Unmanned Part 5

Who Killed Brett Whiteley

Actually, it was Lloyd Rees killed off Brett Whiteley who couldnt live the promise of old age, the calm terror of it. Thats what Rees meant in his letter to Brett: carry the torch forward and something about being a warrior for Art. Brett, in fact, was skittled by a high powered mix of narcissism & clown. Forget what he had to, or couldnt leave behind & anything to do with High Seriousness.

He got caught up in lat.i.tudes of s.e.x where the Olgas loomed round as b.u.t.tocks. Brett became his own myth when he died, and effectively slammed the door on the 60s.

Maybe some other seascape, like Thera, suggestive of broken altars; looking down into the cratered harbour he might have seen beneath the lapis lazuli waters, an ivory scimitar held in the gaze of Portunus, perfectly preserved, snapped in two.

Sugarbag Carpenter

Them days all you needed was a blunt saw & an axe thrown in a

sack. If you could drive a 3" nail through a pound of b.u.t.ter

you got the job and thats a fact ask Bob the Builder

who shook the hand of Banjo Patterson though no-one believes him.

Theres not one finial or mullion round Boomi that hasnt

his name on it; he was there with the ox & swivel chain.

When he couldnt make a deaner he went b.u.mper shooting in the 30s

way back before the Great War the first of the street kids in Ultimo,

and his father (h.e.l.l tell you) saw electricity come to Tamworth in 1888.

From Tilba Tilba to Bondi, the last of the Sugarbag Carpenters.

Aunty Eve

who always kept the Aspidistras flying high up in her Georgian house on the windy Terrace from marble urns

had lipstick bomber pilot red & nails the colour of flame.

It was often elevenses in her lounge with Gordons served on a silver platter and THE GRAND HOTEL, DUNEDIN 1932 engraved

on the rim. Another stim dear?

from the mahogany sideboard repository to dozens of weighty 78 jazz records in brown paper jackets stacked like so many ossified flapjacks.

Oh she had the most beautiful hands (in her day) they said, used for commercials in the Womens Weekly & Booths the Chemists.

Who could forget her gravel voice & make up mannequin thick

not remember her gin-sweet breath warm upon the neck? And how some Yank billeted during WW2 (here) ducky!

thought she was a real living doll.

Oh such beautiful hands she had & the crystal light streaming forth from those great bay windows

onto the iron railings below.

Harold Lloyd

is stridently hanging on for dear life from the Big Clock hand reading 12:30 twenty floors up in NYC dangling a gibbet jig on the ledge beneath his girl with the bob cut screaming soundlessly as he catapults past the big businessman whose fist is foreclosed like a bank on their undying love which against all odds is saved as he grabs at the flagpole angled stark as an erection from the side of the building on the way through the office window only to upset the cooler and startle the typing pool then back down the zigzag emergency exit skittling the fire-bucket to s.n.a.t.c.h the fire-hose & bungy jump down the side of the skysc.r.a.per while the keystone cops are toppling in omnibuses furiously toward the wrong address at odds with the clanging fire brigade a cavalry charge amongst a confusion of ladders & outsize helmets pointing the way into the fray continuously as down drops Harold free falling as only a spider can to be pulled up short one foot from the side walk under the canopied foyer entrance as darling thing hurtles into the stripy canvas awning where Harold catches her in his stiff upheld arms to the astonished joy of the hotel porter

Conrad & Wells & Co.

Great to have met Joseph Conrad or for that matter, HG Wells, who said, Lets go upstairs and do nice things with our bodies, and who did just that to take a tilt at the waitress.

I saw them once, Conrad & Wells, in a photograph, standing together.

A courtyard setting beside a few bamboo chairs. The hour was mild in a black & white afternoon. Trees, too, green galleons s.h.i.+pping oars in Autumn.

Conrad had, perhaps, cast off the last line of a novel: the indigo lump upon the horizon is an Island: behind it the sun spilling its treasure trove: the rent sailcloth of a sea-squall. Anyway, he could still smell the coast wobble from the deck of the Tartane, her weight to the wind. Wells, maybe, was thinking on socialism & science, and in some melancholic way of the waitress, she all ascent. By what conversations did they measure each other, these two voyagers who possessed that sense of the bigness of the world? For Wells, an electrical spark that arced across the white page, and for Conrad, each word creaking on the blocks, the woman pale before the moon, her eyes black as tornadoes at sea.

Hoppalong Ca.s.sidy

nearly topples as the Jaffas rumble down the aisle escarpment which in no way disturbs Bully Boy in the back seat corner of the matinee session on a Sat.u.r.day afternoon flick with it might be Bus Stop Bev with one leg hooked in surrender over the front seat that youd think shes getting shod or something judging by the whinnying which could be some sort of scuffle but then Hoppy regains the ground & the white Arabian stallion muscling to middle screen his ten-gallon hat gum stuck atop his head & his pearl handled six shooters bristling at each hip as he thunders round the dusty back lot who has just saved the stage coach with the backward spinning wheels out of last weeks cliffhanging disaster when over it went packed with the good townsfolk but it didnt all saved by the man in the black velvet with the silver studs & turkey gobble voice much to the hand pumping appreciation of the circuit judge too old to take the high jump & this real paternal dude takes it in his stride is off next week in search of the Lost Dutchmans Gold Mine as legend has it but not for long while Bully Boy will be back sweaty as a farrier with Lemonade Lil to catch what he can with Hoppy sure is a friend indeed when a friends in need

Bob Orr

I called back down the unawakened dawn of the Tasman sea and along the East Coast from the pre-dawn light of my sleep, I called out Bob Orr soft as the punch of a howitzer to the Hokianga harbour & still further over the Waikatos billiard-table green paddocks.

I hailed Bob to the Great Barrier Island & Orr to the Little Barrier, but no answer came chasing after. I sought you down the Harbour Heads & Hauraki Gulf then all about the Waitemata.

I found a Thunderhead big as a container-load of sorrows & nowhere hard by were you toiling. Bob Orr I called from Meola Reef to the outlandish fis.h.i.+ng-tackle cranes along the docks; to Jellicoe wharf, Bledisloe wharf, Marsden wharf, Captain Cook wharf to the Admiralty Steps hoping I would find you gazing out upon the glaucous slick of trawlers, or catch you guiding a snub- nosed tug under the Western Viaduct.