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Alan Wearne

Making the World Revolve (i)

The Lovemakers Book One was published by Penguin Australia in 2001 and was awarded the 2002 NSW Premier’s Literary Awards Book of the Year, The Kenneth Slessor Prize for Poetry, and the 2002 Arts Queensland Judith Wright Calanthe Award for Australian Poetry.
The Lovemakers Book Two was published by ABC Books in February 2004.

This twelve-sestina excerpt is from The Lovemakers Book Two, Part Eleven, and is about 18 printed pages long.

Characters: Carrie: nurse Adrian ‘Mr Magic’ Cross: footballer, her lover Shane Price: footballer Old Scotch: partygiver Amanda: madam Bernie: pimp

Gary: cop Shannon: call girl Starfuck, Neil: clients Wal: Carrie’s friend Benny: psychologist, Wal’s friend Barb, Leo, M: Benny’s friends Hannah: Benny and Wal’s friend Mason : her boyfriend

Carrie, Adrian

          When Carrie followed Adrian to Melbourne

her friends were aghast: ‘She’s not with him again?’

          Then one day, knowing it wouldn’t last another half an hour,

she called him ‘You wet fuck!’ Which was stupid.

          Well he slapped her. Which was stupider.

And he knew it (apologies cascaded from Mr Magic)

knew he was losing his magic.

          Not that she’d tell Melbourne.

Footballers’ sex lives? Nothing could be stupider.

Weren’t they supposed to perform again and again and again?

           ‘But it’s not the sex, ’ Carrie explained, ‘it’s our relationship, stupid.’

          So who was moving out? Adrian was. He had half an hour

and equivocated.

                                   ‘No, half an hour, ’

Carrie was firm, ‘tops’;

                                             If crying had a certain magic

so did cheap plonk. Drunk that night, just to be stupid

she went onto the balcony and yelled: ‘You listening, Melbourne?

I wanna meet a man named Michael Finnegan! And begin again!’

          Sounding like she was back in creche was anything stupider?

          Yes, staying with Adrian was stupider.

But screaming like that had taken thirty seconds, hardly half an hour,

and if Carrie was lucky it wouldn’t happen again.

‘Who needs Adrian and his meagre magic?’

she asked herself. ‘Get out of Melbourne.

Get out of Melbourne, stupid. ’

          A few months before it had been Return to Melbourne, stupid.

And, knowing she could always take that one step stupider,

Carrie imagined making it to the Brownlow, allowing all Melbourne

a perve at her cleavage for what seemed half an hour:

there’s little magic like tit magic!

Unless it was the non-magic of making the back page news again,

for Adrian, once again

had done something stupid,

and the headline told it all:

WHERE OH WHERE IS THE OLD MAGIC?

          Each week his game was getting stupider,

until last Saturday it took the coach less than half an hour

to bench him. (They were playing Melbourne,

a team not noted for its magic. )

                                                                  If stupid

was turning ‘stupider’ Carrie wasn’t staying on for ‘stupidest’. One more half an hour

of Melbourne would be too much. Soon she’d move again.

Amanda, Bernie, Gary

          When the industry sleazed and started running kids

(mainly Filipinos) cynicism took the inevitable upbeat:

it sidetracked them, Amanda knew, into the fatuous.

She should’ve guessed: after months of Bernie

(who’d flog his mum to any suburban cowboy)

why expect more from this king of the discount orgasm?

          True her colleagues sulked: attending to some John’s orgasm

was no big deal; but kids, Filipino kids?

‘Sick!’ the verdict rang, ‘every man’s a cowboy!’

          Challenges though would send Amanda upbeat:

sixteen-year-olds were par for Uncle Bernie;

be outraged, sure, but any surprise seemed fatuous.

When all else had been covered you copped the fatuous,

any working girl knew that: it went with the orgasm.

           ‘So why not, ’ she proposed, ‘skim Bernie

of the best: staff, clients, and start our own?’

                                                                                            They giggled like kids,

it sounded so Amanda: ambitious, cheeky, upbeat.

           ‘There’s just two things that make this world revolve or I’m a cowboy. ’

          But she needed muscle. And to have a cowboy.

And Gary, her cop (was anyone less fatuous?)

came trumps. His response went upbeat:

the idea of selling the young for orgasm-

fodder made you vomit! If only for those kids,

then, him and a mate went and heavied Bernie.

