Imaginary People

                          Big Louie

I used to speculate

– and sometimes still do –

about what it would be like

to have my own personal servant

and, if I did,

what sort of servant I’d want to have.

An impeccable British gentleman’s gentleman?

(Perhaps named Chutney – or maybe Chives)

A talented and versatile chef?

A French soubrette maid in fishnet hose?

I decided long ago, however,

that it would be most useful

to have my own personal thug.

I imagine his name would be Big Louie.

Any time anybody ripped me off

or seriously pissed me off

– and how often do you have such experiences? –

I’d only have to snap my fingers

and he’d respond in his thick, stupid voice,

‘Which one, boss?’

Or maybe the milk of human kindness

would find its way into my veins,

and I’d explain to the offending party

that, ‘I don’t like violence,

unless it’s the kind they play with a bow,

but my associate, Mr Big Louie,

he’s not like that, y’know?’

It’s a soothing fantasy.

                        Peace and Prosperity

He lives in a comfortable, capacious home

on a safe, quiet, shady, street

where his children can play without supervision.

Unlike so many other Midwestern industrial towns,

the aura of secure, American comfort

is everywhere settled and undisturbed,

with no exceptions –

neither poverty nor decay have a toehold here.

His commute to the plant isn’t overly long,

the pay is comfortable,

and new orders are constantly flooding in.

The work there is steady,

has been since his grandfather worked there,

and seems unlikely to slow down

in any future he can imagine.

When he gets home from work

he can settle onto his La-Z-Boy,

an ice-cold beer on the table beside him,

the round-topped one that his father had made in his workshop,

and enjoy the TV news.

Especially the reports showing

young men wearing camouflage fatigues

in various blasted Mideastern and African

landscapes, towns, and cities

shooting at each other,

most of the boom-boom-booms and pop-pop-pops

representing the firing of bullets

that he’s had a hand in manufacturing,

creating the need for urgent re-orders

to replace them.

His wife will have a tuna casserole ready

when the news is over,

after the weather.

                        A Real Character

She was an affected old bird

fond of fogs of non-floral incense,

long, flowing feathery gowns,

and spending hours each day

utilising her toiletries

and applying her cosmetics.

Her hair gleamed.

She had a vague awareness of Celtic myths,

and was enamoured of all things she considered Grecian,

although repelled by that which was greek.

Her home was a repository

for a dizzying array of crystals

and polished semiprecious lapidary ornaments,

set amongst wide expanses of lace

and fringes.

She cherished her original vinyl LP albums

by the Fairport Convention, Cat Stevens, Pentangle,

and the like.

She became irate when the neighbours’ dog

would piddle in her garden,

even though she rarely went into it herself.

She did her best to speak like the Queen,

but tended to overpronounce her words.

She frequently found cause to employ tradesmen,

whom she would refer to as

‘My plumber’ or ‘My electrician’ or ‘My gardener’,

and masturbated shamelessly and promptly

after they left.

                     Missed Siesta

The colonel, grumpy and lumpy,

attended his desk

in his military-peaked hat,

as the blades of his ceiling fan

did less to cool the air

of his jungleside command centre

that was far too far from the city

than they did to mark the seconds

until the day’s siesta.

Sweat oozed down his ribs

and made his back

and the backs of his thick thighs

stick to his uniform’s khaki military textiles.

Lean and dark and gleaming,

in camouflage fatigue pants and singlet,

his sweat integral to who he was,

Ignacio didn’t give a fuck,

not about Jesus or the virgin

or Padre Narciso’s right and wrong,

not even about Citizen Mario’s

ideology of liberation.

The colonel’s men

had tortured his father

and raped his sister.

Ignacio led the barrage

of automatic-weapon fire

from the front,

allowing himself no emotion,

but crying the whole time nonetheless.

The colonel never enjoyed

the chicken mole

his housekeeper had prepared

for his pre-siesta dinner.

                             Perfection

It wasn’t her dad who’d had the money, or not for long;

her dad had been inoffensive,

too shy and deferential to be a successful salesman,

much too much in love with books and booze.

The money had come from her dad’s brother,

a mean-spirited and predatory dickhead,

who’d scragged a fortune screwing legions of people over

before one of them shot him in the head

as he ate wild venison at a footpath table

in front of some upmarket café-style café.

Her dad, being his brother’s sole heir,

had binged on real French champagne

and fifteen-year-old Irish whisky

for three days before falling to his death down a flight of stairs.

Her mum had shot through to Australia

years before with a glib New Age huckster,

so she was her dad’s sole heir.

She tried travel, clothes, and food,

but this combination failed to satisfy her.

Fulfilment announced itself to her at last

in the way of a plasterer named Nigel

who worked on the bay windows

– as she supervised the renovation of her uncle’s 1960s mansion –

without his shirt on.

After Nigel she found no shortage

of firm-muscled young tradesmen willing to have a go

with a fleshy rich woman

who knew how to spend up a good time,

well into her old age.

People who thought it unseemly could go fuck themselves.

She couldn’t imagine improving on her situation.

                     It’s A Hell Of A World

Okay, so he’d had a sheltered upbringing,

his shoes always shined, his clothes always pressed;

he learnt to use the correct forks and spoons

and never to lift a one of them

till his mother had brought all the food to the table

and had sat down and begun eating herself;

his parents had answered his biological queries

with vague abstractions and metaphors

that he hardly understood at all,

and used the words for human emotions

without displaying examples of them for him to emulate.

He learnt to revere the daintiness and social power

of the human females in his narrow little life,

and never to say words his mother disliked.

He also learnt everything his parents’ religion had to teach

without going overboard into the religious life.

Still, once he finally entered the world,

he should have been ready

to take the inevitable surprises in stride,

and not leapt, horrified,

from his conjugal bed on his wedding night,

shouting that he wanted an annulment

just because he’d never known before

that ladies fart.

                     Proving Manhood

He was raised by an ambitious auntie

who enjoyed dominating for its own sake,

didn’t give a shit about anybody but herself,

and demanded that he do all the housework.

He had enormous ears that stuck out from his head,

was short and pudgy and awkward, shitty at sports,

and not much better at school.

He found a job locating and fetching crap

in the warehouse of some online retailer.

It wasn’t bad; he could dream his way through the days

and escape into the TV when he got home,

but he never found a girlfriend,

and the years slipped by.

He eventually answered a sex ad

and took his saved-up money

to a budget motel room,

where a dark-skinned woman – a girl, actually –

with an angry face and a South Asian accent

opened the door and took his money

without a smile and with barely a word.

Dizzy with the idea that this was It at last,

he began undressing.

She stripped quickly and lay back on the bed, scowling.

‘I won’t suck your dick,’ she said,

but you can lick me if it’ll help you.’

She clenched her teeth.

He looked at her with his entire cosmos behind his eyes

and replied, ‘If you hate it so much why do you do it?’,

then put his clothes back on

and left.