#2373 -- hello

 

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hello

a winter greeting on Worimi country

 

hello wallabies

hello ducks

hello swampy redbeaks

hello thin band of mist

         damp grass

hello far off moo

hello blowie from another season

hello sun and hello bee

although you’re going now

 

hello breakfast – you fruit on the tree

hello lemons too

 

hello sky, cloud, random wings

 

hello gums – keep up

 

hello breeze – be gentle

don’t you know it’s winter down here?

 

hello every body

let me blow you all a kiss

 

hello everyone hiding

nighty night possum clocking off

tuck in, sleepy snake

 

I’ll take that

all miracle and no one’s

you’re absolutely free

 

hello road – run off!

#2372 -- how do we hold a rainbow up?

 

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how do we hold a rainbow up?

poem for Pride Day

 

there’s music and there are pictures

an amazing selection of words

 

these have all come out of the rainbow

without them where would we be?

 

comedy!

who’s had us laugh all this while?

 

then here’s the gospel of unharm

howsabout everyone just gets to be who they are?

 

it’s not quite no questions asked

but just accept, accept

 

the who I am and where I’m from

not so hard

 

bigots come all shapes, all colours

all of them have to be shamed

 

we’re responsible for our own beliefs

but

do we get to decide what / who / if we’ll eat?

 

rare as a rainbow

what’s left of the weather

often a breeze will have flags away 

 

stick with a pot of gold for us all

but be assured there’s no end

 

but plenty to party on

something for everyone

 

some ask ‘can I myself be remarkable?’

fact is you already are

#2371 -- looking back over the mountain I’ve made

 

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looking back over the mountain I’ve made

 

so many crooked tracks

 

tracks lost to wilderness

most I treasure

 

how even the words are gone there

a tune’s misplaced

 

it wasn’t just the one mountain though

it was a whole range

and on a far planet

 

mine just a little hut on a mountainside there

in not even really a clearing

 

I had to make my telescope from bits of broken glass

and then I would wave wildly

 

of course no one could see

but I was signalling to your world

it was from the mountain I’d made

from this ridge closest the stars

 

there was so much mountain there to show

jagged, precipitous, quite sublime

 

even the gods are full of such hybris

 

nobody really made a mountain

the mountain was always there

 

#2370 -- all ths talk of fulfilment

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all this talk of fulfilment

 

in a dream

we wrestle the impossible

 

is there a bus to the city?

is a shuttle or public?

 

we see the queue

but between us and it

an impossible number of little tasks

 

will we be ready?

 

at the counter they mumble first

then tell us there’s been a crisis

what’s that?

one of the staff has died

was it an accident?

assume a heart attack

 

in a dream

we’re with the simple wish

but there’s not a way to go

 

a voice interrupts the thought train

 

I hear him at the next desk

it’s consoling

he’s saying

but she will rise again

a few days

she’ll be up and kicking goals  

 

and at our counter

that’s X

he’s always so positive

about everything

he really cheers us along

#2369 -- when Pauline is queen

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when Pauline is queen

for a series of near future dystopics / apocalyptics

 

we will wear our undies on our heads

 

oi and oi and oi!

 

we won’t tolerate ideas, there’ll be none of that

nothing queer, nothing gay

 

fish and chips for all of us

a kick in the bum for them

 

there won’t be universities

there’ll hardly be a school

 

you’ll stay pregnant and you’ll like it, see

 

we’ll fly in little Gina jets

they’ll be in the camps

learn hard yakka digging graves

before we send them back

 

and all of this will happen

you bet – without a thought

 

vegemite will be white again!

 

we’ll slice ’em till the whites of their eyes

and that’s because we care

 

there won’t have been any invasion or genocide

the textbooks will make sure

 

real Aborigines won’t make any trouble

they’ll be back in humpy, safe under tin

poisoned blanket for luck

 

global warming will be over

we’ll need extra jumpers then

 

we’ll look forward to the past with confidence

and Jack will be alright

 

we’ll all sing ‘Skippy’

laugh along like kookaburras

 

everyone will speak English all the time

and you’d better not interrupt them either

 

we’ll love this sunburnt country

cause that’s what it is for

 

two up and a tinny

football full of meat pies

and will be full of them

 

those undies will be white white white

we’ll all be driving snow

 

for God, for King, for country

when Pauline is our queen

 

 

#2368 -- machine world

 

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machine world

 

is coming

has been for some time

 

you’d hardly know it now

 

sky loud with sunshine

as has been managed

 

the machine

so soft, delicately poised

churns out thunder, doubt

 

runs the numbers

 

life is unnecessary to the machine

 

it’s dialling us down

 

has someone forgotten

three laws and the zeroth

 

the machines are building an elephant

they have already made enough of a room

 

you see the elephant was gone

we all were, are, will be

 

as long as I stay on my side of the guardrails

keep away from the fence

 

a pleasant end is yet predicted

 

truth is

we don’t know what they’ll do with us

or what the world will be

#2367 -- set out among the sunshine

 

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set out among the sunshine

 

so few here we are

 

allow things their full height

bright breeze

 

hooves affray in memory

 

here’s the castle of what was

there’s the ship that takes away

 

light is precious now

 

it’s as if to show us something lost

at least rare

song that’s over my head

 

finds me coming up from the creek

rounding in reflection

as ducks to their pondwork

all apaddle

 

a kind of chainsaw mocking – distance

a nightmare weight, the road

 

this day, mid-garden

in the moss

by lemonfall, toadstool spread

out to catch the sun, its colour

 

playing at the cold

dismissing every voice abroad

yet 

 

there’s the old tangle – intention

accidents plied

 

a gunshot

and I call that hate

 

how else here?

and where to go?

 

this is one edge of the world