? –

How to laugh, how to smile, how to – well damn it

To hell and back a little way towards my childhood

Ho, I dream too much, too many sounds lost wails

Yes, I hurt in this my aging, my pain, my suffering

It is my lot of old whine to drink to vomit out, up

Yes I can’t even remember all of it or none of it, be

The honey of bees dripping in the hive of delight, so

What do I mean, this is all I can say, now voice sighs

Oh yeah, indeed, gruff and rough and sad with phlegm

At first a running, a jumping, a standing still entirely

I photographed well until I lost my knees, ankles

And staggered rather than walked, joyless, oh yes

Just an old man in an old suit park benching, oh yes

The sun shining, the mosquitoes breaking into song

Their screaming erupting into my brain like thoughts

I couldn’t follow their meanings, gaps and rappings

Yes rap rap rapping on the cranium of my skull

I give a laugh, a sudden flicker of a magpie there, yes

The tall gum tree has fewer teeth than I mouthless, lacking

The order of speech comes out as a whimper of decay, yes,

In this the twilight of my years, I wear a loose skin, shoeless

And a speckled coat to keep the lies from falling out down

Into the stream of consciousness that finds no feckless hero



Just an old man in an old time ready for the old deed, yes

So amen now and don’t forget the cherry trees are blooming

With no thought of the morrow of not being here or absent.



THIRTY THREE

ROLLING

I been thinking you know, not exactly thinking it came to me

It lingered on and on as the pain in my feet endured on and on, yes,

Well it was there aching and I knew there were chairs for standing

And scooters for riding about when the legs have gone away

Down somewhere or well, why beat about the shrubbery too much

I know, I mean I can see me rolling along the road, yes along

The pavement from ditch to ditch, from witch to witch watch out

Wherever my feet are going I’m going and the pain it takes me along

To regions where I roll about on wheels, yes, feet are outmoded

For old fellows, yep, a soft chair on a scooter around the kitchen

The bedroom, well one room is every bloke’s delight, ain’t it, surely

And inside I can roll along sideways, how to show you like this

You know just rolling then pulling myself up by straps for scraps

I like it, I’ve had enough of feet or rather they have had enough of me

My walking, well it’s a totter these days, I need to wheel along

Look out old lady, old bloke, mate, here I come scootering, hey

Yeah no worries anymore, paracetamol for lingering painful aches

Some tranks for the mind sadness and a drop to wet the gumdrops

Hey, and my own hearse a last drive straight to the cemetery.



THIRTY FOUR

NOTHING SEEMS TO MATTER THEN

When I feel that I am close to death nothing matters but death

However I seek to evade, he is there, Yama on his black buffalo

He is my reality, though he still hugs the shadows, the darkness

Blending into what waits for me, will be mine, more real, yes

More real than this body, this mind, these thoughts, words, yes

To be old is to be like the man facing his executioner, yes

The axe will fall, the trapdoor springs, the shot fires, reality

There is no rhyme, no reason, no miracle to summon,

As the seasons change, as autumn is followed by winter

So life is followed by death, it has no hard meaning,

Birth, life and death, meaningless in their absurd reality

No screaming, no shouting, no hiding, the old can only wait

The buffalo plods nearer, the red eyes gleam out to summon

I must go, no matter the mythology, I must go out from life

This is what happens my friends, the reality of it all, death!



THIRTY FIVE

SOME PEOPLE I DECLARE

You know some people are sad cases, nothing much

Yes nothing much they declare, too often when nothing

To me happens to be something though it’s nothing of course

I’m talking about my tooth, a lower left molar, strong, no

What I thought was strength was weakness, it broke,

Well a piece of it I spat it out, sort of stained, rotten

Dark and nasty, ready just waiting for the dentist to pull

Nothing much, there’s that nothing much again though, yes

It definitely is something, though not pain not much pain, no

Yes not much pain at all though my old body trembled, trembled

As if it was saying goodbye to a friend, it came out sadly protesting

Again it sacrificed a piece then gave up and all the rest popped out

His word, but he didn’t even show to me, that old tooth so long a mate

No, just bite on the gauze and leave it in for an hour, make it two

Nothing much you say, nothing much, this loss of a piece of me

Nothing much, but there’s a great hole where it used to live

And I tongue that nothing and wonder about the rest of me.



THIRTY SIX

THE ROCK

A rock, a small stone, a tiny boulder if you will

Lies inert, unconscious, just a pebble on a beach

For a year, a hundred years, perhaps a thousand

Never ever moving, never ever contemplating a shift

In position, in place, in derision, yes, indeed

Sitting on my park bench groggy from the sun

I desire to be that rock, that stone, that tiny boulder if you will

Just being, just lying there not even thinking to move, yes

This is my want, my need, my prayer as I sit there feeling

An ache beginning in my feet, knowing that it is time

To rouse myself to hobble to the dentist or the doctor

My appointment has been made, they lie in wait

I have to go unlike that rock that stone etc.

