VEGAS* JUNKY (Brent Cantwell)

sometimes
I wish
we could
pick the drizzle
and make peace
with the relics
of Vegas;
one old guy
tiptoes
arpeggios
my way 
muttering
almost immediately:
shoul’ be makin’ tracks
slapping 
the inside of his arm
asking for
steel in m’ veins
emphasising
how he’s not fussy!
We’ve met this guy 
a thousand times before…
he seems happy
with a seam
of either ore: 
whatever’s goin’
don’t matter;
and it’s a metaphor
of bone an’ steal
irony anyway
foreshadowing
the crippling indecision
that comes later
when he seems
either…or….
As always 
he talks himself
into disuse
so it doesn’t matter….
Abandoned carriage 
of the earth,
unearthed
by the possibility
of a new line
and if you put your ear
to the track
it is always cold
and you can hear 
the violence of what’s discontinued,
a noise summoned
by an unused track
shunting
a shot of steel
to the spine
of anyone
who cares
to listen

*Ironic name used for small go-nowhere towns.


Brent Cantwell lives on Tamborine Mountain in Queensland with his family. He teaches English, plays with his children and writes poetry. He draws on his experience of the world and writes to ‘the sequence of the musical phrase not in a sequence of a metronome’.