…These men are worth your tears:
You are not worth their merriment.

-Wilfred Owen, “Apologia Pro Poemate Meo”

When that loudmouth on the wireless machine
Alludes to Western Civilization
What does he mean? Paradise Lost? Probably not
Nor Saint Paul speaking on the Field of Mars

The Kalevala, Hagia Sophia
With its pendentives lifting up our prayers
Horatius fighting to defend his bridge
And Wilfred Owen dying bravely on his

Lord Tennyson and Idylls of the King
Chapultepec, Henry V, Becket
The paratroops at Arnhem, Saint Thomas More,
His King’s loyal servant, but God’s first

The Stray Dog poets of Saint Petersburg
The brave last stand of Roland at Roncesvalles
Lewis and Tolkien and glasses of beer
Montcalm and Wolfe on the Plains of Abraham

Hildegard von Bingen, Siegfried and the Rhine
Magna Carta, HMS Hood, the Thames
The Grove of Daphne, “The Old Rugged Cross”
Beatrix Potter and her little pet rabbit

El Cid, Anne Frank, John Keats, Saint Benedict
“I Have a Dream,” Dostoyevsky, and Greene
Viktor Frankl, Dag Hammarkskjold, and Proust
Good Chaucer’s naughty pilgrims telling tales

The Gettysburg Address, Willie and Joe
Stern Saint Augustine of North Africa
Wodehouse writing a jolly bit of fun
Saint Corbinian and Bavaria

The ancient glories of Byzantium
Pius XII contra the bombs and lies
The 602nd TD Battalion
Saint Joan, the Prado, and Robert Frost

And far, far more.

When that loudmouth on the wireless machine
Alludes to Western Civilization
What does he mean?

slumped under a tree
in the centre of the city
half-empty bottle by your side
liquid purple ticket
to the dreamtime

eyes shut
foot twitching
a smile on your round black face

lost in ancestral memories
walking the scorched red earth
of Arnhem land
escaping for a while
the hatred of the white New World

i'm not what you might call a holocaust denier,
it happened, the end. what i am saying
is found on a song, slayer's angel of death
from the album reign in blood...
the modern media speak of the migrant crisis,
you see it on the news, leaving the Libyan
coast, in inflatable boats, a dead child on Greece's
coast... you can just sense the desperation,
but also the daring, and the ***-starved
European women who took less a chance
for *** holidays in Ivory Coast, or whereever
it is they do their ***** business...
i don't know how they did it, the Germans,
but they did, they were rearing cattle
into those gas chambers, it's not even funny,
i'm not laughing, i'm just astouded by
the comparison, this blind belief in a god
to bail them out, and then watching
the desperate *****-like daring of the modern-day
migrants from africa into europe...
ah, the funny bit... Brussels, chocolate,
magnets... choc from Africa, choc-talk from
Belgium... am i surprised?
   as said, according to the dodo project.

