The Evil Milk Bar

The paint is lime-green, but underneath
are old, ash-grey concrete blocks that bark knuckles
A chapter of  wire rectangles guards Its threshold
Three cold
            and grimey 
                        concrete steps

ascend to a narrow sliver of door

There is a thin film of green sweat on the walls.
Near the rusted iron rubbish-bin it is three degrees colder;
Dogs are known to avoid the spot.  

In winter, when it is still, you can hear It 
mumble the metric system
under Its breath.

It squats at the edge of a blue-black bitumen paddock
On It's Left side is a dark laneway of
red berry trees near which compasses do not work,
and the laws of grammar begin to fail 
(a girl once opened her lunchbox there
and screamed: it was crawling with nouns)

Some of the angels are too obtuse.
The geometry of the place is all wrong.

Escape up the lane is an option;
but a boy who wandered a little way up
became an accountant

Then it was October, and a black and white bitch stood
in the hard-mud wheel-ruts just watching. The universe
grew candid around her, and closing her eyes she sniffed 
colour television in the air.       

So you followed her again:

and held an artic fox up to the stars on Goat Bluff,
where diesel isn't. And surf crashed below 
like a long Turkish scimitar