I must move, I must continue on and on and on

It is how things were ordered or disordered in this cosmos

Necessary bad dreams and even worse night mares

Of flashing strengths and terrible weaknesses.



THIRTY SEVEN

OLD AGE STRIKES THE NOMAD

Old age strikes the nomad he can’t run, escape, hide

He was great at not being there when required, far away

In the jungles of this world of his mind, enjoying being

Here, there and just about everywhere, oh yeah, yeah

A swinging Tarzan seeking out the janes that lingered

Awhile to find out that he was long gone, like, well, like

A turkey through the brush, a jet plane crashing down

Something like that, whichever, I’ve crashed, sure

In lots of places I can’t even pronounce you know

Some were great drinking holes or smoking or wenching,

Too right, mate, too tight, I don’t kid maybe a little

Whatever, now it’s all gone, perhaps I need a shrink

I’m doing it a bit hard, this old age thing ain’t no f un

Whatever happened to growing old gracefully, yeah

I ain’t no dame though I did have it off with Grace

And I could dance, could sing, could run for miles

Now all that gone, like a turkey through the brush

A bush turkey strutting his stuff, no longer though

Now he totters, now he needs a stick to hobble along

Where has it all gone, who took it, old, old, old, yes

Decrepit, the image fallen away and I sigh alone all gone

My teeth have gone, my knees have gone, eyesight too

The nomad’s stuck, only one last place left for me, the grave.



THIRTY EIGHT

SILLY

I find you silly in the morning in your running shoes, sweaty too

I find you silly at midday your suit as wrinkled as your frown

I find myself just as silly in my efforts to play the clown

I find the roads too steep, the pavements too deserted for a child

The bicycles too intimidating for a mind falling into reveries

The clouds drift by in a sky of blue intent to murder slavery

I wonder why they don’t merge, fog the earth and slow it down

The cars rush by in spaced out lines, single people clutching each

A telephone ringing out their solitude unheard and unanswered, yes

All things do not seem to be me perhaps they are you, yes, indeed

You make them keep them, while I just wander wondering feeling mean

Without a single thank you for the smoothness of my steps, for sure

Without a single thank you for the life you construct about me, yes,

No worries, no criticism indeed, I let the times move me along

Smoothly and softly their ideas do the planning, the walking, solicitude

For soon I shall be gone and the world shall roll on entirely without me.



THIRTY NINE

DO ANOTHER ONE

I read a poem, I must write another one, again and again

Seeking for just the right touch, tone and that certain something

No reason or words, but a distant sound of drumming beyond the river

Oh let me find it that thudding, that gentle thudding of the heart gone mad

Bad playing with a girl wearing a plaid skirt, just being, maybe me

In the gone afternoon of certain sights and looks and hey, hey it’s Saturday

Yes, oh look out, there’s more to the styles of my life fit right beside you

I ponder, no wonder where the magic went on that day I played with you

A horn solo of swift delight as we rolled another one and just laughed, yeah

Just laughed the afternoon away into the dawning when we yawned and

smiled

Quite worn out we declared that this was how it was to be alive, yes Jenny

The good times, I remember them well when you were fit and young enough

To move mountains and look beneath for magic mushrooms, splendid, yes

Yes, those moments to capture, in verse can it be worse, love life live it all

But I am old and I hear the pigeons call, yes, call us to an old age grave

beyond

Far beyond when you and I were young and played the world as a song.



FORTY

SLACK AND LAX

To Syd Barrett

Oh yeah, oh yeah, oh yeah, oh yeah, uhuh uhuh

That’s what happens when you think, don’t think ahah

This world so nice, polite, dangle your bunny sonny

Ho ho, no no, I see your veins are standing out limpy

Lumpy turgid blood running in gutters of fat flat

Once upon a time in days gone by, try that, yes yes

My skin is like an old painting filled with cracks

Wrinkled up like the lines of a somnolent sea breeze

The ocean’s huge waves are lost in the absence of hair

Thin and limp. slack and lax a dying puzzle, yes indeed,

The day is sunsetting not sunrising, I have done with that

With the morning run through foggy fields of finery

I’m just an old codger with a stagger in his totter

To those who know they nod their heads lacking poetry

They think only of my death not of my resurrection, oh no

When I go it will be only to return singing this song

Ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho, yes, slack and lax oh yeah, ho.



