*****
Published: Creatrix Issue 5 2009
http://www.wapoets.net.au/pages/creatrixhomepage.html
Title: 21st Century Ariadne
I got lost in the labyrinth
out the back
of Tropicana Café
one day took a wrong turn
and spun into a pole
dancing class
How 21st century
You have to admire
the slick economy
monster and
initiate’s mystery dance
twisted into a single
burlesque schtick
*****
Published: Indigo Vol 1, 2007
Title: Ghost Town
“A graveyard with lights” said the U.S.
servicemen of World War Two
A thin jest that did not insulate
against the cold terror of
finding themselves stranded
at the end of the world
no party to distract them
from mortality and
six o’clock closing
would drive anyone to drink
Some survived and though
I told their sons and grandsons
“In the name of peace, go home”
part of me likes to think
on a hot summer’s night
those first boys
are back, eddying
down the Strip
dancing at The Clink.
I love these Liana – so evocative of place. I hope you have lots of people coming to you with their stories. Is the soldier’s quip ‘a graveyard with lights’ common knowledge, anecdotal, apocryphal, a play on ‘city of lights’?
There speaks the history lover! The quip is (to my knowledge) neither apocryphal, nor a play on ‘city of lights’ because it pre-dated that phenomenon. Might be common knowledge among Freo-ites of my parents generation, those that remain. Guess that means it’s anecdotal – a story my my parents, aunts and uncles mentioned once or twice.