(i)

This unwanted cornucopia - nickel-plated pears, bananas, grapes, apples,

kitsch relic from some neo-classical age, saved from Terminator meltdown

its metallic semiotics stalled on the conveyor belts’ rubber-suited fascism.

Universal bowerbird plucked from sexual obscurity - what a piece of work!

(ii)

All labour history is corrupt. Some American Vietnam War text claimed

that no foreign journalist recorded the fall of Saigon; ditto Neil Davis’

footage of the NVA’s T-72 smashing Palace gates was doco-illusionary.

Neil loved the East, Asian women & died in some shitty Thai coup.

(iii)

Next was coughed up a crouching brass cat. Sexless? Time-neutered.

Sleek in its full metal jacket fur. Did someone switch over to dogs?

“Bob” (“Gollum”) a famous cricket cat, farm-surrendered, now lives

in the ginger generations doorstop mewling around my mother’s feet.

(iv)

Why try to marry sex & Nazism? Partisans assassinated blond poster

crew-cut boy Heydrich (the original Tommy Finland?) almost botched

it, grenades destroyed his motorcades’ armoured genitals, Third Reich’s

proto-Eminem. How many times can you say ‘motherfucker’ textually?

(v)

The head of a Roman centurion rolled out next. Plaster, nose-smashed

by visygothic policies; modern archaeology’s Liverpool kiss. Transference

of sexual magnetism – Roman army defeats Macedonians at the “Dog’s

Heads”, Thessaly 197 B.C. & the rise of Russell Crowe’s rough trade.

(vi)

Then a statue of Dionysus, one horn snapped off, poetry books under arm

mop head beard sadhu fixed to a hard face, sunburn plaster peeling white skin.

His own dishevelled Dionysian nature got him expelled from his gnomeland,

ostracized forever from some Heidelberg courtyard, the tyranny of fallen chic.

(vii)

Murr ay quoted, “I came from a hard culture”, looking a bit like the jolly

Buddha sculpture that humped down the waste stream, Eastern & Western

burning want - striped woollen jumpers unpicking themselves: get knotted

his thin red line of religion spake: the closer you are to Caesar the greater the fear.

(viii)
Tyring to explain my personal ontology, the great man tranced through me,

two brothers jumped ship South Brisbane wharves 1886, Baltic, Isle of Reugen.

Dinnies used to be our name but it changed six generations ago, no one knew

why but Fredy Murray had been there; more literary Proteus than genealogist.

(ix)
The casualisation of Australia & 2.5 million workers suspicious rockabilly minds.

Strong magnetic fields pull artists into poverty, a labour hire shuffle & sucking

up to team leaders, Herr gruppenfuhrer gave needle-stuck Stacey her marching orders,

refused to climb down into a pit waist deep in glass; group signatures against porn.

(x)

On the phone the Manager said to her, “I can picture what you look like naked.”

This, after she’d signed his declaration; harassment is any unwelcome, uninvited behaviour,

whether verbal, written or physical, against another person. Harassment offends, humiliates or

intimidates your workmates & colleagues. All faces are the same man, one big self.

(xi)

Then it was my turn down the pit & I knew why Stacey had rebuked her job

satisfaction – part tunnel rat, part miner we dug out wine bottle shrapnel from

sewerage water, Hien, Alfred, Hussan; Vietnamese, German, Turk & Australian

all in the same trench, huddling from wage concussion; post-war economic boom.

(xii)

Makes one think of Fredy Murray’s artistic dilemma. How he only worked the land

in his head, his hands ploughing with a pen after he’d famously chucked in his public

service job with the revolutionary decree – I’m going home forever! Who could blame him?

Canberra in the 70’s - a political climate polluted by staffers dancing on bits of paper!

(xiii)
In 8 Mile, Eminem or ‘Rabbit’ as he’s monikered faces his own art versus employment

indecision. Garbled American obscenities mask his attempts to break dance on stubs

of bus tickets, slammin’ at the Shelter, the Nuremberg Rally in his mind enhanced by

the Detroit car plant’s ubermensch ethos; all rap lyrics are the same song, one big opera.

(xiv)

Noti ce to all staff. The Manager called everyone in for a rasp over the knuckles, man

of few words off the telephone pissed that someone had left a porno mag on top of a

needle bin, blocking access to the final come down of addiction; casuals poring over Jill

Kelly’s physical assets than VISY’s on paper profit; imagination lost in the waste stream.

(xv)
That’s why I collected trophies; cornucopias, statues, sculptures, columns - my finger on

the end game of guilt, lust, greed, consumerism. Someone else’s abject reality bound for

China’s paper tigers, apathy’s landfill. Davis, Murray, Heydrich & Eminem so screwed up

by jobs & sex, history’s artery hardening; outside my factory gate work will set you free.