Chook Poem by GRANT FRASER

Thirty seven years
later...

along Walker Road,
with red delivery
jacket on,

charcoal flared
industrial
trousers,
flapping
like
great curtains
in the wind,

food provisions,
tight plastic bags
causing bad circulation,

the pavement up ahead
empty,
until you appear...

'The Fighter! '

I've seen you many
times, but you don't
look or pretend to
remember...if you do?

probably cause you were
so busy trying to live
up to that family name,

yes I took your fist -
once:

'a real crack in the jaw! '

and as I remember I only
half mumbled, slipped off,
sore into the night...

forget what it was for,
to be truthful I think
you were just sharpening
your troubled claws,

they called you 'Chook',
meaning tough I suppose
or hard,
and it served it's purpose,

I still remember the camera
flash effect!
once you'd hit me,

and a painful flood
filling my cranium

and yet you still
slit both eyes,
but not as effectively,

nothing else happened
after that,

remember...

like was
I supposed
to fight back?

I didn't, because I couldn't,
or more so,
it just wasn't really in me,

I didn't have the proper
requirements to thump anybody...

and now I'm back
in my head reliving
Secondary school,
and a whirlwind
of other things,

so you hit me
- and I felt it,

what hits me now?
the wind, the rain,
trying to make things happen,

like intellectual choice
and freedom...

but Chook, I just wasn't
Chook enough,
are you more Chook now?

God - the world has to be...
somehow,

one grows old watching
surpluses upon surpluses
of power, wielding
it's ugly fists!

that's the real lesson,
doesn't matter,
so long as you abuse everyone
and everything in the right way...

and this poem is about
the antisocial-nesses and
calamity about class & money,

The only punch!