after 1979

The way you want its
lane-marking drum line not to end’s

like the first time you listen
to Blur’s Coffee & TV;

bring on the highway,
the hedonistic drawl

of Corgan’s limp wrist
out the passenger-side window.

For the tallish boy we all destroyed
who hugged his Melon Collie double set

as young Joaqin Phoenix clutched
his porn in Parenthood –

I always thought he hoped the song
was where his older brother had gone,

hit by a semi-trailer while
fielding a cricket ball on Christmas Eve,

carried along to where Tooronga Road
turns into Dandenong & eternity.

Sorry. This is getting a bit Stand By Me.

Minutes

Can’t be sure, can we,
that the following’s not prohibited
by the first confidentiality agreement I’ve
been oddly hot to sign, as if it were
a financier’s manly handshake before
an Antarctica of secrets.

Watching the entrepreneur
spruik a gospel of developing world goodwill
listen, India’s a brilliant source of human capital
I, retaining what Whitmanian retro chops
the expansive eye of the bothered unAustralian
& an infuriating ability to go along

begin to recognise what
stuff like ‘service industries’ really means.
The movies, the restaurants, less the catalogues
of those still required to spot than
the well-clipped salesman or waiter
who fucking hate their jobs & clientele

all your grand transacting schemata
of the working poor & goal-setting best
is there to farm one key interest:
the fecundity & comfort of our corporate activists.
If I could pass on one lesson on behalf
of, well, you wouldn’t even call it a niche market,

it’d be: for fuck’s sake, just try & relax.
Ditch the gaudy colour photos saying VISION.
You are smarter than this, young businessmen
& women. Revel that your works are but
extensions of a power to charm. The blessed
couldn’t care less what depths they are regarded from.

untitled

Like me, weed has laid him low.
Finally,
a drug that justifies one’s genetic desire
to stay at home via
the intensified appeal
of the private everyday:
meals, music, video games & tv shows.
Cannabis for us implies less
an angry flight from reality
than a rare shot at omniscience;
(being privately schooled suburban kids,
criticism, judgement & expertise
are habits you have to qualify
before a disbelieving panel
badges you with belief.)
Thus. Is it such a sin
that we supplement our indolence
with the feeling that everything is
either, a)
perfectly, brilliantly, happily intense,
or b) soul-destroying shit rich-deserving
all the hilarious disdain it gets?