I’m going to keep my work pretty much to myself for a couple of years. Today I applied to study Professional Writing & Editing online via GippsTAFE and I plan to follow that path for 2 years.  I’ll obviously share my work with my teachers and fellow students and that’ll be enough to satisfy me. Can’t promise I’ll be back. I might like keeping it mostly under wraps.

Here’s a poem that I wrote a few years ago. I like to think that it played no part whatsoever in the formation of the Australian Racing Board’s wise decision to make padded whips mandatory.

Righteousness, it is the maddening force that made this grown man fall in a crowded shopping mall and embrace a coin-operated horse. Then put in the twenty or fifty cents and try to squeeze into the saddle, leave behind the things that addle and slowly ride, ride in innocence.  Around raved no crowd lost in the dream of painless banking. Ahead lied no glory, no fame and no treasure. No whipping in a feverish fit of pleasure! Just the local police, a psychiatric assessment team and some gentle spanking.

Here’s a blend of “schizophrenia”, religious “faith” and global politics. And you know that shrinks aren’t allowed to label religious beliefs insane, right?

23 Skidoo

For John Zorn   

*

I saw a strange, solitary duck. It was perched high

in a tree and relentlessly preened itself as though

burdened by a flea.

*

Later I met a doctor of the mind who told me to try

ducks peppered. It was his way of shouting “Bingo! 

The Lord truly is your Shepherd!”

*

So I studied Exodus, then Leviticus, and clearly was I

mirrored in Moses.

*

“Must I lead the Jews out of Jebusite?”

*

“O fanny … Mae … West … Bank … forecloses!”

*

Then He reversed this commandment and other “excuses

to squat in squalor”. Yet lest we forget our William Hung,

He removed the devilish flea-collar of John XXIII.

*

John blackballed gays and still oboedientia et pax the

grotto. His number came up one September 23. Another

winner in God’s game of lotto? A winner like thechild