Category: Politics

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The Open Doors

Maree and I hopped off the bus and flitted up the hill to the hospital entrance. We were enchanting elves buzzing in fairyland since last night, off our faces on mescalin with our mates.

After Roger said Maree’s face was turning green, the five of us had a simultaneous silent vision where we were ripples on the surface of life and death was when one slipped down to the depths below. Roger had freaked out at the magical communion and hidden the knives.

“Noone can have a shower, it’s too dangerous,” he’d ranted.

I’d grinned at Maree who followed me outside. In the yard, hibiscus flowers glowed and shimmered. Plants flaunted their vivid inner lives to us and I never looked at them the same way since. Back inside, I found a pen and paper and invented a new language which made sense at the time. No words existed to describe the raging gamut of unfiltered experiences so I created my own.

Over brekkie, I’d persuaded Maree to visit my grandma with me. In our elevated state, this had seemed like an excellent idea.

The hospital foyer was oddly empty, though we spotted a large crowd seated outside nearby.

Upstairs we found my grandma, in there for tests. We gave her the flowers which had adopted us from various gardens on the way.

“What’s with all the people outside, Grandma?”

“Oooo, didn’t you know, Prince Charles is here, he’s reopening the hospital. They’re changing its name to his.”

“Has he given it any of his loot to deserve this?”

Being stolidly Scottish, Gran was no royalist and she smiled at my cheek.

“I don’t know, dear, why don’t you go down and ask him?”

We all laughed.

“OK, Gran, we’ll go and have a look. See you in a minute.”

Through the hospital labyrinth, we wandered in the general direction of the grand event.

“Maybe if we find the right route, we can sneak up behind him,” Maree suggested.

Entering a glassed-in area at the end of a corridor, we spotted the Prince’s entourage, fierce looking blokes in dark suits who were probably MI6 and a couple of heavily made-up blonde women squeezed into tight Dior jackets and matching skirts, along with some press photographers and journalists straggling about.

All eyes were fixed on an open door through which we could hear the Prince’s speech indistinctly. We were invisible.

“Hey, it’s February the 29th,” I whispered, “isn’t there an old tradition if someone asks a bloke for their hand in marriage on a leap day, they have to accept?” I stifled a snigger.

“Oh yeah, please, let’s do it.” Maree was my besty and up for anything.

“Hey if I distract them, you can just walk up to him and give it a go, Maree. What have we got to lose, we’re just two ditzy sheilas. Noone’s going to mind.”

Yeah right. The inflated sense of invulnerability from the opened doors of perception hadn’t worn off.

We moved closer. Noone noticed us.

Then I saw him. Or rather I saw his ears which stuck out like ping pong bats on each side of his long head.

Forget the title and the easy life a prince could offer. No way was I going to propose to that.

“Hey, Maree, imagine waking up next to those every morning.”

Too late, she was heading for the verandah and the Prince.

He’d finished his speech and everyone was clapping. Maree ran toward him, tripped over and slid into an ungainly heap at his feet.

“Goodness, dear, are you alright?”

The Prince grasped her arm and pulled her to the vertical.

Maree was speechless. Come on, say it, say it.

Nothing.

She turned beetroot, stammering sorry noises as he led her back inside.

“It’s OK, she’s with me,” I volunteered, unable to wrench my eyes off his monstrosities.

“I’m Wendy and this is Maree. You have to be Prince Charles. We’re here to see my Gran and found out you were here too. We’ll just go back to Gran’s ward now.”

Maree had lost her tongue still. The Prince looked at her quizzically.

“Come on, Maree, looks like you won’t be royalty after all,” I said.

Then I addressed him.

“Charles, is it true if we propose marriage to you on a leap day you have to accept?”

The Prince guffawed.

“Are you British?”

“Errr no, your Earness, I mean, Highness.”

“Only British commoners may apply.”

Common? he called us common!

“Come on Maree, we’re out of here. Now.”

We beat a hasty retreat up to Grandma who cackled so hard at our fiasco, she upset the rest of the patients.

“Thank goodness you couldn’t propose and be accepted. I couldn’t bear those parasites in the family. You know they stole our family’s estate outside Edinburgh centuries ago. The sooner we’re a republic here, the better, I say.”

“Damn, Gran, I forgot to ask him whether he donated money for the privilege of naming the place after him.”

Gran passed away a few months later. She showed me how to die well, with our royal adventure providing her with a good laugh till her time came. The night after she died, I saw her in a dream, dressed like a duchess on an ornate balcony above a Venetian canal, smiling and waving at me.

