Modern Love

Modern Love

PART 1

Hey nerd!
what’s the Word

Package
you prefer?

Sit up in your
perfumed high tower,
look past your Window
of flat electrodes 

to distant suburbs
you moved away from,
your father’s features,
reflecting in the window.

Hey nerd 

what’s the word?
Corporate aspirant 

testing firewalls
over summer
while completing IT degree.

Hey Nerd!
What’s the Word 

Package

you prefer?


PART 2

To brag, to boast,

it’s his new cotton blend suit.
There’s a girl he grew up with,

sort of,

down the road.
Standing in her parents fly wire doorway,
They cry,

"The man with the golden arm has come to take our daughter away.”

To Melbourne to Melbourne,
she pleads, she begs.
They sit in icy station wagon by the computer college’s cut and paste bricks. 

Inside the pub 

they sink pots and jugs

then he whisks her off to the college lab,
lays her on the large imaging screen,

her gypsy hair trailing,

eyes shut and mouth open,

her mind spinning like a jackpot machine,
his fingers fumbling at the controls.

Outside, a street sweeper blinking,
on that empty South Melbourne side street
Sunday morning. 

He drove her home, 

where a police car sat, 

it’s lights twirling like a cocktail umbrella.

Her father chased him down the street with a meat cleaver.

He retired to his bungalow  - and pawed at her number all winter.


PART 3

Three years later he found her, 

working behind a clapper board,
a short movie

with the graduates of the old photography school.

She did not know him among her new friends,

but as he flashed his degree in computer technology 

she felt the glow of their

second generation migrant dream.
They agreed their rushed and awkward beginnings 

a recessive ritual from an old country they’d never been to.
Sophistication settled on their shoulders, these cousins in clover.

She made it clear the Masters degree was essential.
No baby til HECS paid.
One day she would have to choose between her digital editing skills 

and visiting her mother’s mother in Romania. 

They worked late in corporate towers,
eating tea from oblong cardboard boxes with chopsticks, 

laying out future plans.
An IT consultancy came his way, 

Uni tutoring for her.
In between – dates and movies but mostly nights in, 

watching reality TV in minimal décor.


PART 4

The wedding.
Aunts and uncles squeeze into photo frame, 

nephews in light blue suits; 

distant neighbours now sworn comrades,

Uncles and aunts embarrass them,
the grappa and vino flowing,
into a backyard rhythm,
spilling into the street,
the satellite dish above;
the wedding car
slapped across the nature strip.
God bless this Romeo and Juliet in a new country

A new house in the better part

of an outer part of town, 

a long way from their parents.
A gift of a trip overseas,

a short stay at camp USA, 

motoring in red MG, with picnic hamper,

to Washington, 

sending cards to lists of friends.

At farewell drinks

her career took a right turn
– offered a local government graduate management position 

On their return  - she checked her artistic aspirations at the door
and nervously faced her committee
every month.

Their house as plain as dry biscuits,

Sundays spent gardening and shifting heirlooms.
Two cars and two phones,
he, restless for advancement, 

laid out IT appointments every Saturday.
She lucked out with a major project to oversee,
while he worked late

driving home on the freeway alone, 

most nights.


PART 5

So it was a shock,

one morning, 

stepping out of the bed,

he discovered his body a lead weight. 

A nervous breakdown diagnosed,

tests revealed no abnormalities.
His mother cooked him vintage stew.

Quite common for migrant sons,

the visiting doctor remarked.

His leave entitlements strung out,

his position collapsed into another and another,

until one morning, 

fumbling with his pyjama drawstrings, 

he signed for a package from the company.

He got lost at the local Centrelink,

where he found the faces of his father and uncles

waiting in the queue.
No benefits allowed,

the house half renovated, 

her project having flown, 

all major indicators posted.
Now settling into a management chair, 

a rising star, 

while he watched birds in the garden.

Never one for the group,

like his father,

who was lowered into the heated ground that summer, 

with crimson cheeks,

his bird like mouth silently screaming.

Discussing a proposed project site

she met Garry, 

who told stories,

Australian stories. 

Tell me more stories,

you do it so well, she said.
They checked out the proposed site of the new development
from the front seat of the council car, 

under a gum tree,

by a playground
her hair swinging across her face

for the first time in years.
He unbuttoned her suit buttons

one by one,

then she leant down

and clenched the zip of his trousers

with her teeth.



PART 6

Continuing to diminish,

napping each afternoon,

his weight blew out.
In the end it was his sister 

who got him a part time post teaching

at the community school –

computer technology,

Tuesdays and Thursdays,

to juvenile misfits.
The school seemed a jungle at first, 

but the kids loved to hear the tech words
in his soft Hungarian accent .

The suburban house is doom and gloom now.

It’s that morning that has been waiting for him.

Having called him at the school,

she can wait no more.
She explains that they have run their course. 

The issues are complex

but they unravel easily that late morning

in the pastel loungeroom.
He shrugs his shoulders

and slumps into a silent lump on their couch.

PART 7

Christmas – relatives. 

She’s tossing her hair,

now straightened, back.
The windy backyard.

How will she manage, they cry. 

You’re so skinny, these days.
She leaves pleading stomach pains

Far away,

he is driving on a freeway,

listening to a self improvement tape.
The cars weave figure eights around his.

It’s late Xmas afternoon

His car,

one of so many cars;

their house 

one of so many houses,

buried in this silver Eldarado.
But now,

a beam of light

catches the corner of a city tower 

and splats across his windscreen, 

splintering into fragments. 

While she sits

with her personal organiser
– smoking - her new habit, 

in her new, anaesthetised, apartment.