Cartoon briefs - hey diddle diddle

• John Key, with a perplexed look on his face, and dressed in a frock and wearing rubber gloves, is standing in a kitchen with a large, half-empty plastic milk bottle in one hand. The milk bottle has a hole in one corner and is leaking a stream of milk onto the floor. An assortment of burnt cakes, spilt ingredients and torn up recipes litter the bench and floor. In his other hand, he is holding open a book. The title of the book is "NZ Economy Cookbook (Chinese Edition)".

• The cartoon is divided in two diagonally. In the top left, a thin, black-singleted cow-cockey with his back to us is walking out a farm gate. He is carrying a suitcase with a label which says "Fonterra's Get Rich Poor Quickly Dairy Farm Package". A fat bankster dressed in a waist-coated suit is standing by the gate grinning from ear to ear. A "Farm Certificate of Title" document protrudes from his pocket. In the bottom right half of the cartoon, Bill English is speaking on the phone - "Don't worry John, they'll still vote for us." A book with the title "Great Political Con Tricks" sits on a coffee table next to Bill. 

• A group of four cabinet ministers wearing casual clothing is sitting around a table. They are wearing name tags - John, Bill, Stephen, Murray. A sign on a door to the room reads "Green Brown Fields Retreat - Ideas Room". There is a whiteboard behind the table with the heading "Strategies for fixing the dairy downturn". There is no other writing on the whiteboard. At the head of the table sits a woman wearing the name tag "Paula Rebstock - Facilitator". A newspaper with the heading "Tourism overtakes Dairy in export earnings" lies on the table. Paula's speech bubble says "No Stephen, we can't make every tourist buy a can of milk powder as an entry tax". Murray's thought bubble reads "How about a sheep farm then?" Bill is thinking "We should make it 2 cans". John's thought bubble has a flag with a cow on it. Stephen looks as though he is sulking.

Guest Poet at the Fringe, Sunday 21 February

I will be reading from my latest collection, Felt Intensity, on Sunday 21 February. Come if you can. Location and other details are in this poster:

A Post-Tuesday Poem Post: Conception

something almost always
follows a full stop

a hiatus
silence which is nothing

if not unrealised sound
there is present always

nature's abhorrence of nothing
the fragrance of latency

clefs prefacing
unborn sonatas

elemental matter
surfing the grandstands

of the universe
searching for seats

to the last Big Bang
or the birth of

the first letter of
the next sentence



Alas, Tuesday Poem as we knew is no more. The last post was played on the blog on 15 December last year, One of the founders of the blog - I am not sure whether it was Mary McCallum or Claire Beynon, wrote in the farewell post that "Something almost always follows a full stop". I liked this so much, I wrote the poem above.
 

Tuesday Poem: Lament of a couch revolutionary

You are the new dangerous class, it is said.
Bah, you are whining pups
sucking on the paps of Mother Consumer.
You have the vision of a myopic meerkat,
balls of a gelded goat, solidarity of a cess pit.

‘Occupy!’ you cry. Que?
If that’s your mantra, you are truly clueless.
Where is your Manifesto,
your strategy for the long march,
your handbook of hand-to-hand?

Where are your precariat peons, your shirtless,
your barefoot, your les misérables?
Making shirts and shoes in sweat shops,
planting Monsanto’s seedless plants,
paying the mortgage, that’s where.

You picket buildings, but fail to spike the spokes
of those who peddle in your penury –
the poverty-trap profiteers,
the political-party pocket-liners,
the income-gap insouciants,
the bloated banksters and flash boys,
the obscene salary-packaged CEOs.

So, mobilise your brigades of bloggers,

your troops of tweeters, your para-hackers,
your financial system saboteurs.

Storm the trust funds and slush funds

of the feckless, taxless, cartel carpetbaggers
and their coat-tailers and gravy-boaters.
Siphon their vaults, hack their accounts,
unemploy them, evacuate their credit cards,
benefact their bonuses, perforate their perks,
axe their automatic cost-of-living adjusted,
non performance-related pay rises.

Sentence them to twenty year’s detention

in a slum landlord rental

doing crew work (plus two other jobs)

on a zero hours contract

all for the minimum pittance.

It’s time to sound the clarion,
beat your brass razoo cymbals,
exact your pound of carrion!





This poem is from my just released new collection, Felt intensity (Submarine poetry).

Felt intensity is being launched by Dinah Hawken at the New Zealand Poetry Society's Conference on Sunday 15 November (details are on the immediate past post).

Visit Tuesday Poem for more great poetry. This week features the poem That girl, by Heidi North-Bailey from her first collection Possibility of flight, which is being launched at the same time as Felt intensity.

Book Launch Invitation

IP Spring Poetry Season 2015: Wellington, 30 September, 6pm, Wellington Central Library

Presenting an evening of poetry readings hosted by Dr David Reiter of Interactive Publications (Brisbane) with Auckland poet Jeremy Roberts and featuring Wellington poets published by IP: Mark Pirie, Keith Westwater and Tim Jones.

You can join the Facebook event here: https://www.facebook.com/events/1633555860235889/

Watch out for events in other centres too - full schedule is:

28 September: Poetry Live, Auckland, Thirsty Dog Café, 469 Karangahape Rd, 8:30pm
30 September: Wellington Library, 65 Victoria Street, 6pm
1 October: Lyttleton, Freemans Dining Room, 47 London Street, 7pm, with Sugu Pillay and Karen Zelas.

Three Memoir Haiku

Living with addiction

Waiting for ever
outside a pub -
Dad is booking his bets




Masons Avenue, Hamilton

Green enamel gas oven
tick-tocking Grandfather clock -
our grandparents' house




Out of the blue

A new home
with Aunty Jo -
State House, Papatoetoe.

The title says it all. Visit Tuesday Poem for more great poetry.