#auspol

Posted on October 1, 2020 by Paul Dawson

aspirational voter
don’t fuck with the tax system –
because even though you hate rich bastards
one day, you could be one of them
I mean, you never know

Liberal voter
don’t let them take your money
you work hard – without any
handouts ¬– and you certainly
wouldn’t call yourself rich
but yes, let the gays marry

progressive voter
secular kindness in a daily struggle
against the blindness of privilege
we are all the same
pronouns: us / them

conservative voter
you can’t even fucking say
what you think anymore
around these humourless luvvies.
You have rights too, now that the margins
are oppressing you

swing voter #1
when you watch the telly
which one of their smug mugs
annoys you the least?

inner city voter
they do it tough out in the bush
but at least they have gardens –
here it’s just a filter bubble of
terrace houses, cafes and apartments
with only algorithms and a line of traffic
to keep the suburbs at bay

Labor voter
once were workers
shirts begrimed with elbow grease
heaving at the picket lines
now –
wait, who are we?

independent voter
scattergun protest vote or boutique cause?
what makes you different
is what makes the difference

Green voter
science is sexy again
like a Tinder date: swipe left
and we’re all slowly burning
in the dark satanic mills

swipe right, and it’s better to reign
in hell than serve in parliament

either way, our children will
soon be seeking asylum
on another planet

asylum seeker
a weather vane
for our nation’s fears
or failures

swing voter #2
as the country lists
from left to right, listen
to all the sales pitches
and check your balance
like a moody pendulum

non-voter
I mean, they’re all fucked.

aussie voter
spills sauce from a democracy sausage
over greasy fingers and onto
the school ground, where it sizzles in the sun
like blood on the streets in some
faraway revolution

#auspol
how good is Australia?

Posted in 97 & 98: PROPAGANDA | Tagged

A Good Boy

Posted on October 1, 2020 by Craig Bolland

The true fact of the matter was that despite the nearly seven minutes they had spent talking about the annoyances of Skype meetings rather than, say, a let’s-all-huddle-in-the-middle-of-a-sporting-field kind of meeting, despite that, despite those minutes, Brian copied him in to the email second to last with five other team leaders listed before him.

Brian wasn’t one to alphabetise his recipient list or anything like that. He had no system. Brian just added people to the TO: field in whatever capricious order the names came to his manila-folder mind.

Seven minutes. Productive minutes in the sense of being comradely? Of reputational augmentation? No. There he was. Only Janice listed after him. Janice was like sixty or something gaddamn it and one slip-on shoe out the door as it was. Definitely not moving upwards, trajectorally speaking.

Again. Again. Another of a thousand tiny gut punches. He couldn’t think of any one of his colleagues, peers, networks of supervisors or more altitudinous executives who copied him in to an email first. His name was near the start of the alphabet. Nothing Polish.

He was beige. Wan. Was that it? Forgettable somehow. Not assertive. Didn’t speak up. He was too fucking nice. That was it for sure. Part of it. He didn’t self-promote. That was it. He was no propagandist of self-virtues or accomplishments. Nobody noticed and why should they? They had their own virtues and accomplishments to boldly feather nests with, to ensure were enumerated in the monthly newsletter.

Fuck it. Fuck it. Fuck it.

When he was seven years old, just seven, he had found by the side of Moggil Road a small retriever puppy who had been hit by a car in passing. Just a glancing blow. The puppy was alive but red raw skin showed through its blonde shank and it limped horribly. And he had soothed that puppy, picked it up, brought it home, swabbed it with a moist towel, lay a hand on its flank, put it in a box made comfortable with towels and a Spiderman pillow, felt it’s pumping heart settle, sat by it until it began to glow, until it’s health replenished and it began to float, glowing, a meter above the bed, glowing and floating all calm and well like and he sat by it not allowing it to drift unpleasantly in any current of air until his parents came home, his praiseful parents, his proud pleased parents who saw the glowing happy healed puppy floating there and called the number on the puppy’s tag to summon, a half hour later, the puppy’s worried and welcoming and thankful, oh so thankful, owners. They gave him a twenty dollar bill and shook and shook his hand. And that was just one day. There were other golden days too. He was a good boy. Never any trouble. A good boy. That night his mother cooked roast potatoes just for him, shiny with butter. All the neighbors were told. All the relatives. A good boy.

He was too nice. He wasn’t boastful enough. Seven minutes. Second last. Fuck it fuck it fuck it.

