Fugitive at the Coast

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Three days and nights
of coughing up my guts again
doctor pops me a tablet
it does not fill a God-shaped hole
but it assists
a minor resurrection
I drive to the coast
just to feel a place to go
I carry two books of poems
one by Frannie Hopkirk
the other by Yevtushenko
hers is called Riffs on Life
his is called
The City of Yes and No
I ease on down my suburban road
listening to Gang of Youths
the twilight turns the sky
a dirty metal blue
the singer sings
that “things take time”
and I think of things
and time
what I can give
and what I stole
the heart is a beast
every dream a seance
for the mystery
that never stops its flow
a beautiful woman ends
in mercy
her afternoon shift
at the medical centre
sometimes you love someone
for how good they look in jeans
their intelligence and their struggle
half of Newtown and Alexandria
is out on the streets
walking their greyhounds
kids with backpacks on
tune in to secret music
swapping films for YouTube stardom
it’s a start to be okay
to call the dream self into something
and work upon
a once upon
yeah things take time
on Dacey Avenue the trees are lit
like freaks with bones
bikes cross-weave through the traffic
blinking red like some emergency
requires pizza at its door
by the time I get to Bondi
the ghosts have frangipani hands
the air is ultra-fresh and clean
I guess l’m trying to send
them people near the sand
into the nite-flight I witness
taking others like them
home
the boys with wet-suits laughing
the girls with hoodies slung
halfway down their backs
a drone above going back ‘n’ forth
at a card table by a barber
some guy just like me
tapping on his phone
and drinking a careless beer
I get closer to the beach
and a theatre where an intense friend
plans to sit behind a piano
to talk of Visions Fugitive
and play Prokoviev
the Walk sign stutters to me
the sea reflects the lights
of the apartment blocks
the many lives inside
the coast is black and shining
like a photo of a painting
- and me
I’m still riding on my songs
singing this to myself
without knowing what it is
as I walk on down a hill
across a tourist’s Calvary
of gentle surf and paving stone
yeah the lovely oneness
of it all.