while their crops perish in the fields

but guess what? not one of them tried to claim the reward. Blacklisted from their selection! Ned, be damned....I am a widow's son, outlawed. My orders must be obeyed....Graham Berry, over to you.

Meanwhile I have to compare William Gibson's Hinterland with H(erbert) G(eorge) W(ells) (w(ell!)) 'The Time Machine. Wells' social Darwinian vision of Elois and Morlocks and Gibson's cargo cult on the Highway. Not sure which has dated more. Wells' Communism or Gibson's USSR.

Again and Again
took chaos hood from co-incidence
pronounced my life full of incidents
mostly self-styled thirsty trouble
too seldom tee-totalling double
sundrenched in torrential twice-happenings
cartographer's cartwheel fortunate mappenings
turgid thoughts turkey shoot
target happy triple tippling truth

Neath me the fire

reading about Margaret Wertheim's magnificent dissertation on the history of space and spacial concepts The Pearly Gates of Cyberspace. Everything from Dante to the Internet via Aristotle, Kepler, Newton, Galileo, Descartes, Kant, Hubble, Einstein, Wells and others. She has a lovely way of looking at things from an off-kilter angle that makes her observations rooted in something other than raw fact. Yer mad, man.

Clutz
I have to save you
from a deadly homebrew
a concoction made behind dark doors
wino cellars under hobnailed floors
Hallowed be thy name
and wild be thy nature
I’m ruminating on the cud of love
milking the sacred moo
cow’s licking clucking coo
slickly cuddling a cloud called you

Sports Poll: Drogballs?

Thwaite won't wait. Togo, Cote d'Ivoire, Ghana and Angola don't have to wait. National holiday declared in Tome, capital of Togo. Abidjan is the same, Didier Drogba leads the celebration. Cromwell killed well in Drogheda. Uruguay v Argentina live 10.15 am AET Thursday to determine Australia's opponents in Oceania v Concacaf playoff. Angora Angola! chez Guevara, Free Freddy Flintoff, change charge charcoal frill grill. Rejuvenate and when you do, have some of this,

Conversation Stopper
I’m suffocating in that terrible gaffiatus
Between my q-q-question and your considered answers
Caught in a spasm of my own considerations
Spread around me like pinching cancers
Malignant growths that stultify
crushing flower weaving armies of childrenness
a sergeant major shrilly berating
frogmarching my brain into tree-shrugging wilderness
just as this scorched earth mania triumphs
slowly smouldering in purple embers
a wry smile cracks the code to the safe
something in here cogitates, remembers

anglican sundays

Sunday so slow in the suburbs. Churchmice are hibernating. The world is elsewhere. Outside the oppressive heat of Summer come early to Brisbane. Where are all the people? "I'm an anthropologist" says the man in Scorsese's Boxcar Bertha. She is two dollars a touch and ten below the waistline. The anthropologist has put away his pencil.

Time for doughy words:

Breadlines
Sometimes, abundantly clear to me
I’m intensely afraid of bread
And no earthly rationality
Will conquer this floury dread
I dream my hands get sucked in machines
And fingers become individual slices
I am a victim of the Slasher in the Rye
And other complex baking devices
A piper pied to its overwhelming perfume
Its freshness awakens the beast
Those sourdough moments annihilate me
A hopeless prisoner of yeast
I savagely attack with a butterknife
And burn it to the stake as toast
Freshly blazed hearts beat fresh for revenge
Seven seeds for a grain hole ghost
But they cannot murder my edible cravings
Rats will uncover a trail of crumbs
They’ll take the bread from out of my mouth
and loaf about in unleavened slums