Clark Gable is Dead

by David Mac

The hero takes the woman in his arms
She weeps
The orchestra stirs

A young girl rides a horse
The fields are on fire
The trees are angry fists

But the hero will die
The woman will die
The girl and the horse too

The tree is the only one who will
Outlive them all
For even the branches know
Everything ends up this way

But it doesn’t matter
None of it does

As the blue smoke hits
Or the bottle is smashed into the sky

The violins scream and shudder
It’s all they can do

And in the old movies
No end credits play

And everything ends
And ends abruptly

As everything else
Does not

Even The Shadows

by David Mac

Every night we drink
Every night we die
But come the morning
We are born again

Hissing and moaning
Thrown back to the world
The daylight will only protect us
For so long

But we know what will happen
We know the night is coming
For us
And we get ready
And we do

The inevitability of the hours
The cruel joke of the sun
And that one more bottle
That one more sip
That taste on our lips

The fire is so beautiful
That even the shadows
Are scared

Sure Thing - For Chinaski’s Alter Ego

by David Mac

Ignore the horse hooves
and the gods

Ignore the deadly flush and
the good hand
It never is
your hand

Ignore the screaming dice
The way they land
They never land

Ignore the black bird moan
The odds and the
sure thing

There’s no other way
to say it

This life’s a gamble
hard and slow
with losing upon losing

till all that’s left
is the unavoidable win
in the end

the only thing
that’s worth betting on at all

For a Lady

by David Mac

Lady Death been kissing me
all night long
Lady Death don’t like me
singing
She says don’t sing
that song
But Lady Death come round
yeah come round, do
Lady Death been keeping her
ring on the side
her eyes on the side
her teeth in a glass
Lady Death farts
all night long
keeps me awake
Lady Death don’t want me to
go to work
Lady Death want me to
stay in bed
breakfast in bed
wants to brush her hair in the mirror
Lady Death wants to
stay inside today
Lady Death wants to
watch television
Lady Death don’t you know it’s
blue sky
eternal
outside?
Bah she says
Lady Death don’t you hear the
blue birds?
So what? she says
Lady Death stretches out
yawns
lights another cigarette
looks at me
and smiles
Sometimes I even smile back
But I can’t be sure

What’s Scary

by David Mac

Death isn’t the thing
It’s getting there that can
Scare you

Old age
Decay
Disease
Loss of the senses

Death isn’t the thing
It’s making it
Over that
Really hurts

We are all falling
Apart
We are all
Disintegrating
Slow

And it’s
Hell

Not a place
Or a finality
Not an end

It’s happening already

The child
The newborn baby

It has already begun
And it cannot be
Stopped

If you think about it
Death is not the thing

It’s life that kills you

Nappy to the Grave

by David Mac

We pour booze into our souls, we
Breathe smoke into them too
We set ourselves on fire
Every
Chance
We
Get

We awake in the mornings and
Ask the body beside us
What
We
Did
Last
Night

‘You don’t
Wanna
Know’
They
Tell us

Then we get up and
Go to
Work
Or to
Nowhere at all

And it is like this
From the
Nappy
To the
Grave

So perhaps the bodies
Are right

Dressing Gown Days

by David Mac

She said, ‘We’re just flesh and bone.
Don’t you know?’              

I said, ‘You’ve got no heart.’

She said, ‘Don’t start.’

‘Well, what’s the matter?’

‘I’ll tell you later,
 in a day or two,
when we’ve had chance to grow,
when we’re both a little older.’

‘Ah, promises, promises, promises.’

Everything will come in the future.

She kissed me goodbye and went to work.
Another day in my dressing gown
as I sat and looked at the day begin.

I thought: I’ve never forgotten to wake up yet, I’ve
never forgotten to keep breathing.
I’ve never missed one single day of life yet!
Surely there must be some kind of
reward due me.

It isn’t here yet…

Maybe I’ll check the post. Maybe I’ll
wait a little longer.

