AUSTRALIA

AUSTRALIA

Australia without you I'm nothing
Australia 22 dollars & sixty cents, January 26th, 2014
I can't even afford a barrel of oil
Australia why do you celebrate your own invasion?
Go fuck yourself with your white supremacist policies.
I am feeling UnAustralian
Australia I am furious
I weep for your infamies
I decry your enormities
Your last Yes vote referendum was 43 years ago
When will you stop killing the natives?
Australia with your Us & Them
Australia you might have become One Nation

I’m joining the pirates to save the whales
I’m your ninja in corporate clothing
I’m going dissident so try me now
Try your sedition laws on me please
I want to be unworthy of you
I’m harbouring Boat People
We threw all the children overboard
Jihad Jack Thomas is our poster boy
Mamdouh Habib was over for dinner
We ate halal & licked our fingers & wiped our mouths on your imperial flag

Australia I take twenty minute showers every day
& I'm not sorry
Your dams were all built in rain shadows
& your Desal plants are getting rusty
My washing is never dry
But your rain washes our human refuse into the ocean

Australia, when will you be worthy of your million anarchists?
Them Muslims them Muslims them Jews.
And them Muslims
Them Muslims wants all the oil
Muslim nation cries death to the infidel
I think they might mean us
I saw it on TV so it must be true.
Fatwas all round, think I might be next.

My ambition is to be Prime Minister,
even though I’m Atheist
My first act will be to make education free for everybody
Followed by jailing all lawyers without trial
Australia you made me an autocrat
I’m short sighted & have difficulty focusing on anything
But even I can see this mess we're in

Australia you stole a generation & you aren’t really sorry
Australia you let them bomb the Pacific with Nuclear weapons
Australia take your Free Trade & shove it
Australia I won’t pay tax if I don’t want to
I’m addressing you
This is spurious Australia

I still haven't told you what you did to Uncle Tony
after he came home from Juvenile Detention,
still a teenager yet with the face of a 40 year-old,
virginity broken both ways
& a life of violent crime his only vocation

Australia I don’t prefer either of your two parties
Australia I urinated in a ballot box once
when my mother took me to vote as a kid
in the Queensland Daylight Saving Referendum.
All the talk of fading curtains,
them confused cows and all those lawns to mow twice
left my bladder feeling sensitive.
I guess that makes me a good no-voting Australian.

Australia this can’t go on
The World is laughing at us
Little Monarchist U.S. arse-kissing banana republic
Australia your Dream is a fantasy to me
Your Baby Boomers own everything that's nailed down
& most of what isn't.
I haven't got a moneylender's chance

Why is your National Holiday made in China?
When will we have a true democracy?
I'm putting my last dollars on a hundred to one longshot!
I'll wear a cheap pin-stripe suit,
Put product in my hair
& kiss every girl who calls me a Metrosexual

Australia many of your children still live in poverty
Australia when will you let us rejoice?
Australia when can we finally be young & free?
& what good is golden soil
When we can’t afford it anyway?

Shitex Incorporated

Shitex is the sound of one hand clapping,

It’s a blood-soaked bath that’s near over lapping,

It's a thousand kids rapping crappy rhymes

and whatever else passes,

with pants that don’t even cover their arses.

Shitex is the traffic jam where Punt becomes Hoddle,

It’s the mad Monday munt when they all hit the bottle,

the truck drivers on uppers going full throttle

and a holiday road toll losing an unwinnable battle.

Shitex is the Byron Bay tracks without any trains,

When it never pours but it always rains.

It’s the State Liberal Government going to pains

To silence the poets and all the people with brains.

Shitex is a new tax, carbon pricing, mining resource rental,

goods and bloody services tax,

taxes masquerading as levies, tariffs, fees,

discounts on fuel and excise on tobaccy,

taxes on ya booze, on ya gas and ya leccy

tax on taxes, on ya house,

on ya car and even ya funeral casket.

Shitex is the opportunist start up upstarts overcharging on utilities.

Australian owned used to mean owned by Australians,

but Shitex means you pay through the nose,

through both nostrils and out your arse too.

Pay Shitex for your phonecalls, line rental and handset,

John Howard fucked Telecom just like he fucked Ansett,

now they've got us browsing for flights on webjet,

crouching in cattle class, while shares are down at Qantas,

moron CEO asks Mr Abbott “why don't you want us?”

Shitex Party Politicians are laughing and saying “not yet!”

Shitex is supermarkets without any baskets,

no baggers or hard sell,

it's available on the Internet, or novated lease,

Shitex is guaranteed without credit checks for bad debt.

It comes in all sizes, for all shapes and all vices.

Shitex even makes nappies and tampons,

sells giftcards and coupons,

and all kinds of add ons,

you can even get pills to help with your hard ons.

Shitex is the Brisbane Bears or Newtown Jets,

your money back on losing bets.

Buskers thrumming on splintered frets,

3 men short of a string quartet,

Forensic cum stains on her epaulettes,

Army rations on plain-packaged cigarettes

Shitex is your darkest fear in an awful year,

A cold wet tongue in your sinful ear,

You can even get it in a pull o' beer,

or a broken promise from a bull's rear.

