I wanted to be there for Parsnips but time and  money availability have precluded it from happening. I cannot make it down for the funeral.

I f you would please pass on the following few words for me.

Parsnips was my mate, He was the epitome of a man from a different age.
He was wild and intense, dark of mood  and definite of opinion.

He was poetry in motion astride a good jumping mare, many a time I have seen him clear a seven wire fence with a good foot of daylight to spare.
His understanding of equine mentality approached that of witchcraft. He was capable of anticipating the  lashing hoof before the horse had formulated the thought, much less put it into action. He had NO patience with intemperate horseflesh. Many a frisky animal had second thoughts of misbehaviour after they had worn the thick end of a coarse rasp at close quarters.
Parsnip’s work was artistry, he was truly... one of the GREAT farriers.

The end of the working day would see Parsnips drown his sorrows in the demon ***.
This was the emergence of the dark soul who cast about for answers to impossible questions, who wallowed in the unhappiness of his failed horizons and the bitterness of his life’s disappointments. My mate Parsnips was not the easiest man to know in his dark moments. But a mate is a mate... you take the good with the bad.

And there were a lot of really good times... when a happy Parsnips had laughter in his eyes and a flash of excitement in his demeanour. I recall one such time when, on a wild rafting trip on a rampaging, flooded Mohaka river, The raft was marooned on a jammed stump in the midst of violent huge killer white water. Parsnips hung off a rope and with a look of wild joy on his face announced to his flabbergasted mates...”And I can’t even ****** swim a stroke!... fantastic. Needless to say he survived the trip and loved every moment of it.

I called to spend the afternoon with him a short time ago at the Rest Home. This was a shadow of the Parsnips I had once known. He was completely disillusioned with the hand fate had dealt him. He saw no future to speak of... He wanted out.
So I must say that I am not entirely surprised with the way things have materialised.
Parsnips usually arranged the system to get things the way he wanted them.

I grieve for the loss of my wild, intense mate, God knows there are few enough of them left.
Real people who live life in the black and white way.
Definite personalities who, for the good or for the bad, never ever leave you in any doubt as to where they stand in the way of things.

Fare well my old friend, I leave you with these words.

The Winds of Life
by Marshal Gebbie

The wind careers across the years
Gathering leaves and dust,
Sweeping lives before it
In cartwheels of redness and rust.
Epiphanous moments of magnitude
Through special occasions employ
The will o the wisp of everyday stuff
From sadness to anger to joy.

The billowing tumble of living
Through vaulting halls of trees
In the dappled light of sunshine
And green corridors of breeze.
The exquisiteness of living
When senses soar in the air
When the colours of being are rampant
And we savour each moment with care.

For the living time goes quickly
It flares and fades with speed,
‘Tis best enjoyed boisterously
With passion, love and need;
‘Tis best when tasted piquantly
Like a claret on the tongue
When you cloak the days with good things
And you hope your dreams die young.

Marshalg
@ the Gate
Mangere Bridge
29th January 2009

When Princess Lemon went to bed that night
she knew for sure that everything had changed.
She knew the pounding hoofbeats would pursue
the quivering night-time body of her dreams,
would shake her upside-down and inside-out,
would set the tempo of her shuddering sleep.

The horseman spurs the horseflesh to obey
his strict command: "Up now, and clear the hedge!"
Together, man and beast perform as one,
combining will and power; and at speed.

The huntsman and the Princess are a pair.
They dance to Pan as only lovers can
and twine their bodies in the open air.

Village life city style.

Going shopping,
once the necessity has now become the must have fashion accessory,faces adorned with quorn burgers,hamburgers,lamburgers,mouths full of soda pop and this they call the weekend shop
it's enough to make you stop and think and blink your eyes in disbelief,good grief we're heading to obesity and nothing ever comes for free,we're paying through the nose for, goodness knows what's in the meat,is it pork within those pies or horseflesh? they just tell us lies and still we stuff our faces 'til we've had enough,eaten our fill,one day I'm sure we'll all explode,
I bet the greedy ******* will even try to barcode that.

It was going to be the trip of a lifetime. Sydney, Cairo, Constantinople, maybe even Jerusalem if there was time and breath left in us. We came from the far-flung reaches of the earth to the bustling capitals of the Middle East. Just me, my good mates -  Blue, Grim and his cousin Frank - our chaperone Sergeant Major O’Donnell, and 1,500 other lads of the 1st Australian Light Horse Brigade.

