Cabramatta is a dream, then.
I was trying to find a poet between
the needles and the take-out boxes,
when Michelangelo appeared around the corner
desperately sculpting his latest wonder—
the passionate human form,
blade drawn, arm poised to strike . . .
But the blood stains on the pavement of Freedom Plaza
were too few for imagination to reconstruct
the art in the stabbing.
So he tossed it against the stains,
sat on a curb, rubbed his hands against his eyes
and sighed.

He asked me about my rhymes.
I was trying to make rhymes of
grown Australians
bending their chins up to the sky,
their eyes closed, their minds in heroin ecstasy,
as Asian men and women dodged the inconvenience
on their way to the station.
They did not rhyme.

We stared exhaustingly into each other's clay eyes
as he faked a smile and said, in his best Australian,
"No worries, fairdinkum Romantics can find
heaps of inspirations
in this London bastard."

I smiled too, and watched him melt
swiftly into the cracked brick wall of my dream—
the entirely imagined Cabramatta—
a falsehood finding stability
only in young schoolchildren,
reading Keats,
dreaming reality.