balon

a ladder has worn in the thin rubber
skin at the back of your head, like
the walls of a balloon. balon.
who does the baby even belong to?
is the mother the daughter or is the daughter
the sister? laughter echoes louder with each return.
the body is trim, the body is taught to remember
movements just as it recovers the uncovered.
we all pull the hems of our tops
over our baby’s bumps. but baby’s are all bumps.
all of our lines come out in time.

 

the main communist feast

filling our caps with seawater, knowing
we could never take it all in, it was
the dead sea, or was it the red?
blue, the water, green, left us retching
for more, at the tips of our fingers
we felt everything that we had worked for.

Over and over again, they ignore
our faces, hear not our voices, but they
do note, with the sour grimaces of grandmothers
each one of our endless mistakes.

Will they ever hear us? we pile
our bodies – dead? – atop them.
We cannot eat  more, yet they
they who are set aside by distinction
that occurs when their eye falls over us.

it is time to let go of these old
us, them, you, me, rod through the
chest kind of things. but that is clearly
the voice of a person without hands,
without fingers, without heads.

 

after maggie

after maggie went, the feeling
was of new things, of new directions.
but they were being fooled, the change was
the difference between walking backwards
and walking backwards walking backwards.

They faced the opposite direction
toward the same destination. They
began to think that they had their binoculars
(so to speak) around the wrong way. Things
in the distance were getting larger, the wrong things
became like ants. Large ants became like much smaller
ants. Ants of a different genus, or baby ants of the same.
Baby ants became like bacteria, or perhaps
something more proportionally appropriate.

Point being there was a scale, into which
everything was placed, but the scale was sliding.
Present continuous, not as a descriptor.

Abacus beads, yet the columns have all
moved across, unbeknownst to the beads.

But what be known to beads, now?  The
old garfish are gone, the new harp plays
an old tune but in tune now. Though
closer to it, things vibrating, the contained energy
of two notes close but not yet in contact,
making us sick to our stomach(s), placing
magnets behind our eyes, the resonance
knocking teacups from the shelves.

 

getting in first; or, you can’t fire me ‘cos i quit.

he wanted to get me slowly

but i got in first and gladly.

weeks ago the pm got his end

in in the top end now his end

looks to be coming quickly.

jump before you’re pushed.

the active voice is more lively than the passive.

the idea being that the bastards behind you

may already have committed, and with

no resistance forthcoming they may fall off

too, all of us are coming in first. all prizes

go to all contestants. what’s on second?

we’re coming together, our ends therein and waiting to be got,

listening to the sound of  thunder stolen,

we breathe a sigh of relief.

all of us have left.

 

sound effects

saddam hussein is going to be hanged. his lawyer was told to pick up his personal effects. his personal effects.

 

From lock-up to wedlock – the ties that bind

love blossoms in australian detention centres.

isn’t that beautiful? just one thing, smh, there was a bit of a freudian slip when you referred to a ’still-serving detainee’. still serving what? his sentence? when’s he due for parole? and will it be the parole where he gets to stay on a tpv in australia, or will it be the parole in which he is executed in china?

or was andra jackson making a subtle point?

 

today’s go fuck yourself goes to………..

tamworth city council!!!!!

come collect your prize of a smack in the face!

they really do deserve a special mention for specifically rejecting five, that’s right five (in statistical terms, that’s known as an inundation, i believe) sudanese refugee families. really though, fair enough. i mean, they already have twelve sudanese people living in tamworth (that’s eleven more than one, or twelve times one, and a more than 1200% rise in the past two years), and they could have t.b.!!! how could the tamworth health system possibly deal with five more families!? (that’s 5, the cube root of 125!! which itself is the cube root of 1, 953, 125! how can tamworth coucnil be expected to cope with 1, 953, 125 new cases of tuberculosis a day!)

