Thursday, November 26, 2009

The Poetry of WITS member Michael Fitzgerald-Clarke


I Love You, But I Need My Friends


My bed is all yours tonight, it's warm,


I'm meeting Merlin in his favourite


gay bar in South Melbourne.


On the tram there I persuade a woman


reading Milan Kundera's latest novel


to kiss me and accept my hardback


copy of Coleridge's Collected Poems


in exchange for her underpants.


In the bar this wealthy blonde guy


is trying to get Merlin interested.


Merlin wants a woman tonight,


but he's left his wand in a saucepan


of lasagne at Silvio's house.


(We must visit Silvio. I'm worried.


His habit of pissing in his goldfish pond


is killing the goldfish.)


I lend him a chopstick, and at 1AM


he leaves for a brothel near Camelot,


telling me to sleep in the Botanical Gardens


because it's warm and the statues need company.


On the tram there I persuade a woman


reading Goethe in translation


to give me her underpants


in exchange for the other chopstick.


In the Gardens it's too late to have


an earnest conversation with King George,


so I ask him his star sign,


and to my delight he's an Aries, like you.


To learn more about the poet and his books visit http://www.globusz.com/Authors/Michael.php