Tuesday, September 25, 2018

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

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