AFTER THE TOUR, OR TIRADE ON SHITVILLE
Unloosening my tie at the petrol
station leads her to taking down
her hair. Running out of casinos
at dawn; ambivalence, tragedy
playing badminton. Better that than
a stale burlesque. The aquarium?
La plage? Are you jollying me?
A town that puts glitter on its
windows. Where you walk the
footpath in vain for a pizza boy
to ask a rhetorical question …
You don’t care what you inhale
there. Divorce just a change of
hooks (is it any different elsewhere?
Happiness a cancelled train, a
death in another city. There
newspaper readers are intelligent-
sia. So I get a cut brow, and chomp
the wrong fruit; I’m lost, it isn’t
my country anymore. The pros-
titutes all come prematurely
The pools are dry and the truck-
driving flies have driven away
the youth. Would you be a
moon for the lunatics here?
Strip singing like you’re the
local hero? They don’t have match-
books, they don’t have sugar in
packets. This merdeville, this
place du bonjour arsehole
We kiss eventually on the pier
I lie in bed with you: looking at
your tattoo. Elsewhere is my home …
others are my family – you are
those others
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MICHAEL FARREL‘s most recent book is open sesame (Giramondo 2012). He is the coeditor of Out of the Box: Contemporary Australian Gay and Lesbian Poets (Puncher and Wattmann 2009). He took part in the Prague Microfestival in 2009, and has recent poems in Jacket 2 and Vlak. He lives in Melbourne.
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