Awash — Bill Reed

Come unto these yellow sands, And then take hands; Curtsied when you have and kiss'd, The wild waves whist. He was so good at Serious Matters but the trouble was people kept dying around him. It didn't help that the precocious teenager who claimed she was the rightful owner of his body kept nagging him even while, as one, they floated along the shipping lanes of the Indian Ocean. He couldn't even gag on life without someone complaining. He shouldn't have shouted ‘Left!' when he meant ‘Right!' to send his Humvee into an Afghani roadside bomb. He shouldn't have left his darling wife alone in their Queenslander while he tackled the whole of Sydney's legal, creative and in-law woes. He should have honoured his Sri Lankan heritage and his becoming-Australian better. He should have popped something medicinal to purge himself of the Bard. He shouldn't have married himself to the problem of the Australian Aborigines in its sexier form and its sweeter siren songs, only to find there are no words left, only the ageing shuffle within the dandruffy drifts of falling fag ash. His Petey-the-clown's plaffy shoes didn't help. In fact he hadn't been embedded in anything at all. He had merely become awash with it all. And very splutteringly too.