[published in Overland, no. 149, 1997]

privatise! efficiency!
budgets black and tight
competition, rubbish-jobs
work, obey, fight

dry self-feeding words
dust to gag the mouth
in the internetted desert
to the thirsty south

an eagre of dust
rouges the unstoppable history
created every moment
by the obiter dicta of hack economists

‘change is the only certainty’
you can’t step twice in it,
in its dynamic cruelty,
lustrous, inevitable

once, a giggling boy too old for my class
pressed the head of a locust
onto the hot coil of a telegraph sender
on display for our enlightenment

the child of Socialists and Christians,
at that conjuncture i knew
despite all spirit-searing slogans
of ashes and dust

that evil had flesh and blood
that every river can be diverted.