Sometimes I imagine Victoria

as if it wasn’t a

               hypermilitarized     police     State
deep surveillance in place

techno-forward and fascist-enabled

crushing legitimate protest

                  with gleeful enthusiasm
R          A          M          M          I          N          G              12-year-olds
into prison,

     using policing

          carceral violence

               and the (in)justice system
to revenue raise

and fill the coffers

          of Spring St

                    ‘cos the “ayes” have it..
                    the power and the privilege
so why not flash it about?

may as well wilfully lodge their

                                             freshly polished

                                             R.M. (Resource Magnate) Chelsea boots
          firmly across

          our up-to-it necks
     stacking bills

     whilst stacking the     decks

                                             big-building the State

                                             off the breaking backs of the 99%

                                             whilst the bloated and bloviating 1%

                                             lobby in corridors carved from our collapse
But then I remember.

                    This                    is                    Victoria.
and Victoria will always be:

                                             a colon-ic legacy project;

                                             a gold gilded metropolitic mirage;

                                             a concrete slab of nostalgic ephemera
never shedding its straight (union jack)et

as a deep southern outpost

                    of the              ethnocidal,

                                             extracting,

                                             exploiting,

                                             extorting,

                                             entrenching,

                                             emboldening,

                                             eviscerating,

                                             ever-expanding

                                             Empire.