Said Hello to the Clouds

I spoke to the clouds one day

up there in the rarefied air

They weren't very good listeners

flitting by in their cloudy way

but since clouds are born gossips

I had no lack of conversation



I told them about you

how you put butterflies in my stomach

with a word or a glance

& how your smile is so brilliant

it's the eighth wonder of my world



They said- "Oh yes, we know that smile,

she visits from time to time

& we dance in the currents of her eyes."



They said your eyes were sapphires

the colour of ozone and the ocean

shifting from bright azure

to grey goodbye

startling even to such as them



They told me of rivers & lakes

that sparkled in the motes

of the westering sun

yet nothing could hold a candle

to the magnificence of your smile



Then they told me of dreams

when you were off away with them

from fantastic surmise

to nightmare cries

and sleepwalking until sunrise



The clouds carried me across

the Great Divide in the jet stream

spoke to me of hunger & drought

fire & flood & famine

and showed me wastelands of regret



They said- "You crossed this way before

but you lost your way."

Then they told me to follow my dreams

trust to my instincts

& to never lose heart



The clouds spoke to me that day

& they said to say hi

drop by when your eyes are clear

your smile is near

& your heart is in want of nothing

Your Language

Lulled traveller to your sweet siren

I float in your blue moon swell

deaf to the insistent world


Conch cupped to my ear

I listen intently to the deep, stirring

rhythms of your heart


Each poetic bone in my body

feels the music of your velvet voice

& longs to learn your language


Drifter on the tides of time

I dive deeper to breathe the stories

of your life’s many mysteries


Drowning in a sea of dreams

I taste the promise of your lips

dumb to the waking wonder


Wayfarer on the early evenflow

my eyes have no purchase

blind in the naked night

a likely lad

I nursed my fourth knock-off beer

switched to my left hand

& stopped talking for the first time in fifteen minutes

the businessman beside me who was buying me drinks

arched a thick grey eyebrow & said:

       “Yure eh likely lad, Rocco.

        Ye fit, young, eager

        Un wots more, yuv goat

        A gud head on yure shoulders.”

So saying he clapped me on the back

drained his pot & roared for another


it was the Summer of ‘99

bartending BrizVegas

working in a trendy inner-city gin-joint

that is, until the owner got busted

for coke by undercover cops


but I was a jack-of-all-trades

got a job in a hotel/motel

- no-one can tell the difference these days -

of an afternoon I'd wash dishes

chop onions, spuds & carrots

polish glasses & cutlery

answer telephones

brag, boast & exchange lies with the Texan Chef

& the gay Maitré D


by evening I'd wait tables

tend the bar

stock the fridges

clean the kitchen

sweep & mop the floors

answer telephones

& take room-service up to celebrities


one night, among many

I got call from room 56

a reggae band in town & outta booze

        "Hey mun, canna ave t' soup o' tha day

        for seven uf us,

        also, cun you get us

        2 litres o' pineapple juice

        3 lemons & a pint of cream?"

I asked him if that was all, sir?

        "D'ye ave rum?"

Wot, Bundy?

        "No, Mun. Bacardi... White Rum?!"


In no time the Chef's bell rang

I loaded the trolley

punched floor 5 room 6

& knocked (knock knock na knock knock knock-knock)

        "Eeeyyyyyy, D'Artagnan!"

the rasta lion dread-head

sounded like the love-child

of Bob Marley & Fonzie

the stench of ganja hit me square between the eyes

blue-grey clouds billowed out into the hall

but I was blocked at the door


I felt like a five-star pizza-boy, accepted a toke

- no prizes for guessing what they tipped me with -

then went downstairs an tried on a few ten-year-old tricks

y'know, smashed a few plates

rattled the cutlery too loudly

yawned & bitched & complained

until the boss sent me

& my stoned arse home

Her Dark Hair

A cushioned fall

oblivious young lovers frenetic with passion

& consuming desires

we fell many storeys

& as we fell the ground rushed up to meet us

but it was always a soft landing


with the ferocity of otters in rut

we tore snouts & grunted with sweaty abandon

when I came up for air your hair was intoxicating

in its black lustre & I was claimed


The hook I found later embedded in my lungs

was as sweet as your sex & I breathed it deep

what came next I could never have imagined

in the very beginning; a chest-pain horizon

when I came up for air

I was dying the death of a dog

but no hairball; only one black strand


I pushed you back into the pillows

a spent force of endorphins & ecstasy

staggering - like a drunk on his last bender -

I caught the sink with desperate hands

in the mirror I saw a floating face

with white splotches & one dark hair

hanging from my mouth


The blood rushed from my penis

as the rubber slipped & I thought:


“SOMEONE’S GONNA HAFTA CLEAN

THAT UP SOONER OR LATER!”


when the wet ‘Thwack’ of sperm

& vaginal juices hit the bathroom floor


As I pulled that lone hair

I knew the end drew nigh

for it was more than I could give

when I came up for air

the sink brimmed full with festering hopes

& mouldering desires


You fell back into cushions

with a mournful sigh

- a black-maned lioness -

but the Goddess only knew

I would never be the same.

phone booth

A death rattle

like shifting gears

is all I heard before the scream

Leap out of the car

Dodge the traffic

Hurdle the hedge

Slam into the phone booth

only to find I’m not wearing

my Superman costume



0-0-0 o-o-o Oh! Ohh… Oooohhhh.__________.



Then the sirens

ignorant traffic

like you hear

when other people’s Dads

have heart-attacks

like you see

when ambulances

start to cruise

like hearses

because he’s dead

& the emergency’s over