Author: Peter Yowie

I watch passers-bys through the Cafe windows, hearts on their sleeves and alibis to the death of jesus. Some digest in the belly of a hungry tram. Yesterday I made two new best friends in the park, Sunny the sausage dog and a kelpie the colour of a sunset and I shared my lunch. Today I have a choice, to poison myself with alcohol or not. I take a tightrope walk across sobriety. A husky voiced delivery driver orders a coffee, writer’s block, nothing for it but to put down words like a bricklayer. People eat breakfast at the next table, jazz plays, the warm blooded creatures of jazz and snakes in the grass. The coffee lasts as long as a last great idea. Poets must have patience, pretty words are ladies in waiting.

I stare at the yellow roses because I like to look at beautiful things. I dream of close encounters. I’m a Libran ruled by Venus. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out I’ve been in love with a songbird in the Spring. I’m cutting edge and experimental like something that drove the natives out of New York a long time ago. The naivety of Cupid, shooting from the lip, the rocks in Romeo’s hand thrown at the window. There is love out there for me, and when it finds me, all the fantasies will sink like Atlantis. A boy’s wet dream.

A celebrity crush is not love, but I learnt a lot about myself. Love songs and pop songs, like water they shaped the rock of my heart and loneliness is not so bad, in my life it’s been a step away from holiness. You can carry a pop princess in your pocket, you can be in new York in a minute, you can have the attitude of a cynic and think every song she ever sung was a lie. Spinning in a turntable universe,

Early morning a prince kisses his sleeping beauty, keeping his duty to her he tells the truth about where he was last night. Later when he phones her she says this marriage is a hole in the cinnamon donut.

My friend works as a barmaid and is studying to be a teacher, and drives a valient and rides a motorbike. She knows all about women in rock, my bandbuddy. She suffered sexual abuse and still gets sexual harassment. Now I’m hearing a song, it ends and the rain rings out on a tin roof. A songwriter in the wilderness, a deer in the headlights. I have followed these divas, and tried to find reasons. There’s a song for all seasons.

People were yelling, one man was barely standing and looked like he was about to drop dead. It was like the tram was riding to hell and I just wanted to get off, only this wasn’t hell this was Melbourne. People seemed like zombies, some had just finished shopping. A lady with dolls, wearing voodoo mascara was playing at happy families, I looked in the pram at her lifeless baby.

Lady Gaga pours herself another glass of Daddy’s girl, the house wine in Cafe Riche. A big hearted Romeo says a bitch is a bitch. I’m an anonymous poet, famous in heaven, dripping in serenity when I sit in the park. Lady Gaga might be a singer with a ring on her finger but all I ever learnt about love is it brings you to your knees. How many songs does a singer have in their head, how many poems does a poet keep in his heart? Lady Gaga hid behind a thousand masks. Behind a Steinway and Sons piano, she was like a deer in the headlights. I could never get close to the truth, I needed a doctor, I got Doc Marten boots. Now she’s all in leather on the New York streets and the statue of serendipity welcomes her. I had to protect my heart because all the love I’ve ever known is a one way Street. There was no respect for me as an artist. Let her live in her doll house and sing for her dollars while I cry on Gods shoulder. I guess I couldn’t tell the difference between being inspired by someone and desiring someone. She’s a mixture of good music and bad dreams. She sings, I sway, strumming my guitar like the body of a woman in my arms. She’s like a best kept secret, like a sweetheart, like a silhouette and a streetlight. Who is the minister of mayhem that I saw on a kid’s drawing, what inspired her latest album? The lessons of a famous woman.

Homeless messiah who gets so high he thinks he’s in heaven, on the hard streets, under a soft sky, the bruised clouds, the empty hours. He takes shelter under a random smile. It’s gold rush city and history spits in the streets. The homeless, the suffering artists, the shat on statues, the coins in a hat. The system is broken, wisdom is just a token offering. Someone yells, take a shower brother or I’ll throw you in the river Yarra.