I’ve been staring out this window my entire life
I see the same people and hear the same sounds
Blending into one beautiful terrifying shape
Breathing and sweating and crying
Waltzing in time with each beat of the day
The mechanical stream of what is and what isn’t
The blood and the veins of a living picture show
Peering into me as I try to contain it
This window never cracks
Although it may dirty
For months at a time without a polish
Where the figurines have no faces
And the hymns they sing are anguished
Where the sun runs away
And the sky is unfinished
The motions go on
Against better judgement
As I swim into my twentieth year
The window opens
More than ever before
And the beings and trees are angrier
Yet so loving and warm and tender
This window endures
To scold and to liberate
Embracing all grace and imperfection
Beyond the fragile prison of my mind
Think your name would look good in print? Woroni is always open for submissions. Email write@woroni.com.au with a pitch or draft. You can find more info on submitting here.
we hold an indifference to each other’s lives,
the tattooist and i.
he held my arm and
he held my gaze and
still, he remained indifferent.
Noah in love
We drove over the speed limit and I thought of religion.
We skipped a song (twice) and I thought of you (twice).
Noah by the sea
moses and i have heard
of seas splitting
like an arrow
down the middle of a party
at the end is –
at the end is a pair of dead rabbits,
two drowned elephants and
brown eyes.
glazed,
like a ham.
Noah in love, part 2
bad poetry is made worse with the overuse of lowercase / denial of uppercase.
Noah in shower
Tonight in the shower I could breathe my own name.
I breathed out first.
n – o.
I held my breath; there, at the pit of my stomach, and
I waited for my brain to play your name
So many times over that it lost all meaning.
Read the companion piece here
Think your name would look good in print? Woroni is always open for submissions. Email write@woroni.com.au with a pitch or draft. You can find more info on submitting here.
Noah shook her head and sparks leapt off the ends of her hair. I could see them falling from across the room. They fell like fireworks and the cold in the air snuffed them out before they reached her shoes.
The girl speaking with Noah couldn’t see them. She was distracted by something, her mind eating up everything else in the room but Noah. The girl’s friends were gathered around the kitchen, talking to a boy. Her boy. The room held little bundles of people, all of them wishing to be in the next bundle over. But Noah didn’t seem to notice. She was never a good conversationalist. I could recite just about every conversation we’d ever had, they felt so nice, but that doesn’t mean she was good at conversation. She hid this fact by sipping her drink mid-sentence, relishing in the pauses this created. Anything to prolong her train of thought, anything to keep the other person mesmerised by her words. From across the room I could almost see the perspiration on her upper lip as she tried to make her language something magical. She was always too forced; too obvious; too far away from the person opposite. Someone should tell her that.
Still, the room orbited around her nucleus. Still, it seemed like the party was pulsing for her. Sitting by myself, on a fraying couch at the frayed edges, it seemed as if each post-teen, pre-adult, Converse-clad person in the room was a prop to Noah’s play. They greyed in comparison.
Now, the girl was training her eyes towards the boy, purposefully turning ignorant to Noah. She’d catch on soon; when she reached the end of her sentence. She’d catch on. It’s not like she couldn’t read people. I watched as, on cue, she let her last phrase fall out of her mouth. It lay squirming between them on the floor; a gap in the conversation.
The girl looked down, realising what Noah had done. She smiled gratefully at her before running over to her boy. He grinned smugly as she approached, knowing he could pull the girl across the room just by standing in it. And then Noah just stood there next to the fireplace, not even bothering to pretend that she hadn’t been left alone. I watched as her head circled the room, lazily. The sparks lit up slower this time, fizzing out as they fell past her shoulders. Her nonchalance was suffocating. She would only ever notice other people retrospectively, when she was finished with her own thoughts.
