If only he’d met a nice girl

and settled down in Croydon…

That blasted poetry, a void in

which his arty friends would hurl

him. He could of been a mechanic

by now in Footscray

instead of dead today

at twenty five. He was always manic

 

What with breeding mozzies,

frogs – that damn pet swan.

A life gone down the drains. Aussies

thought he was having them on

 

I said, I said “These poems are jokes.”

Ironic now he’s labelled Hoax…

 

 

© rob walker, 2005

(originally published in Cordite Poetry Review’s Children of Malley

Issue #23, Dec 2005)

Also in tropeland (Five Islands Press) 2015