A lunch poem
Perhaps everyone drives round these blocks forever

as cafes get lost in the trawl of Hindley Street

these blocks, just to see something happen.

‘Adelaide’s No.1 Party Venue’, a kind of inroad

or airborne, the sound, lonely sputnik, hey there

you may arrive at The Woolshed, the all male review

what you may want, KFC, KBox, karaoke.

There’s also the art part amongst lunchtime squelching,

some Germans, a queen and his staffy, tapas, city stuff,

‘Playing Till Late’, and though you’re puzzled, you’ve intuited

from the beginning that Polites isn’t a health regime.
There’s paper scattered round, The Advertiser unreadable

the festival programs unreadable, nothing to do with

what goes on, like happy hour, sex work, making

a custom Tshirt, selling secondhand books,

scoffing schnitties, checking the phone — ‘needs and desires’

an oldfashioned textbook might say, probably still on a shelf

somewhere nearby.

                                 Should we be impressed

with the Fringe or Writers Week or 4 Coronas

for $20? While in Tempo there’s some sizzling going on

a burger, a meeting, everyone knows each other here –

well, not you, sweetheart, but, y’know, everyone …
A complete unknown could be perfect, so you can

hide from heat and conversation in the midst

without news or pretence with hero parking and a desert wind

in ‘the workshop of the mind’ as someone once said

too cutely, and all that’s missing is sea salt which should come

from the sea out of the west but refuses and so do you,

but not in a bad way, you have to think and move, nothing is still

even in a heatwave, it is a wave, all that pressure.
A caterer’s truck slams the gutter and anything’s possible

there’s nothing zen in that, existence moves on the waters

and on the sands, and if language made that up

it sounds as possible as whatever may be delivered

along Hindley Street, and, hey there, you might arrive

sometime, but it’s not so lonely in this space

these circles, these funny old corners.