after the fire escapes and security guards

it is good to be beyond CCTV

amidst the howling sirens whipped wind

the thin mercury sound sculpted on sand

the base jumper poised like a civilisation

on a precipice of wasting military assets

before a leap into faith and squashed Midtown gum
the fly-eyed troubadour’s declared intent

the Pitt St. tractor’s pilot manoeuvres by sextant

closer to the CWA delights aesthetic Marxism

handicapped by last season’s King Gee

the verses face up to supported living

wandering the parched grass beyond visiting hours

where in better days the wallabies grazed
lost in a hard drive somewhere between

formats and a nasty trojan horse the length

of an absence stretches like a hair band

co-opted into service as a lock a galleon

mid-ocean stranded twixt trade winds

like that commercial only melancholy

a microwave dinner in the warmth of the presbytery
when mysticism has deserted religion

it’s not enough to face down the beast with popsicles

exhibitors fill the Friday night choc top make out slot

with a CGI Jesus aloft some sea as pithy as

Wivenhoe a digital age donkey chase

piloting perilously down Pilate’s cavernous streets

distracted from our inevitable
Oedipal deaths the literary devices get left

on the shoulder abandoned like tics after therapy

while snow liquid papers over the green coronet

and the bits of science that science forgets

it is the bullsnorting bouncers who make us decline

bobbing weaving and hooking our grammar on

their death rattle line we like Hi-NRG 
uptempo sounds eat yellowfin to be efficient

she kissed him behind the bike shed and it read

Thatcher OUT LBW Alderman

we have not been polled for our taxes

but we still body pop while the neocon circle sits

the gnarled acetates take you back to the crackled

part of the flanking manoeuvre you’ve already won
vinyl jams crammed

into the parcel shelf of your DeLorean

windows custom tinted as the hairs

on your neck prick with the sharpness

of that thin mercury sound