beneath our radiant second verse
there’s more grist for those who
try to bridge the great political
divide
yet
the ham-fisted pop-philosophy
tailored to the silent majority
slips into the cracks
& fissures of this abyss roughly
the size of the desk
on Q&A seeping into the drinking water
like fluoride to keep our teeth white
sharp
& pearly white
I grip firmly
to this $7 bottle of wine
that I bought instead of buying groceries
yelling at the television on a Monday night
wondering how many Egyptians died
building the pyramids
from the top down
where ScoMo sits
most uncomfortably
atop that paragon arrogantly
declaiming us the most successful
multicultural nation in the world
as if it were an olympic sport
(tho we all know we’d have
a better chance of winning
if it were the comm games)
looking confused & daggy
as any politician would getting
actual sand in his boots—it’s like
Napoleon’s soldiers shelling off the nose of the sphinx
breathing a collective sigh of relief when
on the back of a dirty postcard a digger writes
post-colonial & doesn’t get called up on it
the sick logic of this being
that while skin abounds in our sunburnt country being so
sensitive & white means getting stuck on whether to
stock up or not: choosing vitamin D over aloe vera
girt by increased borders of self-preservation
retreating indoors to complain safely about migration
people wait it out in suburbs sparse & plain
like a buried verse in an anthem
only ever mumbled by overpaid athletes
words get lost in their delivery
though it’s clear if Andrew Bolt keeps
talking & people keep letting him I don’t think
we’ll ever be able to reverse the effects of such
awful coral bleaching