Category Archive: PETER’S WRITING
Rat
There is a corner in some foreign field Perpetually dug by historians, Like Evans, or Carter, they crave a yield, Anxious to turn-up Australians And there’s no telling what or fancying that But to keep digging, till you find a rat. — Wishes are horses, bourses are courses, In what is sealed-up, we pry, But try getting hacks to reveal sources Or say where the best bodies lie. You’ll never see the best bones set on the mat And can’t turn up truffles, for the smell of a rat. — Well may seal stones lay in the room, Green, carnelian, amygdaloid,…
Continue Reading →Wide World of Arts
Velázquez looked down on his sitters
They thought to hold a contest for The grandest forms of portraiture To accommodate the talent-free And cash in on celebrity. So the call to paint was made, A grateful nation’s light and shade Was wielded and the packing crates Swept in as if on roller skates. The problem was, the open field Like an open mind, often concealed Hard work forsworn, the sweat that stings And shows the empty state of things.
Continue Reading →The Curse of ”The Sound of Music”
(Dir. Robert Wise) (1965) We’re sorry, but we can only watch The Sound of Music in 15 minute increments. Any more attracts a risk of type-two diabetes. This cloying, sacchariferous, candied, 174-minute dollop of goo would have received one or less review stars from us, but for the superb cinematography, sweeping over and around the chocolate-box town of Salzburg and its surrounding mountains, and the overall production values, which are first-rate. The (bizarre and stupefying) success of both the stage musical and the film have led to endless revivals around the globe, the mawkish meld of Nuns, Nazis and warbling infants a seemingly irresistible combo. We are…
Continue Reading →Essence of Dick
"Let Me Make Something Perfectly Clear" (1970 photo of Nixon by Jack E Kightlinger)
“A place in the national firmament… Greatness is more than government. To make exciting mischief or dull salt; Hazard the chance of ruin, lay on fault, Set the highest stakes through piracy But who the hell to handle it, to cut free; To build me a mad image, up to anything Other than domestically, one who’ll thus bring A welcome beard. Under my dark sun, hold hard! The one you serve was dealt the bleakest card.” (What serves power, if one’s form at flood Is splendidly bedight yet daubed with mud? And the ‘new King’…
Continue Reading →Deconstruction of Desire
How strange to find Ms Kahlo at M. Manet's café...
Rich, bored, and the afternoon is wet. Turning the pages of Vogue, sipping anisette In the big window of the coffee house, Staring at him from shiny pages is a black girl in a white blouse. Without, on bumpy pavements tripped upon by swanky heels No rainbow settles with the rain splashed by Mercedes wheels And mediocre men and women scour shop-fronts in their quest To find something or, perhaps, someone who’ll pass their personal test. This street is where the rich pass time, Where recession does not stroll And at the sidewalk’s end there is no crime, No quiet…
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