Kit Kelen #998 - I hail from New Gold Mountain myself (for Lachlan Brown)

998

for Lachlan Brown

I hail from New Gold Mountain myself

(after reading Lunar Inheritance)

hello to the moon

you inherit

from Kaiping

they walked off the edge of the world

everyone came through Macao

to Lambing Flat

where fists will fell

all for a bag of dust

so gauche to notice a little hatred come our way

sweet and sour everything

it’s like this with the ancestors

looking back, see very few

– a new country thing

oldest, driest, flattest

most gone of all

turn the horse shoe upside down

a continent falls out

now the East is careering along

just you try to stop it

Disraeli didn’t have a clue

we’re mirror in deep with the ancestors

they know all our tunes

because you look a certain way

guessed from the womb

start up your own reconditioned suspicion

no one can write my name

time has given

signature like a map

in Shanghai high over the river

across from the Bund

I met the human ashtray

it was glorious to get rich

but where’s the poetry in that?

twelve thousand years since the planet

was set to defrost

now we’re smokin’

crocodiles heading for the Arctic –

takes you back to the Eocene

wishing to know ourselves

how otherwise?

imagine we who are now

were then

we give nothing

we want their all

it’s gathering dust in the shed right now

meaning we will be trinket too

synthetic abject

like the cupboard of too many toys

sing of it

be countrymeant

all path of flight's

my echo in your head

where you are really from

well?

and outside

kikuyu, lantana, fireweed, scotch thistle

you’ll never get on top of it

or rather, they won’t

because we’re the ancestors now

this was fast forward

the nose blows out

(my big, your small)

points perch overhead

China’s Nosedive out of Black Mirror

then was of a different colour

all the disbelief you’ve worked

serves for a sort of faith –

the illustrated us for bauble

questions children ask are telling

can I be chinese?

system’s too full

print another circuit

it used to take A to B forever

dangerous too along the way

now you wouldn’t want to go

there before you blink

everyone else is too

now we’re ferocious animals

of course we are, why not?

diaolou

is a treasure house

gun turrets

lock em up tight

it’s a jungle out there

bandits everywhere

and on the tide rise

when typhoon comes in

now laptop glint

stone city bones

for a wall of was

and prosper this geometry

I am a white ghost

don’t say dead

dusty heartbeat

turtle feed

stroke, preen

hello to the churchy

spire moonstuck!

balance a world on that