Song of The Plakiware World

All of us people

have bought Marie-Malt houses
and put a veneer on thing in the Old-Orchard country
-the rolling-green orchards billboarded on the edge
of town, around the 'Gateway' to the far-out hills.

We have iced-up tile biscuits for roofs and uprooted
Apples for flowerlawns there on foothills and spread table country.
We are wrapped in giftboxes of houses, thinking our houses
Among neighbours, jobbed houses and plakiware pantries.

We are dreaming about containment, going to happiness
And unhappiness looking over nextdoor's fence
And in keeping the sweet. Yeh, we like to have boundaries
Us people, and to live in building a plakiware world.

All of us nestle together as modular-mates in our votes
We are mates Australia, modular mates all of us lot;
We co-ordinate the look of one to the other, being
Trend-getters with eyes set for style, and lamipanel

Offices to keep the busy looking unoutdone.
We rubdown the instant pushbutton seal: ourselves
Counterparts to parts in containment and clark plastic
We breath shopping and keep mum in the tight air

We keep, we stay the same, covered up and kept
kept. But us people! We have out flavour-savours,
Our 0pinion-stores. We pak-n-store in facemasks
Of refinement Knowing our peaked bungalow has that

Vogue-sheer upline That panoramic motel-look about it.
We are going to doctors, gentling the wellbeing in pills
With many friends to host and become hosted among
Nibbling life's hors d'oevres from our keep-n-carry's

In partied-up backyards wired for touch and sound
with pickies of plump vinyl, our own subdivided platters
Luking the warm, swerving the sleek, making ourself a saving
We are the little people, snap-on, all-covering head-down

Bit-folk making contemporaries, in appearance a public
We have bought it, and arrived. We have made it.
We have made it all buying, ourselves, we have.
We are librarians of the containment.

We Know what plak-paks are, we read containers
We can read the secret writing of your plakiware.
The Mountians are behind us! and back us up
Supercool possessions of our naturestrips!

Crisp-pitted in cabbagehearted forests
Purpling up a pull of dewy lettuceslope, on footrest
Sprays sprinkling ferns under the rhubarb trees.
Paddocks cartwheel full with navels of red-honey dew

Tallpoles of sparrowgrass trees avenue Credit aisles
To the sheer walls of Hillsdale City with its castling
Skystack of plastic that us lot park about looking up
To great neon, saying: 'It's new. It's us! It's the latest!'

So come out to the suburbs of the old-grower's country!
Be baptised in vows of palstic. Committing Happiness!
Our plakcups over flow with irrigations of our blessings
Miming the pearlers of ditty just to contain ourselves:

......... Everyone wants their plakiware
..........To keep a little happiness in;
..........Everyone wants their plakiware,
..........And not an old jam tin.

Even you, brother sister, can get the angel badge, just
Dealing and being dealt, Always going to parties
Taking in the take-in. And for no real cash outlay.
Anyone can fit into the blurb and be applainced.

You'll discover with plakiware, the press-seal lid
On the sky holds a rich rich plakipearl as a link
Of chains you jointo be enriched and profiting,
Dispensing blessing in the Song of the Plakiware World.

1989 © Wayne David Knoll

Comfort Zones are our new fascism's popular compulsion. Here is a middle class lost in it's own pie. We make all our networks and then sell our souls to the fishwife of the market so very easily. I went to secondary school in the plaking outer eastern suburbs at Ferntree Gully just as they made the last moves to smother the early country districts beneath them , but I slipped through in horror of becoming another of the fillets of men in little boxes. The plak-pak sunkland is a soul-trawler's dream.