Black greyed into white a nightmare of bicycling
over childhood roads harried peaceless
tomorrow came a mirage packed in hypodermic
the city we lived in then was not of your making
it was built by sculptors in the narcotic rooms of Stanley
       Street
we solved time an error in judgement
it was stolen by the bosses and marketed as the eight hour day

Waking under a bridge in canberra to chill scrawl
seeing the designs we had painted on its concrete like gnawed
       fresco
Venice with princes feasting while Cimabue sank deeper into
       cobwebs
as the huns approached in skin boats
back in the world Rick and George on the morgue-lists of
       morning
one dead of hunger the other of overdose their ideals precluded
       them
from the Great Society they are with the angels now

I dreamt of satori a sudden crystal wherein civilisation was
       seen
more truly than with cameras but it was your world not ours
yours is a glut of martyrs money and carbon monoxide
I dreamt of next week perhaps then we would eat again sleep
       in a house again
perhaps we would wake to find humanity where at present
freedom is obsolete and honour a heresy. Innocently
I dreamt that madness passes like a dream.

Writ out of ashes, out of twenty years of ashes
For George Alexandrov and for Rick