FANTE IS WITH ME TONIGHT
In a small room in Bunker Hill
I clip my toe nails then open
the blinds
I can see a building
lots of windows
I stick my head out the
window and turn it
and see the Wells Fargo
Car Park(I know this
because the name is
looking at me)
I then close the blinds
and turn on the tap
I wait a few minutes
then fill a plastic cup
I drink the water quickly
and afterwards screw
up my face
I hope that water doesn’t
make me sick, I then
thought. Sitting alone
in a cheap room. An
unpublished writer
with a full notepad
and the belief that I
will one day be great.
On the edge of the soft
bed. Listening to the loud
fan, and not hearing another
thing.
SUMMERTIME
Hot summer afternoons
in the suburbs
of Sydney
1980’s
where even the breeze
didn’t reach,
laying on my bed sweating
in my boiling room
listening to the radio
with nothing else to do;
my father at the pub
drinking
and my mother in the
backyard crying:
all of us hoping for
something more.
THE WORKER
The union representative is plump
and dressed in an expensive suit talking
to the workers. They sit uncomfortably
listening to him lie and tell them this
is the best deal they can get. And the
loss of conditions is not really a loss,
but a benefit for them, and they should
all think about the bigger picture rather
than just themselves. They sit there in
silence taking it. They have no choice.
Jobs are scarce and it would be a mistake
to lose this one.
DREAM
Seven years old in my bedroom
in my parents house
a radio on the bed next to
me
the songs all seemed to make
perfect sense
I was just a newborn in a
great thing
a marvellous thing
the human race
I knew so little
but that didn’t matter
others knew
others knew more than I’d
ever need to know
I could live two-hundred years
and still not learn all the great
things that people knew.
And here I am today over twenty
years later
having seen and learned more
than I’d wished I’d ever know
wishing I was seven again:
with that radio and that dream.
Update 22 September 2015
Words
filling
this
page
now
and
reminding
me
of
a
reason
to
still
be
here
after
far
too
many
years
of
disappointment
with
death
only
as
far
away
as
no
reason.
THE
DEATH OF THE RED LIGHT DISTRICT
The
conservatives have taken
over
Kings Cross. The drug
dealers,
hookers, thugs, and
alcohol
has been taken from
the
street. There are cameras
recording
every inch for anti-
social
activity. Prams have
replaced
blood on the footpaths
on
a Sunday morning. No more
24
hour bars. No more getting
drunk.
No more anything good.
Just
a bunch of lifeless dead
people
that have destroyed the
only
good place left in Sydney.
The
conservatives have taken
over
Kings Cross:
and
I am moving in a week.
WITHOUT
A FACE
The
problem is we all
want
to take
but
don’t want to
give
sweating
like fools
when
we should be
dry
and calm
our
greatest pleasure
success
but
to be successful
others
have to be
unsuccessful
so
it’s a murderers
game
teaching
children to
steal
and desire sex
when
they should
still
be playing with
toys
and
not an ounce of
style
in our way
all
desperate and
willing
to do whatever
it
takes for wealth
with
dead souls
and
dead lives
that
lose little
when
the hearse
finally
arrives.
Find a BM link to
Benton Booth’s short story ‘The Angel of Death’ here: https://georgedanderson.blogspot.com.au/2016/09/short-story-brenton-booth-angel-of-death.html
Also find Brenton Both’s short story 'Candy
Johnson' here: https://georgedanderson.blogspot.com.au/2017/03/short-story-candy-johnson-by-brenton.html
Bio: Brenton Booth lives in Sydney, Australia. After over nine years of rejections poetry and fiction of his has appeared in over fifty publications in the past three years. If you would like to read more of his stuff, his complete published archive is available at brentonbooth.weebly.com
