In Bed With Metallica

She moves out of the painting like a metal

Band . . . She's carrying the frog of darkness

The crowds, the Parisian crowds are forming

And it makes me weep. I buy a jigsaw puzzle

To support the industry. I don't need something

To do in my hotel room: I just need fame

And a frame and someone under glass to visit

At 3am. It's got to be Leonardo da Vinci

Sketching naked rehearsing members of

Metallica. He doesn't know photography's

Invented - and no one wants to break his heart.

Or tear him apart to find the secret of his genius.

We read him Berrigan's sonnets: he thinks it's

Standard English - and that T. Rex is a fragrance.

Michael Farrell

Sidebar

Michael Farrell, originally from Bombala, NSW, now living in Melbourne, is the author of Cocky's Joy, I Love Poetry (both Giramondo) and Writing Australian Unsettlement (Palgrave Macmillan). In May 2018 he was a guest of Festival Internacional de Poesia Santiago, and Roberto Bolaño lecturer at Universidad Diego Portales. He read from his chapbook, efectos a (excerpted in this issue) in Adelaide, at the Multicultural Communities Council, in September, with the assistance of Juan Garrido. 'In Bed With Metallica' published in Cocky's Joy (Giramondo, 2015).