City of Women

Me and you: smitten in an instant.
Pot luck conversation takin-over-the-table invasion.
Footsies; squeezed knees; creaking settee; forgotten TV.
A yawn. An arched arm.
Tiny when unrobed, all ribs and shiver and grin
and winces, winked hints. Next: rants, scratched back,
excessive texts, inexplicable. Best filed under X.

Another you was blown through my winter university.
In a stolen Ford Falcon choice with oi oi boys, shearers in bomber jackets, beer-soaked singlets, stinkin armpits.
You, the caring clean-up type, someone’s cherubic sis,
while the guys packed brick bats you carried toothpaste and Band-Aids and a suitcase
A maid made to roll smokes & plate the kitchen fish ‘n chips
You were too much delicacy for the china shop bull in me.
Led to the wilderness. Released discretely.

Try again. Began as friends. You, upstanding, respected, speccy, Ph.D., loved QI, the Booker Prize and Stephen Fry, clean, anti-nicotine
anti my leather hide; pro-Greens, reiki,
wheatgrass juice, brain food, Omega-3, sushi.
Still, you secreted demons, distress, disease
your shrink said to wean off the Venlafaxine.
Healthier to drop me, cold turkey.

You (number 22, or was it 23) shouldn’t have been
a manager with MYOB, a pedigree and framed degrees,
all heels and meetings
we were just old bros thrown in a guest bed accidentally
Woozy with booze, ceiling spinning,
Tickling, ankles slithering,
sandpaper hands sawing pubic mons,
nibbled neck, panting panicked as an asthma attack.
At dawn your daughter opened the door, saw what could’ve been a father
up and vanish through the crack

I’d spend library nights scribbling furiously, filling up 1B5 diaries
Making notes on a composite chick built of
perfect bits, a Frankenstein Bride.
In the big city, an air hostess one fly-in night
was the last time I consumed human drive-thru
I chewed, wiped my lips, biffed it in the tip.
Swore no more. Revised diet. Change of tune.
Tried to convince you.