The steel monster rumbles,
then sways
with resignation.

Forever trapped in
timetabled precision;

suburbs
                 to
                      city
                      and
         ­    back
again.

Sunlight splashes warmth
on tartan dull and drab

while

single mothers shift their gaze
avoiding confrontation,
as stained-black gum watches
from below.

Air congeals
with a baby's cry.

Spray paint proclaims
that you don’t
****
with HCB,
*****.

Darting eyes of venom
warn against complacency
as iPods beat
hard-house hits
and lyrical dreams
of somewhere else.

Masses lurch forward,
brakes screech with agony,
waiting for oblivion
or 5:17pm express
as city succumbs to night.

Death can come in the night
like a storm
or sometimes
in the form

of a 747
ploughing through your office window.

Or death can fall
from above,
from seemingly serene blue
with measured precision

on

families cowering in ruined remains.

Death could even
make your acquaintance
amid the dark, laser-lit world
of cocktails, bass and

****** pick-up lines

because someone has
finally found
something worth fighting for.

The writer sits and ponders,
filled with empty silent dread,
‘Sorry, this word cannot be found’
the smug spellchecker says.

Weary of petty complications
he drifts, searching for inspiration,
soaring through the African sky
with glorious, lofty liberation.

The yellow plains stretch far below
herds of buffalo, running free
the lions hide amongst the grass
dotted around sandarac trees.

He soars now, over snow-capped peaks
tableclothed in angry cloud,
by eagles, gliding with their young
their talons stretched in readiness
silhouetted in the fiery sun.

He conjures now, Fijian sand, lazy swaying palms
crashing frothy, roaring waves; silky banana ***.
A sparkling ocean glittering, caked with yellow icing,
just a mirror for the setting sun.

But then wings of grace are stripped and
he plummets towards uncertainty,
falling back to swivel chair, staring
at desk lamps, coffee, burgundy.

The rain drizzles down outside,
the heating pours through well-placed vents
as Chinese Communism awaits:
confronting, mocking, dense.

Music is madness.
It screams
Through seventeen
Forked tongues
And pounds
Its pig-skin urban drums,
Ordering on the
Machines of meat;
A soundtrack with
Samsaran beat.

Music is mournful.
It is the caw of the crow
‘Neath the stain of the sky;
The song of the wind
To squeeze truth
From your eyes.
It weaves woven silk of
What could be,
Pirouetting through the air
In a gorgeous despair.

Music is a ghost
That crawls on our skin,
Armed with gilded subterfuge
To bargain its way in;
To coil ‘round consciousness
In serpentine swathes,
Spreading its questions
With ephemeral grace;
Covering completely
Our naked cold
In a gossamer blanket
Of symphonic souls.

Music is a bird
That sings when I want
Booming its voice
From an amplified cage.

But bars soon will bend
As a zephyr distends,
Lifting me with
Wings full of holes.
Climbing the clouds
In communion I fly
Seeking infinity
As eyes drink the sky.

While the world is trying to reach us
We abandon shallow spectres of time
And scratch each other’s itches
Salaciously.

We sink into these magic hours,
****** under coverlets of dreams.
While outside thunders leaden showers,
No water leaks in through the seams

Surrounded like a snake
By suffocators of reality
We shed each other’s skins
Coiled in twists of content.

Angels dance from her fingertips,
Twirling in nascent currents.

The world outside is dissolute
It wails and spatters.
It sneers in through silver panes
It wants none of what we have, the miscreant;
It wants only to breathe its grimy breath.

But we are resolute.
In fact we are ebullient.
The haze of incense, the heat of bodies,
Our world is infinitesimal.

We cavort under our big top; our tipi;
Our tableclothed Elysium.
We dance through each other’s minds
Twirling golden ribbons
Behind us like shooting stars.

We soar through subconscious clouds
And smile at forbidden sunlight
Splashed across our faces.

And we sink back slowly
Listening to the fading showers
We sink back slowly
Into these magic hours.

He writes words on walls and
toilet doors.

Looping black texta with
measured precision.

Emptying out his importance in
tomes of acrid, sickly-sweet-smelling lapses
into hope.

Cascading the loneliness with litanies
of somewhere else
that pulses with a joy unfound.

Tales of intermittent dreams
and dalliance with beauty.

Strobing in translucent beams,
the light leaks through his
poorly-sewn seams

onto the toilet door.