Parramatta

Parramatta

Encircled cemetery

reminds the city

of earthly and eternal things

(echoes of Macau).

Calcium rich soil

draws everything,

and everyone, to itself

– with menacing, libertine, Georgian lust.

And yet it repels

lunch-time boarders,

hurling them back into

the concrete and aluminium deeps.

Watch it clutching

it’s convict rags;

laughing, obscenely gesturing

and winking with all of its decaying face.

There is a joke afoot and glee about

but the blank, frightened,

Buy Now! And Live Forever!

office-gaols do not laugh.