Cocky Bridge Builders

"These babies don't break."



"..."

Scaredy Cat Kevin

"[Climate change is] the great moral, environmental and economic challenge of our age." Rudd address to the Brookings Institution, Apr 2007.

(… “moral” …)

"Australia needs new leadership on climate change." Rudd address to the National Press Club, Nov 2007.

(… “new leadership” …)

"Scientists – including the CSIRO – are telling us that Australia must achieve emissions reductions of 60 per cent by 2050 if we are to avert the significant economic consequences of dangerous climate change. These reductions can be achieved while maintaining strong economic growth." ALP renewable energy policy statement, Nov 2007.

(… 60% by 2050 …)

"Unless we take decisive action to tackle climate change and cut greenhouse gas emissions now, the future health of the Great Barrier Reef will be at serious risk." ALP reef rescue plan, Nov 2007.

(… “decisive” …)

"We share a vision for an ambitious, equitable, environmentally effective, economically responsible post-2012 global agreement on climate change and will work together to this end – drawing on our complementary regional and global relationships." Rudd address to the London School of Economics, Apr 2008.

(… “ambitious” …)

"Today, this generation - our generation - stands at the crossroads of history." Rudd address to the National Press Club, Dec 15 2008.

(… 5 pathetic per cent …)

Kerry the Baptist

Plague?
No
Then ...?
It's the back ...
Famine?
Well, the ...
Locusts, Flood, Fiery Destruction?
No, my mouth ... it's the back ...
...
Coca Cola (gasp)!
Yes ... well, I didn't ...
We must dunk you child!

When I'd've preferred nothing

Unscripted epitaphs

He was S-A-D and A-V-E-R-A-G-E ... what? ... I'm being honest!

Owed nothing, which is good, I 'spose ... what? ... oh yeah ... suppose ... hmm? ... yeah yeah, but that doesn't count ... uh ... no, he ... look, he ... I ... he returned ... not ... oh, for Christ's sake, I'm running out of space!

Never exploded.

Ran guns for the Taliban ... shut up, they'll get it.

Grew to dislike Bunnings (where I got this chisel).

A poem by Robert Frost

The Road Not Taken, 1920

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

What are they doing now?

Christopher Pyne's twitter:

Forgot my plastic comb!

Found one in Mrs Peterson-Smythe's bedside drawer. Between her bible and cigarettes. I'm attending a sing-a-long at the North Adelaide Centre for Demented Aristocrats.

George Brandis' twitter:

Ripped into an Asian shop attendant. Cited the Trade Practices Act. Two spring rolls at $1.50 each. I give her $5. She gives me $1.50 in change!

Told a primary school kid to tuck her shirt in. Cited the Public Nuisance Act. She started crying. Cited the Offensive Behaviour Act. She called for help. Gave her my card and cited the Get Over It Act (LOL).

Helped an old lady across the street. Cited the Good Samaritan Parable. She told me she voted Greens last November. Spat on her bonnet and cited the Self Defence Act.

Over coffee, a friend was sounding out middle names for his new boy. I said how about F--king Legacy Costs and cited the Welfare and Taxation Acts.

Ron Boswell's twitter:

Eating a pie.

And another ... these are good. Though the gravy's burnt my tongue, and some of it has dribbled on my pants, near the fly, which I haven't seen since the 60s (ROTFL).

One more. I can't stop!

I'm in the dunny now. Barnaby just texted me - he wants to know where I am. This kroger's for you old son!

Belinda Neal's twitter:

I'm giving up on this rock melon. The f--king thing broke my knife!

F--k!

Who was the c--t who sold me this piece of sh-t anyway! It's not RIPE!

Mogadon's kicked in. I'm going to watch Oprah now.

Malcolm Fraser's twitter:

I've often wondered about the interior of her majesty's bedroom (innocently, of course). What would her ceiling look like, for example?

Some gutter snipe just swore at my wife! Said she was a "hag" and a "traitor lover".