           ‘Fellas . . . really . . . am I like that?’ cringed Bernie.

He’d never asked, the shudders continued, anyone to cowboy

round the Philippines collecting kids.

What was he taken for? A fatuous

‘Jeez . . . ’ was sighed. It faded like an orgasm.

          The smirking police kept turning that extra upbeat:

Good cop/ bad . . . their routine flowed into a rhythm: upbeat/

down: ‘Know how pathetic you are, Bernie?

Think you’re some X-rated dead-cert orgasm-

machine? You’re about as erotic as a singing cowboy.

So, when the tabloids go arse-over-tit fatuous

Dumb prick we’ll say only had one weakness: kids.

Nothing but kids. Well if they were his freeway to Orgasm-

ville ours are a touch more upbeat!’ Boy were their shrugs fatuous!

‘And one thing’s sure: you’re not much of a cowboy, Bernie. ’

Carrie, Amanda

          She’d met Amanda through some of her father’s friends

(the even more well-heeled, the racier). New to Sydney,

the bars she’d seen were tack, couldn’t give a flying fuck

for discos. Discrimination in a word was Carrie,

but when an intro was proposed (to the usual broad

cross-section of the influential) saying yes seemed simple.

          Adrian, Melbourne, had had the gong, it was that simple.

At twenty-six with minimum commitments and most friends

scattered into marriage, other cities or abroad,

why not, the sun and salt-spray cocktail which is Sydney?

Why not, for once, that essential independent Carrie?

Wasn’t Adrian, her last man, her last man? So what the fuck . . .

          One more single nursing sister aching for a fuck

or its equivalent? You could say that but, in her simple

pleated skirt, neat-boned grey-eyed Carrie

was straight-out charm.

                                                  ‘God’s own city, ’ one of the old man’s friends

explained, ‘the devil’s too. Everybody knows that Sydney

sprawls; how can’t it though, being as broad

as democracy itself.’

                                         A voice arrived beside them: broad,

warm, thankfully feminine. Soon it said ‘You had that Fuck

I’m stuck with this one look. Late spring in Sydney

all of us go like that. ’

                                            Given a few hours it became so simple:

the afternoon was making them friends.

All that needed giving were names: ‘Amanda. ’

                                                                                                ‘Carrie’.

          Given a few weekends of coffees, dinners, one saw Carrie

steady herself to plunge into the broad,

vigorous currents of knowing Amanda. Good friends,

though, were like that, having the strength to help you say Fuck

it all, I’ll tell! Only Amanda hadn’t secrets: just the simple

truth of how she ran a ‘cathouse’. Surely the best in Sydney.

           ‘. . . I wandered into it. Get to know this town and Sydney

makes you plenty. I never recruit though, Carrie.

We’ve a plain ethos and my style is simple:

it’s me who gets approached. ’

                                                            This braced the younger woman, her broad

vulgar cheek erupting. ‘Well then, what’s the price of a fuck?’

(It seemed the least she could say, being, as they were, friends. )

          Sure it could be added how one more broad raring to fuck

had hit Sydney; and her name was Carrie.

But friends, really, is anything that simple?

Amanda, Carrie

          Amanda never trusted thin-lipped women

(part intuition, part something-from-a-book)

and bad teeth, too, only stood for trouble.

Her final test was looking them eye-to-eye.

This game she knew gives so much choice.

Then everyone I choose will be the best.

           Though she wanted little but the best

Carrie never had it much. And seeing some women

making luck their own she knew the choice

by now: to run your life by the book,

or follow those broken rules that come onto the ego’s eye.

(There’s something delicious falling in love with trouble. )

           ‘Like to guess, ‘Amanda prompted, ’my biggest trouble?

Bo Derek clones! To be among our best

“ten” is no requirement. Know who’ll catch the eye?

Girls like us: you-make-me-feel-like-a-natural-woman women.

We’re halfway into any little black book

before we even start. It may seem like the fella’s choice

at first, but worked at hard enough any choice

turns yours. This business is rewards, so take the trouble. ’

           And Carrie would, although Amanda’s unwritten rulebook

bemused her with its Good better best/

never let it rest routine. Smart women were sexy women.

Appearances count. You were to trust the eye.