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How to Make Zucchini Fritters With an American Mountain Lion in Your Kitchen

Posted on October 1, 2020 by Joel Burrows

Ingredients and utensils:

– One motorcycle helmet
– One onion
– Two eggs
– One comically large leg of ham
– Three cup of all-purpose flour
– One fry-pan
– Two tablespoons of olive oil
– Two zucchinis
– One kitchen knife or one BC-41 dagger

Steps:

1. Cut your onions finely. Do not look up. If the onion makes you weep that’s a good thing. Use your tears to your advantage and keep your vision semi-blurred. If you make eye-contact with that Mountain Lion, he will kill you.

2. Finely mince your zucchinis with the speed and precision of a Formula One driver.

3. Grab your mashed zucchinis by the handful and drain their liquid into a bowl. Yes, you will definitely need a bowl. I didn’t mention it earlier because I was distracted by the Mountain Lion that is in my study. Strangle your zucchini, drain the water out of their figures.

4. Get another bowl. Crack your eggs, pour your flour, and add your zucchinis into it. Keep breathing quietly. Mix the ingredients together until they are lightly battered.

5. Look up. Stare into the eyes of that fucking Mountain Lion. Have your hands search across your bench for your comically large leg of ham. When the Mountain Lion is just about to leap at your throat and make consciousness leave your body, peg that meat-bone into your lounge room.

6. Chop-chop! Put your motorcycle helmet on. Grab your bowl of zucchini batter and 360 it into your fry-pan. Add your olive oil into the fry-pan before you do that. Turn your hot-plate up to eleven. The American Mountain Lion is making a lot of noise. You cannot see it, but you know your Vinnies lounge is being destroyed.

7. Start to cook your batter for three minutes. Pray, or visualise a crystal, or if you’re an agnostic quickly find a god. Cougar attacks are rare, but they’re rarely in a person’s house while they’re cooking.

8. Oh no! The Mountain Lion in my study has decided to attack me. I am writing this with one hand while he starts to chew through my left elbow. His nails are excavating my thighs. My blood is all over the floor and I do not know how this will end.

9. Flip your batter and cook for another three minutes.

10. Transfer the zucchini onto a plate. I am looking at ribcage of the Lion that is trying to tear into my arm. He is almost empty. He is probably scared because he is so far away from an American forest. He is probably a lot like me when I start to hungry or less empathetic, though I do not condone this behaviour.

11. Let the oil drain. Sprinkle it with salt. Cut it into fritter like shapes. Creep into lounge room and watch the Mountain Lion. He is asleep. You would not know that he was capable of destroying anything, if it weren’t for the slits in your lounge and the bone being empty. Even mob bosses and wild cult leaders look peaceful when they sleep. Perhaps you should call the RSPCA or your mother. Yeah, maybe do that, they could help you as you munch upon your fritters.

Posted in 97 & 98: PROPAGANDA | Tagged

Survey said.

Posted on October 1, 2020 by Sarah Black

43% of people surveyed said they hated their lives or not in those words because there was no box for that on a two-dimensional form that didn’t ask what they’d noticed out their kitchen window that morning while absent-mindedly scooping cereal into their perfunctory mouths. Two-in-5 Australians (over the age of 18) indicated that they would like more sex while half of the respondents weren’t entirely able to explain the purpose of their mortgage let alone what it was they’d been up to for the past twenty years, deferring instead to ‘all of the above’. There wasn’t anything to formally suggest that given half a chance they’d change their preferences tomorrow but that was the feeling you got, reading between the amassed lines. The survey did however confirm that most people would rather take back-to-back round-the-world holidays though they were too polite to ask for the form for that. 15% of people vaguely hoped tomorrow would be better but couldn’t or wouldn’t count on it, while most seemed to understand that the policy was necessary. Interestingly, all those who responded knew how to fill out a survey as if it were a direct line to God (as if He might one day get to finding their thin white sheet of paper in His crowded in-tray), 12.3% of older people (over 55) hoped one day to meet Him personally for an in-person review of the data, and those who didn’t respond to the survey, well, we haven’t heard from them.

Posted in 97 & 98: PROPAGANDA | Tagged

Excerpt from KATI THANDA

Posted on October 1, 2020 by Campbell Thomson

for Reg Dodd

At Curdimurka west of Maree there’s a sign:

OLD GHAN RAILWAY HERITAGE TRAIL

The Curdimurka Siding, dating from 1888, is the last remaining station yard
of significance left intact on the Old Ghan Railway and includes
station yard, water treatment plant, tower and associated water tank,
fettlers’ cottages and the nearby Stuart Creek Bridge. The 433 metre long
plate girder bridge is located a kilometre west of Curdimurka
and is the second longest bridge on the former Ghan line.
Local Aborigines believed that a great snake named Kuddimuckra lived at nearby
Lake Eyre. They avoided travelling along the shores of the lake and when
many viewed the approaching Ghan for the first time they fled.
Curdimurka siding has been the location for the Curdimurka Outback Ball
held since 1986. The event attracts 1000s of tuxedo and taffeta-clad revellers.

