The state’s the bully-boy for the drug cartels

bovaxxing you up on experimental treatments

& a cascade of paragovernmental surveillance apps

just so you can hit the nags and booze

by flashing your phone at the gate

while the billionaires race to space

with the withered trace of a face

from some creaky-arsed cold-war claptrap

when shows were still on weekly in segments

built around untrammelled product placement

& experimental psychosocial whining

& civilisation was just getting into

pumping its newborns with microplastics

& thalidomide & vitamin c & chemical

foodstuffs with no nutritional value

O those heady days before we taught

toddlers to cough pandemic for the LOLS

wreathed in the smoky melancholic air

though now you spruik yourself shrieking freedoms!

like a full-grown loon into the shadow’s mouth

under a gyrating pyramid of hot-desked riot cops

& twitter punditry, the butt-ends & the ray-bans

of social life crunching like bone spirits

beneath the baboon boots, and the swell

of jibing clicks on the Geiger’s chary face

telling a hoary story of glory for the boys

popping horse-dewormer like click-bait

in a Wittgensteinian confirmation abyss

this I guess in different ways is like

an end, not only for us, but for whatever kept

the whole burning like the eucalypt forests

& a billion screaming creatures foaming ash