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