It’s a street in a suburb of a misunderstood town
The place where childhood’s journey begins
The wind that blows around about
Speaks of loneliness and sin
The planned city hinged by round-abouts
Tame and neat, a housewife’s treat
It’s Lumbertown, it’s Twin Peaks
The façade of Ainsworth Street
In the grim dark hours of evening
Voices rise up over the din
The crash of wedding crockery
Will fill our weekly bin
As a toddler dreams of astronauts
His trance is broken as she entreats
A forest of legs to cling and to fell
In the shooting gallery of Ainsworth Street
There were days when it was all spring blossoms
When skateboard scrapes match the claret ash
The dusk of laughter lingered
As brussel sprouts were boiled into mash
There were days when the world was too close
When the news screamed of blood on the street
When chopper blades sent us diving for cover
On the fringes of Ainsworth Street
Politicians ponder hard decisions
As we figure how to make ends meet
We hear the echoes of, “Kerr’s cur”
In the burgeoning bourgeois heat
All our aspirations evaporate
As the voices crowd out and repeat
“Look at those worthless bunch of bastards”
Struggling down on Ainsworth Street
In spite of all the palaver
The house was more than a roof over our heads
There was love in the time of psychosis
And someone to change the sheets on our beds
In the shadows of the pyramid
Where survival was some kind of feat
Improvise, adapt and overcome
Was the life on Ainsworth Street
My second guest for December, thank you Lajos Hamers!
It’s poem about growing up in Canberra … Inspired by John Cooper Clarke.
Lajos is an actor, musician, singer, writer and all round buff gentleman.
I’m a Phd Student in Creative Arts at Wollongong Uni.
poemation 