the other completely valid point that mayor james treloar makes, is that it ‘could lead to a Cronulla riots-type situation.’ that’s where my head explodes. like, if you were a general, run-of-the-mill racist fuck, with a more global outlook, you might be able to say ‘oh, we don’t want what happened in paris happening here’ (as if anything that happened in paris could happen in tamworth), because if you were a general, run-of-the-mill racist fuck, you could ignore all the reasons why the paris riots came about,  see them as purely negative, but at least the paris riots were largely carried out by migrant youth. here’s the difference: the paris riots could in some way be described as race riots (though plenty of people pointed out how they were actually more accurately poor riots), whereas the cronulla riots were purely racist riots. what the mayor is saying, is that, if five more families came, it may lead to locals lynching them in the streets. being racist isn’t an apologia for racism. though maybe at the end of the day claiming that you don’t want more refugees because you’re too racist to live peacefully with them is at least, i don’t know, honest.

 

finally

the goverment done somethink about ethnicks who dont now even speak inglish. fucken finally. link.

 

kevin rudd.

ok, so kevin spud. can/will he win the next election? john howard the other day was reported as saying that the problem for labour in recent years has not been the salesmen but rather the product. now that’s a typically smug response from john howard, as well as very fitting considering his commodify-all-things-on-god’s-earth approach to philosophy and political economy. but really, it’s a disingenuous statement. not because its logical reverse is more true (that the problem has been the salesmen and not the product) but rather because he has misstated the true statement, which is: the problem for labour has not been the salesman, but rather the salesman of the opposition, to wit, the john howard. this statement is proven by the simple thought experiment of: with alexander downer in power, would the liberals defeat any possible labour leader? of course not. with peter costello? maybe, depends on who he’s up against and a whole bunch of other circumstantial election campaign shit. so the problem for labour is john howard. just as the reason labour has had no problems in nsw was not because bob carr or morris iemma are fantastic, but rather because their opposition has been broggers of debnam (fuckface to his friends and colleagues). indeed over the past few months, debnam has been the number one asset of the labour party, the only thing keeping them afloat.

so with that in mind, does spudface have a chance? my short answer is yes. but the more important question: would that be in any way a good thing? my answer is ummmmm, well, you have to ask god about that. only true labour party hacks think that winning regardless is a good thing. i think there’s a pretty good chance that, given the unfortunate, hypothetical, unincited-in-a-seditious-way-by-me assassination of john howard, kevin rudd would have a pretty decent chance of defeating just about anyone else in the liberal party. the main two forces behind him are the churches and seven sunrise.

the happiest people out of all this are church leaders. finally both major parties are lead by people with unashamedly religious priorities. it’s clear that kevin rudd sees himself as an up-and-coming young politico-religious ideologue. whether or not the churches and voters come to buy that is another question. but i’m guessing that the only way he’ll gain their trust is by showing his mettle in regards to an issue or two (gay marriages, stem cells, abortion?). if he does that, sure, he’ll probably get elected, but i won’t be dancing in the streets over it.

i mentioned seven sunrise earlier because a lot of you probably don’t realise that mr rudd has been hanging about on seven sunrise for some time now giving regular little opinion pieces, bit by bit building up his profile like the little media slut that he is. and the sunrise set is a very powerful section of australian voters, let me assure you. now, it would be easy to simply dismiss rudd as a snivelling, smarmy fuck that normal australians will never relate to. but then, the australian electorate has shown a tolerance for snivelling, smarmy fucks for some years now.

the one other thing that rudd could possibly use, is that he apparently speaks mandarin. of course he’d have to be careful with this one. whilst he might be able to charm part of the australian migrant population by speaking their language, there’s a significant proportion of australians who, if they found out, might not be too happy. i mean, there’s no need for an australian prime minister to speak to australians in languages other than english, is there? as we’ve discussed before, all australians should speak fluent english. and if thhey don’t, the least a prime minister can do is tacitly exclude them from public discourse.

 

self-saucing

i was planning on making an insightful analysis of the rise and prospects of kevin rudd. but instead, i’m just going to sing the praises of self-saucing puddings. they are the shit. forget going out to buy a sauce for your pudding. it’s all there. in the frigging box! do it. buy it. eat it. love it.

maybe kevin spud tomorrow.