WHEN WE MET

It was winter in '74 when we met

a time in my life I won't easily forget

a juxtaposition of "Hot August Night" and Sydney winter chills

training for that bloody City to Surf up Vaucluse hills

when we met ...

I asked you out, slipped a note under your door

at your flat in Australia St on the second floor

it wasn't my invitation you found inviting

what you liked, you said, was my writing

when we met ...

We went to a party at Ronnie's in celebration

of having accepted his dare to run the city to surf excruciation

known popularly as a 'fun-run' in those days

which I completed, surprised and in an exhausted haze

when we met ....

Attracted to each other like flames attract moths

our love intense, we pulled out all the stops

life had blossomed, ennuii vanished like morning mist

you left me bereft of my senses and emotionally pissed

when we met ....

We never did marry but we've got two beaut kids

(your culinary skills has us peeking under bubbling lids)

you paint, create from stone,wood and clay and write like ... God

with your playground sense of justice you won't take odds

you're dealing with good people and imposters and treating them alike

with your firm, fair determination and flair I admire and like

since a few decades or so or more ago ..

when we met

ASK WHAT YOU CAN DO FOR YOUR COUNTRY

Increasing our dependancy on Government to solve our every problem by fiat or blatant pork-barrel decreases our worth as individuals. It's time to consider the largesse that flows from a government - however sincere its motive -  spending its way out of trouble. Today's manna could be tomorrow's albatross. For the many of us who subscribe to the "I was born in a shoe-box and worked my way up to where I am today .... " giving away money so that people can spend it on gee-gaws like TVs is outrageous.

Irony piled on outrage is that we are about to incur more debt as a  nation to see us through this catastrophic and monumental mess which was caused by debt incurred over the past decade by the greedy or naive individual. More ironic is that the previous Coalition government spent that very decade paying off government debt of around $96billion. Our current government is about to borrow nearly half of that sum which could shackle us in debt for an indeterminate time. This fiscal albatross may be an unbearable burden on the future of our kids and theirs, if we, an ageing nation with a shrinking tax base with huge medical expenditures forecast for those of us living to be octogenarians or nonagenarians, spend this vast sum unwisely today.

Now, we'll jostle one another as we line up for a sum of money that we would have scoffed at a scant year ago when the 'good times were rolling'. We'll count the ways we would spend this munificent sum with nary a thought of who will pay for this in longer term. But the good times have rolled haven't they?

From the individual to the corporation, we'll all get in for our cheap cut of this largesse. The pensioner to the chief executive, the low income earner to the well-heeled, the needy and the greedy. After all it's our money right? It's our 'common-wealth' okay? It's where the government garners the money from in the first place .. yes, from us taxpayers both individual or corporation neither of us being co-operative when it comes to taxes.

We moan and whinge about paying taxes and wail about them being wasted on aboriginals or whales or derros or druggies or public housing or external territories or foreign aid or single-mothers or power stations. 

We'll never complain when we are the recipients of the handout whether we earn 40 grand or 120 grand. We'll self-righteously and unctuously declare that we need the money to pay our debts or our bills or feed and clothe ourselves and yes .... buy TVs. But simply put we will rarely admit that our lifestyles have exceeded our commonwealth.

Will we think of what our contribution could be to helping our nation cope with this mess together? Will a Coalition government have done things differently, tightened its fiscal belt and spent money more cautiously on capital works for example that benefits the whole community in the long-term?

Capitalist systems revolve in cycles. Good times follow bad and vice versa. I suggest now is the time for building the nation in preparation for exploiting the good times that must follow.

For now, let's look after the absolutely needy only. Apply a means-test to every needy individual or ailing company and provide assistance if it's genuinely proved to be the case. Meanwhile, let's concentrate on the projects that will reinforce our future. Capital Works programs will provide employment and more vocational and tertiary education will create a wider and deeper pool of theoretically educated people who can apply the practical advantage when the good times return.

Assure more Aussies of jobs. Buy Aussie goods and services (more butter, less guns) and demand more staff where you shop or bank or fly or purchase petrol or holiday. Reduce your consumption of gee-gaws or comestibles that are wants instead of needs. Buy fair dinkum Aussie fruit that's in season instead of the imported or canned stuff. If you like a feed of prawns, purchase the Karumba variety instead of the foreign Vannamei kind. Drink water supplied by your local council (the most stringently assured quality in the world) and eschew the stuff in plastic bottles of dubious origin. Forget holidays in Bali ... too may drunks, druggies and dangers. Discover your own country and do yourself and Australia a favour for this is a safe place, stable and you can drink and behave disgracefully and party to oblivion if that's your thing and yes .... the natives are friendly and speak your lingo.

