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ARTS AND CULTURE

Long conversations over low fences

  • 16 February 2021
  Selected poetry Spare a thought

 

Spare a thought for the humble fruit fly (gnat) the next time you visit your pub

Incepted on fermented yeast nectar to protect itself from parasitic wasps

Hotels attract them like moths to a flame

Its flirtatious, licentious and has poor judgement with partners

One nighter denial

Hitting the bottle with hangovers, withdrawals commonplace

Haven’t we all known someone like that or been through such an episode?

We do have 60 per cent identical DNA ironically

These silent winged socialites and I must be kindred spirits as they surreptitiously sip at the rim of my beer glass

Not a word is said

'I’m only here for the alcohol too,' I say to them

As we both flutter away to a new meniscus

 

 

The net casts a broad sweep

 

Ayah for bambinos

Platforms and forums for the conceited

Paradisical banter decadence

Item providing purveyors

Inspirational mood motivators

Piranhas trolling for a byte

Minnow schools of thoughts with barbed wired mouth hook conspiracy theories

Snaring even the colossal inked squid gangsters with interwoven noughts and crossed algorithms in gendarmerie trawlers

Devoured paroled miscreant herrings

Served up on a seabed of tomato and saffron basmati ‘Chump’ digitalized rice

 

 

Toowoomba

 

In a stilted, modest Queenslander in Cumming Street we lived

Pets, organic alimentation and perishable bartering

Egg producing Cackling Rhode Island Reds, Leghorns and Bantams

Freedom to explore the countryside without fear or anxiety

Long conversations over low fences

Minimal obesity and cancer

Milk bottle and newspaper deliveries

The concrete incinerator that was stoked with household waste

When it kept burning at night Brian and I would run up throw an empty aerosol spray

A steel water tank repurposed as a cubby house

Barbeques on the Besser Brick Spic 'N Span

Dad expertise was the written word and food cremations

The garbo darting in to grab the galvanized 60 litre bin with a six pack at Chrissy for his efforts

Visits from Con the fruiterer with pails of fruit in his grey canvas covered Bedford

Saturdays, the pieman playing Mozart’s 'GreenSleeves' with the speaker on top of his white Thames van

The frequent hum of the Apis Millifera collecting pollen from the Geraldton wax trees

Choruses from the April Starling squadrons roosting on the telegraph wires

The onomatopoeia of grain filled railcars shunting at the Willowburn yards

Dad on his Olivetti typewriter stamping out a new poem for his publisher

Mum with her evocative blooms drifting into the house

No fabricated screens, complex alarms and locks

An unhindered door to a quality life

 

 

Crime scene punctuation

 

Ellipsis is missing presumably foul play

Full stops have come to a disastrous faux pas accident

Exclamation points are on high alert

Apostrophes abandoned
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