The Lucubratory Collaboratory

Canberra’s funny flat-black,
mush­room topped
moun­tain mingled

tree lined streets

coated in thin-black, thin-black tarmac.

See we, can­berra community,

smoking in what, I don’t know
ash, fires, fumes and tobacco,
always go back this way
along the cycle path.
Along, Barry drive,

along north­bourne avenue,

along the roads curl­ing and alive with

tired tyres

Thin-black thin-black breath in
con­vin­cing grin
suck in suck in smoke.

Exhale thinly, breath­ing easy, wheezy
between Bur­ley Griffin’s water borne disease.

Squat­ted down between prime minister’s knees

we open the cab­inet up to the air
and suck in suck in

wheezy moun­tain dust car­ried in breazily.

And it beginnings:

the thin-black thin-black tarmac

begins to crack

it cal­luses into tiles of cro­codile skin

and the walls that keep us in from the

cold moun­tain air –

frac­ture as the roads around us rupture -

and the land, the ver­teb­rae of moun­tain line

vel­veted in vegetation

starts to sway, swish­ing and creas­ing into a spine.
Here comes the ancient alligator rapture.

Morph­ing into a cro­codile, mon­ster with

a snap­ping smile,

emer­ging from the mud, com­ing up.

Has had enough of our

elec­tri­city our needles of street lights

dig­ging in every night like

elec­tro­fide acupuncture.

The earth erupts

and claws drag them­selves, first legs with stumps
then other lumps of a being big­ger than us,
out of our sur­rounds out of the grounds

we’ve shaved into gar­dens, tamed into

arti­fi­cial lakes.
with thin-black thin-black eyes

who have had enough.

And the mon­ster begins to shake.