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Blue glow

crows crark
over darlinghurst,
we order 
black beer

*

sitting on wet sand 
watching steepling surf,
a huge dirtywater tide
threatens bondi

*

your sudden
and beautiful exit 
frightened me

*

I was going to say
how we took cocaine
and danced, in ultimo,
when we were older 
than we should have been

but it was your funeral,
it was too sorrowful,
now I’m stuck 
with platitudes 
you’d find funny, 
anyway
I can say anything 
in a poem 
you’ll never read
                             
*

artificially overlit
groves of myrtle
staged for you,    
and never televised
(not as if we didn’t try)

the secrets 
you mentioned
on your second last day
are secret still

*

three storms in three hours,
hailstones ripping holes
in the nasturtium leaves.
blackout  -   
using a torch to find a candle 

*


I’d never tell anyone,
but just look at this,
what I’m doing now

daily crumplings

will this
take my mind off things
when
I could simply spend
more and more time
watching tv ?

*

to be here 
knowing you’re not
gets me down

the latest person 
I had to tell
said
‘she was someone
I always thought
I would see again’

*

you’re not around,
you’re only a dream,
always
so anti-sentimental
you drank whisky
after everyone else 
gave it up

*

you loved
the halloween parade song
and the wooster group

our own theatre 
was courageous,
not ‘showy’,
and failed 
its experiment

new york
can wait -
I’m sorry, new york,
you’ll have to wait

*

helplessly,
I placed two perfect
nasturtium leaves
in the card from morocco
and brought them 
to your delirium

*

you read my prose
from over twenty years ago
at your mother’s funeral

the piece that says
‘we don’t die alone’
and that 
‘maybe love
comes to us from the dead’

I decided 
not to read it 
for you

two decades later
I’m not at all
certain of it

*

I’d like to sleep
tonight
all night long
in the blue glow



(in memoriam Jan McKemmish, 1950-2007)

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