Tennant Creek Drive -In

Help me somebody

The walls are closing in

And sharks are biting my shins

Because of the Tennant Creek Drive-In

You remember, when we got in for free

Because dad was a Apex Club member

And it was his job to run the projectors

Carbon rods burning white hot

While the town scowled in the dark

We saw such terrible and wonderful things

In the back of our Holden station wagon

Where we were meant to fall asleep

But we didn't

The best and worst of 70's

Exploitation Cinema

Was our dreamscape

While our mum waited for the gig to end

As she had done ever since her 19th year

We saw, while peaking over back seats,

Wild animals ripping people to shreds

People being shot, disemboweled, decapitated,

Blown up, stabbed, invaded by parasites

Maybe a 5 year-old shouldn't be seeing this?

I asked my mum, years later, once my daughter was born

Her advice on raising children.

She said: You pretty much raised yourselves

Did we?

Maybe I should write a how-to book
That takes a long hard look
At how to raise kids free of nightmares
Page one would probably begin:
Don't take your 5 year-old
To the Tennant Creek Drive-In.

© shaun patrick green 2018

ghost nation

dressed in shorts, t-shirt

not at all like a warrior

he stood on the bike path

legs braced, throwing arm

like a coiled spring

grunting, hissing, shuffling forward

ready to release his imaginary spear

whilst diners ate pizza on the grass

stealing furtive glances

or pretending not to see

until he stumbled amongst them

hand no longer gripping his weapon

but held out palm up for alms

where he was once able to hunt

then later came another

wavering between those ordering

those collecting, again

hand held out palm up

being politely told to queue

to exchange money for food

where once all had been shared

he turned away confused

both of them equally

phantom members of a ghost nation

one overwritten by time, out of place

existing out there as trace, echo

like the shadow of wallpaper under paint

a mark left in passing, a secret

a taboo

further down the foreshore

the women sat in circles

singing songs under the mangroves

where their grandmothers used to fish

waiting for their men

hunter gatherers

pizza in hand

to come home

© shaun patrick green 2018

Middle-Class-Straight-White Male for Sale.

This Middle-Class-Straight-White Male

Provides an opportunity for the canny investor

Looking toward the medium to long term,

With excellent potential for high returns.

Situated comfortably within

An inner-urban demographic

And sporting middle-of-the-road taste

In fashion, food and music,

Combined with a sense of manifest destiny,

This Middle-Class-Straight-White Male

Takes full advantage of all the perks

Of entitlement and privilege.

Along with a tasteful exterior renovation,

The interior has been extensively remodelled

To accommodate the views of women,

People of colour, the LBGTQI community

And the poor, with plenty of room left over

For feelings of self-satisfaction and superiority.

Smart use of apathy and indifference throughout

Have created a sense of light and space,

With the use of quality, locally-sourced fittings

Having the added bonus of guilt reduction.

While most sports can be blended seamlessly

Into the living environment, the best of the

Arts are also on show, though always understated,

Such that this Middle-Class-Straight-White Male

Is equally at home watching Friday night footy

Or Game of Thrones, provided the right amount

Of irony and condescension is on hand to keep their

Mass appeal in check.

Despite recent upheavals in the market,

Caused by #metoo and #blacklivesmatter,

This university educated, media-savvy

Middle-Class-Straight-White-Male

Has managed to hold its value

And still represents

A quality investment

For the discerning buying

Looking to make a statement

In these uncertain

Economic times.

© shaun patrick green 2018

Laundry Song.

You had your reasons for leaving,

Mostly to do with preserving what

Was left of your own sanity.

I didn't blame you... no, actually

I did blame you for lacking imagination.

You called us a "calamity",

Which I thought was a tad hyperbolic,

But then, like all frustrated writers,

You were prone to exaggeration.

Couldn't you see I was broken,

In desperate need of repair?

Perhaps you could and didn't care.

I remember the moment you told me

- tearfully, fearfully, yet nearly happily -

That you were extracting your compass point

From my absurd arc, exacting a revenge

Both devastating and necessary:

We were back from Yarra Park, having taken

Our deranged mutt of a dog for a walk,

Where its behaviour had sparked an argument,

Me screaming I had never wanted a dog,

That it was all about you,

You screaming you had always wanted kids,

That it was all about me.

