SurVision Magazine

High Flyer


He's south of nowhere, his tinfoil island tower shines,
with sunlight raining down on you like a siege.
A million floors up in the Bingo Department an actor friend
flown in on the package tour
spins a wheel, bets a province or a village,
then begins a great feast
eating out the country's crabs.
Then he goes home with perfect teeth.
Poets love his yacht, and his stratospheric parking lot.
No Irish troubles, but the cigarettes are the same
as they were in '74,
the harbour wind breathes earnestness
and immoral as it ever was in 1788.
Dogs are puppies and in the evacuated factory conversion
the menus are lyrical.
Oceans wait for him, his stylish rescues
never go unfilmed.
Grey blue are his eyes, the streets in daylight-saved evenings
fill with nomad diversity, the Scythian gypsy,
the Mongolian girl insured,
or was it the Mongolian gypsy the Scythian girl?
He's forgotten, so rich he is
he doesn't have a clue where they're from.
The two wanderers for instance, from Twilightville.
That's them, his debtor children
still rotting in an oriental jail.
He'll never outgrow The Sad, even without
the gardens growing up his walls.
Alien land sold off recalled in rhymes.
He hopes you will remember, but not his crimes.
His father calls out from his grave: "Toughen up
or you'll blow the lot."
If I knew I'd tell him how to profit from the blues.
Obscene wealth cures nothing.






Adam Aitken was born in London, and spent his early childhood in London, Thailand and Malaysia before moving permanently to Australia in 1968. As well as numerous articles on poetry, essays on Asian-Australian literature, and works of creative non-fiction, he is the author of five full-length collections of poetry, two most recent being Tonto's Revenge (2011) and Archipelago (2018). An award-winning poet, he lectures at the University of Technology, Sydney.