Lordy, Bill,
you cover so much!
and the transitions can feel like sleight of hand.
[As a longtime practicer/practitioner of the swerve and the non sequitur,
who am I to bring this up?]
I almost feel it’s sprawling its way into separate topics or a numbered sequence.
M in Seattle
On Jan 27, 2015, at 13:23, Bill Wootton <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> A companion piece to last week's 'Offshooting':
>
> Scarcely tilting at windmills,
> but when my mates downed
> Coke, I sipped Fanta or Leed.
>
> Banana Splits oiled
> my gums with gloop,
> not icy Choc Wedges.
>
> Such choices pepper
> my life, the most popular
> so eschewable.
>
> Neither Holden nor Ford;
> my first car, a front-
> wheel drive Morris 1100.
>
> Football? Cricket?
> I settled for volleyball.
> School team even.
>
> Until jeans got under
> my defences. Couldn't wait
> to get legs out of Amcos,
>
> into Levi's or Wranglers
> or Lees. The big three.
> Western gear garnered me.
>
> Not sure why. Perhaps
> the unpretensiousness
> of screen cowboys appealed.
>
> The way they arrived
> at their own codes and stuck
> by them, under starry skies.
>
> Today's soup of commercial TV,
> Radio with ads, talkback,
> how can this attract?
>
> At stopwork meetings,
> never voted for the resolution.
> Supported forlorn amendments.
>
> Floating with the current
> provides false momentum.
> I value my tributariness.
>
> But how much difference
> are we talking about?
> How wide my preferential arc?
>
> Am I just another trimmer
> of tall poppies? Espousing
> an illusion of superior taste,
>
> my nuanced selections
> riding proud over roughshod
> popular addictions?
>
> Trouble is the mainstream
> tends to obliterate
> independence of thought.
>
> Consent so easily
> manufactured nowadays
> that objectors seem stolid,
>
> predictable, naysayers. But
> what passes for positive
> so often protects privilege.
>
> Polls would have us believe
> harsh asylum seeker
> policies keep us all safe.
>
> Why can't we forget the taste
> of fear? Back ourselves in?
> The gushing middle deserve
>
> to be regarded with wariness.
> Who loads those bouquets
> at Sydney's Martin Place,
>
> by roadside death spots?
> Why was remote Diana mourned
> as a breeze-blown candle
>
> when Boko Haram snuffs
> out lives by the hundred?
> Mass outpourings of grief,
>
> apparent hunger for rampant
> public mourning rituals must
> spring from somewhere.
>
> Or do such displays
> only reveal the vacuum
> at the heart of the centre?
>
> bw
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