Author: Peter Yowie

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 like a magpie digs for worms

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

We were like a couple of suckling puppies. My hand was on his crotch that was hard, I was on a mission to Mars.

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.

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.

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?

An American woman on the tram talking with her friend about setting a trap for a mouse, you use chocolate not cheese. I’d just been at the Hive shopping centre, shopping for my addictions, a deal in my pocket, a six pack of beer. Addicted lives, down at the Hive, until it’s swarming with junkies and drunks but we start our lives licking lollipops.

The truth is I have to change, it’s like a light bulb hangs in my soul. There’s shivers on the surface of the river and I’m delivered from another night of drinking. In the thinking man’s Cafe I sink back a coffee with a copy of a book. I think the great poets have a name for it throughout history, it’s called publish or perish.

Gym bodies, working off our sins. She flashes me a smile, I catch it and ride it all the way to the shore. Sore muscles, hustle at the next machine, the sweat pours. Testosterone and desperation have led me here.

She came out of the closet like a gift from the Goddess, on hormone replacement therapy, in her high heels, taking feminine rights and peppermints. She leads men to question their masculinity and Gods to question their divinity. All roads lead to the cover of Vogue