Shogun from Royal Headache,
in the clip for Carolina,
hawked and spat out
of their monochrome
practice room into colour
Petersham — Fed Era
red brick Reg Mombasa
through Sydney Long
or Sophie Steffanoni —
and he tears right across it —
dances a junk trolley past
Oxford Street, circumambulates
the water tower, its shade,
busts bag-handed from the White
Cockatoo’s bottleshop,
springs tight-coiled along
Petersham Station bridge,
scissor-kicks in the tunnel,
leaping with joy, like, I guess,
the night John Forbes first
heard The Saints,
not drunk
or stoned at all, just
gone,
joyful mourning.
Greg McLaren is a Sydney-based poet, critic and teacher whose books include Australian ravens (Puncher & Wattmann, 2016), After Han Shan (Flying Islands, 2012), and The Kurri Kurri Book of the Dead (P&W, 2007). His work has been anthologised almost widely.