There really are too many adult book shops in this area (Mornington). They attract the wrong crowd.

Aneurysm

Dull hum
A beetle's walk
Blizzard of whittle sticks
Warm noodle aggregate
My brain
Infinitesimal carrier
Clumped dying knot
Sea sponge
A maze-like ooze-athon

Rosetta Keats

Traitor's Pass '47

Arnold

There round the dock goes Arnold,
elfin ears scanning
the morning's dark tide
on Cockatoo Island.

Walking over to the caisson,
kicking gently at its slot;
a high arm pointing out buds
of steam aft of the pumping station.

Everything as it should be,
zephyrs flashing on the brim
(his private joy); powerful suction
twisting the thickening brine

Down the scummy terraces
dawn workers pass my grandfather -
jockeying near the pit. A shouting match
ensues; bounty of doomed sea life
slithering on convict stone.

Fascist Rebirth

Oh dear, Robert Doyle is planning to eliminate "badly talented buskers" and "bogans" from the CBD. He also intends to re-open Swanston st to traffic.

In a 3AW interview, he explained that he will train a squad of South Yarra tattle-tales to patrol the streets of the city judging the talent of its buskers. These women will also assess whether any smelly or dishevelled pedestrians they encounter are bogans. If an individual is deemed to be a bogan, they will be arrested, taken to the newly-established Bourke st police station, beaten with rolled-up David Jones catalogues, and have the word "BOGAN" tattooed on their forehead.

While listening to Doyle's description of Stasiland Melbourne-style, Neil Mitchell was reported to have involuntarily ejaculated in his trousers.

Home Invasion

Geiger County

Puppy Stones

glimmer after glimmer

I went to see Craig Powell read some of his poems last Wednesday night. This one is from a chapbook titled Poems For a Marriage, 2008.

The Goldfish Pond

When you gaze in as a child you wait for the fish -
the rocky ooze and then a glitter of bronze
or tangerine. A few moments only. Every one
has its own darkness to swim to. As though
you were staring into the heart of the earth.

Now like a child you sleep facing your wife
more restful knowing you could open your eyes and watch her.
In the morning you can tell her the dream you had.
You were four years old gazing in a goldfish pond,
glimmer after glimmer, one depth and then another.

Tie them down

Has Rolf Harris met Gerry Harvey?* Because when it comes to casting ill-natured judgement upon the voiceless and vulnerable, they appear to be of one spirit. This is from today's Age:

"Aboriginal children were never disciplined or expected to adhere to rules until adulthood, the 78-year-old [wobbleboard virtuoso] said in Melbourne. 'Till then, they have a totally carefree life to do what they want, and that quite often involves smashing everything that they have.'"

Does the former British Paints spokesperson have any evidence to back up such a broad brush assertion? He doesn't say (or it wasn't reported); but, mercifully, he does offer us a solution to the problem of generational dispossession, discrimination and disadvantage among Aboriginal peoples: they should "get off their arses."

Interesting that he now regrets including the lines "let me Abos go loose" and "they're of no further use" in the original recordings of Tie Me Kangaroo Down, Sport. He appeals to historical context when he says:

"It was a mark of the times, done totally innocently with no realisation that you would offend at all … just trying to create a fun song for a bunch of Aussies who were drinking themselves stupid on Swan Lager in London at the time."

What a shame our nation's most zany royal portraitist didn't also appeal to historical context when mouthing off about Aboriginal dysfunction.

Interesting, also, that at his Melbourne appearance yesterday he was wearing a Ken Done tie. I suppose Ken is a mate of Rolf's. One of the blokes he might have clinked Swan Larger stubbies with in a London pub many years ago.

Actually, considering that he is suffering extreme disadvantage himself at present, Ken should thank Rolf for promoting some of his merchandise.**


* The billionaire land-fill merchant who recently described homeless people as no-hopers.
** Due to an overabundance of honour (or trust, I suppose), Ken, a celebrated placemat decorator with commercial interests in primary colours and souvenir depictions of someone else's Sydney, allowed his financial advisor to whittle away a $61.5 million dollar fortune over a four year period to merely $8 million.