          If Sydney seemed stacked with guys poised to eye

her off, it always would; and Carrie’s choice

by now wasn’t to choose. Last May she’d joined those women

lapping up articles like ‘How to make men trouble

work for you’. How indeed. Most nights at best

she’d propped herself with records, wine cask, book

(nine hundred and fifty pages worth of book)

to see her through the winter. Though better eye-

strain than suckered by some conman at his ‘best’

When she thought that plain responsive guy, my choice,

thanks me for all my taking trouble,

count me among those other luckier women.

          Given these best of dreams (this one’s for the book,

and this the apple of my eye!) were hardly trouble,

she made her choice and joined Amanda’s women.

Amanda, Shannon, Starfuck, Carrie

          Part common touch/ part born to rule,

Amanda, though hardly known for screaming,

could still be flinty as any lady ocker.

She called the feminist mainstream ‘thought-

policewomen’ and snapped whenever ‘the game’ was criticised: ‘They’re at it again!’

Yet once she commenced a trickle of tenderness

you sensed there must be those reserves of tenderness

going with the job: to rule

the roost meant you took the raps: again and yet again

the buck stopped with Amanda.

                                                                  Shannon wasn’t exactly screaming

that afternoon, just crunching up her face with the thought

of Starfuck: this fat rich John, a, let’s be honest, seedy ocker.

          But the boss turned upbeat: ‘Even the most unlettered ocker

can at least attempt a morsel of tenderness

don’t you think?’

                                  Yes, Carrie thought,

recalling a previous Amanda golden rule:

‘If they have you screaming,

and they will, you’ll see them again, ’

          . . . and they will, you’ll see them again

if this had reached the ears of any ocker

the poor man would’ve scrambled from this building, screaming.

          But oh those things you did to institute tenderness

and the little you were promised in return!

                                                                                          Amanda, as a rule,

believed in considerate things, but even the nicest thought

remained a thought;

and she was heading towards pep-talk mode again.

           (With Starfuck about to arrive Carrie switched to the rule

of memory; she was eighteen, Max Merritt was still the thinking girl’s ocker

and when he and The Meteors launched into ‘Try a Little Tenderness’

the gig couldn’t stop screaming. )

           ‘There’s one of you who gets Starfuck screaming, ’

Amanda announced, looking at Carrie.

                                                                                Thanks, she thought,

but this is a girl who needs her tenderness

right now, today. (For though she would go through with it again,

the man was hardly Carrie s favourite ocker. )

          And even if there was one rule

alone (the rule of tenderness)

the thought of Starfuck almost sent her screaming

Not that ocker again!

Carrie, Neil, Amanda

          Here’s how Carrie met Neil:

at the Penthouse she saw, admiring their harbour vistas,

a man: eyes, ears, hands, arms, legs, feet: two

of each. Why ask for more?

          It was Amanda, obviously of all women,

who joking asked ‘Well, what you want, Mac?’

She seemed to know him. ‘This is err Mac.’

           ‘It’s Neil, Monica. ’

                                                   ‘Okay it’s Neil. ’

          Later, Carrie would tell him what women

kicked against: relationships with no more vistas

than the inside of a dunny. Need she say more?

‘Though name a better number in the world than “two”.

If it works, which isn’t often, I find I’m finding myself.’

                                                                                                                ‘Me too.

Even the flasher in his trademark mac

deserves a “love interest ”. Who’s yours, Kenneth More?’

          If he must know she’d a preference for Sam Neill;

then, giving their conversation unguessed-for vistas,

she asked ‘What gives with women?

I’ll tell what gives with women:

unless you’re melon-titted, twenty-two

and white-hot for a root, shut down all vistas!’

          Later she told of this truckie, less-than-fresh from his Mack,

who ordered Shannon Go on and kneel,

kneel bitch and suck that cock! An exaggeration? Well more-

or-less. Still, weren’t men eternal Oliver Twists, always wanting more?

          He wasn’t to let that pass: ‘And women don’t?’

          It wouldn’t be her last time sparring with Neil:

‘Well Eva Braun didn’t cause World War Two!’

          Carrie was more lethal than Mack

the Knife . . . and the vistas

she opened! Their sweep rivaled Vista-

vision; their humanism, Sir Thomas More:

‘We offer class. Don’t expect a Big Mac

when you dine at The Ritz. Though when it comes to women

some guys are thicker than a four-by-two.

There, on the floor, lay this muso, Neil,

too too out of it (I’ve seen the weirdest vistas)

honkin’ ’n’ screamin’ Gimme more, women!

Who’d he think he was, Big Jay McNeely?’

