For Mark Sanders
I saw the minds born during the summer of love destroyed by phantasy, almighty frenzied absurd,
succored on battery-charged eggs six-twenty corn syrup slabs of butter washed down with Tang flourided water and the Streets of San Francisco,
hippy offspring disconnected from bell-bottom wisdom revealed on the discotheque trail near Kathmandu,
the last to gaze at the blanket of sequined heavenly messengers whispering psalms on cool black windless nights contemplating toenails,
to hear rain drops falling on tin roofs filling buckets placed under old ceilings that needed to be new,
to run to the store for milk see pedophiles on the street and come back with white bags filled with candy,
to walk through lazy avenues of one-bathroomed red brick and yellow timber houses following a path of authoritative trees,
to make four-eyed socialists break down pop a vein or split weary spleens as spitballs and juvenile cocks split the anatomy of a frog,
to laugh read and sing hallucinogenic tunes that codified the transcendence of the stars,
to take bicycles across wire fence suburbs over train tracks and angry roads that carried lumber steel washing machines and televisions made by fodder in sweaty factories with sheds reeking of smoke instant coffee and flatulent fava beans,
to ride like horsemen searching for the Apocalypse come home at the end of the day whispering SFA to mother and fodder toiling for gravy and grease,
rusted loveswings charismatic lawns plastic outdoor drunken Socratic soapboxes rum and cola ice buckets bread and butter bum-fuck nowhere tea towels swaying in habitual depression outdoor televisions welded to ten-dollar patios, half-cut gauche aficionados of 50s jalopies with a rail for every point,
to thrillseek on dangerous Saturday nights in underage driving jock-loving through the hoop mag-wheeled ecstasy that died when the fodder arrived with buffoons,
to conform in blue at the top of humanity and sit through dog-eared luminescent tracts of rhetorical glory funky nerdiness from classless polo-necked idealists,
to leave with stubble and testosterone for towers that filled incandescent minds with ivory words and humanitarian manifestos sprung from cages opened by portly governors,
a backslapping cadre of neophyte plagiarists eager to unlock secrets of nihilist capitalism and art and communism and greed,
to sit on long petrified lawns that had heard intrigues of anarchists conformists and thought-provoking Shylocks menacing for war isolationism neo-con freedom capitulation and increased speed limits,
frugal liberalists pontificating on Biafran cornflakes and sentimental musos with dry biscuits and dust for the midday meal,
to drink lukewarm coffee in bohemian cafes with Francophile theorists whose arguments spilled onto the street and dislodged unemployed Luddites,
who ran debts paid back mercenary loans one cent at a time for a hearth that is warm and their own, trembling checking balances every evening,
to rail against each other against esoteric moons Armageddon mace and Moloch’s Ray Bans filtering the sun from sarcastic eyes,
to take certified papers throw wicked hats and cheerfully set out with fortified Odysseus on the road to starfucking serfdom,
to beg in conforming grey as grotesque teeth dripped with vanity and muscular lederhosen holding Cubans and ambrosia,
to present varnished papers in gilt-edged frames with marshmallow credentials for the gothic scrutiny of an uneducated mother superior,
to sweat in beautiful glass cages with carpets and ashtrays never burnished by grease or carcinogens,
to sit at six-by-three mocking laminate with melancholy stationery and irrefutable documents stained with excrement,
to listen to hysterical aphorisms wanting citation and the poisoned authority embraced in towers of Babel and ivory,
to suck pig-ear burgers and plastic milky straws like fiscal phalluses draining Velcro wallets with erogenous familiarity and bearded lips,
to eat fat leftover by obese suits drinking Moselle and Burgundy in Shiraz and Bordeaux late into the afternoon spawning digits and superhighways to promulgate nothingness,
to drive baby boomers to airports ca-chinging doctors and investment bankers that were friends from the street who stole money with jargon and Cheops and actuarial tables spinning like fixed slot machines in sleazy velvet lounges,
to wait for the death of fodder overpriced bricks and Jones terrazzo adding meaning to nothingness adding nothing to meaning but black holes and hypochondria,
to run towards beloved futility and the cognitive dissonance of kudos and imperatives of jungles in East Africa,
to be fucked in the arse by saintly advisors and scream in pecuniary pain,
to take interstate trysts and blow guilty in elevators taxis and beds that smelled of lilac and lemonade,
to put the hapless haphazard sword in a fireman’s wife a military maid a saxophonist’s groupie as they choked on the heat of the steel,
to remove Marks and Sparks brassieres in dim-lit flats near beachside palaces with the fingers and thumbs of a pole-vaulting chess player,
to make love to frigid bitches with enchanted curling wands and hundred-dollar manicures who contrived sighs like the soprano crescendo of an operatic pornstar,
to screen calls from bunny-boiling tight-arses with red pubes green eyes fashionable wineries and vindictive voices that blew the machine and made peanut shells withdraw their German helmets,
to sow seeds on baseball fields car seats and car parks with Japanese cameras and Dutch beckpeckers kicking at flora and pebbles as she climaxed with one leg in the dirt,
to ride across oceans of bodies in fragrant red light parlors with nutty millionaire vagabonds lining up at the door of some candlelit whore whose oily tattooed hands greased a pole an hour for a year, rickety boxsprings squeaking,