Don't let your lifestyle exceed your wealth (and your health).

Ask what you can do for your country.

 

HALLELUJAH, I JUST LOVE HIM SO

Strewth! I'll be ty-dyed and hornswoggled

that beaut little tacker Ty has (finally) made his debut

a simultaneous exit and entry into this WBL

to show us what he's like and to take in the view ....

His Mum and Dad are more pleased than Punch

at 3.5 kilos he's a handy little bundle of joy

will he be a poet or a dancer, a devil or a clown

inherit his Great Grand-dads curls? But for now, he's a herald of joy

I've two gee-kiddies to be a gee-diddy to now

when I see 'em I'll sing out 'Lo Ro' or 'Hi Ty'

there'll be the odd tussle or four between 'em

but I'm betting they'll be good mates by and by

when I held him my heart galloped like a Melbourne Cup finale

my senses reeled, love overwhelmed me like a tsunami

Ty ... me kangaroo down, sport ... that's euphoria writ bold

I've gotta suck on a lemon to stop grinning about this baby

A couple of days young and already he's under my skin

I'll look forward to seeing him at Forrie in a little while

we'll toast him with a glass or three of of good Aussie wine

and while drinking in this little Ty(ke) we'll smile 'n smile 'n smile ...

DRESS REHEARSAL

And when I die

don't leave me supine, even in renewable timber

occupying space supplied by some overweening undertaker

at the price of an arm and a leg

after all I'm dead, deceased, carked it, brown bread, finis

only my corporeal remains remain

The grim reaper has reaped what was sown years before

and its dust to dusty ashes

for me a fire, a pyre but ... I don't want to add to the hole in the ozone layer

that inexplicably, intractably occurs in this hemisphere

when the majority of the culprits (us humans) who sully and defoliate

live in the other half of the planet

But for me, eschew the fancy trappings, the mock gilt

the blandishments of the unctuous funeral person

funereal by mien and insincere visage dissembling

the cortege, the dirge, to inter me with a knell

the obsequies appropriate (and pecuniary) to the dead.

Don't weaken or bother yourself on my account

for when I'm in a terminal state of narcolepsy

it's unlikely that I will attempt a Lazarus

to judge the parsimony or opulence exercised by you at my demise

In the shucking of my mortal coil, remember my proclivity ....

for the odd glass of wine or seven

and have a decent wake to remind you of me

and quote the lines of that prescient poet in my memory .... 

"Sound , sound the trumpet, fill the fife

throughout the earthly world proclaim

one crowded hour of glorious life

is worth an age without a name"

A TALE OF TWO CTs

My anxiety increased as I drove to Brisbane that morn

how do you gauge a doctor's concern?

when he's inscrutable in mien, clinical in character

my thoughts raced as my car did on my way to Brissie

There ... I gulped down two litres of vile green liquid

and dumped the third litre on an unsuspecting plant

undressed and put on  silly gown nine sizes too large

with the ties located back-to-front

entered the chamber outwardly serene and nonchalant

(observed the Japanese origin of the machine, marvelling at their ubiquity and ingenuity)

A disembodied voice instructed me to lie quiet, supine

lights flashing, sibilantly purring, the machine prowled around its casing

taking, I assumed, sectional views of my body

as I moved back and forth on a traversing pallet

The machine roamed north and south, pubis to gullet

then, a twenty minute respite and more vile liquid

busting for a pee but ensconced and palletised

more lights, buzzes, movement, instructions and ... it was over

left feeling anti-climactic (like a creek without a paddle) 

I sat down in the waiting area and improved my knowledge of celebrity

waiting to collect the prints, which I did, 9 magazines later 

good pictures I thought but what do they mean?

had a captain cook at the doctors report

medical mumbo-jumbo, wasn't much I could glean

Back home to Taabinga and an interrogation by Pauline

"read the quacks report and you'll know more than me maybe" said I

and till the next round of tests, the verdicts out ...

meanwhile let's enjoy ourselves as a family

ME

How many have I known ....

who could look but not see

who could touch but not feel

who could speak but not communicate

who could hear but not heed

who could sense but not know 

Of ...

my hopes for the future

my fears for my country

my dreams for my children

my ambitions for myself

in ...

a country free of repression

a country abundant with food

a country generous of spirit and compassion

at...

a time when age doesn't count

a time where experience is rewarded

when ...

my worth as a human is not measured as a resource