I’ve been thinking of what to do

when no one will pay me to write poetry

anymore 

 

maybe become a locksmith?

a van drives by the mayfield bowling

club and beckons

 

with its bolts, latches and cylinders

I inhale as the old bloke behind

moans of greenies

 

I want to show him a picture

of the storm a fire makes all its 

own, electric

 

and tell him of the town in 

pennsylvania where a coal blaze has burned

for fifty years

 

and the trouble I’ve been having 

breathing, anxiety or bushfire smoke

hard to say

 

it’s a tightness of the chest just like

the air’s bearing down, saying “hey

motherfuckers,

 

do you want me here or not?” and yes

you know I do, and I want the earth unburnt

and oceans cold

 

and colourful like oil on water, like your

eyes when they tell me I am going to be 

 

okay