FORTY ONE

DEATH ON THE INSTALLMENT PLAN

There’s no such thing as the big bang in sex or astronomy

There’s no such thing as a continuing game, it ends

There no such thing as a sudden dying, it lingers on and on

Marked out by sudden frenzies and bleak despairs indeed

Making a continuity of up and downs and just weird sufferings

On and on, but not so smooth, the trip is rough, hard too hard

Plain bad worse sometimes I linger smiling at the moon, yes

Sometimes I lie upon the beach listening to my untruths

Sometimes, not again, yes again and again, false starts

Loss of creativity, movement in the gulags of the mind

Seeking out an infinity of surcease in fitful circumstances

Oh yes, I’ve had enough of intellectual discourse, hateful

Bickering over a life gone wrong and fallen into the gutter

No surcease, one by one the atoms arise to disperse, yes

Only to return again and again as no weight or mass, existence

So when will this endless parade of fears and joys, pitiful ploys

Glooms and the darknesses of the night and soul give over, yes

There is no wandering free only death on the installment plan

I came, I signed, I will go when the final payment is done

No worries, eh, but the paying goes on and on, too long

And I shift uneasily waiting for the end I fear, oh dear.



FORTY TWO

THE WILD CAT FELL

Yeah, it’s been a long long time from May to September, 21st

Century

And when the push came it was a hard shove between the shoulder blades

Don’t open your mouth, keep your trap shut, run run rabbit, yep, for sure

The wild cat was good at running, at skipping out, feet like smooth silk

Gliding, flashing like lightning, legs thin in thin blue jeans, yeah, smooth

For sure, the black cat looked good his black hair slicked back, curled

For sure, maybe, he went there and danced away the night, the fool

Don’t give me some loving, I’ll take it and leave with the dawn, cool

Life was, well, a blast of a rock-n-roll song, Little Richard himself

The way it was and we all grow old, haggard, slow steps staggering

Slowly towards where Yama waits on the black cloud of his buffalo

Yeah, the times drift into old age and tottering steps limping on

I can stand I can sit, hard is the moving both heels hurt one after another

What a life we have, it comes to this it has come to this, oh brother

There aren’t no more cutting the rug at Sweet Sue’s, nothing, eh sister

Nothing added to nothing makes sweet nothings, though there’s something else

That Yama sitting on his fat black buffalo smiling scowling whatever the day

The wild cat has just about done his time, release date pretty soon now

He’s finished what he could and forgotten half of it for sure, man

They held him up and they brought him down along a five mile track

And he disappeared when he found that home just meant homelessness

Oh yeah, so fine, let it be, no matter how, home just means homelessness.



FORTY THREE

KEEP ON KEEPING ON

What is there to do when you’re old forget about the gray

Keep in good humour, tell a joke, yeah why not

What once had two legs and now walks on three

What else, what else indeed my friends, but an old dullard

Like me, ill and unkempt no use for style, never more oh

Once, yes it’s always once now that I’ve passed the mark

The sun is setting there are no dreams left to dazzle me

Along I face not the possibility but the fact of my death

Oh yes, oh yes, my friend, the sun that once I felt I was

Is falling into the sea of nothingness, a few streaks left behind

Fading memories, photographs, a library catalogue name

It’s all over, it’s all gone, I face the end, only nightmares now

And all that I can do is keep on keeping on, yes, my friend

All I can do is keep on keeping on until it’s there, death, hello my

friend.



FORTY FOUR

WHY WHATEVER SADNESS

(In memory of Jack Kerouac)

Old age creeps on in with battered wings to dry to fly far

Never into the night of rising loves and slow moves to a beat

Lost in the waves the breath is erratic ragged a hoarse cough stutters

Lost to the surreal, real, the aches, the painful whining old

Fashioned dream pipe never more now the heart misses

Footfalls trip a sort of decayed dance with heel spurs, yes

How else to handle what we become memories faded out

Into the gothic cemeteries of headstones spiking the sky flat

Gray never livid with the night time cravings of well lost

These words they seek a voice, the dumb speak dumbly

Socially impaired they invent new names out of school a senior

Oh yeah just walking is a trail of endurance make it well

From bed to chair and chair to bed and never rolling evermore

Huh, huh, cough, splutter, weary eyes tear the fabric of time and space

Right or wrong does it matter when only the grave yawns truth

But what a truth and what a means to underline I’ll end up there dead

What matter, why oh why what the morning brings is this sadness

Yes the stumble from the couch to the toilet and the dripping urine stinks

Of medicine taken to ease the pain of that sadness ever being, never waiting

One day soon, will it end or last an eternity, whatever, we know sadness.



FORTY FIVE

DEATH

THE END

old fell a poems edited

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