My friend Burt told me
of the secret door at Melbourne Airport.
It looks the same as any door
but you have to have a special pass.
Like that restaurant in Sydney
you can only enter if you are a member,
but no one knows how you get to be a member
except the owner who won’t say.
You have to masticate each mouthful
twenty-six times,
and she comes around the tables counting,
throwing you out if you do fewer.
So I went to the city International
and tried all the handles I could see,
until Border Protection asked me for my Passport,
which I didn’t have
because I was only looking for the place
with the self-dispensing bloody marys and lamb steaks.
After a while they accepted I wasn’t a terrorist,
and one of them winked at me,
and the guard dog licked my hand.
Later I noticed the servo in Station Street
which used to have the sign ‘Lube until you wait’.
was now a Food Palace
and a woman was placing a placard
out the front with ‘Special menu’ written on it,
but I can’t chew that often,
and I don’t know the etiquette for franchise.
Published in Outlaw Poetry
James Walton Poetry 