the nitrous oxide canisters
carpeting our dust-blown campsite,
their nibs all punctured
(a hole for every airless high)
clink like rival marbles
as I rake them with a palm frond
from amongst the glitter-daubed detritus
of faces and splayed
stubbled legs and tool box
radios and wristbands and convex eyes—
shoot open tubes of gold body paint
onto blanched bush soil,
butchy boys, translucent spiders,
psytrance album covers, blow flies
blanketing the two compost heaps
between fire-bugged, moribund gums—
like little warheads blazoned with red
AUSTRIA and a seven digit serial number,
sold in boxes with lemon squash
and cream gateaux printed on the sides
of the plastic-buffered
cardboard—anodised chrome
tanks of oxygen
constriction
and auditory ringing
on centrifugal refrain
and mirth and absenteeism
and blotchy sight and baritone
acrobatics, supine acrobatics,
a sort of carnival parlance
interposing the jerks the writhes—
but chiefly of the glinting piles
pounded by steel-capped boots
into the earth in the night,
hidden under Boliviano carpets
in iceless Eskies with Sea Sheppard
and White Stripes stickers
on the hummus-smeared lid,
in the dregs of unnumbered bottles
of sports and fruit drinks and gin
and multivitamins, in sleeping
bag linings, between tarpaulin folds,
in pockets in the sticky pits of knees,
feathery headdresses—
it is morning and I am outcast
by being more than half alive—
my nonna’s counterpane
spills from the unzipped swag
like the alcohol from my pores—
one hundred and twenty seven
is the final figure I arrive at—
fewer than the quantity
found on a square metre
of the Back of Burke dance floor.
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