The Old Rocker swings his green, plastic, string bag
as he strolls Sholl* towards Woolworths.
His hair is bright orange.
Regardless of the weather,
he wears a brown, vinyl jacket
which is in danger of being knighted
for its ceaseless assault on the ramparts of fashion.
Perhaps, like Saul on the road to Tarsus,
he was blissfully playing his Glenn Miller 78s
when the voice of Johnny Rotten spoke to him
in a flash of light so blinding
that it knocked him off his chintz sofa.
Like a high priest of kitsch
he has ascended to the Mount
to receive the wisdom of the fifties and seventies,
inscribed on the tablets of tackiness.
He waits in the check-out line,
blissfully unaware of the hawkish gaze
of Mr Hard-working-Family-man-Suburban-Home- improver
who clearly resents this Warhol pop art splash
on his Rembrandt ideal of respectable burgher community.
The Old Rocker runs idle fingers through his lank, orange hair
and wishes the pension would stretch to hair gel.
POET'S NOTE: I guess it's like Sybil Fawlty "stating the bleedin' obvious", but here is the third instalment. As Robert Frost observed about life: "It goes on."
*Sholl Street is a main shopping street in the town (now city) of Mandurah. Also, by a great coincidence, it makes a nice sound rhyme with "stroll".
I love this - it's got such a lovely sense of image shot through with humour.
ReplyDeletePunk's not dead!
ReplyDeleteThanks for your comments, AJ and Tim. There's something fascinating about the truly eccentric. I love that they care not one iota what other people think of them. They do their thing and let nothing get in the way.
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