Thanks, Doug. I was trying with 'Bitumenised' to leave the final impression that the feisty girl had left us in her wake. She was the only fluid thing as opposed to us: interested parties, enforcers, onlookers, all rendered static by her spirit, blending in with the road only she could walk upon. But it's hard to do all that in a word. I made one up.
I'm open to alternative suggestions.
Cheers,
Bill
> On 3 Jan 2014, at 5:54 am, Douglas Barbour <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
> Yeah, the story & its tension is there, Bill. Not sure I get 'Bitumenised.' Just well oiled on the night?
>
> Doug
>> On Dec 31, 2013, at 10:53 PM, Bill Wootton <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>>
>> Ah b'leve ah won't be sinking down, then, on the strength of your praise, Andrew.
>>
>> Cheers,
>> Bill
>>
>>> On 1 Jan 2014, at 2:14 pm, Andrew Burke <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>>>
>>> A recognisable moment there in a fine narrative poem. (I'll play
>>> Crossroads, the Robt Johnson version, now to kick off 2014 - then the
>>> Clapton one. Brilliant stuff.)
>>>
>>> Andrew
>>>
>>>
>>>> On 1 January 2014 00:20, Bill Wootton <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>>>>
>>>> First for 2014 is a reworked job. Greetings all for new year.
>>>>
>>>> Bill
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Crossroads
>>>>
>>>> i
>>>>
>>>> I was standing at the crossroads. Port Fairy.
>>>> 1986. I was not alone.
>>>>
>>>> Two, maybe three hundred people stood at the crossroads
>>>> that Saturday night. Milling about.
>>>>
>>>> Strange expression, milling. As if we were making something.
>>>> Something more than a ragged circle,
>>>>
>>>> looking in.
>>>> The corner streetlight shone through flicking insects
>>>>
>>>> on glistening black skin.
>>>> Her headband was not up to the task
>>>>
>>>> of absorbing night sweat, righteous lather.
>>>> Left hand brandishing a can of VB,
>>>>
>>>> right hand dismissing the concerns of a host
>>>> of scraggy Commancheros, whose black bikes,
>>>>
>>>> evenly reversed to the kerb outside The Stump,
>>>> one-eyed the lot of us.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> ii
>>>>
>>>> Younger than either the Aboriginal woman
>>>> or any of the bikers, two policemen,
>>>>
>>>> both sporting blue short-sleeved shirts bearing
>>>> crease-marks ironed in that folk festival morning,
>>>>
>>>> paced uneasily, making brief eye contact
>>>> with anyone speaking
>>>>
>>>> but mostly gazed over heads,
>>>> expectantly.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> iii
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> It had started so simply. Sun had started
>>>> to miss the tables dragged out to the front of the pub.
>>>>
>>>> From the shadow of the public bar,
>>>> A black flash tripped or kicked an unexpected chair,
>>>>
>>>> sending it up on two legs, balancing,
>>>> before toppling into the neatly parked Triumph Bonneville,
>>>>
>>>> which, almost graciously, folded down in the dust.
>>>> One glance, instant decision.
>>>>
>>>> Off. Up and over the picket fence next door.
>>>> Black legs pounding across paspalum.
>>>>
>>>> He was over the next fence before
>>>> a single Commanchero was at the first.
>>>>
>>>> Punters piled out of the pub.
>>>> Half a dozen of the least tubby bikers set off
>>>>
>>>> across the backyards of Port Fairy
>>>> in search of Koori quarry.
>>>>
>>>> The rest assembled by their bikes, muttering,
>>>> gesticulating, beers forgotten on tables, on grass.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> iv
>>>>
>>>> The shaping up at the crossroads might have begun
>>>> when one of the Commancheros, suddenly sober, accused:
>>>>
>>>> ‘That’s his girlfriend. She was in the bar this arvo.’
>>>> Or maybe she taunted them.
>>>>
>>>> I don’t know. But I was there.
>>>> With all the others. Massing.
>>>>
>>>> Not at High Noon. But at High Closing Time
>>>> At 10 to 11. On a Saturday night.
>>>>
>>>> Distant violin and footstomp still, over at The Vic
>>>> But folkies are not an incendiary bunch.
>>>>
>>>> ‘Yaargh, ya weak bastards, all o’yez,’
>>>> she spat, before turning and making her way
>>>>
>>>> through an easily parting channel of onlookers.
>>>> Hairy Commancheros, police, folkers, me. Bitumenised.
>>>>
>>>> bw
>>>
>>>
>>> --
>>> Andrew
>>> http://hispirits.blogspot.com/
>>> 'Undercover of Lightness'
>>> http://walleahpress.com.au/recent-publications.html
>>> 'Shikibu Shuffle'
>>> http://abovegroundpress.blogspot.com.au/2012/03/new-from-aboveground-press-shikibu.html
>
> Douglas Barbour
> [log in to unmask]
>
> http://www.ualberta.ca/~dbarbour/
> http://eclecticruckus.wordpress.com/
>
> Latest books:
> Continuations & Continuations 2 (with Sheila E Murphy)
> http://www.uap.ualberta.ca/UAP.asp?LID=41&bookID=962
> Recording Dates
> (Rubicon Press)
>
> Swept snow, Li Po,
> by dawn’s 40-watt moon
> to the road that hies to office
> away from home.
>
> Lorine Niedecker
>
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