Ken Trimble #5 Everything bleeds

Johnny boy lived
next to the boiler room,
going on sixty
surrounded by a sea of papers
he sat there staring into his
smoke rings.

Nothing romantic about
rooming houses.

You want isolation
go there .

You want a brick
in your face go there

You want sad stories
go there.


I lived in some pretty
wild joints but Murray Street
was the craziest.

Drinking wine 7am
with a guy from Barwon prison
frothing at the mouth

and the ex Carthusian monk
who lived in a tool shed
surrounded by crucifixes
who when drunk
became  Homo Erectus
swinging his arms bellowing
at the moon and god.

Then came the Chinese man
who sat in the same spot day
after day smoking his pipe
looking out of it or maybe I
was the one out of it , god knows
I drank enough Coolabah wine
to sink a ship.

We had tiny  kitchens  allocated
to each resident
a string of them, partitioned
dog boxes they were.

There were guns and gun stories
and lost weekends or just years.

Johnny wore a goatee
blacked by shoe polish.

He wore pants that strangled
the life out of his life.

"My son's an airline pilot he'd say,
one day he's gonna take me
outta here".

The tragic fucking hip pass by
the house
sleepwalking amnesiacs
in a world
where everything bleeds.