I can agree with Max, here, Bill, that you’ve covered a lot of ground, but I felt that a little too much sermonizing crept it.
I really liked
At stopwork meetings,
never voted for the resolution.
Supported forlorn amendments.
But one of the other stanzas argued a point rather than displaying how ‘you’ & your reactions meant a particular way. I think you might be able to cut some of this down, & still get to that conclusion…?
Doug
On Jan 28, 2015, at 8:34 AM, Max Richards <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> 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
>
Douglas Barbour
[log in to unmask]
Recent publications: (With Sheila E Murphy) Continuations & Continuation 2 (UofAPress).
Recording Dates (Rubicon Press).
that we are only
as we find out we are
Charles Olson
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