Loudspeaker ideology leadening with fists, a brawler, and whoever is led astray is not so wise For the terror of the righteous is like the growling of a lion; Whoever provokes it to anger forfeits their life. It is an honor for a person to stay aloof from the strife And avoid every fool who goes about quarrelling. The sluggard is only awake when told to be; They will take the correct advice to get warm porridge. The good purpose in a person’s heart is like a deep well, Someone with ethical intentions drawing from it. Many a person proclaims they want social justice, But a faithful one, who can anyone find? The righteous walk around in jack boots high, Cursed are they all who are insulted by them. They are false judges who sit on bony seats of judgment Winnowing their judgments with their searching eyes. Unequal weights and unequal measures like these, are abominations to the common sense For, as children they make themselves known by their acts, ...

Thinking about defunded entertainers, And thinking about fragile egos flunking contracts through clausal misdemeanors, And excised through performance cleaners; They say plastic surgery is an option. Or nobodies at award nights who mysteriously evolve from gym people to star brokers, from starlets to cover tunes, Their image seamlessly fashioned anew for judgment.

Lookie me, lookie me, I’m Terror Maralinga Down under It’s your attention I’m desperate for, therefore Desire A dry corner of me bum’s been turned to fire Just a parliamentary kidding Coz I’m comely, and lonely and importantly big I once got going a Big Thong athletics gig Man, for two weeks I was the centre of your World, World Feeling like I was possessed, all giddy like.   But nothing’s been happening since; not a Happening thing There’s been a story about a bloke in a Laberal suit Caught bonding at a giggle show Down in New York, down under like me Now he’s the boss after some great election Lookie world’s attention he’s got a permanently huge Complexion Of green and gold He‘s humming like a kookaburra But I digress, flighty like the windblown dust On my treeless plains Like the godless spirits resurrecting from my Tragic human remains.   Its attention I’m a needing, as much as I can get My throat’s nowhere droughty ...

O Master of the Bloated Ego how you sing your praises; Impressing girls with your nighttime phrases; Naive pearls of unwanted imperfections; You declare your heat and charm intentions; Telling heroic tales of yourself in private; Talking in chat rooms, for them to decipher; The flattery of your cooing words; Your texting caresses smutty.

When the calling time is nearly ripe And the mood of mankind is mellow So none grieve when the next one goes To their origins in a black coffin Six feet under a slab, etched with the life Returning forests will hide them away By rains and humanity’s variations To thicken with the clauses of time Around the gravedigger’s art Until even posterity scratches its head When looking for humans dead Unless the trees lose their clothes To the baking sun’s fiercest stare And play the part memories suppose.  

He’s a seasoned Aussie mullet stunned By his hard drinking and smog smoking, And with an ego blistered by degrees He’s a living, swelling acid tub. Just carried along by two legs wobbling He’s hungry and starts his gobbling Up his mates, fluent in slip slobbering. The publican who refuses to serve Him his fifteenth amber nuzzler Says, by gosh, he’s been an avid guzzler! For when a phantom, prodding finger Makes a presence in his massive chest, It’s time for the mullet’s mullet To stop it’s wildly growing madly On account of a massive heart attack.

Long ago we farewelled our Catholic school friends, And alighted the Starship Jesus, Down the end of our suburban back yards, And conversed with our Marvel friends for awhile, Thinking how we could realise the unbelievable, Or was it the other way around? Too young to know, Our salvation became how we handled a cricket bat.  And we’d find strange and unusual things on the street, Rushing our minds with imaginative zeal, We’d tell each other what we saw For we all contemplated the word ‘meaning’. Secretly mocking a Brother, who taught us of it, We knew his look and what it meant, He never got to us. He got a member of our school boy gang. We saw him once when school life was over. He had that blank stare, seeing nothing ahead. We couldn’t see what he saw. It was much later in one of our reunions, Over light beers and pastry pies, We thought about him and his suicide. What he saw was where he wanted to go. Sometimes we wanted to go there ...

And behold, her journey to motherhood; From morning sickness to the pains of birth, breastfeeding and beyond; In giving birth, she fulfils her biology; Joined with nature as a cradle of life; And by her works she is praised.

Francis Bede -  a Gael man.   Author of Bad Clergy - a question in five fantasies.  God in the Human Machine - a theobiography. Between Old Worlds - Poems Cyberwit 2025. Alfonso, His Vignettes 1936 to 1968.  For sale at all good independent bookstores.   Bad Clergy - a question in five fantasies On a cloudy Friday in 1980 the pot smoking Bad Clergy are out for a big night in the dirty old ‘Syndey’ town. Kelly, Muldoon, Mahone and Clancy (and two silent companions) - Catholic priests all - throw off their robes and embrace the contradictions of their theological guardianship. A literary burlesque of satire, criticism, theology and social commentary, Bad Clergy weaves in its diabolical night’s tale a journey of transition from eager Eucharist to doubtful Divinity. Through prose, verse and dialogue, digressing in places with a series of absurdist encounters, Bad Clergy offers a jarring, darkly humorous and fantastical taste of the bitter clash between con...