Exciting First Lines I

At once whatever happened starts receding.

(From Philip Larkin's Whatever Happened?, 1953)

Multi-story Walt

Walt Stains

Relic

Rainy Road

Tongues roiling
Like an exorcism
Fit of veins
Clench of words
Frothed like spat-out skin
Like storm drain soup
Bleached into each
Pair
Of red mongrel eyes

How do they want
To be wanted?
How do they know
How to ask?

I'm riding through
On the 393
A shifting voyeur
Craned in these contexts
Spilled on these panto
Fetishes
Home on another rainy road

Single Walt Whisky

King's pleasure

Well, things were tight in King County, Texas.

McCain:  151   93.2%
Obama:   8      4.9%
Other:     3       1.9%

At the close of counting, a posse was dispatched. The eight Democrat voters were rounded up and shot. The three Other voters were forced to do the shooting (before shooting themselves).

Janet Reframed

Are they ours?
Hovering above the table -
You've said you wouldn't know
How to trust me
When they came -
But now
You see
Like messy little clouds
Are those angels actually ours?

(This might have been foreseen)
My friend
(Urgent
Naive to the point of fragile):
There are no angels
The surface is blank

Yet here again we are
Stopped on opposite sides
Lost in another of his loopy stories
Each a companion to yet each smaller
Than himself
Thinly crafted like the furniture
Stumped around at our feet

And the table
Creaking slowly upwards
Slinged in the centre of us
Polished and somehow
Doubly impressive today
An Edwardian showpiece
With quatrefoil stretchers
And barley twist legs
Juddering to its agreed height
Just above our noses
Where it rests now
But with no apparent hostage
Of angels, I urge

Yes?

Oh, but it's his turn
To close in on the verges
Set fact beside fact and find
Something
Neither of us wants to see
Or wants
To be charmed by the invisible
Is a step in the wrong direction
To own it is proof

Comments overheard ...

... in the seaside hamlet of Hackneyed.

"At the end of the day, I'll put the bins out, watch a bit of teli and go to bed ... Yeah."

"When all's said and done, there won't be anything to do or talk about, I suppose. Oh, we could play scrabble. But oh, tsst, silly! No we couldn't coz that would've already been done. Boring!"

"When push comes to shove, release your hold and tell the rude man 'alright, so no more armed robberies!'"

Dreaming

Legend has it that in his younger days, and with a belly full of merlot, Piers Ackerman once plucked up for a round or two in Jimmy Sharman’s tent. Funny story. He raised his fists to his nose but was instantly stricken once his lumbering adversary began to move. The next five minutes were sheer vaudeville. Two grown men chasing each other round the ring; one grunting and kicking up dust, the other skipping and shrieking like a clown.

The pitiful Piers, short of breath, was eventually hounded out of the tent, the car park, then the town, when it became clear he was all mouth. Next stop Sydney, and a job with The Daily Telegraph!

All you

Two tight fingers
Trying to hide the kernel
In a whorl
Your self already flown
Scattered or maybe
Eroding
This moment's coiled identity

Two pressed into one
Dead and no longer pushing
Deeper into the eye
Failing in their hunt for singularity
Failing in their slack retreat

Everything seems simple
When all you want is
All you get
Is all you

Uncupped Hand

Softly in your uncupped hand
Sat among gnarls and wire cuts
Lustred heaps of calloused
Schoolyard savageries

Where it all began

And now?
An old brilliantine bruiser
Watching amber effervesce
Among motes and jangling slot machines
The slow afternoon sunshine
Bursts your weathered glare

You're there again but never seen
Parading about the ring in
Shifts, sleights, feints, dud turns
And ragged dead-hand rolls of
Grog and battered head bones;
These waxen scars laced down their side
Stretched loose toward the smallest knuckle
Are glossed with the smokey charm forgone
Of working men and bar room banter

These are the real show
(Soft)
The real you in your gently upturned
Uncupped hand.

