Kings Cross Street Life

The Stripper's Shift and The Cross by Terry (Feral) Stocks (deceased)
Good Friday by Feral, Celeste and Zelda

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Feral would have tears streaming down his cheeks at the irony and satire of some of life's gifts handed to him through the bureaucracies and agencies that were trying to find solutions to the leaking bucket of the life of homeless Jacks and homemaker Jills at the Cross. He would often pull out an out-of-context phrase from the old testament or a phrase from the BAHAINESE "The Seven Valleys and the Four Valleys". One evening when I was sad, he drove me out to Watsons Bay on his motor cycle to look at the ocean with its cityscape as a backdrape. He also showed me a special tree that he once slept under some years previously. When we returned to the Cross he presented me with a card that read: you have been assisted, by FERAL, Kings Cross Bikers Social Club.

Good Friday was written one afternoon at Zelda's place. The first words Feral greeted Zelda with on that Easter Saturday were the opening lines to this glimpse of the church. The previous day having been Good Friday, Feral was feeling cynical about the public holiday closure of a sustenance outlet that would normally sell cheap food and give free counsel to the homeless and hungry.
Instead, the hungry went to prey.
Celeste and Zelda joined Feral in writing the rest of the poem.
Feral died two months later.

Here's to you Tribune at the top of the spiral staircase, Feral...

Noeline Mitchell

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