King Tide
we don’t always take stock of
or shed our satellite stocks but a blonde woman
pointing at maps became historical and the moon shone
hysterically on our sector
we embraced our shelves
for a large complex weather event
an east coast low that we panicked very carefully about
below a fat tsunami cloud
its every wish and wash like policy breaking the air
waves we saw at least a hundred and fifty
cubic metres of sand gone
lying and gushing about the street
people asked the sea why it had geared up negatively
the prime minister praised the storm for creating
new lucrative-warm waterfront estates
further inland on scenic new river systems he was spilling over
bubbling on camera gas eeked from his seams
it was like he’d been mined by his own
sense of the public gaze
royally
weighing in on the storm which seemed also
for most of its duration to be at war with various other wars
mostly digital and cultural ones that the media
or at least the media we didn’t have active stakes in
blew up and out of proportion
with the kind of inflammatory commentary
straight out of the textbook on bushfires and cyclones
it was hell
mental at the end of the dayglo
hi-vis and off in the west with a few helicopters
dewing the rounds
and a certain kind of peace
the moving forward kind had to be made
so the land was employed to right the ship
and the flora and fauna engaged
in the labour that would solidify the electorate
who’d become shaky on all the conflicting beetle grounds
that needed to be shored up
because time doesn’t
mean anything when you’re about to have Walter lapping
at your door he was phenomenal
contractually speaking his rivers’ tributes to Ares
included roots and trunks of many
wrong-time-wrong-place trees
and snake effigies hollowed out and named
after other hallowed dignitories of the prefab past
participle government
although
and no matter what Walter employed
to stem the time
signatures kept mounting up for a cap to unsuit
the foreign suits who were lining up
which was mean
we all thought
an anti-everything mentality had come home to roast
or was it a spit
i can’t be onshore
all i know is that it was spinning and revolutions
only last so long or shift their shop
into other regions of the globe like hot or cold y-fronts
so we were all good our behaviour
once the clean-up job had blown over heads
wasn’t in question
we could go on going about our busyness
of acquiring new states of mind to rent out
to embody with avatars or to have digested by
our huge accumulation of mouth pieces
we’d amassed
all the personal profiles of those who’d floundered
and the platforms we’d virtually divested of them were already
in the crosswinds anyhow
havens were being founded on cities of foam
we built on
and on the cultural wastelands and the driftwood
things were floating around at such opportune angles
and to such a positive degree in the tide
it was only natural that we adapt the landscape
had shifted it was a truly wonderful time
to be offshore
invested in our futures