i too thought that when the band *reef
released their greatest hits album,
with a new song, give me your love,
that they could rekindle their long gone career...
i thought it was their mangum opus,
just over 3 minutes long, still... what a song...
it could do much better on the radio frequencies
than their standard place your hands,
give me your love is like a virus,
it's a contagious anthem to what could have
been, but never was,
i'm sure that, if the radio people appreciated it
as much as i did (when i still played the guitar,
but later smashed it for reason that are worth
noting my ex-girlfriend and how her dad
initially made it hardly dead, but slightly disabled,
let's just say he gave her an extra sound hole;
****** hollowed her out! completely!)...
   and yes, i want writing to be as fickle,
as painting an "abstract", so i'll adopt blitzkrieg
to writing, strobe lighting, quick change of pace,
the whole disco shabang...
       what, can't i imitate women by writing as
finicky as is humanely possible?
    let's do that... i have all day...
well... i can officially say it's the 20th of February
and winter has ended...
   it's getting warmer, yuck, and i'm getting more
daylight than i like to have had...
  speak to the scandinavians about winter
and misery, or the "blues", they'll tell you that
in winter, they couldn't be happier, or should i say:
cosy... cuddling pillows and lighting scented candles
in their wooden shacks...
for care of all that *******, that's true.
      i was thinking Alaska, or Siberia, somewhere
really really remote, so i can be like
that cat i own looking at my *******
so that i look away when it's taking a **** in the garden...
oh sorry, i'll just return to my cigarette and beer
breakfast... take your time...
         what an annoying little twit she can be...
and with "can be", is...
      just after philosophy attacked poetry,
suddenly someone said, enough! that's when poetry
attacked the medium of journalism...
   someone has to bully someone in the end,
   or as i like to call it: symbiosis vulgaris...
it usually takes the monday edition of a newspaper,
and then re-reading the magzines from the sunday
edition... how those ponces critique books,
but i like critics, they actually read books,
which makes less time to think about books and bricks
and vacuums... critic: mmm hastings...
book? reporting war, by rrrr mosely... (trill that,
trill that *****)...
    it's basically about Patton bitchslapping an exhausted
soldier... and how Montgomery and 1944 and
Arnhem, and how he should have been sacked for that...
but primarily about how journalists lied...
    some shot down fighter jets,
some even did a Hemingway and added a bit
of spice, a chilli romance or something of that sort...
i add more spices to my curry when i make one,
e.g. cardamom... try thinking i'm a ****-asian
and not blame me for ultimate war and commerce...
oh wait... Caucasian... the caucus...
or let's call her: Matka Caucasus...
modernity, see, you have to start looking for myths,
myth-making is the only worthy rebellion
  to be made when everything is speeding past you
at 100 miles per hour... and it's still only Monday...
by Friday we can say: conquered the moon
and killed of Brother Grimm...
      and yes, in ancient times,
i'd give 30 years of pure, pure, pure life for this
advanced modern ******* of shrivelling away
at 100... give me 30 years of pure, raw, oyster-slurping
life and i'm your man...
   give me a life, that's actually a library and
the next time i sit before a television, i'll turn into
a little ****** and start utilising a gun and shooting
a mountain... a bit like Xerxes
          and his army told to whip the seas
into submission... akin to any madman,
the comedy just never seems to end...
                   it just goes on and on and then, at some point
we reach the pinnacle, the everyday grey,
common people... and then it becomes truly sad,
the realisation that we're all apparently prisoners
entombed by cosmic forces... i'd like people to try
to laugh then...
     but we are living in times of relative peace, aren't we?
it's not like we decided to enforce an "article 50"
(more like article 22, catch)
and are sending men to war,
                only when the mechanisms of war have become
so advanced that the wars we currently see
are puny... they don't capture the imagination,
what with the nation being so abstract it's
only basis is for football supporters and nothing else...
not the type of man i could have been in 1939...
   even when my grandfather and father lived
in a nation that prescribed no university after
leaving school, but 3 years in the army...
   where my jealosy stems from...
   3 years comprehensive in the army...
     it's that lesson of teaching man: routine...
my routine went when i went to university,
even though i did have 9 am lectures, and it was chemistry
and in my third year i was doing over 30 hours
in lab and lecture hall...
          but when i look at my father's and my grandfather's
life, i'm just thinking about an england,
where army conscription was dogma...
                ****'s sake, ted berrigan did it!
and he was a poet!
               me? more or less a *****... a tier higher above
a gimp... but i'll just call myself chewing gum
and mule it over...
                  try not having a joke at the existential
lottery known as life...
                          but it's like: who to fight?
    we done fighting, we're faking fighting? we're
not really fighting, are we?
      so, about this book, and how journalists and with
due care for establishing that there were censors
in the interim years 1939 - 45...
             and how wars are waged as much with
guns and knives as with truths and lies...
      well... if at war... tell a load of lies...
if at peace?
                 you have to tell the most mundane truths
unimaginable... truths can't be imagined,
e.g. i wrote this quasi-constipated, that's quasi for:
i kept it in and made an effort, and had some *****...
of peace and for peace to endure:
you have to be blunt... you can't *******,
well, i call bullshiting a diarrhea of narrative,
in the meantime i'm also capturing the sunset,
i started this, whenever i did and now i'm desperate
for a lightbulb...
      but really, for truth and for peace,
for both these children to have a father,
          they need to hear the uttermost banal:
a banana is yellow, white is the refractor of light,
black is the insulator of light... goths and emos
wear black cloths but have an aristocratic complex
meaning they have a vitmanin d deficiency
and i could milk them with my pinky.

