Canberra 2013

a centennial year poem

a crass grass ridden place
hidden behind civic sheen
empty streets laden
in publicservant

its conceit
that it counts, somehow
brown nosed cow
far away from the real game

choked by cloying carefully composted
conservatrite bullshite
dry in yr face death winds blowing
off the Monaroo plain

the frost circles widen
around the roundabout parade
public carrion birds circling the hill
circling inwards for the kill

a compromise stillborn
grown into a classless tasteless suburbinane sprawl;
a junked-up townie wasteland;
a white commodore drawl-ville

come visit the inhuman theme park toy town!
see the horse tradin in political unobtanium!
do smell the stigma martyr and pistil!
aboutfarce the subsidised pageant of national propagandorum!

chalk topped hills canter into summer fires
but a fillip inverts the entire scenario into
a cemented dangerous cancerous cantanker
and cold as a fuck in snow is Canberra