The Curdimurka Kennicott tower, a burnt orange cylinder of iron
that softened the mineralised waters of the spring,
is an Ozymandias on a gibbered plain
with a stairway that sinuously climbs its flank
and Galahs that shriek like tyrants on its peak.

In 1883 engineers proposed pumping sea water
356 kilometres by a channel from Port Augusta to fill Kati Thanda.
When Ion Idriess started to beat up this idea again
W.G. Woolnough, a former Geology Professor in Perth wrote:

Since, however, the bed of Lake Eyre is 
just under thirty feet below sea level
and the length of the canal would be in the order of 400 miles
it does not take of very profound knowledge of hydraulics
to doubt whether a gradient of less than 1 foot in 10 miles
would be sufficient to initiate or maintain a flow of water
even in the absence of an evaporation rate
of much more than 100 inches a year along its length.

In 2011 Badescu and others dreamed up a scheme
with solar power to pump sea water through flexible pipelines
and a polyethylene film to cover Kati Thanda
to reduce evaporation and enable aquaculture.

John Bradfield designed the Sydney Harbour Bridge
& in 1938 said we should divert water from North Queensland
by tunnels and pipelines to Kati Thanda to irrigate
a great food bowl, generate power and change the climate.
The Queensland Premier asked how much.
Maybe 30 million pounds? End of meeting.
Bjelke-Petersen persuaded Fraser to put up $5 million for a feasibility study
for the same idea before Fraser lost the election in 1983.
Barnaby Joyce and the Queensland Liberal National Party
proposed a New Bradfield Scheme in 2019
with an estimated cost of more than A$15 billion.
Pauline Hanson and Bob Katter think it’s a good idea too.

It had not rained for nine years at Muloorina Station
in 1963 in Arabana country just south of Kati Thanda
when Donald Campbell brought his Bluebird CN7
to break the world land speed record.
He’d tried and crashed at 360 mph in Utah in 1960,
fractured his skull and punctured an ear drum
& said he was no longer much use for anything, old sport
but the Kati Thanda salt flats
provided a perfect fifteen-mile strip, till it rained.
Elliot Price, a friend of Francis Warren, who leased Muloorina
was pleased as wool was one pound a pound
& he could restock his flock.
Price told Campbell, blackfellas won’t go near the lake
because of Kurdimurka, the Rainbow Snake with a kangaroo’s head.
Campbell returned the next year when on 17 July
with his teddy bear mascot Mr Whoppit in the cockpit
he zoomed an average 403.1 mph over a measured mile
with a maximum of 429 mph, to beat his Dad.
On New Year’s Eve he broke the world water speed record
in Bluebird K7 on Lake Dumbleyung near Perth,
the first man to hold both records at the same time.
Trying to go faster in 1967 on Lake Coniston in England
he hit a duck and flipped and died.
They found Mr Whoppit in the reeds.

Posted in 97 & 98: PROPAGANDA | Tagged

A Massage from the Vice-Chancellor

Posted on October 1, 2020 by Toby Fitch

1
Dear ____ , in a nuanced way. At the shame time
I am writing to you this is in addition to your
with some key information regular annual crisis
disruption. In adjuncting to our management
‘new normal’ you have shown positive spirt leave.

Some a computer or other compassion device.
students have I am grateful to all those cool
expressed their portly leagues who have re-
folios, company concerns, to ponded rapidly
ensure you will not be able to access to the

questions you are a staff member. I do know
about how this no this is disappointmenting.
environment is an unsettling We thank you for
tomb assisting us to proctor your being maintaining
online. So please, don’t come to camp on us if your

core crisis in many different sways that are specific
through this most to your particular, under-active-
torrenting of chimes and consideration, casual
for understumbling. We are making contract
every effort to really take this into account life.


2
Since I wrote to you on ____ , regarding projected
our new ‘new normal’ austerity budgie shortfall
measures your staff. while a prudent app roach
Time frames of great magnitude should poke
your you in the coming days about what this

moans for your impact options, which national
have arisen intake, as outlied. agents have roles
We anticipate some to play in flattering your
deferral, loads. curve, but also in minimising our
Inter- goading principle; and that, of course, is

to increase the rigour. We are currency to emerge
on track to achieve only core from this timely
maintenance. And so crisis and for your extra
thank you for ordinary faculties in sustaining
managing department head. Yours. ____________

