Me fail? I fly!

As we headed for bed, home form a social evening, I wailed that I had to get a sonnet written but the well was dry. The Art Student, never one to let someone just moan, told me to get in touch with my inner rage about recent news headlines. So I came up with this in fairly short order:

Sonnet 12: Australia, 27 November 2013
When they were in opposition
they said no, no, no, no. No
one expects the Inquisition,
Spanish or otherwise, and so
we didn’t dream that once empowered
they’d really drag us back to Howard
and beyond, ditch Gonski, try
to bluff and bully SBY,
sack scientists, be kind to rorters,
snub climate talks, give boats to thugs,
tweet racist tweets, treat us like mugs.
As trusting lambs are led to slaughters
we chose them. They appal, amaze
the world in barely eighty days.

If I remember correctly the French for ‘crash’ in the context of computers is naufrager, which is also the word used when a ship wrecks.

Sonnet 11: How I got a new toy tool
Some virtual reef sank my computer
as it steamed on through the night.
Its kernel panic wasn’t cute or
pretty, nor its owner’s fright.
But I’d backed up, so very little
work was lost – two jots, one tittle.
I took it to a man in red,
who said the audio card was dead.
A woman in red T-shirt, Uppy,
charming smile, discreet tattoos,
helped dissipate my first-world blues.
Though I’m too old to be a yuppy
my heart leapt up when I did hold
a shiny new Mac, bought and sold.

The computer that died has featured in this blog at least once before. It survived four years after the disaster that befell it shortly before this photo was taken, and was already of a certain age then, so I guess it’s had a good innings.

Perhaps a snippet of narrative, which is after all what this form of sonnet was invented for:

Sonnet 10: Suburban travelling companions
Corinda, Sherwood, Graceville, Chelmer:
Tattooed boys with half shaved heads
and desperado airs that tell more
than they know use seats as beds.
One sleeps. ‘I hope he bought three tickets,’
tuts a greybeard, ‘makes me sick.’ It’s
soon Taringa, then Toowong.
Two boys share buds. A chinkling song
confirms the greybeard’s irriration.
Unplugged, they chat about the dole
and meetings to observe parole.
The sleeper wakes for Central Station,
which comes like dawn to end his night.
There tattoos, beard, and I alight.

Enough with trying to squeeze a thought into 14 lines of roughly 8 syllables each. Today, an impressionistic moment:

Sonnet 9: South Bank
Thursday morning in the city
at the Ice-Cream-Brand-Name Beach
and Other-Brand-Name Fountains, pretty
children with one adult each –
mothers, aunts, great aunts, grandmothers
a dad or two – and sundry others
deploy the sunny Brisbane day
to better ends than making hay.
A squad of teenage girls come jogging,
uniformed, with in-ear buds.
A skateboard ollies, grinds and scuds.
I sit and eavesdrop, rhyming, blogging:
‘Mummy, sunscreen!’ ‘Splash me!’ ‘What?’
‘Oh my god, how can you not?’

I’m away from my computer and trying to catch up on my sonnet quota on the iPad far from home. The first eight lines of this got published prematurely some time yesterday. Here’s the whole thing, and the other six lines took less than 24 hours.

Sonnet 8: Prayer of a child of capitalism
Dear Absent Lord, Our Nobodaddy,
Dear Particle, or Gland, or Gene,
Who speak through prophet, saint and maddy
and have done since the Pleistocene,
accept my humble genuflection
in awe of natural selection.
Give us this day our daily bread
and roses, birdsong, sky’s vast spread.
Forgive – But I’ve no heart to ask it.
We’ve made a quarry of the Earth
and of its peoples. What’s it worth
when hell-bound in a plastic basket
to say we’re sorry? Don’t respond.
We’ve work to do. No magic wand.

I’m away from my computer and trying to catch up on my sonnet quota on the iPad far from home. The first eight lines of this got published prematurely some time yesterday. Here’s the whole thing, and the other six lines took less than 24 hours.

Sonnet 8: Prayer of a child of capitalism
Dear Absent Lord, Our Nobodaddy,
Dear Particle, or Gland, or Gene,
Who speak through prophet, saint and maddy
and have done since the Pleistocene,
accept my humble genuflection
in awe of natural selection.
Give us this day our daily bread
and roses, birdsong, sky’s vast spread.
Forgive – But I’ve no heart to ask it.
We’ve made a quarry of the Earth
and of its peoples. What’s it worth
when hell-bound in a plastic basket
to say we’re sorry? Don’t respond.
We’ve work to do. No magic wand.

For those who didn’t receive any group emails, recorded phone messages, leaflets, facebook promptings or reminders from actual friends: yesterday was National Day of Climate Action.

Sonnet 7: Demo
Ten thousand had, today in Sydney,
enough sense to stand in the rain
and twirl umbrellas, not stay hid. We
rallied, one link in a chain
of rallies all around Australia
crying out against the failure
of governments who play the role
of sycophants to Old King Coal.
Ten thousand stood with rain god Hughie,
sixty thousand nationwide
who’ll vote, divest, protest, decide
to use renewables, get more cluey.
There’s climate change, heat’s on the rise.
It’s time to change, to organise.