Jinjirrie
April 2021

COMMEMORATIVE HAIKUS

Colonizer dies
Servile press feasts on carcass
Chucky takes the spoils

Queen dead on Day 2
Turn on the TV and yawn
Not this shit again

Chucky the Turd drools
elevates Willy of Wales
bye Mummy and thanks

Chucky inherits
Britain’s imperial loot
Time to pay it back

Coronation glee
Aussie Parliament
goes on holiday

Two weeks holiday
For bludging Aussie pollies
One day for voters

White supremacists
Flying colours on Day 4
Lambie loves Hanson

Relief on Day 5
Back to normal programming
The Rabbitohs won

Protest monarchy
In “democratic” Britain
And you’re thrown in jail

No truth to power
Permitted in the UK
Dissent is silenced

Slick role of the Crown
Uniting supine peasants
to serve ruling class

Caitlin Moran breach
Bow to the coloniser
Or pay settlers’ fine

F*ck imperialism
Abolish the monarchy
Crush the ruling class

Nine million is
Funeral money well spent
To conceal the poor

People freeze and starve
While lucky Chucky 3 skips
Inheritance tax

British monarchy
Still miscegenation rules
Absolute whiteness

Distracting freebie
Coffin queuing for twelve hours
Forget power bills

Today’s top idea
The little Aussie bleeder
On the pink snapper

Return the jewel
Apologize for empire
Theft and genocide

The ABC sends
Twenty-seven journalists
to bootlick England

Under Ita’s reign
Public broadcaster becomes
Women’s Weekly drool

Even Stan Grant is cross
Aboriginal people
Silenced by settlers

Royal death orgy
Media funeral feast
Orgasms today

The cortege commences
Time to watch horror movies
And sci fi instead

Lisa Millar drools
Outside Westminster Abbey
toxic royalty

Another day bored
By slathering media
Forcefed royalty

Interminable
Grovelling sycophancy
To unearned loot

Meghan Markle shines
Racist royalists demand
White supremacy

Public holiday
To be flooded by deluge
We may as well work

In memoriam
Of her complicit silence
With empire’s foul crimes

No holiday here
Just solemn contemplation
of Frontier Wars

Ghoulish media
Gobbling scraps of royal corpse
Winter is coming

#QE2Haiku
#ChuckyHaiku
#NotMyKing

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International Women’s Day 2022

Kangaroo Mother and Children
No to reflexive acceptance
of unacceptable patriarchal narratives
No to worship of colonial baubles
to pad hollow best lives
No to climate change
unless toward cooling
and they don’t have a plan
for our children’s children
all they give a f*ck about is bucks
over our f*cked dead bodies
and concocting plausible deniability
to shield them from deserved fates
their worst lives are realised only in ours
No to lies, to conjobs, to war except class war,
to whiteness, to empire, to the man on the screen
who sells it to us against our own interests –
does he think they’ll save their mouthpiece
after he’s served their purposes?
filling a hole with fluff satisfies hollowness
with the illusion of fullness
all those best lives are empty
tributes to emptiness
No to life without truth and the planet’s healing.

Jinjirrie, March 2022

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Mr Speaker Stand Up

Scummo

Cando Bullshit

A lot of people from down south jibe and sneer at Queensland and us banana benders, especially those of us who don’t live in the city. You live 50 years in the past, they reckon. Well i’m here to tell you we in the Noosa hinterland are as erudite and edumacated as any of those Antarcticans. And if Queensland wasn’t so great, why have they been moving up here from down south in droves since the Covid hit? why do so many of them holiday in Noosa? why are they buying up all our houses?

So I decided to prove how in touch we are round here, by interviewing people in the local Cooran shop and asking them about our one and only prime monster, Scummo. Yeah, so Queensland gave Canberra the ghoulish Pauline Hanson, Malcolm Roberts, George Christenson, Matt Canavan, Potatohead and a couple of Mad Katters, but look what we got in return? and now he’s reckoning we can’t go to coffee shops in Briso? bollocks mate, we’ve barely noticed lockdowns. It’s him with his vaccine strollout who hasn’t noticed, the way he never notices how many times he says “Mr Speaker” in Question Time. But we notice.

Here’s a good one Laurie from round the corner told me.

A liar, a dogwhistling opportunist and an incompetent leader walk into a bar.
The bartender says “What can I get you, Mr Morrison?”

So you didn’t get it? wake the fuck up, Scummo relies on you mob being half asleep to pull the wool right over yer eyes.

Scummo doesn’t hold a hose to folks round these parts. As long time local Carol told me, the only hose he actually holds is his own and even then he doesn’t know what to do with it.

Then there’s Annie, who’s worked from home as an artist for years before covid. Here’s her sparkling wit.

This bloke went to a job interview and they asked about his work ethic.

He said, “I don’t give a fuck about my work colleagues getting death threats or raped or sexually harassed, just as long as someone takes lots of photos when I get a haircut instead of working.”

And they said …

Congratulations Prime Minister, when can you start?

Yeah, people round here are woke to Scummo’s foibles, we don’t put up with the prick. Terry reckoned he heard he could walk on water, but the real miracle is Scummo swims with the sharks down the Goldy and they line up on either side of him – it’s professional courtesy.