Neil’s story

          So he’d tell her about Barb,

tell almost as much about Roger, the husband

and yes they’d a child, a son

           ‘. . . well here’s my theory: since they never fought

guess what, nobody had won.

That’s why their marriage was so much on the rocks. ’

          Did Carrie feel this gelled?

                                                                    ‘It rocks, ’

she admitted.

                              He’d never known the younger Barb,

Neil wandered in long after Year One:

when she acquired her husband,

stockading a family behind their domestic fort.

           (And Neil imagined that ‘support’ his parents would give their son:

‘Messing with somebody’s wife: We’re with you all the way, son!’)

          After work they’d walk around The Rocks,

his daggy wit a bittersweet forte

under the circumstances: ‘Speaking of spouses, Barbe

Bleu, now there was a husband!’

He liked that. Made him feel a regular Don Juan.

Well an intellectual one.

          Caught in her awe of Roger (exemplary father, perfect son-

in-law) ‘. . . little wonder, ’ Carrie observed, ‘his wife would husband

any amount of guile to have you. These were her rocks

and she was getting them off!’

                                                              Call it a truth (it was barbed

but certainly perceptive) and not the kind you fought

against.

                 Looking Neil over Carrie fought

his indulgence: ‘Oh, ’ she half-sneered, ‘you are a one!’

as Barb, Barb, Barb, Barb

Neil bleated. If he’d a touch of the sun

it was leavened with pinches of shit: a girl sure had rocks

in her head listening to this!

                                                           ‘So the husband, ’

Carrie asked, ‘did she fuck the husband?

That’s what wives are for. ’

                                                     He didn’t know, it didn’t matter, he’d fought

it through and, over many a Jim Beam on the rocks

was glad, ‘Glad I’m out of that one!’

          It seemed kind of a natural law: there was a sun

but under it lay nothing new, not even him and Barb:

breaking rocks in the hot sun?

He’d fought the law and that law had won.

           (One day, perhaps, Carrie might meet Barb’s husband. )

Carrie, Neil

          In bemusement she thought ‘Smart girls

mightn’t say “franger” but was ever a word

clumsier than “prophylactic”?’

                                                                 Watching him peel off his condom,

she almost became a detective. (Throughout the world, between

humanity’s legs, a mutual psyche kept playing at Well well well

what ’ave we ’ere? always had, always would. )

                                                                                                    Her bourgeois

upbringing with its balance, detachment (what ultimate bourgeois

strengths!) went with the job. Their men required good girls

(good-enough being never enough) who were the well-

spring of Amanda’s motto Where only the best serve the best, whose in-a-word word

just had to be ‘style’: no time for floundering betwixt and between;

and no use considering How plebeian, the condom.

          It must’ve been simpler, Neil decided, when, like a condom,

a class label could encase everyone: upper, bourgeois,

working, and all them lumpen guys between.

           ‘So where, ’ he asked, ‘do we place you girls?’

           ‘Honey we are the world, ’ she purred.

                                                                                            ‘Word?’

Neil had misheard.

                                         Oh Carrie liked that: ‘Yes, and it as well. ’

          Enjoying such banter they did it well

and had to: as if even language (yes, like your humble condom)

possessed its use-by date, and hardly any word

seemed safe. ‘Yuppie’ was overtaking ‘bourgeois’

(at least for abuse) whilst ‘chick’, ‘bird’, ‘sort’ (though hardly ‘working girl’)

sounded thankfully redundant in that centuries-slow unfold and fold between

one tongue and the next.

                                                 That day though was pure Just between

ourselves. After she’d well-

versed him in those essentials for a modern girl’s

night out: spare cash for cabs, tampons, the credit card, the condom,

he replied with his upcoming journey: it wasn’t that bourgeois

his wanting to quit Australia, was it? And ‘exile’ seemed too strong a word

for a man who, wanting to keep his word,

would send her cards.

                                               As ever she’d get paid, paid today to be somewhere between

Neil’s ex and the wide blue yonder.

                                                                        Then ‘Got you something, ’ she said. (Still bourgeois

and predictable enough his face signalled Well?)

‘I’d like to present . . . t’taa! Your final condom!’

          She means it! his look indicated, she means it! Carrie would have to tell the girls.

And this was his final word: she should know he despised that well-

trod fallacy: how between the desire and the enjoyment fell the condom.

Cautious, bourgeois Neil needed to please and protect (even be pleased by/ protected from) girls.

