Apology

Lachlan Brown

for JVB

The edges of your face tread water
& another celebrity’s sham wedding
can’t distract me, this time, from liquid
eyes or daytime smiles. We walk
like a back-fence conversation, as
the light winds clumsy shutters
down over our heads. Oh mixed business
of the heart! It’s the corners that rise
like tides & quarries, and we hold onto
our ticket stubs of grief. NO
PASSOUTS so I guess it doesn’t
matter. Just wink & try the next
venue, but is this a blue-light-disco
or a train carriage?
I do trust you, though, like I trust the classifieds
or Sydney’s obsession with real estate,
’cause it’s all negative gearing and emotions
down this way & the Asians are buying
smart in Hurstville and Maroubra & wide new
houses reach into the corners of quarter-acre
blocks & they’re finally auctioning off some big dumb
mansion in Castle Cove. Whew! You’ve gotta
move sometime, old fella, but at the moment it’s a tradeoff
between interest rates and changing flightpaths.
Maybe that made you smile, but it made
me realise how 13-year-olds blow $29.40
worth of phone credit in two days, and
then go through the rest of the month
nursing the final sixty cents like it was
treasure in a field, or Britney
Spears’ chewing gum. I guess these days
I’m more the sounds of pavement and
not talking. Learning, slowly,
to look where I listen.

This poem is taken from Total Cardboard issue 7, and remains under copyright. For more information see www.totalcardboard.com