Icarus 21st Century (I Saw Them Fall)

by David Mac

 
Ancient wings burnt by sun
bird shape sizzle
landed in the landscape
somewhere
terror as everything
falls simple
every day statues
stone cry weep shudder
evil and non evil
perspectives
points of view
eyes seen so much now
seen it all:
black and white
no grey
life and death
and balancing somewhere
in between
can be hard as hell

Sunflower Times

by David Mac

Sunflower, don’t laugh at me

Sunflower, I took you back

so be good

Sunflower, the boys in bars

playing the fruit machines

make too much noise

and it’s Sunday

it’s awful

Sunflower, are you like me?

I am a sunflower too, in a way

But come 12 o’clock noon

I’ll be drunk and full of

red-faced bleak words

hateful as old grey town

derelict abandoned

buildings forlorn
underground…

dying is sad news…
soul news…

So sunflower don’t hate me
don’t be like me
Get out the shade

Stick to what you’re good at

Your Red

by David Mac

I really loved it there in your red room,
Where we drank cheap wine
And searched for cigarettes and Rizla,
Where we decided the rest of the world
Was not red enough
For us.                  

Long days in that place where you told me
Charles Bukowski was Charles Baudelaire
Reincarnated, and that it was ‘sooo obvious.’
‘Well, who am I?’ I asked.
‘Jane Austen,’ you replied.
‘I always thought so,’ I said.

And your rocking chair where I sat
And read ancient magazines you never threw away,
Listening to your terrible CD collection
Or watching films you owned but had never seen.
You chatted the whole way through them each time
Leaving me to know all the words.

If heaven was white and the sky was blue,
The world some other shade I
Couldn’t even fathom or make out,
And the colours of other girls’ rooms
Were less important,
It all didn’t matter to me.

It was only your room,
Only deep in that red,
Some place
That could’ve
Represented
Your heart.

The Greatest Forklift Driver

by David Mac

When you see me on my forklift,
you watch
and learn.

You see my chariot dance in the yard,
the swirl and spin,
the dirt and dust of industries and labour.
Stand back.
You’re weak and breathless,
I can tell.

As I carry out these smooth machine operations,
that would be so complex to a mortal man,
you know I’m thinking.
I’m contemplating the poem in this factory/warehouse world.

You can tell it in the way I determine my movements,
as I calculate weight and height, balance,
the forces everywhere.
You see me remembering Newton and his apple,
a little thing called ‘Gravity’.

My hand rests limp on three black levers.
See me operate my shift,
my tilt,
my balance,
my stack,
my vertical raise.
See me lean out the side to see around the object in my vision.
Hear shaft clang and mast rattle.
See how I turn corners,
skilfully steering.
See my heavy load.
See me fast, safe, precise, smooth,
efficient, methodical,
a beautiful rider,
a shining star.

See me up here,
you know,
like some kinda god,
and you know I am the Forklift King
forklift warrior,
forklift angel moving before you.

You don’t have to say nothing.
The fact you thought all this
is enough.

Night Town Eden

by David Mac

Black windows
Black heart
Black soul to look through
The masterpiece has changed
The painting’s not the same

Town night air swirls
Don’t know no better
Drives you crazy

Bleeding ghosts of girls
Lips like cigarettes
Smiles like stars
Rats betray the dream
We’ll never change
We’ll never get over a thing
The love of snakes
The fear of apples

We’re a force to be reckoned with
We do not stand a chance

You are not Humphrey Bogart, and you’ll never get over it

by David Mac

Locking yourself away
in a room
with a bottle
can be as good as
locking yourself away
with a woman

Sometimes it’s the same
Often it’s better

Sitting there alone
watching Bogart play the classic loner
cool hard and
tough
straight
the main guy
how you wish to be

It’s at these times
in these rooms where
everything can be good

a little while longer
can be good
at last
As if everything was
black and
white

but
with no
white

and all the
black
in the
world