747s

and Pelikan ink, and Letraset

kissing without meaning

because

we were smart

and beads
she wore a blue panty girdle

napalm blossoms in the garden

Rufus Youngblood, the head of the presidential security detail

trotted in a suit beside the Lincoln Continental
angry egg yolks ruin shiny car black duco

our youth priest drove his Peugeot 404 at 100 miles an hour

on the back roads behind the concrete dam wall
stone walls were crumbling

my Irish history

we were listening to Sergeant Peppers
though apart from the novelty

we had no idea

bus drivers were figures of authority
I had to stop and weep

driving over the Great Dividing Range

in the red and grey Mini my father bought me
we ate red meat and gravy, but even then

our mother was making us detour to the stone ground miller in Epping

we thought she was a fool

this was 1966

she was doing rough paintings of Australian trees

under the influence of a German artist friend

in the hot, stony outskirts of a Bendigo suburb

that I cannot get rid of

sadness