Carrie, Neil, Shannon, a German engineer, Amanda

          Though with Neil you could play at being kids

again; and somehow that gave Carrie a corner

for her self-esteem. (Being susceptible

to mere cash wasn’t enough. )

                                                        After watching Shannon fuck some beached whale

of a German engineer Some might call that sex

she thought I can’t quite. (Later, with a bemused mind,

she’d sought Amanda; who alas had larger working girl problems on her mind

that day. )

                    Doubtless forgetful to his frau und kids

‘Eine girl to votch?’ Hans had demanded. ‘Please next time funf! sechs!’

The glutton!

                       (Though if you turned the historical corner

back to those crinoline and whale-

boned day and nights, the game was worse. )

                                                                                             She wasn’t being

naive but If being men-susceptible

means rather liking them at times, call me susceptible.

          Amanda never was that vulnerable. Often, her friend’s mind-

set concerning her, she’d confide to Shannon: ‘To promise a whale-

of-a-time is one thing, but Carrie kids

herself if it’ll be more. Never paint yourself into a corner

as a substitute for any man’s ex. ’

          But given that sheer bartering side of sex,

if it seemed possible, pleasant enough, Carrie was susceptible.

           ‘Could you, ’ Neil had asked, ‘go over to that corner,

put a hand on either wall and spread your legs? Do you mind?’

          Of course not and, as they moved together, like kids

adjusting for the first time, Carrie heard him wail.

           ‘That’s okay, ’ she urged, ‘keep spouting you gorgeous sperm whale

of a man!’

                      She felt his heart-beats and later, as his sex

subsided, he, being wide-eyed, flushed, told her, ‘Kids

never get it good as you can give. ’

                                                                     And Carrie, susceptible

to seeing a man enjoy himself with her, agreed. ‘Though mind

you, ’ her proviso came, ‘when it’s my turn for pussy-in-the-corner

just watch me!’

                             ‘You’re not, ’ asked Neil, ‘about to corner

a fuck franchise for the whole of New South Wales?’

          Carrie couldn’t stop giggling: she’d have to tell Amanda, the best mind

in their business.

                                  And sure it was liked, but that pragmatic afternoon sex

was just sex: it didn’t sound so original. Some days the boss felt susceptible

only to the heart-strings side of it: e. g. street kids

standing on some corner at The Cross, flogging sex.

She might Save the Whale but Amanda was hardly slogan-susceptible.

‘It’s all child-minding, Carrie. Men are kids. ’

Carrie, Wal, Benny

           So Carrie met men who kept her out of danger,

learning to cope with all their passionate gushing:

‘I’ll be back, ’ she constantly heard, ‘don’t worry about that!’

           At the hospital came different attempts at friendship:

the smile, the date, the fumbled pass. Sex might be a god,

but hadn’t Carrie other things to value?

Why didn’t most men believe No too had its value?

True the interns, registrars and specialists proved no moral danger,

but each tin god

with all their preposterous gushing

propositions, what were they after? Mere friendship?

Sister Larson knew just one way to tackle that!

A high-pitched delivery and confident Howzat?

would get these gentlemen walking (talk about value

for money!).

                       But this is also the tale of Carrie’s friendship

with Wal; and since he was gay go on ask her Where’s the danger?

And no he wasn’t just another gushing

queen.

               ‘Do you believe in God?’

she asked, once after work, not knowing why.

                                                                                              ‘Does God, ’

her friend replied, ‘believe in me?’

                                                                       Who told him that?!

           No-one had, he’d made it up. And a blush came gushing

over the man.

                              Wal, an orderly, knew his value

lay in the hospital’s pecking order. Knew, too, the danger

to be found in cruising. But then he’d this great friendship

with Carrie brewing. And another one, more than a friendship

now. With Benny he didn’t have to worry What a stud! What a god!

and, when self-esteem became involved, there was no danger

in someone sniping ‘You’re seeing that?’

           Carrie understood: if little is ever value-

free (and so much of life has equal shares in biting and gushing)

‘When I’m with Wal, ’ she knew, ‘I feel like an oil well gushing. ’

Did that describe their friendship?

‘It does, it does. He knows my value,

I know his . . . ’

                                 And it wasn’t as if Cupid, the god

of love, had struck them pow! Like that!

Unless you truly fell for Wal you stayed away from danger

well away from danger.

