Houses of Parliament

By Orry Kerr

Deafened ears traced muffled soles along nearby floorboards.
The cupboards and Cabinets shivered crockery and mice,
Collecting dust on table fabrics and wallpaper whispers.
Peeling like old sunburn turned to rot, the splinters
in walls and waning planks beneath your feet read like coarse braille,
telling horror stories concocted by philosophers and socialites.
Tonight the swaying chandelier disco ball like a shattered mirror,
its shimmer hiding your crooked features drained by leeches
chains and mumbled speeches echo from newspapers.
as the souls once muffled crawled from mouseholes and trapdoors
come to feast on cheese before midnight, turned mould by your pores
as your gulping fastens to your waist, churning your stomach
with the rickety wooden boards turned to gallows and giblets.

What would those newspapers read in the morning when they find out?
Your corruption now concocted into sewage systems and anti-jokes
My bicycle spokes could garrote the state and its fraying bones,
coasting coast to coast amidst black fog and plumes not blooming
but the ticks that crawl and clock handles ticking are booming,
when Elizabeth and Ben too shiver above your craven tower
tolling for the new hour, brimming with scheming and ten-day cream.
The river flows putrid beneath, closets fit to burst tossed to the depths,
their skeletons ash and plastic row steady downstream
your house of horrors looms behind them, both accept the façade
of a world on fire, a crumbling Victoria, seven sets of firing squads.