Posted in 97 & 98: PROPAGANDA | Tagged

The Company You Keep

Posted on October 1, 2020 by Chris Joseph

The Company You Keep by Chris Joseph

Posted in 97 & 98: PROPAGANDA | Tagged

SỰ TÍCH CHÚA | A FAIRYTALE OF GOD

Posted on October 1, 2020 by Ha Manh Nguyen

Hoàng tử hôn công chúa ếch
Rồi hoàng tử hôn cung nữ
Cung nữ vuốt má bác làm vườn
Bác làm vườn cho cậu bé đánh giày quả táo
Quả táo được cậu bé chia cho cô bé bán vé số
Tờ vé số rơi vào tay kẻ trộm chó
Kẻ trộm chó khạc vào cây hoa ven đường
Cây hoa chết mang theo mầm bệnh cúm ếch
Những người còn lại sống khỏe mạnh
Và nói chung yêu đời đến khi đầu bạc răng long
(Trừ kẻ trộm chó có lần bị chó cắn
Nhưng hình như đã kịp tiêm phòng
Còn hắn có cắn ai không thì tôi không rõ).


The prince kissed the frog princess.
The prince kissed the palace maid.
The maid fondled the gardener’s cheek.
The gardener gave the shoeshine boy an apple.
The apple was shared with the lottery ticket girl.
A lottery ticket was purchased by the dog thief.
The dog thief spat on the roadside flower.
The flower died carrying away frog flu germs,
leaving the others healthy lives
and maybe still sharing love amongst them,
until they died naturally of old age –
(except the dog thief, who had been bitten by a dog,
but, fortunately, vaccinated in time,
although if he had bitten anyone else,
I wasn’t sure.).

Translated by Joe Dolce

Posted in 97 & 98: PROPAGANDA | Tagged ,

Surveillance: 3

Posted on October 1, 2020 by Annie Zaidi

i.

Listen, why do you think the armed constabulary
shot all the able bodied men that evening in ‘eighty seven?

A – Because the constabulary had guns

B – Because water sources have always needed blood
sacrifice of the young, they were rounded up and shot near the canal
although washing blood out of a canal is impossible

C – Because they had a truck
(and blood is a non sequitur)


ii.

Listen carefully now

They’ll call it Reinforcement of Internal Security
Or Control of Anti-National Activity
Or, more neatly, Procedure

Procedure will ring the doorbell eleven times
between three and four in the morning
yanking you out of a deep sleep dream in which an ex
wears mascara and wanders unbathed into a nice hotel

Procedure will riffle through cupboards
ask you to empty out drawers and make precise lists
of contents: your grandmother’s watch,
cultured rice pearls, plans
for a house not yet built

Procedure will politely ask the cab driver to pull over
on the expressway, flashing mysterious
IDs, requesting you to come answer a few questions
without specifying where

Procedure will concern itself with proof:
papers you can furnish, phone lists to establish
whether you have journalist artist professor
friends who might make a noise if you disappeared
or were found to have confessed to something
via methods popular in the eleventh century CE

Procedure will stand guard
as fire snakes through your township
documenting what becomes of solar rooftop panels,
underground sewage tanks and compost pits
under high heat circumstances before updating
the procedural manual

Listen to me:
Do not allow
an anxious fingertip to check how thick
the dust on your great-grandfather’s rifle
lying in safe deposit

Return to the newspaper
and tomato-cucumber breakfasts
Turn to the comics page
Read your horoscope
Listen for it:

When it begins, you must not insist
on calling Procedure to its face
war

Gather up the children likeliest
to die under the biggest tree
and surrender to them
the a-b-c’s of your language

At noon, take the littlest ones
into your lap and chant
a rhyme about the kid
who ate almonds and walnuts
and drank soda water

Conduct frog leap races
potato-spoon races
thread-the-needle races
sack races
cartwheel races

Take those of your people
who do not yet understand
to the cinema

Those who refuse to eat
outside food,
buy them cakes

Juice the air for laughs

Hold your arms wide and squeeze
the breath out of their gnawed hearts

Nibble

Grow old overnight

Toss salty head from left shoulder to right
and run to empty swings in a park you watched
grow emptier
emptier
empty

Listen for it:
Procedure (war)

Now, loud, call it:
War


iii.

The town is a black hole

Dangling in neat rows
fairy lights in
glass front store

Inside hang some more
in rude bunches of
white military formation

These lights are your tunnel
At the end of it
you may go blind

Orange green peacock blue
mosaic shells clasp
trees in spider embrace
sucking out of your eyes
the handful of soil you were saving up
for your own grave

Listen
you, who have been fed your own flesh
you cannot tell pain from victual

Too long you sat through meals
where the blood of your brother
set lips smacking
Too long you pursed your mouth to suck
at the wound in the infinite body
of the republic

Eyed by the watchful
you stoked fire

You hurried past your kul devi
and devta, giving them sweets
and yellow thread
never the heart’s blood
that is due to the gods

