Huh, I see what you mean, Pat!
Bill
On Friday, 22 July 2016, Patrick McManus <[log in to unmask]>
wrote:
> Pak is a tricky word here
>
>
> On 20/07/2016 00:56, Max Richards wrote:
>
>> Enjoyable, for me, with its links to my own boyhood and NZ school.
>>
>> slurp, slurp. and all that juvenile connoisseurship...
>>
>> I see why you write ‘pak’ but I’d put it in quotes, first time at least.
>>
>> So The Burner is now sequel to this…? fair enough.
>>
>> Max
>>
>> On Jul 19, 2016, at 6:13, Bill Wootton <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>>
>> This is an expanded version of an earlier poem I think I submitted here
>>> called The Burner. Now it's a sort of companion piece I suppose.
>>>
>>> Bill
>>>
>>>
>>> East Ivanhoe State's Tuckshop lit up our lives.
>>> A drab building adjoining the library when shut,
>>> it sprang to colourful life each recess and lunchtime.
>>>
>>> Bright boxes of pink musk sticks; yellow cartons
>>> of flat twelve-inch liquorice straps, a penny a pop,
>>> longitudinally peelable, so six for the price of one.
>>>
>>> Chocolate Royals we smashed on our foreheads
>>> before easing off cracked chocolate to reveal
>>> marshmallow- white or pink - on a crisp jam biscuit.
>>>
>>> And what about local mash-ups like 'favouries':
>>> rolled-up buttered soft pikelets, two a penny.
>>> Cut sandwiches from home - huh! No competition.
>>>
>>> Summer treats were Sunnyboys: sweet orange
>>> cordial in tetrahedral paks, also available frozen,
>>> the better for lasting longer, but forcing choices.
>>>
>>> Do you suck out the flavour as the frozen bit melts
>>> knowing you will leave tasteless pale ice at the end
>>> or do you belt your Sunnyboy on a Tuckshop rail,
>>>
>>> allowing an even mixture of flavour and ice crunch?
>>> Or for true aficionados: wait, slurp up ice, let it drop
>>> back to pak, slurp some more until all that's left
>>>
>>> is impossibly superlative concentrated cold orange.
>>> And then the ripping apart of soggy silver foil;
>>> who had a 'lucky'? The magic printed blue words
>>>
>>> 'free tetra pak' inside entitled you to suck again.
>>> If you dipped out, and The Burner had already
>>> been raked through, search for unripped paks.
>>>
>>> Classrooms were the places for skill acquisition,
>>> gyms and ovals for physical jerks but for sheer
>>> sensuality, it's hard to go past The Tuckshop.
>>>
>>> bw
>>>
>>
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