Hello and welcome to Glebe Park and there is a lot of excitement happening here to celebrate the first reconsilation day and on the main stage we had the griffin ensemble and the music they played was very calm and relaxing and there are a lot of different activities happening all over Glebe Park
Yes, the indigenous Australians will be happy but the day has only just began and about to come onto the main stage is the great dale Huddleston and he is known to be a rocker country singer and dale’s music is very good the first song is Arnhem Land dreams and the next song is an aborigine and I go walking
And dale has a great voice and has the crowd sitting there being thoroughly entertained
And he sang that with so much pride and the next song was written about a place called black fellas point and around me the crowd are walking and sitting buying food and one old man is tapping his foot, very exciting, yeah dale you know how to sing and you are a classic to play for reconciliation day here in Glebe Park
And the next song was about the simple things in life like when he wrote the song his daughter was being born and that was the happiest day of his life and he really treasured that day and now he is about to sing
Home is where the heart is which to me will mean you go off and have all these adventures but when you go home you feel love and looked after and he sings about water and listening to country music on the radio and many more exciting things but at the end of the day home is where the heart is
Dale Huddleston is now leaving the stage and he really showed us is version of aboriginal culture and he didn’t disappoint anyone in the crowd
The next singer is **** whose music represents aboriginal and Torres straight Islander rights
In this world and I can tell you he is a bit of a rapper but his music does really suit the occasion and now he is singing or rapping out the heavens opening up to create the rain coming down which he tries to get people to understand that we need to focus on being positive despite all the problems they have in the world and music especially his kind of rap does focus on the positive
They are talking about making reconsiliation an every day event not just today because if you did everyone would live in harmony with one another
The next act is the feature act named busby Marou and they are starting to sing loudly but cool as they sit up on the high seat this band is from Queensland and they are here celebrating aboriginal culture
They are showing Queensland’s great oceans and sunshine in their music which is a good thing for this wonderful day
This next song is titled full moon
And this song really explains the meaning of this day like as long as we respect that aborigines were on this land first it will be alright and after that they played a song called blue road which was written back in the early days and it has a great beat as well as a great meaning
So fantastic and if you remember the 90s when they had a song called my island home well busby marou did a version of it and I can tell you they are singing it with so much meaning saying whatever you do you must remember your island home will be waiting for you so just do whet you see fit
And each song explains whether or not you make mistakes and you could try and fix it and you fail But that doesn’t mean much because in life you can have fun
And if you play your cards right
You won’t fail as long as you don’t make anymore mistakes
The music is really moving and great and it has heaps of meaning of this day and then after that they played a classic cindy lauper hit girls just want to have fun which was dedicated to all the girls out there and each of the girls starting clapping, yes a very good version of that song
After that they started to play a song to keep the rain away from Glebe Park and as the played that song the sun pokes itself through the cloud, there is a wind but no rain and they make this rain song sounds cool doesn’t it and then they sang a song called the best part of me is you which has a lot of great meaning to it as well as having a lot of people sitting on the grass of the chairs really enjoying the music and they will finish with a song called paint this land which is their reconsiliation song which is an artists song as you look around people are painting pictures of this land from north to south and east to west great song this is
As we are sitting here enjoying the fun at Glebe Park for reconsiliation day we are going to see some great aboriginal music with the didgeridoo as they have got body paint on them and the music sounds quite nice and pleasant
And as the Chant went on two women came on and with the leaves they swept the land clean and yes, this is ever so great and doesn’t the didgeridoo sound great and I can see other people gathered behind the stage to continue this great music and after that they have some audience participation where they made them do a few arm movements and then they had a laugh saying I feel like chicken tonight like chicken tonight and that is what this day is about having a bit of a laugh and I believe aborigines need to have a day like this because it explains their culture and after that they brought all the kids down to do the kangaroo dance and this got the kids really excited and
Each kid is enjoying being kangaroos and we are up to the last act and it will be interested what interesting dances they will perform today, well the first dance is the paddle dance which has a catchy tune and an interesting tune and as I was waking away from the main stage I was walking over to the middle and busker and former voice star Lucy Sugerman playing a few of her very own songs and she is sounding very good as she has performed at events before but for her to be at the first reconsiliation day was a great opportunity for her
And she is playing her keyboard
Well her music I guess is great music for this day and then she sang a bob Dylan song and she sang it very well, well she has got a great voice
She certainly lets out plenty of meaning in her music and then as I was walking out I heard a blast from the 80s with the song let’s hear it for the boys but two great men singers and they make the song sound like it is really cool and I had a great time watching the reconsiliation day concert and I will definately be back next year
Catch ya