Flashy

Gathering exclamation marks to decorate
newish statutes, the epaulette makers

chatted about the latest board of inquiry,
flipping off sequins with a-priori smugness.

So many lessons to input, and all that scanner
glare rattling around like afterthoughts;

or buried in council minutes, a quango
so like a mango it blew all the light-emitting

hydrangeas so hard they hit the splashbacks
of the kitchenettes in the Airbnbs of each

board member’s interstate investment property,
purportedly. It was like the spangled light

of a discoball only wetter, messier,
and it came to stink like an admixture

of body odour, Lynx and dead water.
In a joint-statement that read

like a FOGO bin liner filled to the brim
with shit, they’d decided to defend the erection

of various new statues too, spewing out advice
on how to conduct lives in leafier enclaves

as forests baked to roots. Emboldened
and aroused, they percolated plans

to bring back gentlemen’s clubs with doubly
exclusive retinues, installing priest holes

and dumb waiter to smuggle in booty
and contraband on misogynistic

bandwidths. Fucking glorious! they raved,
planning their collective individualised

libertarian freeforall keynote for the next
Diggers and Dealers, lubricating each other’s

pockets with insider trading on rental evictions,
swapping pics of the homeless. Whose retinas,

flashing neon at the sight of being on the board
of some newfangled techbro entrepreneurialism,

are these? They go dark as poison clouds
if transparency is ever requested. Heaven

forbid we cease feather-dusting weapons
manufacturers. And whose shiny copper

urinals are these? Whose polished concrete?
If so inclined, one can see constellations

in any material, but these must be premium
materials, extracted for extravagance,

mined for myopic opulence. Let’s begin
a blue-tick thread to vaunt past excess,

spruik the ritz of historic architectural
magnificence and implicate predicaments

as opportunities for exponential jubilees
replete with ornamental scrolls in jarrah

panelling, with steer-hide floor-matting
donations from northern cattle barons

and boar tusk ‘curios’ with cane-field
imprimaturs. Such declarations! Such

manifests of Haulpak air-brake ore-talk.
Lumpen flips in destiny, in historical

stockpiling as red dust smothers
the port.