It’s the stale argument once again
of course, old verbal horse,
about that ethnic fairy land
and all the dark-brown banksia men
seething on their twiggy branches:
cones with violent hearts.

          Powerful Aquinas never saw a potato

Even a paranoid, wonderful Freud protested,
can manage enemies,
but where does that leave the ethnic elves
and cobbling tribes of goblins?
Fricked if I know but I have been
socio-trumped through centuries again.

                    The earth’s not cosy any more

but suddenly I feel a ravenous need for liberty
eating it all without so much as forks or knives,
just saying what I want,
even telling death I have the whole box & dice
under my control, knowing all the inky rules
at the very moment of denying the lot of them,
shouting like one who’s fully alive
as I must confess I am, at least
                                                           this honeyed afternoon