Dear Ken, I still frequent

Self Preservation.

Dan is there, dressed in black,

always a book on the go.

He’s just finished Louis-Ferdinand Celine’s

“Death on the Instalment Plan”

from which he quotes—

“To hell with reality!

I want to die in music,

not in reason or in prose.”
Tattooed, in his late twenties,

in walks Spencer,

a Canadian New Zealander,

fashionably unwashed looking,

but not pungent

seats himself on the

black vinyl couch,

between Dan and me.
Spencer is

Friday afternoon going into evening restless,

wants someone to go drinking with him

at Lily Blacks,

prefers to talk about girls

rather than books,

says, “I want a girl I can’t have.”

then shows me

several photos of supermodel types

on his mobile phone.
This is the moment

for Sean, the waiter,

to hand me an ice bucket

in which to drown

Spencer’s mobile phone.

But that would be fantasy, not real life,

with its further lessons

around the corner

and, beyond, Lily Blacks.
I walk down Flinders Lane,

pass a sandwich board

that reads, “Grab dinner by the balls.”

I’m not in the mood

and mightn’t be for years.
In Lonsdale Street

“The Burroteca Donkey Disco”,

featuring Zoltar the $2 Cosmic Fortune Teller,

is closed.

I make a note to recommend it to Spencer,

an alternative to Lily Blacks.
In Russell Street

a young Chinese woman

totters out of “Sense Hair Salon”.

She’s wearing bright pink high heels

and a black T-shirt

with two words written on it—

CELINE

 PARIS
And The Jam sing,

“In the city there’s a thousand things

I want to say to you …”
Ken, I like your hair,

the reddish tinge that fate and genes

have invested in it.

The people from Central Casting

agree with me that your remaining vestiges

of Anthony Quinn looks,

will bring long queues

to the box office of this poem,

so I place you behind the wheel

of a royal blue convertible.
Tires screeching, you peel away from the kerb,

keen to be at Ruby’s Music Room

for The Vampires’ first set,

which I’ll have to miss,

having a forensic report to write

about the poet’s corpse

found lying on the terrace of Madame Brussels

last Sunday morning,

covered in rejection slips,

from Meanjin chiefly.
I think about subject matter

for Edouard Vuillard to paint this century—
Neighbour with leaf blower.

Still life with microwave.
Used Earl Grey tea bag on white saucer.
Vuillard said, “The painter’s instrument

is his armchair.”

Mine is at

Self Preservation,

the black vinyl couch.

I sit there and write

on small yellow index cards,

small brown paper shopping bags,

bookmarks from The Paperback

and The Hill of Content.
Ken, with your black eyepatch in place,

the complete poems of Andre Breton

tucked under your rhinestone-encrusted belt

and a lime green Citroen garaged in every port,

you continue to sail

the salty waters

of Australian poetry.
There’s an affronted mob

who’d would like to see you

hung from the yardarm,

but before strong rope is found

you get another poem accepted

by Best Australian Poems

and Morry Schwartz

mails a “clean” revolver

to a designated P. O. Box in Adelaide.

You call the revolver “The Equalizer”,

tape it to the underside

of your writing desk.
And The Temptations sing,

“But it was just my ‘magination,

running away with me.”
At The Paperback, I buy

 a biography of Gauguin,

walk back to Self Preservation.

Edouard Vuillard is there

sitting on the black vinyl couch,

moves over to make room for me.
Emma takes our order, a Pernod each,

which makes Edouard more talkative.

Noticing the light bulb tattoo on Emma’s right shin,

he says, “Each human heart is a light bulb.

Some try to exceed their wattage,

some remain dim,

some dangle naked from a ceiling,

the chair beneath them kicked away.

In paintings

I reveal the individual,

perhaps challenged, subdued by curtain shadow,

perhaps rising from a comfortable chair

to risk looking out a window,

their venturesome face anointed by morning light.

I wander Melbourne’s central business district,

thinking about the bold and the hesitant,

eventually reach a cafe

I long have favoured.
Alas, I am a dedicated bachelor.

A shift from that position

would dismay my widowed mother.

I cannot accompany Spencer to Lily Blacks

to be his wingman.”
A cafe patron’s long black gloves,

as I consider what Edouard said,

crawl away from her hands

onto her face,

become a mask that she may wear tonight

to a ballroom beneath the sea.
Oh white cuboid napkin dispenser

sitting atop the long wooden bench

at Self Preservation,

you are scratched and scuffed

but steady on your four rubber stumps,

having seen Federal governments come and go.

You serve but are not servile.

No wide gossip,

no high-heeled beauty

turns your head.

You go where needed—

to egg stain and wine spill,

give generously

of yourself.
You tolerate

Melbourne weather,

dainty, absorbent,

and Sean playing

 “Rosanna”, “Africa” and “Hold The Line” by Toto

every Friday night

on the sound system.
And Billy Joel sings,

“I love you just the way you are.”
Park bench in the Treasury Gardens,

near where Collins Street meets Spring,

often I pause

to rest upon your slats,

to look up at the sky,

sometimes blue, often grey,

an inverted pasture,

where clouds graze

with their rumoured lining,

the sun, a sulky teenager,

goofing off, not doing his job:

to shepherd each rain-fattened cloud

into the corral of the horizon.
I walk along Russell Street towards Little Lonsdale,

pass Trunk Diner,

their sandwich board that reads,

unpleasantly,

“WE HAVE BEERS COLDER THAN YOUR EX”
And The Velvet Underground sing,

“Who loves the sun?

Who cares that it makes plants grow?

Who cares what it does

Since you broke my heart?”
My painter friend Antoine recently won a coffin

in a poker game.

He’s painted a self-portrait on the lid,

which now hangs in his room.

At night Antoine sleeps in the bottom half of the coffin,

his on-going packet of Benson & Hedges

within easy reach.

We talk about

drinking glasses and vases,

how their careful placement in our paintings and poems,

may make the individuals portrayed in our work

consider where they place themselves

in a room,

in a gathering,

in this chessboard world

of the regal and the pawned.

Antoine feels he’s ready, almost, to include

a paper napkin dispenser in his next painting.

I’m excited for him. 
And Gene Allison sings,

“You can make it if you try

You can make it if you try.”
I craft this poem,

add and erase

until it’s ready to email to you, Ken,

in Adelaide,

where you sit

in your regular cafe,

perhaps thinking about

a favourite Wayne Shorter composition,

ordering scrambled eggs on toast,

wanting them to be

marvellous rather than everyday,

but the shape and detail

of the light green sugar bowl

on the cafe table

have caught your attention

and where you are

and what you’re thinking

ceases to be

everyday

and now you’re searching

for a notepad and a pen.