she’s not entirely alone   she still got the lorikeets outside in the flowering elms chattering away at 40 degrees waiting for the rain  and judy & john hav been trying take her mind off things  they go on and on til sundown bout refugees and free social services   let the floodgates open they mock then sigh how can they hold their head high when they get nuthin but a clit kiwi pension they go  it’s not fair in australia  but she just bites her lip and swallows it dry like a griffins wine-biscuit theyr no socialists not like poppy  he’d give em an earful if he was here in mind

good thing her bp’s low  so low sometimes she think the lorikeets cud pretty much carry her away outta this world into the next whenever they wanted wit nuffink but a molecule noticing her shadow on the ground da sky spinnin around she misses the rain she still loves a good stiff gin  but not as much as how she loved poppy wen he was a dirty old man wit an enormous atomic cock   he’d grab her ass in light n dark ( in the days wen he knew where he was)

life’s for the living (siale says siale knows) but it dont need no reason  jus oxygen and a host of its own  to grow like the tomatoes on the road sproutin up out of concrete cracks commando where her & poppy go walking most days he’s most lucid first light but it’s uphill from there and it’s thumbs down for respite  cos  he dont wanna go the parrots tell her so he only wants to be wit her & no one else will do

now she wears the crimson streak of a lorikeet lighting its way across her skin   watching her cross the street everyday  everyone knows everyone sees where his nails hav been  stuck into her gin n tonic hit wrists (cos he dont wanna lose her when the sky finally folds) squeezin  the veins of her lov 4 him   how she hates the smell of old man he used to taste of nectar she says but now he smells of old vegetable she mutters of curses n mothballs medicated sweat and broccoli