Randwick Bridge
The women call me Genghis Khan
For my chains and endless beard
Holding children to their chest
Dirtied little faces beaming
From their sodden naval sheets
-
The children stare with mouths agape
And giggle through their fluffy cloaks
At strange gruntings and moanings at night
Yet there isn’t much to see
With the wool pulled over their eyes
-
The men call me a hero tramp
For my brave, endless beggary
They count their shillings from their day
From their labour deftly spread about
The infinity of a day
-
Randwick Bridge sings to me;
A tarmac above my watery grave,
Whilst I dream of making passage there,
The filtered light speaks miracles
To my yellow, calloused skin.
-
Each day I stare with a fish-eye
Poised steady upon my view,
Upon our quarters beneath the world
The edges turn all fuzzy and blue,
For all visions come through dreaming
-
Footbridge to my sleeping quarters
Promenade to my begging spot.
Pier for my idle mind
And my teacher most kind indeed;
I march as a dead man in ether.
-
For one fateful day I lost my way
And fell into the water
Beneath the surface I saw so clearly
The strong foundations of the Bridge
And fell to sleep by the calm undulating vision
-
Before my fatal step
I etched my story into woodwork
My few lines of poetry to say:
-
“This wooden beam hath been my totem,
My ascension and my fall,
Look all ye upon its form
Like a cruel splinter in the sea.
-
I climbed the broken ladder rungs
A passage into death
And through my misery I hope
You learn from my mistake.
-
I took the fatal passageway
To dote upon the Bridge,
Sweet in all her promises
But cruel in passing her gifts.”
Filed under 
The End of The Day
At the end of the day
The door swings open without delay
Brother and sister already by the door
Without a moments hestiation,
She decides the time has come
For that curt southern breeze
To brush a swollen, rosy cheek
With curious fingers following
The fallen fragipani trail
To feast in a sensuous way
At the end of the day
Watching the cautious late summer sunlight
An interplay of porcelain tattoo
Of lines and of gauze
Etched marks of wear, the gentle tear
Of threadbare things,
Clambering of fingers on ivory
And the precise swing of breath,
A night of jazz to wash it away
All by the dusty windowsill
At the end of the day
From this better vantage point
Fresh laundry crispens beneath the sun
Dappled light courses the weeping willow
With branches half-sunk beneath the water
And as evening beckons the sound of brass,
Grease and tobacco and a crescent moon
Here, we lament to the passing of time
And praise our senses, those we better knew.
Our Craft, Our Shepherd
Once upon a time they awoke,
Not without reason and not without duty
Never taken from their daily quest and motion
Many of kin: each to the craft of making
Each to the craft
Sublime and gentle and real
Not without a moment for doubt and not without pain
For even when the painter took his feather bristle brush
His canvas the Lord and The Shepherd of his aching soul
He cast the pastel paints of blood and water
And though they seeped from the edge of deviance
And danced the devil’s dance of desecration,
He was master and voice of the craft of making
Day n’er passed without a fruitful yield
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