"Bet he drinks green tea too", a more slim that usual detective notes,
"and it's the only thing he orders from the café underneath the railway arches, and orders it "on the go"', with one hand on the mobile phone to his ear, I know,
I've seen it before, on his tail, leaving St. Kilda for Fitzroy.
He calls the girl behind the counter "Magda", even though her name is Radomila,
but hey, that's ok, lol, they all say.
Benjamin fell asleep in '36, wild and barren Australia mourned,
urban Australia mourns 37 different years, Benjamin's returned, "a different Benjamin" McGurk tells me.
Someone else me told me he was the devil
stealing lover's dreams from TV screens, old ladies choking on scones at tea time.
He swiped their love like hidden diamonds,
like a hoodlum with a sack marked swag.
He stands no taller than a rock,
doesn't walk on water, or convert oil to petroleum from sin. No surprise - that no frame,
that no bone, is huddled in the bastards of his skin.
I stood there listening to the spirituals with my sisters, back down on the Yarra-bed,
the waters running dry, the songs smothering the sky - suddenly - the butcher's cut loose
on the empty houses; I dry myself quickly,
tell my sisters I love them, fix a flashing siren on my roof,
leave with my Mojo on safety-mode.
When I got back to Australia they'd changed from pounds, shillings and pence, into dollars,
when I got home to Fitzroy, the beer was flat and the blues had turned every colour but blue;
the queens of London City said their prayers
but did not have any souls, I was the only one in the precinct who didn't find that to be a surprise.
I'm listening to Dylan from '97 onwards, that creepy, somewhat silent stranger, in the hat and waistcoat who sits near the back of the church on a Sunday and is either the first or last to leave,
there's no middle ground with that guy,
I take a leaf from his scripture, a feather from his hat,
I walked into Danny's dreams, warned him that previous night, there's a killer on the loose around the spinal cord of town, hanging like an electric fence over water,
the fire in the heart
or the grease smothering the machine
which one burns you faster?
Hey Danny, which jackdaw swoops to snip your holster?
something came up long before daybreak
koshed the moon from behind;
dragging that moon behind a tree
he went through its pockets
poured a stale shot of rum on its lapels -
his footprints in the fields remain like fossils,
Danny's wheels covered-over everything else - a shame, that boy
covered over hard evidence - instead of sleepwalking before getting permission from the dark - like the way
gold bullion looks like dirty water coming from a poor man's
rag-stuffed well,
dogs, usually match-stick legged, keeping a three-score distance,
the way the bones in the waves
subtly tune to a jazz session, sleeves wet,
windows welded by the sun, everything beautiful stolen, though safe for now, behind closed doors; safe for now, I said...
The killer I see sipping on his green tea
is an ideas guy, giving investors a solid return on their capital,
still calls that waitress Magda - no-one's laughing.
If I want to find redemption I guess I better sin to get there first
a tribal elder told me - I drew a necklace of swollen sorrows, handed down from the Southern Cross -
the first sin I needed to commit was to let the drowning man die of thirst, no green-tea left, sorry Benjamin, we've ran out of coffee too -
the second sin I committed was to let Galilee run out of turpentine;
On the thirteenth day they went to stone me
but I'd escaped on a swinging saloon door, shortly before midnight on the ninth,
making Geelong as the Southern Cross
signed off for sunrise,
dust-swarms, shaking trees, puzzling the elders in Gippsland,
The third sin I'll commit is to accuse Ben Avraham of theft, false-selly, that is.
When he turns to slap my cheek, he'll knock me 37 years back in time; last time I drew my blade on Ben
His barndoor missed my face by twenty or twenty seven years, there'll be no sad and sorry miss, this time of all times.
It's worked. My soul is damned anyway, best to shoot a hangman down,
then hang like a walk-on extra, immortal in a hail of lead -
ant-sting holes on a cooled-down saddle, as I clip-clop into Jackson's Hotel,
37 years of old ladies' dreams, sipping tea politely
with an old-time horse of war, Nell apologizing to Helen,
Edith says "it's cucumber, not ham" they want on their sandwiches.
Danny's left his doctor's office meanwhile,
cycling down Flinders
I meet him head-on, we cycle back to '85,
in the dream that we remember
like in the dreams I used to have
so long long ago, Reggie C. was my witness, "he was on a tram going down Collins, about to meet me for a beer"
Reggie told the courthouse
who turned and roared "show him mercy, your lordship!" all in tandem -
this was how the butcher of Ramsey St. wound-up swinging
from a gallows in the outback,
instead of on T.V. screen
like he'd planned for me.
Me, you ask, how am I doing now?
I wound up an expert marksman in the Salvation Army,
driving my Neighbours crazy, blowing brass instruments, from time to time
John Doyle became a Mod again in the summer of 2017 to fight off his impending mid-life crisis; whether this has been a success remains to be seen. He has has two collections published to date, A Stirring at Dusk in 2017, and Songs for Boys Called Wendell Gomez in 2018, both on PSKI's Porch.
He is based in Maynooth, County Kildare, Ireland. All he asks is that you leave your guns at the door and tie up your horses before your enter.
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