#1773 - I am angry with

 

1773

5.311

7.xi.24

I am angry with

poem for the world day of mourning

KAKO-day

 

my only friend, the end

               – Jim Morrison  

 

and the Republic summons shite –

the Mausoleum’s last long fart

               – apologies to Lowell

 

 

 

I am angry with it

I am angry with us

 

even at this distance, angry

with the failure to resist

the failure of justice, of right

 

there’s no least corner to escape

 

CRIMINAL IN CHARGE OF WORLD’S DEADLIEST GANG

 

angry at myself to be surprised

 

at the failure of irony to deliver

 

how weak we have been to let

 

it’s really all a kind of display

the eagles and the stars

the golf course

gleaming tower

 

and taunt the wrong?

what good?

 

try reason

see how far it gets

 

angry with ideas

 

to make a world safe for what?

 

foolskin

shared values?

no thanks

 

I am angry with what it is

what it shows

 

angry at all our pretending till now

(but that’s another poem)

 

it’s history where the wrong often win

 

I am angry for the Earth

for Science

yes for Truth

 

what can a poet – can an artist – do?

 

carry a torch to the top of the hill?

watch the world burn?

maybe join in?

 

very few of them can know what they’ve done

they must not be forgiven

 

this is the end of the gift they never deserved

they couldn’t understand

the ancestral blood shed for naught now

 

I am angry with it

with them

no better than the money made

the money lost

 

bare what teeth

grit

 

 

this morning

I was a long time getting the frog out of the kitchen

towards the safety of the no one pond, the bog, the swamp

we succeeded!

 

I am wearing my socks with the stars and koalas

I am setting off fresh again

 

woke up in the night with this

 

and frogs don’t boil by the way

frogs jump out of the water in time 

#1772 - the crime against humanity

 

1772

5.310

6.xi.24

the crime against humanity

notes towards the clock series

 

time breaks things down

 

swords to ploughshares

back again

 

a clock tears through time

time is the wrecker’s ball

and it heals a sun

 

the egg timer falls off the fridge

the washing machine knows its way

 

‘a clock is what’s good for you’

they’ll say

 

then frequent signs of the impending

 

the second hand like cloud spun

the minute’s converse all around

the hour an accusation

 

they have removed the clocks from the shops  

it’s so you’ll tell out time

 

it’s this moon

against the wide world

 

where you’re gone once was

you have a face

 

we have to put up with time

 

you have to forget to care

#1771 - Lethe light

 

1771

5.309

5.xi.24

Lethe light

 

without a thought come to

 

an ache in the weather

waking

 

a dew sheen

 

around me

all that has happened

 

big lizards and snakes in my dream

farewell

 

no taming the changes

no standing still

 

one animal is often another

they’ll bring you along

 

where I wrote certain things

brought the furniture

 

goanna runs up

thinks you’re a tree

 

underache, over

without a thought

 

it’s how time breaks things down

it ploughs

it’s the wrecker’s ball

 

it heals

and we put up with it

 

tap toes for a song

 

poor blind goanna

 

change tames us

 

imagine a wheel

the work of the will

 

the long rhyme is time

clepsydra spill

 

ahead of me

what will be

#1770 (think Captain Cook) - river he never saw

 

1770

(a Captain Cook kind of number)

5.308

4.xi.24

river he never saw

concerning William Manning

and the need to permanently remove his name from the map of Australia

 

this man

he has his name on the river, the valley

the church, the real estate, the gallery, the camping ground, the college

the Coles, the automotive, the map, the succulent garden, the school, the motel

and what else?

let’s re-name them all!  

 

why?

because this someone no one knows

who never came anywhere near here

he was the owner of bodies – the breathing, feeling kind

and some say souls

I won’t go so far

 

William Manning was very busy making the people he owned into money

 

the river is older than any of us

the river’s older than any name in any language

the river’s older than our kind  

 

he was a big man, big banker, member of pre-reform parliaments

twelve years Governor of the Bank of England

almost forty years on the board

he was a cash register of a man

 

and he thought it was good to own people

he thought it was right, there should be more of it

 

he’s still in the Hansard where he says

you can read it yourself

he says

how comfortable the negroes are – his slaves he means

and the slaves of his white English protestant peers

how well fed, with fruit trees, chickens in the yard

how they never have to beg

oh happy slaves!

 

‘named in his honour’, they say

the river, the valley and everything else?

one name leads to another

all of it taken for granted

 

I think it’s time for this to stop, don’t you

enough of William Manning

what did he ever do for you?

what did he do for Australia?

 

now I don’t think we should lightly rename the world

I don’t think tearing down every statue will make things right

better to re-caption, explain, to tell the truth

about how why things are the way they are

 

but there are some statues ought to come down

there are some names ought to go

 

‘named in honour’?

I have to ask what honour there is in owning others

in promoting this

in doing all in his power to prevent the abolition of slavery

throughout the whole wide world

because the sun never set on his empire

 

what honour in empire? one might ask

 

it’s time to remember who William Manning was

time to call him out

 

I call him enemy of humanity

I call him Mammon – avatar of greed

 

he died bankrupt too

as befits his moral compass

had to downsize to a London townhouse – poor poor William Manning

 

still stalks the Earth like a ghost abroad

still with us in these so many names

Manning this and Manning that

he’s spread like a stain all over the map

 

some people say

they’re used to a name

why change it?

that’s always been the name they say

but they’re wrong

there was a name before

there were names for everything before

 

and before there were names

the river ran

before there were people at all

 

let’s just ask the survivors

let’s ask the people from whom the river

from whom the valley was stolen

 

let’s ask

what’s this river – what’s this valley – called?

 

and it turns out it does have a name

in a language called Gathang

it’s called

Boolumbahtee

 

why don’t we just call it that?