Scummo says it’s the Australian way, but what’s that? witch-burning? He’s taking us back to medieval times with this religious ‘freedom’ bill so nasty people can be racists and bigots again.

We’re not silly here, we all know religion’s just another blokey con job to keep us preggers in the kitchen and bringing the bloke his beer. Though it was a miracle Scummo got elected. That’s the last real truth I remember him telling us. My mate Jacky who works for the local rag, her journo mate down south asked him:

“Mr Morrison, what’s your favourite lie you’ve told the public?”
“I’ve never told a lie in public,” Scummo says.
“That’s my favourite too!” she replied.

Now he’s hawking hollow gibberish about climate change mitigation. We know he’s up to his eyeballs in coal, his precious. You can’t trust the bugger as far as you can throw him. The planet will fry, we’re all going to hell on earth, never mind the afterlife.

What’s the difference between Australia and hell?
Scott Morrison hasn’t managed to fuck up hell yet.

So what is a Morrison promise worth?
Net zero. Just ask the French.

Do you know what the mummy sardine said to the baby sardine when they saw the nuclear sub?

“Hey sonny, there goes a tin of scared Aussies.”

Now that’s critical technology, forty years late. When Scummo rants on about critical technology it reminds me of a joke at Tourism Australia when he was CEO, before he got the arse as he always does after his lies catch up with him. If his PA was off sick or on leave it was pointless expecting an answer to any emails. She wasn’t there to log him on to the system.

Scummo’s election pitch about government interferring in people’s lives is another joke. His same sex marriage bigotry, Indue card, Robodebt, alleged rape and FOI cover ups and religious discrimination laws all interfer in peoples’ lives. He talks from both sides of his mouth. Who else is sick of his coddling of neo-nazis? Just like his roll-out stroll-out … his call-out of the far right was a crawl-out. Ben at the shop told me this one.

What’s the difference between Neil Erikson and Scummo?
Neil is an honest self-proclaimed neo-Nazi.

Have I thrown you lot into enough of a spin yet?

Rightyo, folks, now I’m not going for a Scummo break – leaving in the middle of a crisis – I’m off to meet up with my mate from Melbourne who’s double vaxxed and tested clear so he can visit Queensland and not infect us the way Scummo wants us to be so he can claim a Labor state failed to do its job. Have a good one and remember to put the LNP crime family last on the ballot, the way they put our future last with their lies, dirty kick backs, net zero cred promises and pickled pork for their mates.

Jinjirrie
November 2021

(This is a standup exercise, to be performed in a broad Queensland accent.)

Addendum

Q. What’s the difference between #Omicron and #Scomicron?
A. One lays you out straight in bed, the other can’t lie straight in bed.

Posted on

Fly My Pretties

Witch cat

Samhain 2021

Hear me friends, heed the call,
around the bonfire gather all,
to cauterise its endless bingeing
patriarchy needs a singeing,
Our broomsticks now wait in the wings
for sophisticated modern things,
3d drones printed in the thousands
to swarm the warming world unmanned,
We’ll guide them swift above the land
and torch oppressors where they stand,
locate them by their hi viz vests,
divest them of their treasure chests,
seize power from wealthy old white men,
incinerate the deadly capitalist system,
With eye of newt and skin of toad
remove the crushing brutal load,
cast a pure contemporary spell,
send the colonisers straight to hell,
as they consigned our beloved sisters,
corrupted flesh will melt and blister,
On Judgement day their bones won’t rise
while we’ll embrace the end of lies,
Off, you ghoulies, to the kitchen,
we’ve better things to do – more witchin’,
We’ll heal the forests, mend the breach,
before the tipping point is reached,
Now fly my pretties, straight to prey
so our planet lives for another day.

Jinjirrie
October 2021

Related Links

Caliban and the Witch (Silvia Federici)

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On The Plague of Grifters

Disdainful Black Cat

Wicky Woo

Wicky wicky wacky woo,
do as i say, do as I do,
spread disease, reject the vax,
embrace my bullshit alternate facts,
the sicker you get, the more you’ll need me,
your desperation is what feeds me,
western doctors, what do they know,
big pharma, like me, wants profits to grow.

Buy my potions, pills and prophecies,
there’s none so blind as do not see,
don’t forget your horse dewormer,
I’m your role model star performer,
freedom is my personal brand,
your body, your choice are in my hands,
wicky wicky wacky woo,
I have the snake oil just for you.

Us woo merchants are on the fiddle,
you sitting ducks are scared of needles,
this border lockdown really sucks,
burn your masks, free the trucks,
all the experts huff and blow,
let’s party like there’s no tomorrow,
wicky wicky wacky woo,
more money for me and pain for you.

Jinjirrie, August 2021