I can't go on.
I'm writing that so you'll think I'm manic
or just a bit depressed.
In compos mentis, but you know how the worries
of a cloistered life
can get one down.
So now it's down to business.
I leave and bequeath my dying breath
to all the strangers I used to know
but never got to sleep with,
my toenail clippings
to all the ones I made.
Lovers are always the hardest to bid goodbye
so I'd like to make a list
and tell you all the truth.
For instance.
Yvonne, I though you were lousy in bed
you slept like three cats in a sewn-up sack.
I threw you into the river but somehow
you clawed your way out
and sent me hate mail for over a year.
Marianne, you were right, I'm a bastard,
I only loved you for your mother's money
but she loved me more than you.
And Debbie,
the one I love the most.
Self-possessed bitch
I think I said the rest
in that last drunken letter.
I filled your telephone with passion and fear and jealousy
and I hated your guts because you were so unpretentious
and you made me sick with your innocence and your moans
and you thought I loved your best friend.
Well, you're right!
I did.
Though I loved you more.
So where does that leave me?
I've accounted for everyone I ever really loved.
I trust that you'sll value my cigarette butts
and my worn-out typewriter ribbons,
nostlgia's not my good point
so that's the lot.
I'd like to tell the world it stinks
and that Death is clean and fresh,
but neither is true.
I haven't had a bath for years
I'll leave my stockpile of untouched deoderant
and my empty bottle of Paco Rabanne
to the starving masses in India.
My copy of the I Ching goes to the Whale upstairs,
she's always dying to know if she'll ever lose an ounce.
My parting advice is that the "Taming Power of the Great"
would be your only solution.
To the Painter I scatter my Hexagrams,
you never called me
they told that you would come to me.
Well, you've got about another fifteen minutes
so hurry up,
the Yang line never lies.
Of all the maniacs I used to know
there were one or two (or is that two or four)
who taught me that paranoia, psychosis and delusion
were just a part of daily death,
mere innocent obsessions
that filtered out monotony
and that if the Disprins didn't work
then everything was cool.
I'm running out of things to give
but to Callen who talked to TV sets
was mad as birds
and twice as scared of neutron bombs
there are a couple of things I still have up my sleeve.
I leave you all, although you said I never cared,
my wealth and Freudian slips
and many more besides.
I know you'll guard them well, but mind,
don't use them once too oftern,
it gives the game away.
To all my enemies
(discounting lovers, friends and schizophrenics)
I leave you all my wordly wisdom.
I hope it drives you giddy
and that if we meet at Hell's Hot Gates
or at tea with God and Peter
we'll be the best of friends.
To whoever cares to claim them,
there's still my collection of suicides and all my Dylan tapes
but watch you don't connfuse them.
I did once
and they scratched and fucked and bit
and it took about a month of years
to get out of the bathroom and even then they broke it off.
I know this is getting long and boring
and that wills shouldn't be so confusing and destructive
but I've five minutes left.
A little longer for the phone that never rang
and the door that never knocked
and perhaps a last glimpse out my window
to see if the woman across the way
is dressing or undressing or
is towelling down her breasts.
My time is up it seems
and I'm running out of words
so that if this is a confession
and not a plaintive cry
or something just as feeble,
I can't be held to order.
.................................................(January 1985; Sydney)
