i. Come On Die Young
the diary is a newstart fraud de art

a fortnight spaced with love minestrone neruda

7-11 EFTPOS seals our entente
mallboy with a rose and a resume company suitor

caffeine cigarettes bandana and an ipod body rock

dusk don't care if you're a mover or shaker
if you don't have the ingredients, don't try to cook

greasy libraries pull over for accidents

inventory your stuff see what you can hock
the nokia generation reject their romances

in a dark wood  the peace corp succumb to diphtheria

are you the sum of your selection criteria
 
ii. Busabout
waifs all over triple j 				   singing london

you're 						  	   still in london

the bars are 						   full of london

everybody is coming and 			   going london

and i think i understand the saints

stranded so far from home.
 
iii. Geezers Need Excitement
for Sam
His shirt says This is the Modern Age.

Piffing bottles outside the Worker's Club,

rucking with wannabe rockstars

takes up Friday night

like the footy would

if it was

July and we were Bombers fans.

AC Neilsen decree we play on Saturday.
Hit the trendiest digs

trying lines before you go

on the run from the morning after

when it's too early to know

what you've gotten into.

(Horse tranquilizers are strictly

for the racing fraternity.)

Hang out with bouncers

until they ask: is this it?
Walking down Boundary St.

Golden Casket's neon rainbow fades fast.

Sam hasn't even emptied his bags

and he's ready to jump Brisneyland's bail.

There's too much Peter Parker in me.
Someday the clouds will lift

and you'll catch me tipping my sombrero to a seniorita

giving the day as a gift

shuffling like a reptile at the fade of a dusty siesta.
 
iv. La Bamba
for Frank O'Hara
fairytale dawn:			our estimations

of ourselves relax their

grip on temporality
the killer gets off on a technicality
the big easy at the not quite there

swelters with afternoon's enthusiasm

     punchpacked with clouds

     a storm that never breaks
to the bequeathed: shoeboxed ‘78s

a mildewed dive slate a cassette
hot nights translating prime time's bottom line
your model for the world

is a house				where you've lived in

every room
you carry the memories around like prized mumbles
 
vi. The Secret Life of Them
life in the fast lane catches up with you

do tony montana's march towards destiny

morally ambiguous as a tense day five test match finish
the logistics of summer mean you drive over creeks

underneath airplanes beside

containers ceremonial grounds

the italian mausoleums

fence the bottom l of the cemetery

the seminary guilts down from its hill
you take out life insurance

but can't find a beneficiary

methamphetamine labs hide in our sheds

cut down the banana plantations

put up condos instead

it's an all night burn up at the fossil fuel doof

last man standing turn off the lights
					but the lights go out on us,

as lazily as a midwicket poke in the annual boxing day game

michael slater has never known such a tragedy
rather than celebrities the glossies give us notorieties

the gossip in the weatherboard suburbs

is as periodical as a cold sore

the pleasant machines

in the bourgeois estates get whacked on irony and debt
play prime time remote control keno

if it comes up rove everybody wins
who says the naughties cant be fun

just  get the rules down:

it's mob life
once your in the pocket

you  pay
i float off

into the universe

a sceptical astronaut

who was only ever in it for the uniform.