Red post boxes stand on street corners like aged prostitutes
rusted and flaking
and they are going the way of phone boxes and TV aerial?

Are there still milkman?

Who writes letters?

Postcards from men
working down a pit?

Stuck in the trench
I killed time by attening seminars about powerful words,
the history of things,  
body language as legitimate currency
exposing the micro.

A craven emptiness screaming extinction.

On autumns ground I walk,
As winters snow sky blindingly glows.

In the thylacines footsteps i tread,
On a path the future presents.

Sitting in a cafe, I realise,
The tea I have just had, was built from a billion lives.
Who tasted the leaves.
Who told the others.
Who invented the farm.
Who planted the leaves.
Who planted the seeds.
Who made them grow.
Who picked them.
Who told the nation.
Who created the plough, made the grow more effectively, created the axe, learned to chop a tree, learned to shape it, learned wood floated, came up with the ships, made the first boat, made it sail, told the others, discovered nations, learned their language, spoke it, found what they wanted, got tea, got it back, gave birth to 200,000 generations who split off as cup makers, baristas, cow farmers, milkmen, sugar farmers, sugar packers, cafe owners and tea farmers.
'CHEERS!'

We are indeed standing on the shoulders of giants, but the weight will build on ours.
Swimming the route laid out by the Baiji.

The milkmen are all gone.

Dispersed like the crows

that ravaged the tops of bottles.



A new generation sees the alternative

to ravaged and wrinkled flat peak caps -

tumbled from their heights. Yesterday's plate

no longer throttled



so that a better life can prevail,

with total control of their self - a being.

A generation no longer hostile;



no longer blind;

no longer ignorant.

Instead blissful. Modern role models.

the mornings play a
hysterical game of
forgetting the night
and putting it back
together piece by piece,
thread after thread
so delicately by sundown.
the demons don't care
what the milkmen have to say.
they're so easily forgotten.
until they climb out of their
little houses.
they tug on the thread each visit,
unraveling.
they will swallow you whole.
the milkmen are waiting with the sun.
they great me with a smile and a sweet touch,
like sun rays on pale skin.
but the demons bring stars with them.
they grab my hand as cherry red drips
of my fingertips.

Ponder the milkman.
Uniform obsolescence met evolution
Occupation is what you are reduced to,
In a body
Not meant for boundaries
Some nausea from the neighbor’s perfect lawn
There is anxiety pouring from that clock
Cerebral mardi gras parade rolling the spine
Crackling bottle rockets that pepper nerve endings
Between the shouting and *******
Accompanied by beads of sweat
My love
Ain’t all in the hips, some comes
Outside of me, but through me all goes
All I could ever know
And always less I could tell you
Things aren’t the same, they never will be
That truth like a statue
Carved from ever step forward
That forgot what backwards meant
The Milkmen may be a dead breed
But I know children who have soul
Dressed all in that pearly white
Ready to deliver
Themselves
To everything.

I see you at the open mic
we smile through mocha haze,
almond eyes bring the butterflies
out of the cocoon I had built for them.

We collide at the milkmen show
dead on drugs and the city,
my glasses fall off and I see you blurred
punk beats bringing the butterflies back.

I sit down we meet by the beach
drunk, for we are the liquor.
In love with the blue sky ocean bay and eyes
we grab the fish by the tail telling secrets by the sea
and here come the butterflies.

Back from the cocoon I had built for them

Roses and jasmines. All vowels extended until you barely make the words out,
approaching, then rushing and receding past, early mornings. The flower boy;
Wake up calls, admonishments, family fights and announcements, old stories,
dire oaths, colourful threats, affected love, who, this loud mouth? Lady next door;
Squirrels that shriek like birds, competing for turns to puncture the solemn silence;
Paperboys and milkmen, school vans and church bells, pressure cooker whistles,
whish of reed broom on jagged floors wet with cleaning water, motor noise, aircon:
Two years: that vanished like a dancing drop on a hot pan: beauty hiding the pain
Ending like the slowly turning reflection of the halting fan on my breakfast bowl:
Ja..asmi...ines and ro..oses, squirrel shrieks, now familiar story of the family next
door, wash whish, silence: who is that faint spectacled figure on the cabinet glass?

She looked like a corpse on my front porch
Clutching the spawn of her latest divorce, saying
"Let's get the baby high"

"Oh little pig, little pig, let me in
I've traded food stamps for a bottle a' gin
C'mon, let's get the baby high!"

"For someone like you to get custody
Of an innocent child's a tragedy
No, don't get your baby high."

"Oh, just open up, I've got nowhere to go
My man threw me out and it's starting to snow
So, let's get the baby high!"

"I don't mean to question your parenting skills
But I'm really amazed that kid hasn't been killed
Please don't get your baby high."

"For someone like you to criticize me
Is really the height of hypocrisy
So, let's get the baby high!"

"There's no way in hell I'll open my door
I still have pictures from the time before
No, don't get your baby high."

"Yes I've traded my oldest for a couple a' lids
But it's none of your business how I raise my kids
Now, let's get the baby high!"

"For someone like you to get custody
Of an innocent child's a tragedy
No, don't get your baby high."

"I've asked you politely, now I'm gonna be mean
If you don't open up, I'm going to scream
Let's get the baby high!"

"You can scream all you want but you're not gettin' in
What you do to that kid is really a sin
Please don't get your baby high."

"For someone like you to criticize me
Is really the height of hypocrisy
Now, let's get the baby high!"

"It must be a boy because it's turning blue...
Oh, cootchie, cootchie coo..."

She still stood like a corpse on my front porch
Still clutching the spawn of her latest divorce, saying
"Let's get the baby high!"