We Lived Near Beasley Street

Poetry

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.

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