It is not too late
Unglue lips from the wound
and say,
I do not drink

Stop sticking that knife into
God’s underarm
Say, my brother is my brother
not my meal

Say, my brothers fill the hole
in my being

Say, forgive me
I did not know

* * *

Posted in 97 & 98: PROPAGANDA | Tagged

The Lament of Kel Nedly

Posted on October 1, 2020 by Francis Bede

All right you kiss my arses, you bleeding simples, you stay at homes,
Stick yourself by the audio and bend your ears, for I have grievances to tell,
Those of you whimpering and backsliding, I can hear your Aussie groans,
Be patient my fellow rebels, history like this I know too bloody well;
For this is the day I go into bankruptcy, found guilty by my enemy accusers,
And I’ll struggle you bastards; you’ll have my life but not my free spirit,
Rebels fight hard for freedoms; and stick it to sweet freedom’s abusers,
I have no maker or parenting kinds; destiny is closer and I’ll not fear it!

What began as a scrap with the council over the height rules of a shed,
With kitchen knives drawn, ugly abuse has peppered the misty morning,
Inside me a boil of Irish resentment, bursting out the orifices of my head,
And foul words have gushed from my throat and turned into British scorning;
For was it not they, who oppressed my people and drove them overseas?
Neglecting the starving punters ravaged by the Potato Famine,
They who convicted our gamers, transporting them to wherever they please,
Shipping them in yellow and stripe, labelling them Irish Vermin.

But that’s not the way dear listeners, you who muscle legend down the years,
I fought for your rights and though an honest man, I committed dark deeds,
Like arguing and resisting; instead of shouting my mates copious beers,
I sought with my soul brothers instead, to rid our patch of The Empire’s weeds;
Nuisancing and affray we did, bearing our backs to the hurting rod,
To help the powerless, and return them their freedoms wrongly taken,
And be of consequence when judgement comes, and make peace with god,
Though my deeds are out of time, out of place, and thoroughly mistaken.

What else is there to fight for, when poverty and oppression has been rid?
For when the entire world is goody, and meat and jam are the standards
Of every Aussie man and woman, and every hybrid descendant who can bid
For a home, work and the right to gaze wistfully and peacefully skywards;
I hear of rebel outlaws black masked, riding on two wheels into sunset,
And of hot tempered men regurgitating their pessimism in public places,
With a nod and a wink, the flush of anxiety vanishes without regret,
For the jack of all arguments survives in mouths lined with stacked aces.

The cranked up rumours of me off shoring to India, fly madly into lore,
A new kind of folk hero I am, sticking it up the local prick schemers,
Those so called representatives riding roughshod, them rotten to the core,
I was a better outlaw than these ugly bunches of high falutin’ redeemers;
Suck masters of minor powers, scroungers for pennies, down for a spewey,
Why aren’t they heroes, those who nailed me to the pale bone of justice?
I know of their names; Ricky Paul, Col Mandrake and Black Louie,
Names forever disappeared they are, poor players in a social armistice.

Think of me no more, my comfortable clowns living needlessly in worship
Of the kind of legendary tomfoolery fit for the stupidest bungler I was,
And the projection associated with heroes, surely undermine the mateship
Of needy friends, who live together in harmonious bliss just because;
Let me fade into a history reserved for impulsive numbskulls like me,
And bear me no relevance to changes happening at this very now,
C’mon my special little worshippers, c’mon let my troubled name be,
Kel Nedly, brave heart to the weak; may he yet make his humble bow.

Posted in 97 & 98: PROPAGANDA | Tagged

How good is this?

