The incarnadine highlands quench an obscure thirst.
Red Fanta exploded under the car seat.
Fifty-fix kilometres until the next Shell.

Christina Stead, in her diaries, does.
Yawing, the first anabasis of the full moon.
The fugitive years between 1971 and 2000.

The why of the poem takes your offer:
police protection in an unlikely part of 
	Darlington. Good.
Embers enjoy a gam in the near-dark marri canopy.

What is the patrilineage of a Swan Draught pilgrimage.
You cannot be his son much longer, Sebastian.
Wish I’d torn my deltoid on a gaff, not a backyard palm.

Ertrinkt — deceive the nation forever. This time
as the ghoul of folklore. Now that Sophocles steers 
the festival circuit, the Sadovaya ends in roadblock. 

Bougainvillea in the half-dark lets colour 
rather than scrapes like a palm claw.
Anywhere but here join the middle class. 
At least you are a threat to the kingdom, Alice.

You need Mayakovsky to gain a Shklovsky
but you don’t need a Harold Bloom for a Homer.
She carves her initials into the stoop.

Like a klop, Ipswich once visited me in dreams.
Mine. He lost the hugger-mugger at a pine desk.
Bored, the surfboard-shaped platter protrudes.
Learning’s surrounded by gumnut again. 
History makes a backchannel but hexagonal plea.
During biographies, a screaming baby begs for Mickey.

Hey, Mickey. You need a Sydney to foster a punk Roneo
but you don’t need Epicurus for a Restaurant Rules.

They can play / anything you put in front of them
and they do. 


Quotation in the second-last line  comes from Peter Porter’s “Better than God” in Better than God (Picador 2009).