It was a new town

I was the only normie there,
In the back street, bright, Newtown cafe,
A Gen X sociological expedition
To neo queer twenties coolness:

Black combat boots and hard chopped fringes,
Swaggering blue jeans under tartan scarves,
Fresh camo shorts and stout moustaches,
And unironic cable knits in forest greens.

Tall boys in cool white tees just short 
Of short shorts, Peruvian Llama Coats, 
Fresh dyed hair black and sharply stark
Above yanked high, tight white socks.

Eighties tribute sneakers in highlight colours
Of forties cars, and dark blue velour
Elasticated pants for shorter, older
First time mums, shining their navy at me.

Large, ornate plastic gold buckles
On old-man leather slip-ons for a girl — 
Or a boy — hiding glum face and school spots 
Under dull grey, dwarfing headphones,

Sporting not quite Adidas go-fast stripes
Along new vintage soft black tracksuit pants:
Laptop engrossed and sagely nursing
Their first transparent dirty chai.

Tall, skinny, scruffy dudes in effortless 
Black caps, vibrating like new cellos 
In the long kitchen, to a soundtrack 
Of Aussie old god Melbourne guitar rockers,

Cooling even the Sydney winter sun.
How do you make unpolished concrete
And beige walls cool? With octopus sized
Magnolias climbing out of giant, clear

Beer glass cylinders; with all black uniforms 
Of cryptic tee-shirt messages from found bottles,
And half zippered hoodies blamelessly
Draped on sapling beard, man boy staff;

With generous splashes of seventies
Truck-stop stickers on the Bakertop,
Minus the tits (I looked):
Honk if you're listening to cold beer

In Petersham, drive me nuts tooth and nail,
Fucking awesome creative director!
And only room for one lost envoy 
Of the taupe scrunch shorts, ath-fem brigade.

By the end I felt an imposition 
On their temperate, novel culture:
The wrongness of my uncoolness 
Unapparent to them because 

Theirs was a communion of acceptance,
Warm, smiling and gently unenforced.
I was not even a nineties intrigue,
Just an old scribbler near their coffee sun.