Posted on October 1, 2020 by Victor Billot

After I got back from Hawaii, there were fireworks
for New Year, then the cricket, not that I’m complaining,
it’s always a busy time of year – a family time.
I was having a look at the business pages one evening
when the wife said look outside at that will ya?
To be honest I couldn’t see anything much.
The horizon was a lovely pink colour, or perhaps maroon
or red. The sun was a ball of fire sinking into it.
How good is that? I said to her. But she was
on the iPad, frowning. Uh-oh, I thought.
I went into the next room and turned up the air con.
I can read a room! Sure enough she followed me through
and said what about this fire then? Haven’t heard anything
I replied, looking at my phone – of course it was flat.
Then her iPad rang. It was Gladys on Skype.
Where the bloody hell are ya? I heard her crackle.
We’ve all got to get out of town! I’ve just got back I shouted,
people will start complaining if I head off again.
But Gladys told me to look out the window and sure enough
there were these big flames coming over the back fence.
Fuck, said the wife, the joint is going up!
I didn’t say anything but I really can’t bear it
when a woman uses language like that. I’m old fashioned
at heart. She was off like the clappers so I went down
after her, and the security bloke who sits at the gate
was waiting for us in the SUV, in fact he was already
halfway down the drive when the wife waved him down
(the poor bugger nearly ran her over.)
I slipped in the front and gave him a wink
and said brakes a bit sticky on her mate?
You’ve got to use a bit of humour to break the ice.
So we were all in snug and I was fiddling around
with the door when this little compartment opened
and a can of lemonade popped out. Cold as.
I said how good is this! but the wife was still on the iPad.
There was this smell, it was pretty disgusting actually,
and I said to the driver someone’s burned the prawns
but he said nothing, just turned on the lights and sped up.
I knew then he was a quiet Australian – one of my people.
Anyway we ended up down at Bondi. How good is that?
Everyone was down there. Gladys was waving a torch
and came up with a couple of special branch on either side.
Afternoon boys! I said. For God’s sake what are you doing here,
she hissed at me. I don’t like the Lord’s name taken in vain
but she was upset, so I didn’t take it personally.
I could see a few of the punters pointing to me,
they were waving and yelling G’day I think.
I couldn’t see much with all the smoke.
They must have put on more fireworks because
there were all these bangs – very loud actually,
some of the ladies screamed a bit – then a big cloud
of burning stuff went flying overhead.
I thought then it might be a good time to call it a night
but that bloody driver had gone off.
It all got a bit confused after that. We ended up going
for a bit of a paddle and more people started arriving.
I said, is that Kylie Minogue over there?
By now the wife was in a lather and had started crying
so I tried to give her a cuddle to cheer her up,
but she was being difficult about it to be honest,
so I had to really try hard to get my arms around her
to give her a big squeeze. Women can be a bit like that.
God, get us out of here, I thought to myself.
Then just like that the waters opened.
I mean the ocean went out like the plug had been pulled
and I thought someone up there likes you, fella.
I yelled out come on everyone, follow me!
So we walked over the sand and the rock and the mud
where the sea had been, and to be honest
it wasn’t that pleasant since there were plastic bags
and an oil platform lying on its side and all the dead fish,
although not as many as you might think.
At one point all these kangaroos went racing past.
But the flames kept following us, it was like
the fire knew where we were going. Then all the
grey dead coral sitting on the mud went up like kindling
and it was quite hot so I started running
and when I stopped I was on my own. What to do?
I’m a simple man of faith. So I stood there
and raised my hands to the burning clouds far above
and beseeched O Lord give your humble servant a hand
in his hour of need. Sure enough when I opened my eyes
this big crack in the ground had appeared before me.
I thought to myself, twice in one day! How good is this?
I clambered down into the black crevice
where it was warm and quiet so I kept on
feeling my way and finally came around a corner
where spreading out in front of me
was an endless plain of fire.

It was the whole world burning.

I turned around because it would have been good
to talk to someone else or get a hug, or just even
shake someone’s hand, but there was no one there:
just the darkness and the fire.

Posted in 97 & 98: PROPAGANDA | Tagged

Living vicariously through myself

Posted on October 1, 2020 by Darby Hudson

One day I’ll meet my reputation in person.
And I’ll ask it if it would
like to have an ice-cream with me up
my favourite tree…
and of course, it will tell me to
get fucked.

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You Want It Darker

Posted on October 1, 2020 by Daniel John Pilkington

after Leonard Cohen


There is a crack in everything.
It’s how the light gets in.

The crack is that there is
something, some thing in the light.

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Lion’s Bridge

Posted on October 1, 2020 by Ion Corcos

The seats were covered in snow in February,
and the screech of trams as they passed Lavov Most,
Lion’s Bridge, muffled the water of the Vladaya.

A woman walks in red heels outside a bakery.
The old communist buildings are tattered.
In winter there was ice on leaves, and stray cats
sat on an outdoor heater; the sky was dark.

It is still hot in September; no fur coats,
no chimney smoke. In the markets,
celeriac for 2.50 leva a kilo, chestnuts for 5,
plums for 1. Taps and leather bags.

I want to sell you something, a man says.
We have knives for everything. For cutting,
for chopping. Even for killing. He laughs.

An electric bus stops outside the Zhenski Pazar.
In a butcher’s shop, pigs’ trotters
and a head with its tongue hanging out.

The lions on Lavov Most have no tongues;
to guard secrets, some say, and ghosts.
A woman feeds a stray cat; looks sideways
to see if anyone has seen her.

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Handbagged

Posted on October 1, 2020 by Jilly O'Brien

Funny peculiar
not funny haha

who

has the most to lose
from white smoke

and breaking bread
how the grocer’s daughter

ought to bare knuckle
on scabbed over grass, yet finds herself

elocuting
whilst the canary chokes

hits the cage floor
with a blind thump

working men are hit with bricks
thrown from the sky

each one wrapped in Christmas paper
and tied with string

a tag swinging

Funny peculiar
Not funny haha

That the Cold War
was a carry on

A Hollywood rom-com
starring Ronald Reagan

even Sting was on the payroll
hoping those Russians loved their children

too. Me too.

