Category Archive: PETER’S WRITING
Write, Don’t Talk
(Random thoughts regarding Adelaide Writers’ Week, 2023 – a verse dialogue) (With apologies to Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Thomas Stearns Eliot) READER A lovely form there sate beside my bed, And such a feeding calm its presence shed, A tone so pure, far from earthly leaven, A message reassuring, newly down from heaven. ‘Twas some comfort – A fact drawn from bone; “We read to know that we are not alone.” AUTHOR And yet here it shrinks back, as if mistook! That weary, wandering, disavowing look! ‘Twas all another feature, look and frame, And still, methought, I knew, it was…
Continue Reading →The Old Stoic’s Lethargy
POEM FOR THE YEAR (with apologies to W. H. Auden) This earth in 2023 Is not the planet fit for me, A world, I need, to give me hope Opposed to the end of a rope. *** My Eden landscapes and their climes Are great constructs from rational times, When reason meant, at least, induction, Not dogma posed as deduction. *** The plastic bags we gather to be Transformed as if by alchemy: I chose to send them whence they came, The ground, from fossil fuels by name. *** I’m now required to approve Blighted wind farms that rarely move:…
Continue Reading →La Voix
(with apologies to Arthur Rimbaud and T.E. Eliot) The pale Man trudges along by the flowery paths Dressed in mourning, a cigar between his teeth: The pale Man recalls the corridors of Canberra – and sometimes his lustreless eye becomes keen… For the bullhorn user is drunk with his 250 year orgy! He said to himself: “I shall blow Liberty out Very neatly, as if it were a candle!” Liberty lives again! His back is broken! He has been forsaken Ah! What word trembles on His silent lips? What regret does he feel? We shall never know. The pale Man’s…
Continue Reading →The Kurt Russell Theater – 40 Years On
July 1982: The Best of Times. The town of Springfield was breathlessly clutching its pearls, toffee apples and popcorn, awaiting the Grand Opening of the KRT, when the classics Escape from New York and newly-released The Thing screened on a double bill and Goldie Hawn cut the ribbon to the ‘Dexter Reilly Diner‘ in the complex. Mr. Russell and Ms. Hawn presided over the greatest cultural event in the history of Western Civilisation. Dignitaries and fans swung, shifted, and paraded by an enormous trophy cabinet, containing such priceless artefacts as: Kurt’s junior baseball gear; the quarter Elvis gave him to…
Continue Reading →Don’t Juice Jussie!
The tribulations of Jussie Smollett (Dec. 21) or Faux Victimhood as Heroism (With apologies to Robert Southwell) As he in hoary winter’s night stood shivering in the snow, Surprised he was with sudden heat which which made his heart to glow, And lifting up a fearful eye to view what men came near, Two white supremacists in MAGA hats did then appear; Who, armed with bleach and bearing noose, caused floods of tears to shed As though his floods should quench the flames which with his tears were fed. “Alas,” quoth he, “my Subway sandwich now in snowdrift lies, Though…
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