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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