Oh, they do go on!

"Con"

"ver"

"sa"

"tion"

Window on the 9.15 Frankston II

Foreign

Domed platform
Falling to every horizon
Scored with the husks
That gather among phantoms
At its edge
This ancestral stage burns
Beneath an unforgotten sun

I'm screwed to a chair
A warped agent of renewal
In the middle of a storm
Trying to lick the dust from my mouth
While dogs fight
For my tongue

Trying to lift myself
Out of myself
And call for an exit
For rain

Window on the 9.15 Frankston I

C'mon, just one.



It doesn't have to be hot.

Experimental P--m

This a response to Ted Hughes' poem View of a Pig (below).

Thumper

Pig on a barrow
Snouts a punch
Lolls back
Bares itself
Is bleeding
Is split
Is wild for it
This rain
These vicious flecks finding ground
Dissolving
Into one another

It's not going nowhere this morning
Dead
Its trotters stuck straight out
Pig on a barrow
Is a thumper

And its viewer knows
His subject
Fat wheat sack poundage
Laid out before him
Is too deadly factual for market
For shame
Before Him too dead
The sunk thumper's viewer is unabashed
He fancies a greased fairground piglet squealing
       between shadows harder to
Catch
Nimbler than a cat

The pig
More than dead
A thumper


View of a Pig

The pig lay on a barrow dead.
It weighed, they said, as much as three men.
Its eyes closed, pink white eyelashes.
Its trotters stuck straight out.

Such weight and thick pink bulk
Set in death seemed not just dead.
It was less than lifeless, further off.
It was like a sack of wheat.

I thumped it without feeling remorse.
One feels guilty insulting the dead,
Walking on graves. But this pig
Did not seem able to accuse.

It was too dead. Just so much
A poundage of lard and pork.
Its last dignity had entirely gone.
It was not a figure of fun.

Too dead now to pity.
To remember its life, din, stronghold
Of earthly pleasure as it had been,
Seemed a false effort, and off the point.

Too deadly factual. Its weight
Oppressed me – how could it be moved?
And the trouble of cutting it up!
The gash in its throat was shocking, but not pathetic.

Once I ran at a fair in the noise
To catch a greased piglet
That was faster and nimbler than a cat,
Its squeal was the rending of metal.

Pigs must have hot blood, they feel like ovens.
Their bite is worse than a horse's –
They chop a half-moon clean out.
They eat cinders, dead cats.

Distinctions and admirations such
As this one was long finished with.
I stared at it a long time. They were going to scald it,
Scald it and scour it like a doorstep.

Two sideways ways way too sideways

Provision for the intellect

According to poet A. E. Housman, the purpose of liberal study is to awaken the joy of learning.

The pleasure of learning and knowing, though not the keenest, is yet the least perishable of pleasures; the least subject to external things, and the play of chance, and the wear of time. And as a prudent man puts money by to serve as a provision for the material wants of his old age, so too he needs to lay up against the end of his days provision for the intellect.

But I'm not sure.

Playful hyphen

This hyphen (play-acting a bracket) is apparently untroubled by its turd-like appearance – or the fact that its closest mark is a dash.

Separated at 'birth'

A poem by Ted Hughes

The Thought-Fox

A Wiki survey

Adam Smith
b. 1723 (Kirkcaldy), d. 1790 (Edinburgh)
Age: 67
Right

Known for his explanation of how rational self-interest and competition, operating in a social framework which ultimately depends on adherence to moral obligations, can lead to economic well-being and prosperity.

Notable publication: An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (1776).


John Maynard Keynes
b. 1883 (Cambridge), d. 1946 (Tilton)
Age: 62
Left

Advocated interventionist government policy, by which the government would use fiscal and monetary measures to mitigate the adverse effects of economic recessions, depressions and booms.

Notable publication: The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money (1936).


