Twenty Bucks

With a hundred unsold books, an overdraft and twenty bucks I’ll buy three 2.99 brewskies to lubricate the stiff day, satiate the geyser-in-wait. Water down my temper. Dilute the magma. That leaves ten for Pinot or merlot to thin the wife’s blood type-O

and make her post-natal tension break. I’ll take the change
in ten cent bits for my kid to put in his piggy bank.
An afternoon evaporates; we tickle and oink.

An orange note remains: get Abe a Maccas Coke McFloat, watch the Super 18 for free, score the Herald on Sunday, buy the fam-i-ly free napkins, aircon. Handful of straws for the wee one.

It don’t cost a leg and an arm to stalk the toy department of the Big Red Barn and mime
like I might buy some overpriced FisherPrice device, then
blow my final golden heron on a Thomas the Tank Engine

carousel where you get the PakNSave prams from.
Abe’s too amazed to get on it. Parking change
traded for a 50 buck ticket on my bonnet.


A dollar gets you half a scoop of chips –fine dining for a kid.
Or get the snips, chop five lollies into twice as many bits,
It’s our shoestring economy. There’s no app for that on iPad.

I’ve got the park, climbing trees, wife’s grinning running chasing screaming giggling teeth, I’ve got the beach, that’s free. Hot baths, pram runs, endorphins, put the boy on his dad’s back, crawl through the house

in motorcycle padded pants, a panda’s what I am for three hours, eat a pot plant, call it bamboo, til church playgroup, free bikkies and tea
then we’re off down the library pushing books off the shelves. Security smiles and melts.

It’s not five, ten or twenty bucks to jog to the sewage pond and feed the ducks. It doesn’t cost shit to put a grin
on top of Abe’s chubby chin.
Bags of books. Brushing teeth with toothpaste tested on pets cause it’s a dollar-fifty.

So fuck a $50 family deal to see Toy Story 3D:
Here’s Abe in 3D.
Through the anxiety, I keep

the writin comin, and
strapped to my abdomen,
baby Violet sleeps obliviously.