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Author: Peter Yowie

I'm a poet who thrives in the wilderness, seven year career as a Madonna magazine writer, managed to secure a certificate in professional writing, started my life as an airforce cook

Hound dog of homelessness

Look at me, I’ve got a warm bed every night, then look at the homeless man living on the edge of the city. The salute I learnt in the Airforce is longest way up, shortest way down. I spent the weekend taking the homeless man for drinks in the park. I’m not physically able to solve his problems, and he can’t solve mine. Instead we sat at a picnic table by the river. Oh, the riddles of life.

During the day he sits on the street between the pub and the supermarket, a fallen life waiting for falling coins. I buy him a sandwich sometimes and I feel like a king then, doing the lord’s work. But giving money all the time to the homeless beggar just begs the question who’s helping me. The ex boxer turned butcher walks past and says God bless, lives in excess are in the windows of the hotel drinking pints of liquid gold. The homeless man smokes butts he picks up off the street. Cut throat citizens walk past and give him nothing.

Do what’s in your heart, said my neighbour, kindness is not a curse. He labours all day, sitting on the street like the suffering Buddha in a hoodie

If I was Lady Gaga

I’d pour myself another glass of daddy’s girl, the house wine at Cafe Riche, I can see it, I don’t have to be psychic. On a brick wall there’s a pink hearted Romeo and a bitch is a bitch. A celebrity crush that tightens it’s grip. Love reaches a fever pitch, then a lit cigarette after the pleasure I get from a magazine cover Goddess.

Lounge lizards in heaven are watching the news unfold, a world racing towards annihilation, but I’m a poet in the centre of a lotus flower, in isolation.

A Windows seat in a Brunswick Street bar, I watch the human traffic pass by, I’m a wizard with a goblet of fire. The blood sucking cold is here, the wind, hand sewn and frivolous, the privileged few are with us. Tranasaurus Rex on a lady’s jacket and I try to strike up a conversation.

When the lady sings her jazz, some fantastic melody in Vegas where we’re all on holiday from our sins, someone screams out sing it bitch and the audience whips the horses on a fast moving chariot in a show only for the 18 carat gold and over.

Happy hour still happens even for a sober man. I was struck by lightning, inspired to write, addiction makes a great story. Through adversity, seeing angels. I saw jesus, I saw Jack kerouacs Doctor Sax.

There’s no stopping time, there’s no going back, the poem marches forward towards it’s reward, memorised by a schoolgirl, read at a funeral.

The house from hell on the corner, decorated with gargoyles and skulls, by the crossing where the lollipop man shepherds me across. I take my opiate, a dose of blue sunny skies, with an insatiable appetite for poetry, I find myself at the Cafe with coffee, toastie and open notebook. Maybe the devil will offer me a deal, maybe with God it’s not a level playing field.

Is Lady gaga the energizer bunny, soft, pink flesh and sunglasses or is she a fairy who leads me out of the forest, singing with her honest songs because we’re all a little lost?