Friedrich August von Hayek
b. 1889 (Vienna), d. 1992 (Freiburg)
Age: 92
Right

Known for his defence of classical liberalism and free-market capitalism against socialist and collectivist thought.

Notable publication: The Road to Serfdom (1944).


John Kenneth Galbraith
b. 1908 (Iona Station), d. 2006 (Cambridge, Mass.)
Age: 97
Left

Believed that economic activity could not be distilled into inviolable laws, but rather was a complex product of the cultural and political milieu in which it occurs.

Notable publication: American Capitalism: The Concept of Countervailing Power (1952).


Milton Friedman
b. 1912 (Brooklyn), d. 2006 (San Francisco)
Age: 94
Right

Argued that if capitalism, or economic freedom, is introduced into countries governed by totalitarian regimes, political freedom would tend to result.

Notable publication: Capitalism and Freedom (1962).


The Swedish Chef
b. 1937 (Jokkmokk, Lapland), d. 1981 (London)
Age: 44
North

Known to have waved kitchen utensils while singing a "signature song", the lyrics of which varied but always ended with "bort, bort, bort" (meaning, literally, "away, away, away").

Notable publication: Ginger-free Pepparkakor Cookies (1962).

A poem by Robert Louis Stevenson

Christmas at Sea

The sheets were frozen hard, and they cut the naked hand;
The decks were like a slide, where a seaman scarce could
       stand;
The wind was a nor'wester, blowing squally off the sea;
And cliffs and spouting breakers were the only things a-lee.

They heard the surf a-roaring before the break of day;
But 'twas only with the peep of light we saw how ill we lay.
We tumbled every hand on deck instanter, with a shout,
And we gave her the maintops'l, and stood by to go
       about.
All day we tacked and tacked between the South Head and
       the North;
All day we hauled the frozen sheets, and got no further
       forth;
All day as cold as charity, in bitter pain and dread,
For very life and nature we tacked from head to head.

We gave the South a wider berth, for there the tide-race
       roared;
But every tack we made we brought the North Head close
       aboard:
So's we saw the cliffs and houses, and the breakers running
       high,
And the coastguard in his garden, with his glass against his
       eye.

The frost was on the village roofs as white as ocean foam;
The good red fires were burning bright in every 'longshore
       home;
The windows sparkled clear, and the chimneys volleyed
       out;
And I vow we sniffed the victuals as the vessel went about.

The bells upon the church were rung with a mighty jovial
       cheer;
For it's just that I should tell you how (of all days in the
       year)
This day of our adversity was blessèd Christmas morn,
And the house above the coastguard's was the house where
       I was born.

O well I saw the pleasant room, the pleasant faces there,
My mother's silver spectacles, my father's silver hair;
And well I saw the firelight, like a flight of homely elves,
Go dancing round the china-plates that stand upon the
       shelves.

And well I knew the talk they had, the talk that was of me,
Of the shadow on the household and the son that went to
       sea;
And O the wicked fool I seemed, in every kind of way,
To be here and hauling frozen ropes on blessèd Christmas
       Day.

They lit the high sea-light, and the dark began to fall.
'All hands to loose topgallant sails,' I heard the captain call.
'By the Lord, she'll never stand it,' our first mate, Jackson,
       cried.
... 'It's the one way or the other, Mr Jackson,' he replied.

She staggered to her bearings, but the sails were new and
       good,
And the ship smelt up to windward just as thought she
       understood.
As the winter's day was ending, in the entry of the night,
We cleared the weary headland, and passed below the light.

And they heaved a mighty breath, every soul on board but
       me,
As they saw her nose again pointing handsome out to sea;
But all that I could think of, in the darkness and the cold,
Was just that I was leaving home and my folks were
       growing old.


Suspending my anxiety about rhyming poetry in ballad metre (where tweeness gathers ripe, like a load of fresh cut tripe), I read this poem several times through. Just now I read it aloud to myself. Twice. And I must say it really is quite beautiful.

