Nick Cave wind

Melbourne, July 2009

There’s a Nick Cave on every corner
in shock-black hair, hitching up his ill-fitting pants
on his skinny structure, leaning into doorways, smoking

There’s a buttoned-up New York coat and hat
on every block, black or checked, standing straight

There’s a thin face, shadowed chin, sideways look

It’s in all this brick and concrete and cloth
Words emerging like consciousness from the neural net of it,
blasting at my ears in the ice-eyed Nick Cave wind of it

This winter is nothing compared to
Yet it is

First published in Australian Reader