More Poems

Harsh Words With A Shock Jock

Babble on you travesty of human existence

It’s dirty money you make

Drawing attention to the dark side of things

Posing as the voice of upstairs management

You weave ugly words into an unearthly tapestry

Of deception, violence and hate

Sullying the lives of innocent people

Undeserving of what you bring them as their orchestrated fate

Shock jock is your category of behaviour

A stage-managed label in a marketplace of lies that sell

And so you behave like a real estate agent

Selling strata title in Hell

The Seven Deadly Sins are your subject matter

To get public attention

You rant and rave in Plato’s cave

Giving every possible wrong cause a mention

You twist the truth, deny the science,

Greet the law with illicit defiance

Until you have a world that reeks of iniquity

The kind where your type rises to the well paid rank of stardom

But get you gone you stentor of gibberish

Cast yourself into tomorrow’s waste bins of irrelevance

Pollute the air with the last traces of your aggressive persona

Turned into the dust of your deserved oblivion

And let the beautiful silence when you no longer speak

Proclaim to us all

That the world can be a positive, dignified place

Dinner For Two

Bon appetite

Tell me how long have you been making a living

Deceiving people with distorted realities?

You don’t say

That’s a very long time. Profitable I assume?

I thought so, judging by your extravagant lifestyle

Tell me

How important to you is the truth?

That’s interesting

And how often does it reduce selling power?

Aha! Well now fancy that!

Lies are more profitable than scientific proof

So there you stand. But tell me this

Do you feel sometimes like Mephistopheles?

Yes, the well known bargainer…

There’s a Faustus in every lounge room isn’t there?

You make your entire living out of temptation do you not?

Well that’s something we agree on

There’s a Heaven waiting for everyone with a Visa card 

Even if you buy passports to Hell

But we don’t have debtor’s prisons any more do we?

Places where spendthrifts have to go

More trivia. How do you feel about the moral equity

Of invasive commercials that destroy dramatic tension in films?

You castrate the artistry this way on TV to sell, don’t you?

Is that really in pursuit of the best of all possible worlds?

I take your point:

The means justifies the end

Well there you are

I have got to know you and your modus operandi much better now

Would you care for a drink to complete our celebration?

What about some Absinthe?

There you are. Just a little of the Green Fairy. Nice

And thanks for your card:

AAA: AMBIVALENT ADVERTISING AGENCY

I’ll look you up next time my ship comes in

Cowboys And Indians

I was a hero once

A man of the saddle

Infinitely calm in a crisis

Twirling my six-shooter revolver

In defiance of the Indians

Who surrounded me in pursuit of my scalp

My friend Arthur was one of those dangerous foes

He had a lovely feathery headdress

A Christmas present from his Auntie Jane

He would creep up on me as an Apache from time to time

In the bush near where we lived

But I was always ready for him

Too alert by far

A great survivor like Hopalong Cassidy

Or Roy Rogers

My heroes from the Saturday matinees

I must admit however

Occasionally he would get me

Creeping up behind me with his rubber Indian axe

He was no match for me with his bow and arrow though

Now I have grown up

In fact I am very grown up

An octogenarian

Arthur is long dead

So we no longer play together

Instead I read a lot

And American history is one of my favourite subjects

I go for a walk in the bush still these days

Unafraid of Indians

But I wonder why I was taught fear of them by all those movies

Was there a racist agenda in all those screenplays?

I do not know but perhaps there was

I learn too about all the beautiful land those indigenous victims lost

Yes, maybe Arthur and I should have acted out the Little Bighorn

With Arthur as Crazy Horse, Chief Gall or Sitting Bull

And me George Armstrong Custer, the man with the red right hand

One Kind Word

Life is hard for a failure

One who never manages to succeed

With even the simplest challenges of life

Poverty ruled my childhood

My father couldn’t afford Christmas presents

So he made me wheelbarrows and cricket bats

Using surplus timber from building sites

Where he worked as a labourer

My school outcomes were poor

Somehow I didn’t understand

The nature of classroom interaction

It was all too confusing for me

My first job was with Woolworths

But I got the sack

Because I went to my grandfather’s funeral on a busy day

Had several other jobs but couldn’t find contentment

I was a garbage man for a while

Not a high status role

But you have to eat and the exercise carrying the bins was good

Then came the change

The baby boom after World War II

Left my country’s schools in dire need

Classes were big because teachers were few

A massive recruitment drive followed

That was why I found myself

At an interview one significant afternoon

The inquisitor was gentle with me, looking for new teachers

He smiled often

And seemed to understand my desperate desire

To belong to my society

Many questions and answers followed

Then eventually, came one kind word:

“Yes!”

So I became a teacher

And did well in those first years especially – loved the work

Among other reasons because I truly understood how it feels to fail

To Err Is Inhuman

So you have made a mistake

Stuffed up completely as the hoi polloi would put it

Bungled, fumbled, miscalculated, lapsed

Until the structure of your world has collapsed

But you won’t admit a thing

You point instead to the counterfeit progress you have made

With sham progressivism

Giving the market the same importance as people’s health

The sirens of untruth

Trumpet your name in the blimpish media

You, the proclaimed angel of profit 

Who guides us away from so called loss and suffering

So they say

Yet in truth all you promote is success for your powerful friends

Heed this then

O painter of deceptive self-portraits

Life stories not based on truth are doomed to slip slide away

To fade into oblivion

Eventually

So even if you cover your deceptive tracks

Speak about fantasies of achievement 

Divert attention from the truth with platitudes that sound good

Beware

For history will uncover reality 

Relentlessly

With judgements drawn from true evidence revealed by the ages

Thus it follows as day the night since time began,

The truth will in the end reach out to every man

That is why your period in office will end with a loss of friends

Your name will fade from minds near and far

Perhaps for that reason I’ve already forgotten who you are

Idiots

Blithering is an utterance I have often heard

Compellingly placed beside idiots

When asked to act decisively

The idiot merely fidgets

Today there’s a word these dullards regard as decidedly obscene:

They run away and hide their heads 

At the mention of a vaccine

Brainwashed they proclaim with stark impunity

Their right in freedom’s name, to kill themselves and others

By completely refusing immunity

So the virus rages and the death toll rises

As dullards stage a procession

They demonstrate in their ill-informed way

Inspired by a halfwit’s obsession: 

Masks don’t work; lockdowns are a lurk

With the virus one of a villain’s schemes

But O my, things are so different

When you believe in science

Therefore awaken poor fools, expunge your nightmare

And may new found truth enter your dreams

If you throw away your life expectancy

Nothing more can be said

The wise will survive and remain alive

While the others will soon be dead

But wait

In my quest for peace, more wisdom I require

Those who err and meet dismay

Need my pity not my ire

Passion should become compassion

So here’s to reform ere this poem ends

As there is yet time to make amends

royciebaby