Category Archive: PETER’S WRITING
The Lawyer Drinks Alone
(photo by Esther Bubley)
(A recent report in the “Australasian Lawyer” disclosed research suggesting the Legal profession was the most depressed profession, and the highest user of legal depressants). Worse than in “Aubade” We work all day, and get drunk at night. Like Saul Goodman, glum and quiet, Hammering rusty nails, bedight In shame. Sampling the contents Of a bottle in chambers, forlorn, In dark corners, with dark materials, Knowing only, qua Tulkinghorn, Those dark parts of the human soul So that one admits no other. Therefore we look on the bottle As one would a reliable lover. And why not? The days Are measured out in units of six; The…
Continue Reading →The Evil Plan
(image by W. Endicott & Co.)
“You befriend a number of unfortunates, indigent, alone, abandoned and unhappy. The sheep of this misbegotten flock need be old enough to have forever lost their zest but too young to carry with them an official record of mental illness, drug dependence, tendency towards violence, or history of self-harm. “You take life insurance upon each of them. You foster in them a feeling of self-worth and joy. This achieved by the simple expedients of spending time, listening, taking seriously, showing some respect. The purchase of small presents, mere tokens, may be involved. “You have them execute their last wills and…
Continue Reading →Nyugalom
"The Chasseur in the Forest", Caspar David Friedrich, 1814 (detail)
[A lunatic from the past, Bela Kiss, living in conditions of relative tranquility (in Hungarian, “Nyugalom“), made recordings of his ravings in the first-person mode obtaining from time immemorial. These have been transcribed and lovingly italicized by a team of scholars with rather too much affection for the source. The editor has taken the liberty of suggesting that the ensuing statements in the manuscript smack of self-serving apologia, akin to the homilies obtaining in the forwards of most modern three-volume biographies, to the effect that guessing, decontextualizing, moralizing and or fiction are necessary in order to render an antique subject…
Continue Reading →Stations of the Cross
(by Hans Holbein)
‘We quiver here for fear, a badly shaven lot, Leaderless and clear in fractured polyglot, Take a very long line and see it moves apace; It is the time of fishes, ticket punched another place. Sun-treader, comb your morning hair, sweep this private road in anger. What of other highways? Go tell King Mwanga, The royal house is empty, the servants all abroad, Scattered to the corners, a tuneless monochord. Their hearts a lute for strumming, diseased the ebb and flow, Sad cypress and unfulfilled watercress, What do you know?’
Continue Reading →Stars in the Drug Show
Who can tell the honest score When no-one knows or can be sure That the ball in the net / an incomplete pass Or the bungled catch / upon the grass Weren’t planned? Should you work the mobile phone, With your team well in the zone Where Olympic pride / the bikes they ride Head for the lowlands, on a peptide Of flasks, all banned? We’re all ‘stars in the drug show’ now, We made it happen – we showed them how By greasing on our couches, betting And buying all they sold us, letting Them jab their engorged hand.
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