WHEN LIFE WAS AN ANTONIONI MOVIE

Remember when life was an Antonioni movie
and we projected our souls onto empty warehouse streets,
Catpeople prowling the avenues at dusk,
Searching for missing bodies in public parks,
Finding a cast of characters instead.
The bewildered drunk living in a garage.
The walrus toothed cat in the wheelie contraption.
The yellow lady.

We walked through early constructions of post modernism,
practising ‘community arts’ every week,
learning music in an abandoned milkbar.
Went to a drama in a women’s prison
got locked out ,
climbed the roof
Saw the cops roaming the periphery,
moustachioed and brutal.
Looking behind, we had dragged
the whole inner city behind us on our coat tails
Lets eat dinner from the top of the tallest building !

We were all touched
Shotguns at parties,
tears dissolving into brickwalls at 4am,
mental illness lurking in gardens of group houses
next to back sheds
where unfinished canvasses by dead kids sagged
Will your stoned world intersect with my stoned world?
she sobbed in the front bedroom before leaving forever

The inner city became a fog
Sugar plum fairy came and hit the streets
Looking for soul food and a place to sleep
Went to the Apollo
Should have seen them go go go…

When it was over my nerves were shattered
I tumbled out backwards
Like a brawler ejected through the plate glass of a wild west saloon


Malcolm Hill 2004