Thanks, Bill, most entertaining.
Others no doubt have the Ginsberg by heart, but I felt I needed to check, and copy below now the line in context.
(What a performance!)
America when will you send your eggs to India?
I'm sick of your insane demands.
When can I go into the supermarket and buy what I need with my good looks?
America after all it is you and I who are perfect not the next world.
Your machinery is too much for me.
You made me want to be a saint.
There must be some other way to settle this argument.
etc
Highly present, those rats, in your presentation, Bill,
Sharon too.
Can I find her on youtube? or somewhere…
Easy to imagine your lines being performed to a good audience.
Max
On Dec 1, 2015, at 13:40, Bill Wootton <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> (or) Two doors, six rats
>
> You could do that then.
> In permanent blue felt tip,
> ex-schoolgirl swim champ Sharon
> wrote out Ginsberg's Howl on the door
> of the salmon kitchen cupboard
> in our share house in Heidelberg
> and when it wouldn't all
> fit, she used the inside of the cupboard
> and the final stanza even leaked
> on to the laminex bench top next to the sink.
> No, hang on, it was America, the one
> with the line asking when he'd be able to buy
> what he wanted from supermarkets
> with his good looks.
>
> Found five dead rats while decommissioning
> a spa in our new house this morning. Hollow
> sockets for eyes, whip-long tails, time-holes
> in their jaws, requiring prising off
> the old floorboards where they'd stuck.
>
> Sharon had been bequeathed a white Valiant
> so for the first time we had a car parked
> in our cracked concrete driveway.
> We could shop in the suburbs.
> And drive to parties.
> One night I didn't feel like it
> when I got there, Punt Road pizza
> curdling in my guts, so I asked Sharon
> for the keys to sit it out in the car.
> You could do that then.
>
> I poked my nose in from time to time
> but Sharon was enjoying herself,
> adopting the right combination of cynicism
> and celebration which I could never pull off.
> Do you mind if I head off, is what
> I remember asking, seeing she had heaps
> of friends there to give her a lift home.
> So I scarpered, drove home and conked.
>
> Can't remember which I heard first:
> the yelling: 'Hey, bastard,' or the sound
> of my bedroom door being kicked.
> All know is it went on for a bit
> so I got up, locked the door
> (I slept in the old lounge room
> which had a key for some reason)
> and went back to bed.
>
> Next day she was still dark on me.
> Turned out she'd had to score a lift home
> with some creep, after thinking
> her car had been stolen.
> Thud! Thud! She really gave that door
> a workout. I'd never experienced naked
> emotion outside the family.
>
> Went on to a singing career, Sharon.
> Heard her on my Corolla radio years later.
> First single was a smash. Spanish Seas.
> Second stalled but she was on the rise again
> with her third when cancer clubbed her.
> Dead at 52; famous husband, kids.
>
> Rats went out in the bin, along with broken
> slate levered off walls and floors.
> Should we polish the floorboards?
> How come, Sharon once asked,
> everybody we know is fucked?
> You could say that then.
>
> bw
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