Two Poems

The Man Next Door

The most gnarled & bitter person in town
Is the midget next-door.
With every pinched smirk, every condescension
He shrinks the rage further into himself.

Even the kindest of people can't contain themselves:
Everyone has to sneer insults
Onto his big head & little body,
Everybody has to point at his stubby hands,
Laugh at his child's shoe-size.

He'll get us in the end,
One night after we've laughed ourselves to sleep
& We lie sniggering in a contented doze,
He'll steal in & clip off our legs at the knees.

---

As the Cancellations Are Read

I find nothing more welcome than
Falling asleep to the sound
Of a thousand fists boxing
My ears into the pillow. Find a choir
Of gruff voiced, thick necked, beasts of men,
Have them sing me
A lullaby of knuckles &
Don't let them stop when I drift off;
Keep the blows hailing down.

Leave my dreams pocked with bruises.
Every morning in Dunedin,
During those five minutes
Before the city is drowned in rain,
The sun throbs, swollen
In the sky. I limp out into the street,
My head burning & massive like that star,
My eyes carved into nocturnal slits,
Blue, & shivering with fragility &
As the girders of sunlight stab bluntly through,

I howl with celestial delight.

I am glad to be alive, here
In a fish 'n' chip shop catching another wallop
To the back of the head.
The radio beams down at me.
I am the luckiest man on Earth,
This is the best moment in my life,
Soaking wet, pounded half to death,
Humiliated, as the cancellations are read.
Matches, practises, gatherings & the Fun Run are off

& I dream of a bed, soft, & warm with blood.