Multi-Miners & Co. Present Ned Kelly

Multi-Miners & Co. present Ned Kelly
as they'll bring you the world's end
unearthing the end of the world
without knowing where to
bury it---ah

inside glass, is it?
like Ned Kelly & Co.

panning & sluicing for
gold tailings--- that's mining

& the iron plough softening
in orange wood coals &
nailed & shaped into armour
front piece, back piece, headpiece---

they were miners who dug iron & legend.

Armour could have been asbestos
if Multi-Miners & Co. had known in advance
about the pub fire at Glenrowan.
Imagine the commercials!

Perhaps Ned Kelly was crowned
or, with his headpiece, crowned himself
king of his own Victorian republic,
leading legend off in all directions
when Multi-Miners & Co. said they
buried the crown after his capture.

Since 1880 they've all been after
that bulletproof iron crown---
the hopefuls, the get-rich-quick &
the dead, including Lasseter.
Multi-Miners & Co. urge them on.

Lay on the legend, they say.
Have Ned coming up out of
a lavender-pink dawn mist
like a robot joined by a
production-line of robots
who then disappear into history

& only history. But keep Ned coming
the Multi-Miners say, keep Ned
coming down to the railway line,
two pistols firing at random---Ned
tilting to & fro along sleepers of
bullets of cartridges of dynamite---Ned
endlessly rocking, endlessly reeling
too slowly to be human
too slowly not to be human---Ned
man & iron man reeling
along the conveyor-belt & on

towards tomorrow & tomorrow & tomorrow.