No Joke

by Ian C Smith

All along the cell block, sang the lawyer to the cop. The old lag’s mimicry echoes in here, voice flat, adenoidal like Dylan’s, threat loaded with false jocularity disturbing my reverie of A-list dealing days, that lush intellectual glamour, my domain high above Market Street, leaning on my balcony wearing a crisp white shirt, sleeves rolled just so, listening to distant sirens, ambulances, cop cars prowling the night canyons of the glittering city, looking down on poor sods whose lives run into dead ends.

Fuckfuckfuck I mutter, sweat sour, reflection in stainless steel blurred, a fallen star, boring months, years, stretched ahead as good, or bad, as finished. Over.  My erratic schooldays, the ballooning differential between brainpower and behavior, kindled my father’s favourite cark and care comment re fees; Flushing cash down the lavatory, remembered now, pissing, desultory, alone yet not alone. I blew bigger sums, actually, I tell the swirling water, than you dreamed of.

My neighbor, this tone-deaf troubadour of trouble, warbles There must be some way outta here; me, brainwave bankrupt to find this way, inflexible hierarchies being such, my last, dumbest, deal is done. Passion, ignorance, concupiscence.  They bludgeoned Fat Carl, another high-profile snitch, brained him with a barbell.      

******  

Ian C Smith’s work has appeared in, Amsterdam Quarterly, Antipodes, cordite, Poetry New Zealand, Poetry Salzburg Review, Southerly, & Two-Thirds North.  His seventh book is wonder sadness madness joy, Ginninderra (Port Adelaide).  He writes in the Gippsland Lakes area of Victoria, and on Flinders Island, Tasmania.