The Inner West

Newtown - the peak of the bell curve

I can wail about rentals

and the lawyers

who came to stay

the artists who have left

and woe tidings

to 21st century gentry.

Clambering out of the money pit

Predictions and wishes are launched

Where do the sentries go

the students now stay 

with parents

I thank god for the housing commission

to keep the distributary

of fiscal hygiene in check

Marrickville and Dulwich Hill

suburban enough for social diversity

on ethnic heritage lines

and perhaps the evolution

of hair cultures going back to the 1960s

it's different till the tribe

grows big and old,
hair loss or lost its meaning,

and neatly nucleates to familiar familias

the bedrock of the nation

and then the fluid sets

the concrete took a block

a yard or two.

In Leichhardt the gelato

will set you back

but not like the butcher

to your wallet

and it's the clumping

of real estate

between people's

fascinated disbelief

a million now the median

demanded. Let the bubble 

burst but first the high density

out past Ashfield

promises the end to watching

another reality tv show

and the commencement

of the Real Estate Channel on free to air

The trees of Petersham

are the stalwarts of space

some highway built

will demolish the old face.

It's a shitfight, the sprawl

it's the root system

and not gridded plane

and the jumbos are not that bad

for noise.

I can be educated, be brown, wear glasses

and dress like a hobo hermit hobo

without getting knocked and knocked out

by backwater boofheads endearingly called lads.

We welcome city and wanderers

musicians unless they got it good

and buy in Bondi. It's the art

undiluted cordial of the Cumberland basin.