it rises in school yards


      of smashed-fruit afternoons

            sun peeling back day’s dazed

      in Shakespeare

                  and Pythagoras’s theorem

            when two kids use sticks

      to cast spells on each other’s shins

                  smelling the scent of piss

               from some suburban Harry Potter’s


            mid-week binge, brain battering

                  beneath the train bridge

                        a trolley rattling

            in the Kmart Christmas extravaganza

      or a battler pulling his last cone

                  and melting into re-runs of The Simpsons

            i’m talking layman’s terms

      the sound of spitting

                  how it is to be out here all free


                        amidst the BP fluorescent green

            considering the sun as a razorblade


                  cutting through thin crust


as we sit at the water’s edge

                        and watch as we roll

            like lorikeets opening locks

                  with their beaks


            and leaving us as digital brumbies

                  to be rode through a golden soil sunset


and isn’t that just the way it is


            English riding train carriages into obscurity


      only to get lost in that giant apricot

                  sitting on the lawn

            or if that is just it, to wonder

                  as an Illawarra train sings

            the Average Joe electric


breaking the windows

            of the most religiously

      worshipped Westfield