Guide to Sydney Crime by Les Wicks - HTML preview

Norm Neill

innocent until

There hasn’t been a murder here in years:

the razor gangs have gone, the bookies too

and vice-squads bought with cash, hot goods and beers,

as have the girls who hurried clients through

the brothel managed by a psychopath

shot dead one night by a fiery pimp, whose star

flared briefly till he died, the aftermath

of third-rate gin. Life changed and no one won.

Now corporate traders share good-humoured meals

in bistros, boasting of the ways they wring

fat profits from their tax-reducing deals

and renovations, scorning anything

suggestive of the days of gangland crime,

conspiring artfully while killing time.

Previously published Australian Poetry Journal