Funny peculiar
That Michael Parkinson, even,

had his phone tapped
on the picket lines

I listened
as the brass band tuned up

emptying spit valves without thinking
on the concrete

I did not go and see your film
I left it to someone else to pick

through the rubble
to try and get you out

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Trophies

Posted on October 1, 2020 by Eva Collins

The Nazi commander said to the Poles:
Even though we lost the war,
the plaques commemorating your dead,
will always be trophies
to us.

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Surreal, were it not Real (Sydney, 05:09, 22/03/2020)

Posted on October 1, 2020 by Bob Gearing

Fine sand bakes, unshadowed, on Bondi Beach in the mid-day sunshine.
The Kaaba is deserted; desultory knots linger at the Western Wall.
Lonely footfall sends metallic echoes down the steps at Waterloo station.
Redundant car horns on 5th Avenue; a forest of orange taxi lights.
And the world lies still, and quiet, at home now,
Thinking of friends lying in negative pressure rooms,
And anticipating, imagining, what is yet to come.

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Impatience

Posted on October 1, 2020 by Oliver Driscoll

Today, while my partner and I walked along the edge of the highway toward an area where the houses, trees and dogs are larger, more expansive, and have received a greater degree of care, I told her that I had written a piece about her watching a beautiful slow elegant film with very little dialogue shot and based in Hong Kong about impossible love between a man and woman each of whom were in marriages to other people they were not able to leave on her laptop while I watched a film, on my laptop, that suggested, or seemed to suggest, that each of us has one true love – what various characters within the film referred to as ‘soulmates’. I said, my synopsis of the film she had watched was okay, but the sentences describing the film I had watched were all far too long and difficult to navigate. I said, the films were, in a way, similar, though, I said, one of them is a good film and one of them isn’t. She said, well, another thing that was said in the documentary about the film shot and based in Hong Kong, that she had watched yesterday, the day after having watched the film itself, is that originally the male character’s motivation for having the affair that would become the impossible love was revenge.

My partner did not say whether the revenge was towards his wife, or towards the husband of the woman he was having an affair with or, perhaps, whether it was towards the woman he was having an affair with herself. She had also learned, she went on, from the documentary that a series of comical scenes had been shot that had likewise not made it into the final version of the film.

Towards the end of the walk, once we were again beyond the area where the houses, trees and dogs are larger, my partner pointed out what appeared to be a mobile phone number scrawled into the footpath in large numerals, thirty to forty centimetres high. She said, it doesn’t say call this number to get your dick sucked. Look, she said, the number is all on its own.

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Cook 2614

Posted on October 1, 2020 by Dave Drayton

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ALTERNATE REALITIES

Posted on October 1, 2020 by Gerard Sarnat

i. A.P. 11March20 9:08PM EST POTUS is expected in his televised Oval Office Coronavirus address to the nation to announce that he has negotiated the Best Deal Ever with Jeff Bezos. Amazon’s leveraged buyout of the US Government will turn over management of the pandemic including sale plus delivery of all services and goods — not just food or medicine. Mr. Bezos will become President — at least until January 20 following November’s election. Mr. Trump will receive a 10% finder’s fee plus 8% of all profits.

ii. A.P. 11March20 11:13PM EST – President Trump, who appeared under the weather and short of breath during his eleven-minute Oral Office address two hours ago, had a sudden respiratory arrest and died 10:29PM EST in the East Wing living quarters of the White House. Vice President Pence, who was sworn in by the Chief Justice, is looked at by Las Vegas as an odds-on favorite to defeat ex-Vice President Biden. Unlike the financial markets, his stock has shot up during recent days since overperforming expectations set when he was named Coronavirus czar.

iii. V-2 Nazi Rocket Redux

“Vunce ze rockets are up, who cares vere zey come down
“Zats not mein department!” says Werner von Braun
—Tom Lehrer

Coupla other news reports,
not yet picked up widely here,
now state that POTUS/V-POTUS
have been working to procure/move
some German research groups to U.S.
because they are way ahead in developing
COVID vaccines: the reason Mein Trumpf
wants these units is so ONLY Americans get
shots in case our Orange I-take-no-responsibility
Insane One starts WWIII – current rumours suggest
Wherner von Braun’s kid, Margrit Cécile, leads a team.

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Egon Kisch Takes The Dictation Test 1934

Posted on October 1, 2020 by Damen O'Brien

I do not speak the language which condemns him.
My task is to speak the language of this door, the simple
words of yes or no, you may enter here, you may not.
Behind me Australia branches and the door must remain shut.