                                                  ‘Oh my god!’

cried Carrie, ‘we like each other heaps. But there’s little value in gushing.

This is more than a friendship!’

                                                                ‘. . . and that,’ said Wal, ‘is that!’

Wal, Carrie, Benny

           He would phone her: ‘Hello Angel.’

           Dearest friends by now, this wasn’t some fantasy:

it had love and it had balance: Carrie ‘s acid

to Wal’s alkaline, her straight-till-something-better-arrives to his undiluted queer.

           One more Perth boy who had headed east

to make his life better than it had been, Wal was hiding from his thin-

walled, fibro shack of a childhood.

                                                                       A tall, thin,

somewhat floppy rag doll of an angel

(whose hair — neither north nor west nor south nor east —

knew few directions) Wal was hardly a homoerotic fantasy.

           When he was younger Wal often felt a trifle peeky (‘queer’

if you like). So back then Mum stocked up on the antacid.

           If only she could know how, on some beats, all you thought was Not another acid

test! Besides, Wal’s patience with the cops was getting thin.

How many times did he have to ask and answer ‘What me? Queer?

Now honestly sergeant, be an angel. . . ’

Carrie could understand her friend wanting this fantasy

(if you could call it that) to end. So the time came to move east:

to that few square miles of approximate heaven just east

of Sydney’s CBD.

                                      For months it felt like Oxford Street was seen through a sheen of acid,

and it might’ve been, except this was no fantasy:

with all these exciting men (anything but thin

on the ground) life had turned decidedly real. Even the devil was a yummy angel

once. Strange, though, that having been lumbered with ‘queer’

you were expected now to pride yourself as ‘queer’.

Wal didn’t know why and neither did Carrie.

                                                                                          One night a new man rode east

on his Vespa. Good to be with, making Wal laugh, ‘I’m no angel. . . ’

Benny confessed.

                                    A few evenings on, Wal took acid

and Carrie didn’t. Poor Wal. She had to hug him, he was so thin-

blooded. They talked one fantasy

after another for hours. Carrie’s fantasy?

It may’ve sounded banal, even queer

to some, but: ‘Having the right man forever. ’

                                                                                             There was a thin,

pale line starting its expansion in the east.

Wal was coming down from his acid.

Good. Carrie could get to sleep, to stop feeling like a guardian angel.

           And what music was her fantasy to wake to? Not the thin,

dated effects of acid rock but full-bodied Sinatra: ‘East

of the Sun and West of the Moon’.

                                                                     ‘Nighty night angel, ’ said Wal; not accurate exactly, but hardly queer.

Carrie, Wal

           Part ingenue/ part flapper, Carrie could sing Do do do

what you done done done before baby

high steppin’ in with top hat and tails, kisses,

trilling a quite passable do re mi;

in this, Wal’s other world, with all its democracy of hugs,

she could ignore that malicious sneer Getta life!

For it was envy which fuelled the getta life

syndrome: if her men were where and when required . . . whacky doo.

           There is a certain premium in hugs:

Carrie had often craved them like a baby.

But no use blubbering Why me?

Why the woman in the moon!

                                                              Then though came the kisses.

You could lose your brain with kisses.

And, once they’d evaporated, ‘When will I really getta life?’

you asked. ‘What went before was hardly me:

all that strangers in the night dooby dooby doo

taa ciao see ya round baby’

           Wal always greeted his friends with hugs,

there was no other way, hugs

were a necessity.

                                     ‘But Carrie, ‘he confessed, ‘the kisses!

Ooooohbaby!’

And Wal, OIC Operation Gettalife,

let forth a Flintstonian Yabba dabba doo!

What? Embarrassed? Who? Me?

           Wal’s friends enjoyed Carrie. ‘They know me, ’

she felt proud to say, ‘know me as safe. ’ (Though attempting anything but hugs

would find her up past the neck in deep doo-doo. )

And if you had to double-take men giving each other kisses

in today’s world, well getta life,

get two!

                    And if Wal sometimes was one big baby,

thanks for the practice, one day she might produce a baby.

(Since there must be some dimension beyond Me,

myself and I name her a better way to getta life. )

           But would that be the final outcome of the hugs,

the total destination of the kisses?

For they could chill her, all the intricate dos

’n’ don’ts of hugs ’n’ kisses,

and the smug resignation of It’ll do me

was never Carrie’s way.

                                               ‘Getta life?’ she asked no-one but herself. . . getta baby?’