I stood there shocked, undone.

How had I missed your need to breed?

When had it been spoken of? On some

Hot summer evening when my hearing was split

Between the whir of a fan and the shit on TV?

Where had I misplaced this detail

So definitive of you?

Not that it matters now.

I hang here on our Hills Hoist,

Still moist from all these tears

And the sweat each night rings from me,

Wanting nothing but for you

To come back and unpeg me,

To pat and fold me gently,

To lay me in the laundry basket

Of your love.

© shaun patrick green 2018

Hang Them Out To Dry.

They shouted: "Stop the boats!"

In a shameless grab for votes

And turn away those who are most in need.

"Children thrown overboard," they cried,

As if it's a choice: some lived, some died,

All victims of the people smugglers greed.

When questioned, our politicians

Dismissed humanitarian notions:

"The voting public are not so easily led.

There will always be war and slaughter."

But what about the bodies in the water?

"We'll hang them out to dry", they said.

© shaun patrick green 2018

First Love.

If Time is a war crime then the evidence

Lies not in what it does to our bodies,

But how it slaughters our minds.

Memories pile on top of each other like

Bodies in a pit caked with dirt and lime.

Maybe that is what dementia is:

Simply having seen too much of this?

We search in vain for survivors,

Among them our "first love",

A foothold in the darkness

We strive in vain to climb out of.

Who was this person that made us,

Formed us from rough clay

With a touch, a look, a kiss,

Acts so pure and true

They haunt us until the last

Light of consciousness blinks out?

We imbue them with a power

They could never hold in life,

A might born of the weight of years

And our own need to feel

That all this living was not in vain.

I close my eyes and see her:

Skinny and bright eyed in a short dress,

Us facing each other, chests heaving

After an arduous chase through

A schoolyard full of children running

From whatever was chasing them,

The two of us ending up in the boys toilets,

Her face a luminous dial of excitement,

The thrill of the forbidden visible

In her twitching fingertips as she

Bounced on her toes and searched

For an escape from the kiss she knew

Was coming, my heart thrumming

Inside my chest like an insane drum

As I moved in, my head light as if hit

By a fist of pure need to put my lips

Against her lips and have that thing

That was her: her trembling, her sweat,

The hair on her arms, the dip between

Where her nose ended and her mouth began...

She dodged me and ran,

But that sensation sunk its hot iron

Into the fleshy pulp of my young self

And branded me a romantic, one doomed

To search for this moment again and again,

Until my last breath leaves me cold

And insensate as a stone.

But I will not be alone,

For memory is as vital as oxygen

And I will dig with bare bloody hands

Until I drag my first love from her grave,

So we can once again stand as we did

And know what it means to live.

© shaun patrick green 2018

Where the First Shall Be Last.

Adam and Eve must have thought they were the first,

Drunk on love, gamboling about the garden of Eden

Like two ecstatic children - the first to know passion,

The first to know the terrible cost of paradise lost.

Isaac Newton must have enjoyed this feeling,

That falling apple, apocryphal or not, having stunned

His mind with the gift of an invisible force

Guiding celestial bodies in their dance around the sun.

Amelia Earhart must have savoured this thrill,

Watching the Atlantic slide below like an endless

Rippling conveyor belt pulling her through the sky

Toward a destiny with a ghostly testimony.

Neil Armstrong, too, must have caught that wave,

Like the creator marveling at his creation,

Seeing the whole earth poised in blackness so complete

That stepping off his tiny ship felt like a giant leap.

But who confers upon whom the status of "being first"?

Is it history or our own thirst for originary myths?

We need beginnings. Beginnings need protagonists,

Actions, words, or they remain vague, out of reach,

Like false memories, illusions, fevered dreams.

Is it our attempt to capture a unique subjectivity,

To be a rock in the fast flowing river of time,

Where the first is always and already the last:

The last to see a new world diminished,

The last to look on power with innocence,

The last to seek knowledge without limits,

The last to live in bliss without ignorance?

© shaun patrick green 2018