Elizabeth A Martina Ryan

Gig Ryan] (1956 / Melbourne

Interest Rates

1.

"I used to be like you, full of icey self-regard
but life monotonously catches up and culls you
and all the others' Things begin to glow
like your own house, car, and love's equivalent
You get sick of being alone and raddled, and he's a real pet
. . . isn't he? So I buckled under, got a richly job
and I'm, you know, fulfilled. Before it was just a covey of unrealistic aims
Everybody told me.
He dusted me off
who had once been lost
Now it's solid, tangible
The baby's like cement to me
Otherwise the million things I wanted every cider brick
I'd just be drifting or immersed"

2.

"You can score easily in Thailand
but the stuff's no def for me"
Her drugged voice matinees and peels
She parks the dryer and puts the sixth gin down
after two pre-spiritualism weeks
"There I can withdraw from this chemical western mew
Drugs and alcohol and sex rivet you in place
but in the East they starve and grow, I mean spiritually
They have truth and peace and death and acceptance"
The god advertisements sheep in between the sitcoms
and the Government making strikes illegal
She looks at the cleaner stove
"Europe was a blast but this's cheaper"

3.

The artist observes her attitude
and her observation equals the product
which we can't get Personality's enough
Her head knocks in its shell
"I mean, you're not a bimbo" he says, profoundly
"and for the last two hours on Ecstasy I thought yeah
right She's/It's got to be" she listens through the beer stool
through his petulance to Adeva's geometry and slings
His bones and crystals jump and prig the laser stairs
He would be at it with its ghosts of peace
and Truth roaming empty and haranguing
her supple rhododendron mantra's steel jailed corridors
The console shards "I mean, I was majorly transformed"
insight levies Each pringle of expense continues
its buffet-car of depth's serene atlas joy
The greasy boards and lights and mortgage
dull the disc.
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