Outside, all of Australia branches and Spring’s first crows complain
to the cheerful wind and the wind jibes back. I’ve seen Mr Kisch
stare out the window a dozen times then back to the page’s empty mouth.
His allotted time is nearly gone, and nothing that he says can be correct.

His allotted time is nearly gone, and nothing in his multilingual brain
will grant the words to let him pass, though all of Europe is
burning at his back and all we have to do to save him is to
listen. The crows call out and all of them are prophesying war.

Listen, the crows call out and perhaps they speak the Lord’s Prayer
in Gaelic, for that’s the acid lines I’ve given him to speak, or they talk
of death. I cannot tell. I do not speak it, and nor does he. For
the purpose of the test is not to pass, and his lips must stay shut.

The purpose of the test is not to pass and the only language set
must be the only language he is certain not to know. I left my daughters
rolling in their cot this morning to make my way down to the immigrant’s dock,
their voices squealing behind me like the unkind judgment of the birds.

Their voices squealing, the birds have marked the hour and time is up.
He never spoke a word though the Jews of Europe were burning at his back.
He knew we would not listen to any prayer he chose, nor any warning.
When the trial is run, he can put his case before the testing of the law.

When the trial is run, they’ll say of me, he was a second rate Scotsman,
he had not a word of Gaelic to decide, but that was not my failure: what
I did not know was that the language of a door is always no. You do not
need a door to enter, but a door like any mouth can be kept shut.

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Worn-out thongs

Posted on October 1, 2020 by Lucy Roberts

She is always walking,
worn-out thongs, no hat.
Her feet slog out the daily route,
one small grocery bag comes back.

I am always driving,
high in my black shiny car.
Dashing somewhere, running late, picking up a child.
Daring a couple of kays over the speed limit.

She walks alone this suburb’s streets,
past parks and gardens, family homes.
Sagging jeans with fraying cuffs, lank hair, sunburnt
shoulders and beer-gut belly spilling from stretched-out tank tops.

Each time I see her pacing,
I don’t recognise her face.
It slides and shifts and melts away.
Today, she could be my age.

She walks and staggers, stops and stands,
swaying and sweating on the path.
The sun the sun the constant sun;
it’s 35 degrees outside my car.

I don’t always see her, I think she goes away.
I straightened once, from weeding: filthy handed
to see her standing haunting
the shade of the gumtree across the road.

I flinched.
She never seems to see me.
Who does she see when she stands and stares?
I would know her anywhere.

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Metaphor

Posted on October 1, 2020 by Andrew Sutherland
I ask Wan Ching how she is. Are you lonely? At home on whatever-floor. She replies, I have had mysterious droppings on my floor for some time. Her brother-in-law sends pictures to a biologist friend. Apparently, the droppings of a bat. Never seen the animal, Wan Ching writes. Just been cleaning up its mess. Log on HDB fengshui forums: wi-fi geomancers tell us, time to buy 4D. We know we’re lucky upside-down. In sleep I never dream of wings, but flap into the night the same; depending on the angle. Actually – isn’t a bat technically always the right side up? For what it needs to do, I mean. I’m not a gambling person, but one of my worst fears is being a vector, and never realising what I’ve done. An essay on viral dramaturgy lurks in my browser history, though I’m not sure if I ever plan to read it. I’m a scientific person, too. I’m quite sure no one ate the bat; just happen to fly by. Echolocation doesn’t work if nothing’s there in front of you. I don’t compare advice; no point wondering what to think. I just enjoy the luck – and not so lonely, either. Wan Ching’s yet to see her guest. Finally, I type: do you think maybe the bat is a metaphor? She says, the bat might be, but the shit is real.
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Meanwhile

Posted on October 1, 2020 by Marina Tulic

Headlines nurse a generation of cynics and madmen with microphones,
Hope is out of fashion, except when Twitter’s watching, and
post-truth politics are in. I’m too tired for trends, though.
Maybe god lost his faith a long time ago, but
I still believe
in those lured outside by the rumour of rain
and four a.m. fog on the city,
who leap off speeding trains, hear silence, walk directionless
yet always end up collapsing on the shore, homesick
and heart-mad.
I still believe
in old fools out on their verandas, chewing evening nepenthe,
their grief a living testimony that history still exists, however
shriveled and beaten.
In quiet lives spent trying to dive deeper,
expelled to the surface by shortness of breath
just when they thought they finally had it –
that they finally understood it. Returning to land
only to grapple with smoke, still convinced they can forge it
into being, and forge being into
beauty.
I still believe in art,
and hope,
and resistance,
and you.

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