No, Sorry, I Don’t Think It’s Awesome*

That bloody sculpture by the sea
is mostly crap if you ask me
The tricked up plastic, metal shapes
Are dodgy icing on the capes
Of south Bondi and Tamarama
I should take to them with a hammer
And surely they would not be missed
If I went with a dozer, pissed,
And pushed them all into the brine
And paid someone a massive fine
For commandeering council gear
While brain is coursing through with beer

But seriously who’d complain
If I relieved us of this pain
Of people who have come to gawk
Congesting Sydney’s favourite walk
By stopping short like taxi cabs
Traversing it like drunken crabs

Each Monday I restore my mood
And balance all the wine and food
By starting out at Bondi North
And shuffling, jogging, running forth
To Bronte and MacPherson Street
Then up and down, repeat, repeat
With proper music in the phones
Cold Chisel or the Rolling Stones
The Killers for a turbocharge
The Jam or U2 looming large

Til lungs are spent and legs are slack
And then I shuffle northwards, back
Through people walking without aim
The hapless punters who I blame
For underwriting this shit-fight
Which clogs the path from morn til night
Two steps forward one step back
“Watch your self there, watch your back”
Someone once wrote they’d never see
A poem as lovely as a tree
And so it goes with 3D art
It clearly cannot even start
To match up with the natural gifts
The ocean light, the tidal shifts
The rise and fall of moon and sun
alter the scene for every run
The changing winds the changing swell
No visitor can ever tell
Just which coastline is on today
It shows itself in its own way
There’s all that’s natural, real and true
And more than 40 shades of blue
And none of these improved one bit
By self-indulgent new age shit

So put your sculpture, bronze or brass
Into the metaphoric arse
Of town, some suburb where
They don’t have ocean vistas there
And leave our cliffs please not augmented
Looking just how God intended.

*On Bondi’s ‘Sculptures By The Sea’