Frank copped it at Gallipoli, never even set foot on the beach. I left him screaming on the metal deck of the landing craft awash with ***** and blood as he watched his innards unfurl. ****** oath, they stunk! Like ten-day-old snags left out in the Adelaide sun. His Mum always said she’d have his guts for garters if he enlisted underage. I reckon she’d never use that expression again. She was a nice lady too, that Mrs Gibson.

Tell me, fair dinkum, what do 18-year-old, daring-do dreamers from Parramatta know of the chain of high command, a war of geopolitical strategy and stiff upper lips. The bewhiskered gentlemen who manoeuvre their pieces in imperial map rooms will live to fight another day, and yet hold their fallen troops accountable for the unpredictable tides of history.

Grim took Frank’s death hard. From that day on his war was one explosive suicide mission. In the end, he walked into a spray of Turkish gunpowder at Chunuk Bair. The Distinguished Conduct Medal he earned that day sits on my mantelpiece beside a photo of the four of us at Giza. His sister Molly, my dear sweet Molly, turned out to be the love of my life. Funny how that happens - the threads that hold us together, the ties that bind brothers, the strangers who become our saviours.

The sergeant major succumbed to typhoid fever in Palestine and that left Blue and me. We sit and remember. We laugh at the horror during the day and shiver in our beds at night. We wage war with ourselves, our choices, our victories and defeats. We marvel at the world and the territorial ambition of nations, shake our heads at the repetition of dumb history, and raise our wavering fists to those same men in their ivory towers. It’s in all the newspapers that the Vietnam conflict is this generation’s Dardanelles Campaign. ‘A vain and protracted engagement fought in a topographically hostile arena with disproportionate loss of life’ is what I read. Yet wonder of wonders, a Yank - Blue knows his name...but I forget...Neville Someone - walked on the moon last month. Do y’reckon we helped to make that happen? Four cobbers from New South Wales, who had a knack with horseflesh and a taste for kangaroo feathers, on an adventure which spanned more lifetimes than I could ever have imagined.

She observed herself
Standing fast in clouds of steam
This felt so unreal.

Remote perspective
Would make survivable the
Dreaded encounter.

The necessities:
Tickets, porter, clock,
Time creeping along.

Maintained a distance
And staunch objectivity
‘Til the last moment.

Final words spoken,
All defenses splintering
She paused, one last look.

One last chance to stay,
Vanquished, punished, forbidden
The wide world’s  pageant.
.
Point of inflexion.
The tug of the familiar
The pull of the known

Would invert the arc,
Intended trajectory,
Retrogressively.

And then, there it was:
Unctuous, demeaning smile,
Withering and cruel.

Pierced by well-honed fleer,
She reflexively shuddered
Like fly-stung horseflesh.

Ears roaring; face flushed
She felt foolish, faint-hearted,
humiliated.

One breath, and one more,
Forcing herself to stare down
Scorn and ridicule.

Then chin uplifted
And breath becalmed, she nodded
And scant smiled Adieu.

Thus the poetess
Righted her millinery,
Spun on her bootheel,

Snapped her parasol,
gave her bustle a barely
Perceptible shake,

And with solemn mien,
But mirthful eyes, she set forth
For better morrow.

You use your propaganda as
if it's played like watching cricket
from an old pavilion and you
sat on the verandah
with a pink gin in your hand

all that's missing is the marching band and that can easily be fixed just like you fix the things we need, we read, the horseflesh we don't want to feed on but as long as its propping up the state
we're well conditioned to that.

You told me there was Shangri-la, another lie,
shanghaied I'm taken off to be
reformed in the reformatory

But the cracks begin to show
tarnishing your crowns of gold
diminishing that glow of
self righteous satisfaction

the factions within factions are
the ones you need to fear
the time to strike is almost here

and can you hear the bells ring freedom?
see them?
I can.

a stallion lunges
forward
threatening
warning
hoping you'll
back off

you're licking your lips
at the horseflesh
hungry as a lioness
you grin
into

oh this battle
of flesh on flesh
a victor
a meal

or an escape

and i know tomorrow
having imagined myself
there so often
winning

abate your self
interest

create a space to buffer
passion
and the instants
that used to
save lives
that now
confuse

enuf is said
in one day
to save us all
yet we fall
continuously
is this direction
away from home
and mom

it draws us back
this vein of tomorrow
this fount of can i get there
this loss of
losing

i am found
on a line
by you
here
thanks
i needed found

bound to this thread
of breath
til it fogs no more
and we kid ourselves
until then
or live



Copyright@2019 Dennis Willis

Stolen ponies found abandoned
Clearly far too much to handle
For the fool who thought it wise
To take this horseflesh as his prize
Perhaps a blind impulse rob
Maybe a drunken bet gone wrong
But when resason or sobriety hit
He let them loose
And did a flit.