to stab at the nothingness with limp implants multiplying DVD sales with the spontaneous frankness of a child,
to celibate running dreaming into pale overexcited cities of agitated bankers with more money than trouble bars with salty-lipped fruity suits to the inch throbbing scotch so close to suburbs Marilyn posters and Che Guevara t-shirts,
to see towers planes memorial seat belts irate box cutters x-ray breasts queues and malicious liquids interrogating sacred texts of sympathetic authority as Midnight Express officers disappointed Turks,
to fear goats sand-traps manchester beards and binaries ejaculating from nucular presidents we were not for or against,
to slump on remote control recliners fitting tangerine skins like leather sheaths with ribbed rubber seedy sensual comfort in the ‘burban bourbon ‘hood,
to palliate chronic fatigue with ignorant sound bytes from hasty ivory colleagues burdened by poor grammar and soporific syntax,
to yield to mendacious credibility starving craving stale valium dressed in soothing stanzas of techno banality,
to squeeze apocryphal humanity up a licentious fat ass dripping with champagne,
to drape dirt over coffins cash red bricks and yellow timber and off-shore factories and warehouses,
to construct welcoming granite porticos install rosewood benches for daiquiris and boutique beer that tasted of honey,
to sit in hot tubs with neurotic neighbors waxing hackney sipping quickly and lusting after slippery skins willing to fuck for a dollar thrill,
to watch as suicide farmers and confessional clerks aimed their passionate bullets at themselves,
to socialize the cocaine pill press hedged suit pyramid ninja junk shadowstat equity bondarama rollercoaster of fiduciary motherfuckers printing the world into a hole,
to embrace naiveté at dinner with Nigerian princes serving unclaimed petro-estate dollars from childless billionaires for dessert,
to buy Rolexes and Gucci ankle socks with titanium-trimmed credit cards and income protection plans for overweight middle-aged sagging scrotums with grey temples varicose veins and heart arrhythmia,
to light fires in houses and stuff kerosene socks under mattresses full of worthless notes from promissory relatives and sleazy uncles with Filipina wives and pot bellies that gurgled and hissed when they walked,
to smile excessively and cordially at deluded lawn mowing neighbors with watering cans and hoes and hos and hoses that dribbled onto the street,
to scream at bilious plasma and surrogate touchscreen friends and fear nothing but interactive HD voids filled by telemarketers with scripts and turbans and the temerity to ask for a name,
to laze on schizophrenic sofas sick ottomans and Persian carpets from Sweden when the sun was still high in the sky,
to run into sun like a child naked born new wiggling fat sunburnt rich in a tropical haven of slaves coconut cocktails and wives with ten kids and a cow, resolute prayers to live there forever,
to fly to paradise and paradise on promises blind to mirrors of wrinkles love handles blotches and cellulite stalactites hanging from armpits arses and thighs dripping with Pina Coladas,
to pay double and triple and get hoodwinked and shystered and post-colonialed off islands with trinkets heat rash and pirated copies of Botox and collagen,
to rear good Samaritans in patrolled palaces with sensible-shoed matrons and well-intentioned pastoral virgins hiding constant erections,
to rent grey nomad caravans surf selfish waves in tourist stops gold souqs and shiny towers made of fossilized coin waiting for Dystopia in Raqqa Tikrit or Homs,
to escrow annuities and elegiac bank accounts with gold from a Chinaman’s calluses and silver and jade from slappers back home with the clap,
to run naked in tank tops and sweaters with zircon embroidery as peasants drink smoke and dance during Ramadan and Lent,
to take Warfarin Xanax Viagra and writhe with indifference at impudent haemorrhoids lactose intolerance hip hop and sat-nav directions,
the last to homage to caskets flowers condolences on sticky ubiquitous tablets anesthetising anxiety like a cocktail of Somma,
hospitals graveyards arrogant tubes wrinkled misogynistic testicles masticated nipples and salivating mouths hungry for a sweet salty fix of nothingness filling the hole, Starbuck hits and Subway professors, imitation of a poet’s last poem, dreams that make noises like bombs and broken glass,
leaving the void darkness pits of nothingness four-feet-deep in shit and boggy unsympathetic soil eroded by time by yesterday’s garbage futility string theory Big Bang lottery,
Mark, you took too much ran smoked ran stogied ran drinking laughing at mercy fools and payment plans with superannuated knees,
Black Sabbath Jimmi Hendrix on leg guitars in a bus on a road to some Mid-West county with Pintos and trailers and jailbait,
thought nothing of morning beer and a run in the heat and sun dripping wet beer coming through pores running eight miles to see someone from a bar or a wire cage with the scent of wood and pine tar,
came to nothing from nothing but made memories of words of jokes Walkman screaming sonnets of heavy metal Roxanne hardcore that was your dance your poem your lyrical ecstasy reverberating around rooms you walked through gates you crossed hours you spent laughing like a tyrant,
the crazy banger with thick limbs hairy chin eye-popping muscle left on the floor of a kitchen, heart broken in the heat of a Lismore day when the mercenary sun killed someone who loved it,
who rose from the grave like a king playing metal on a leg with a cry in the morning like a ghost who had found nectar on a wardrobe at dawn,
haunting me calling me echoing down years through corridors of memories onto black lines howling for our hole in the ground.
