so I took a swing at him and caught him on the side of his head

and his hat flew off

and then I was in the van

and I was carted off like a lump of fucking meat

/

the police know all kinds of people who say they want to help you

they can’t help you

because they don’t know what you need

you can’t tell them what you need

you don’t know what it is

it might be money

most of the time it would be money

but you can’t ask for money

they haven’t got any money to give you

and money’s not the answer they say

not the answer to what

to whatever’s bothering you

being poor’s bothering you

but apparently money’s not the answer

if it isn’t I don’t know what is

/

after that day I visited on Sunday afternoons

with Lenny leaning over me like a warden

I whispered Beau in the baby’s ear so Lenny couldn’t hear me

and the baby giggled

Lenny’s sister was always there

she had a keyhole for a face

thin as a ferret and a churchgoer of course

as barren as a plank and just as hard

/

Lenny was like a little kid in front of her

I knew he loved me

I could see it in his eyes when he looked at me with the baby in my arms

but he couldn’t let her see that look

I knew what she thought of me

he had to think it too when she was around

and she was always around

she stuck to Lenny like shit to a blanket

/

it was a stinking summer

the country dried out

cockatoos came into town from the hills

screeching over Brunswick and Collingwood

they sat on telephone poles and tram wires

gangs of them screaming like banshees

when they shook their feathers clouds of red dust came off them like smoke

they sat along the guttering of the Rising Sun Hotel

and on the chimneys of the Grace Darling in Smith Street

their beaks stuck open going mad with hunger

dust storms blew in and the sky went dark yellow

you’d have to shut your eyes and mouth

I put a scarf around my head like an Arab

and pushed against the wind down Johnston Street my dress flapping like a sail

I cadged drinks in the Prince Patrick and the Crown

and at the Leinster Arms in Gold Street

until they barred me for being a nuisance

and I had to stay outside with the cockies dying of thirst

/

I saw Mrs Kennedy most days

and she gave me some of her good stuff to get me through

because she knew how it was she said

you could see she’d had a rough time or two

there was something in her eyes that told you she’d seen the worst