Category Archive: PETER’S WRITING
Parody # 10: Australia, 2021
(with apologies to William Wordsworth) Tony Abbott! thou shouldst be with us at this hour: Australia hath need of thee: she is a swamp Of stagnant waters; dust, and rising damp, Our wealth for toil and sea-girt bower Have lost strength, their inner steel doth cower – We now are selfish, addled, multi-gendered dopes: Please raise us up, do restore our hopes; Let us not scare easily with each passing shower. Thy words could quite embarrass, yet ring clear; But never weasel words, never insincere …
Continue Reading →Parody # 9: The Raving
(with apologies to Edgar Allan Poe) Once upon a morning early, while I tweeted, smug and surly, Over many a terse, ridiculous thread certain to bore, While I CAPS-LOCKED, mouth akimbo Suddenly, amid my limbo Of a spat with an on-line bimbo, a weary conversational chore There appeared a meme, a sign insistent, Daring me to sign ‘Deplore’ – ‘Tis some silly meme’ I muttered, ‘Only this and nothing more.’ Ah, distinctly I recall, it was not the antipodean fall That threw its shadows on my wall and blew away my online post, Rather, it…
Continue Reading →Parody # 8: A Vision in a Nightmare
(with apologies to Samuel Taylor Coleridge) At Idokopas did Vladimir A stately pleasure-dome decree: Where a block of seventy-four hectares span And a special rock-carved tunnel ran Down to the east Black Sea. So many miles of fertile ground With walls and turrets girdled round: And there were gardens thick with stern armed guards, And a port, vineyard, a hockey rink, and church of old; Here too was forest, a casino replete with wheels, chips, cards And toilet brushes, $850 each, all blocked in gold. But oh! that deep troubling abyss which erupted Down slopes amid protected air and…
Continue Reading →Parody # 7: Welcome to Brigadoon Beach
(with apologies to Matthew Arnold) The air is cool tonight, The tide is low, the ice lies fair In the sea, displacing its mass And the fjords stand, Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay. Come to the window, Greta, sweet is the night air! The Sea of Faith Was once at the full and bore your Yacht, in uttermost luxury, to New York Before the merry flights home. But now I only hear A melancholy, long-withdrawing roar, Beating, echoing with the fading bleats Of a Swedish Doom-Goblin And here we are as at a cocktail circuit,…
Continue Reading →Parody # 6: The Spoodle (Home From the Lab)
(with apologies to R. M. Rilke and his ‘Panther’) His vision, from neurotic genes Has grown so confused it cannot bear Life. It seems to him there is No line, and in his mirror image, no life. As he squeals and rolls his eyes, again He totters on rickety, confected pegs Like the fabricated gait of a wind-up doll In which no sentience occurs. Only at times, the veil lifts Quietly; he sees a dog from the pound, A vague picture forms of real life and love – It clambers through his button eyes, plunges the metal…
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