these are a few of my favourite things

possibly slightly less ancient than the others. hopefully.

Schnapps and Cigarettes

If you were to kiss me now,
I’d taste of schnapps and cigarettes –
a different brand, as if to mark
the distance desperation put between us.
Now that I’m out of my bracket,
my socio-cultural depth,
I feel the need
to cling and cry, be comforted
by tear-softened words about
the old haunts, the old times.
Thirty-eight days is far too long
to go without familiar whispers,
far too much time
spent lost among privileged, precocious faces
who know more than I’d ever dream.
(You are their best reflection,
their wisdom and refine without their air of superiority.
My blasphemies and ignorance endear you,
you see me as a different kind –
a sub-species, a Darwinian freak,
to be held and helped and guided to the lighthouse,
and there bathed in sun-like beams,
my imperfections burnt away
by the dazzling glare of infinite knowledge).

I’m minute-counting now.
I am pathetic.
But, should I taste sour and deformed,
I know you enough to bring me back,
a swimmer plucked from the flood
as the undertow threatens
to take me under, smother me
in unfamiliar waves and take away
all I ever hated; all that ever,
in the end,
gave me any definition.
I am an Ilson girl and through my veins
runs not the solitude of hillsides, stone and earth;
not the capital’s diseased yet vibrant beat,
but squalid concrete and sick-stains,
starving mutts and morning drunks,
paint stripper booze and Richmond tar.
I am an Ilson girl who knows big words,
who writes verse in crooked syllables and thrives
on her suburban contradictions.
You are the caffeine-coloured star I steer by,
my familiar waves
and in this storm of schnapps and cigarettes
I wait for you to pull me under.
I wait for your embrace.