Here are four things I like about it:

1. The grand and effortless way it moves between different settings: from the epic immensity of a ship on a storm-tossed sea to the folksy familiarity of a coastguard in his garden to the intimacy of a fire-lit living room ... and back again.

2. Its tantalising 'gaps': Why did the narrator go to sea?; Why was he a 'shadow on the household'?; What business did the (presumably) merchant vessel have so close to his birthplace?; Why Christmas day?; Did any of the other seamen know of his familial connection?

3. Its slightly unexpected metaphors - such as in "the ship smelt up to windward", "the chimneys volleyed out" and "cleared the weary headland".

4. Its melancholic atmosphere. At last light and sailing clear of the heads, the other seamen were relieved to be free, finally, of the day's toil and peril. But the narrator was thinking only of the little village where he was born - that he passed on this Christmas morn so close he could hear it and smell it. Of leaving home and of his parents growing old.

Window on the 370

Urban ablution

Riding home the other night, I passed a man on Redfern street squared up to a shop door. It was very late and there was no one else around. His belt was undone and his pants were loose at the rear. A stream of urine was hosing out from his front side, drenching the lower part of the door and running down frothily past his shoes to the gutter. I couldn't help but admire the sheer animalism of the situation. Bladder to brain: GO. Brain to hands: GO.

(I think he might've had a couple.)

Mondrian Jellyfish

m
.
j
.

Falling gracefully

A reprisal of Window on the 461 II

Window on the 438 II

Window on the 438 I

But
t
h
e
real
p
r
o
b
l
e
m
with
t
h
i
s
man
Is he says he can't when he can.

(From Sitting on a Fence - The Housemartins.)

Endeavouring to find the right words II

"Captain?"

"..."

Preternatural public transport

What are you looking at, she asked.

A window. But not at it. We're on the bus, so I'm clearly looking through it. But I mean the window's in me, and together we're checking out what's going on outside. In the street.

What do you see?

Oh, that question is less philosophical than you might think. Crowds. Cars. Neon lights. Mashed paper. Shop front awnings. Shoes. A kaleidoscope of hoods and hands. The city is lively tonight, don't you think?

(Her stop had come.)

Window on the 399

Whatever happened to the leftover lamb?

"For me, true perfection is a result of passion, understanding and the willingness to transform lives," Dr Chris Brown (veterinarian).

"Nala [a dog] and the Purina One team agree."

This quote appeared in an advertisement for pet food.

Car's Law coffee mishap

(Aketon is ...?)

A fragment of John Kinsella's Armour (on poems without politics ...?)

From the OED: A stuffed jacket or jerkin, at first of quilted cotton, worn under the mail; also, in later times, a jacket of leather or other material plated with mail.

Window on the 461 II

|
o
|

o
o

Trans parent

This window, whose otherwise dull life was brightened by the occasional court jester appearance at kids' parties, ended it all by leaping through a window. IRONIC huh! (He was a single father of three.)

Window on the 461 I

Finding yourself in a Morandi still life

|
| |
|
o
|

Giorgio Morandi's Still life, 1960 was painted four years before his death.

The Mundanity of Reconstruction

Mundanity (from the OED).

1. The quality or fact of belonging to the world; worldliness. obs.

2. The quality of being in vogue; fashionableness. rare.

3. The quality or fact of being commonplace, trivial, or ordinary. Also: that which is commonplace; a humdrum thing, a tedious necessity.

Inundation

Passing

We walked on cold ground
Heavy with rain
Unspoiled yet
By night
Or the nomads
Who pass through here

We came to a fire
Straining to see
Its long
Loosely offered
Curlicue tongues
Flare out
Amongst the swollen brush
Lifting and parting
And reforming fiendishly
Into places beyond the embered lair
Or the gypsy pilgrims
Whose tambourine capering
It shadowed

We unwrapped each other
In a cradle of leaves
Out of view til morning
Til our passing
Could be weightless again
Of the temptation
Of the surrender
Printed like veins on our skin

Fragment

A Definite Article

Spider Window