Mister No Talent

Tezza was, among other things, a bit of a local character.

He wore second hand clothes: grubby T-shirts,

trackies, thongs and whatever else he could ransack

out of the overnight drop-off bins.

It paid to be upwind of Tezza whenever possible,

for while he could be charming,

even Brut 33 aftershave would have been an improvement.


To say that Tezza was missing a few teeth

is like saying a bald man was missing a few hairs.

But it never stopped him smiling.


On a bad day, Tezza would wander up & down the street

yelling at anyone who would listen.


        "I hate West End!"

He would bawl at the local member for council.


         "Socrates was a fraud!"

He would shout at the Greek Green Grocer.


        "Huey ya bastard, this weather's fucked."

He would holler at the solitary white cloud

in an otherwise clear & prominently sunny Brisbane sky.


Tezza would buy a bunch of flowers on pension day,

usually for some lucky girl

who worked in a shop on the main drag.

He was often rebuffed,

for he had quite a reputation for fortnightly harassment,

although sometimes he made somebody's shitty day a little brighter.


For a few days after payday,

Tezza would offer everybody cigarettes,

then proceeded to mercilessly scab from them thereafter.


He lived in a small Housing Commission flat

across the road from me,

but told everyone that he was homeless.

His mates on the street were two blokes

who had houses and families of their own,

but reckoned they could make a decent living out of being bums.


Come Friday night though,

and Tezza would make a miraculous transformation.

Dressing in his moth-eaten tuxedo,

he would beg 70c from a street café tip jar

to catch a bus into the city,

where he starred in the role of

-  Mr No Talent


                  & The


                           One-Eyed Trouser Snake

He'd stand outside nightclubs

singing snatches of lyrics at the top of his lungs.


        "Yestaday, aw moy trubb-ulls seem so farraway."


He made more money from people paying him

to go away than he did for his mastery of song.

Occasionally he'd crash another busker's gig

and they'd pay him to leave too,

or loosen a few of his remaining teeth.


Every year Tezza would apply for a gig

at the local music festival, and every year,

after being politely turned down,

he'd do his show anyway.


Then one day, after putting his furniture

and whitegoods out for hard rubbish,

he cleaned out his flat

and chucked out half his wardrobe.

We didn't see him around much after that

and then we didn't see him at all.

No-one seemed to miss him much.


Things went on as usual.

Mail still got delivered.

Pension day came and went.

The pub still closed at 10pm because of the race riots.

People sat next to the road and sipped café lattes

and chain-smoked and rattled loose-change in their pockets

to torment the buskers and street urchins.


But I found that I kinda missed Tezza & his local character.

After all, people paid good money to miss

Mr No Talent & the One-Eyed Trouser Snake.


        "O, I baleave in Yestaday - HMM HMM HMMM HMM.______. HMMMM._________hhhHHHhhmmmmmmm."