Addle Brains - Augie March

A Tuesday night in Winter, holed up in the city of ravens

The owls in the hills hoo-hooing and eyeing off the field mice down in the cold

grey centre

Addle Brains lining up with the dead for the soup spoon

Addle Brains and the legions of the passed for the bread bag

Ladle the soup, pass the rolls

Addle Brains and the many not here and loose souls

One might fly off to the blank heavens and the lead high halls

O the hungry sky aches for blokes without folks and bulges with the bearers of

palls

Addle Brains would drink for four days and no eats

And sleep in the glens of botanical parks, and on the humped bus shelter seats

Where it’s cold, where it’s cold

One morning I woke up in a room in the nation’s heart

And couldn’t think for the life of me what I was doing, or where to start

Or what rehearsal was required, I was so sad and tired

What does a bird want with money?

Was he made this way?

Do you have to earn the right to find all of this funny?

Nothing’s funny today

Addle Brains mixes his powders with his fateful blues

And the wide-eyed bubs of the Parliament couldn’t give a hoot, or even two

All it takes, it takes, is a kind look and a word, a word

Some pretty eyes and skin, from your fine family you were given to win

And spill it over into the basin of common sin

Just a drop, a drop of the stuff that makes us kin

— Addle Brains perching way out on a limb