Rites of Passage

I remember the first time I roamed the streets

Pissed

Weaving along the streets in broad daylight —

We got pissed at the bus stop
And our bottles sloshed from side to side
As we plummeted along
Our bottles dangling from our hands like bananas

We lurched and leaned along for miles
I dunno what we were looking to do —

Maybe one of us would even frighten someone!

Or disseminate them into the ether of the other world — or
Some shit —

But I had a new shirt on and didn’t want any further remarks

About dissemination splattered on it,

Besides,

I was already drawing quality attention from the way my head
Was swaying in relation to my feet and a remark about the early addictive tendencies of todays youth and a wildly disparaging remark by some jangling lip filled faces kept us louching along happily —

We circuited the shopping centre,
Then fell in commune —

Buggering about all arvo and smoking cigarettes and gettin’ argy bargy
With a post box —

Then one of me mates drew so hard on his fag he dislocated his face —

And another fashioned a suit from a $2 tracky pant from the dump bin at Red Dot tucked into a loosely fitting polyester T Shirt he got from Coles and I tell ya he looked really really —

And another of me mates disclosed through a mouth muffled with bubblegum that he had been hangin’ about the bustle of the supermarkets for so long he had completely lost track of who he was trying to be — and when his parents pushed past with a pushcart of shit — without so much as a wink —
He found himself facing a very long sentence freewheeling along completely unfathomed

In the big

Wide

World of rigmarole

Ah well, it doesn’t bother me —

One day I know I’ll be a cop!

Or at least a security guard!

Or a trolley boy!

Maybe just a guy with a loud T-Shirt?

But for now I’ll swing among the boughs of the game parlours

Smiling in wonderment — stupendously inspired

Swinging in anticipation

Assimilating into and with the extra-sensoryness of —

Shopping.


Snoop Bilby, aka Daniel Oxenburgh (Western Australia)