from "Horse Lyrics"
7. Instrumental
all kids think of suicide
like all kids think sleeping pills
might win you a day off school
for me there was dying under green trees
buried in the spring you know
the green would die greenly.
the impossibility of it
doesn't occur to you as a teenager,
the impossibility of few things
will occur before you first lose your head
over someone now less than special
but not worth the blame.
too old to top yourself
because friends are wise to you
& you are wise enough to yourself
to leave it to latin lovers in ludicrous
Almodovar films, or Japanese couples
with wilder kitchen utensils
drinking yourself to death
has more advantages than most methods;
in my green dreams of park suicide
I don't remember what the instrument was
but the grass was lush & jolly
& the bottles were red
Hugh Tolhurst
from Filth and Other Poems
(Nth Fitzroy: Black Pepper, 1997)
this suite soon to be reprinted in full in
Calyx: 30 Contemporary Australian Poets,
edited by Peter Minter and Michael Brennan
(Brooklyn NSW, Paper Bark, 2000)
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