Autumn Almanac

March begins and this isn't Flint, Michigan,
this is Wakouaiti, so why the toxic tap flow,
chemical warfare creeping through a waterhole?
Self-harmer farmers in a town called Malice,
and all the screens hand-held to make you jealous.
Way out here on the borders of disorder,
things that you look at get smaller and smaller.
The price of a house measured in skyrockets,
pieces of string and very deep pockets.
Anonymous veto, not for profit's got to go;
marginal is as marginal does at zero times zero.
Pete Dutton takes out the trash for compaction,
with all the compassion of a bog of liquefaction.
In his Jurassic Park mind he's top dinosaur,
as psychopathic as Mohammed bin Bone-Saw.
Hydrofoils, peppermill, and salt grinder:
America's Cup yachts, flying a blinder —
Luna Rossa's a sinking Prada handbag.
You are the Alpha and the Oprah agog,
check the righteous Princess, the Windsor frog;
Lorde knows, we will never be Royals on TV,
but at least we got water trucks in Waikouaiti.
Quakes made the ocean dance like Beyoncé's
booty-bounce over from the Kermadecs;
everyone hit the decks like nervous wrecks,
but it all fell flatter than a soufflé,
and Queenstown's a limbo-dancer in limbo,
go low, go lower, get your lawyer on the blower.
The bang on a can brigade leave the smelter,
carrying all the aluminium they will ever need
for tinfoil hats and the dross of anti-5G.
Destiny and Tamaki are revving up a Harley,
oozing oily unction, greasy hair and skin.
What he quotes is not quite from the Bible,
and what he preaches is almost libel.
So many contradictory narratives —
anti-vaxxers swear each is an eye-witness.
They don't believe in an interventionist jab,
or in Jacinda Ardern's gift of the gab,
but have faith in swarms of micro-aggressions
by Mike Hosking in his minute-long sessions —
more outlandish, the better they like them.
There's Cruella Collins and her 101 Damnations:
devilish thoughts of Covid-weakened nations
climbing to the top of decline and fall;
you will know them by their trail of the dead.
Autism, colonialism, evangelism, behaviourism,
are shades of the doxology economy.
Feel the hot breeze of aggressive reason,
anarchist or rationalist for the Hollywood LOLs
of Bezos Zuckerberg and the Deadly Hallows.
Locked out, locked in, locked up, locked down:
when can everyone go mask free, town to town?
When can the cray-cray king get a new crown?
There's the horoscope, the personality quiz,
the credit rating and the click-baiting.
I got a gut feeling, everyone's waiting.

Ōtepoti,16 March 2021

— David Eggleton