AT SEA

I've taken this sign photograph from an Engrish website. I can't even begin to think of its context. Was the photo taken at a restaurant, an aquarium, an airport, a freak show, a comic book convention? Thank god for unfathomable things. There are still a few out there.

LJ, June 14 2012.

FERAL LEGISLATION

I'm disgusted that Barry O'Farrell (let's now call him Backwoods Barry) has decided to open up the national parks, nature reserves and state conservation areas of New South Wales to hunters. What a joke. What a crime. Who can guarantee the safety of picnickers, families, hikers, birders etc? When will Josephine Average know when it is safe to visit particular national parks? Who's going to be monitoring what various goons with guns various are executing? Are the rare, vulnerable and endangered species of New South Wales going to be safe? I do not trust hunters to shoot only ferals - I'd love to think they'll do everything by the books, but I doubt they will. Take the case of some of our mallee reserves, now open to shooters. These reserves have small populations of endangered malleefowl. Who's going to be looking out for them? I know I sound alarmist/over-the-top, but really, Backwoods Barry has thrown us into the Dark Ages. I talk a little more about this over at my other blogsite - http://wildbundanoon.blogspot.com

LJ, June 12 2012

KISSING IN THE BLUE DARK

I'm such a fan of Lana Del Ray's Video Games. I heard it in Two Skinny Cooks (best coffee and tarts in the Southern Highlands) last weekend and was bowled over.

Her voice - her glorious voice - is like twelve-year old single malt scotch whisky poured over ice cubes at 11pm in a low lit Sydney bar most of us have forgotten about.

LJ, June 6 2012.

POEM #16

WHAT THE CRAZED THEOLOGIAN, WHO LOOKED LIKE A CROSS BETWEEN TROTSKY AND WOODY ALLEN, ASKED AT BAKERS DELIGHT, BOWRAL, LAST SATURDAY MORNING

Are the 
         Dead Sea scrolls 
                               still fresh?

LJ, June 4 2012

POEM #15

VISITOR
For Ted Hughes (if he was still around and could give two hoots - or even three hoots - about a small poem from an emerging Aussie poet)

A pre-midnight fox
consumed by bone-lust,
padding where memory is lost,
hurls wheezes and wails
at Morton National Park's tides.

Along Lower Gullies Road
all our bored boxed-foxes
tear themselves from stale
fireside mats, chats and pats,
to shriek by frozen front doors.

We refuse to open up outside,
let them join that One Real Dog,
set fern, fence and field aflame,
out-laugh the loon, fang the moon,
scream until ambulances howl.

LJ, May 28 2012

POEM #14

GRIMM THING

amanita muscaria,
Fly Agaric -

ball for fresh sport,
evil strawberry,
dragon eyeball,

a distant
observatory's
dome,
all fire
and
smoke,

after God tired
of our staring.

LJ, May 28 2012

POEM #13

THOUGHT

On
Country 
Road 
stairs,
Australia's
Great Poet
told me writing
verse was like
throwing
stones
down
a
well.

LJ, May 24 2012