—
The first time we met it had been hot; the sky was the kind of heavy that smothered any suggestion of romance or affection and still I had stared at her. Her hair was longer then, down to her waist, and it lit up as she circled through the school yard. She was placed next to me in class. When she looked at me, I felt myself being swallowed up by the wall behind me. The first time she spoke to me, it was to ask how to spell the word ‘disintegrate.’ D-i-s-i-n-t-e-g-r-a-t-e, I had replied. Di-sin-te-grate, she had said back, placing emphasis on sin. And then she laughed her strange, hollow laugh and our descent into romance began.
By the time that her love for me had started filtering through the layers of her mind, my love for her had already begun pooling at my feet. It leaked through the doors of her dad’s car as we drove over the speed limit down the highway, and my parents could smell it on me as I sat down to dinner each night. Walking through the city to go to the movies, or to the shops, she would hide our clasped hands behind her back. My heart swelled at our secret. When my desire to share us with the world got too much to bear I would draw the outline of her mother’s dress, of her makeup brushes, of her bed frame. One time, my art teacher stood behind me as I drew.
“Oh Abigail! How wonderfully violent,” she exclaimed, rolling her eyes at another tortured teenager in love. Three months into knowing Noah, I had memorised her moods, the times of day she liked to be alone, the moments before she retreated. I loathed those stretches of retreat, where her eyes glazed over and her mind shut itself off to the world. But I would persist; I stayed watching her and talking to her and touching her until she closed off completely and I could taste my aloneness. That’s what defeated us in the end; what di-sin-te-grated us. My aloneness. Her aloofness.
—
Eight months later and Noah was standing by the fireplace, her phone open to the notes app. I could tell by the way that she was typing and then pausing, typing and then pausing. She was writing a poem. It would go like –
My parents died today
Or so my empty house said.
Mother hanging in the laundry
And Father facedown on the bed.
Or perhaps –
The Wind howled and
roared at the sea and the
Sea roared back.
Later that night, she would sit at the edge of her bed, her hair glowing. She would have her phone on one knee and her notebook on the other, and she would copy the poem down under today’s date. Or maybe she wouldn’t. Maybe she didn’t do that anymore. I suppose it didn’t matter where she kept her poems. They weren’t any good now that they weren’t about me.
Read the companion piece here
Think your name would look good in print? Woroni is always open for submissions. Email write@woroni.com.au with a pitch or draft. You can find more info on submitting here.
Hey PheeBee, at the start of this year, I resolved myself to being a more intersectional and outspoken individual who would educate herself more on the Black Lives Matter movement and the fight for reconciliation with Australian Indigenous communities. However, I am finding myself mentally exhausted by the effort that education and empathy takes. Do you have any tips on how to maintain a fighting spirit when you aren’t part of the marginalised community that the movement is about?
Dear Emotionally Exhausted,
I totally get it! My anxious overly empathetic savoir complex is really showing up right now.
Here’s how I spiral: SO MANY bad things are happening to people and it is SO unfair and I am just sitting here taking up space when people are dying and getting shot and the world is just on FIRE. And we are running out of water and I am running out of energy and now I have spun so much I need to unravel and there goes the whole day and I have done nothing but feel sorry for myself. What a waste!
I have been there. Many times.
The world really is a little bit on fire at the moment. It seems you have decided to become a firefighter. HOT DAMN. Firefighters are HOT, I can’t wait to see you in (or out) of that uniform. However, being a firefighter that actually puts out fires is a lot. There is smoke, and soot and it’s hard to breathe. It’s hard to see. It’s also completely overwhelming walking into burning buildings. It is also disheartening realizing that the structures we lived in couldn’t protect everyone, they weren’t fireproof. This fiery truth enlightens us and burns us little too.
Fire brings light, truth. This fire has illuminated a lot of things in the world. Truth can be hard to accept, especially if maybe we confirmed the strength of the burning breaking structure. Maybe we built some of it, believed in it too. Maybe sometimes we ticked yes on that housing scheme for our own convenience and ease – letting someone out to freeze. Now though, don’t look away. Let the proximity to the heat humble you, you don’t have it all figured out, you don’t have all the answers, or the whole truth and you don’t need to. We are not Prometheus, an overbearing god, here to “enlighten” or “civilise”.
Instead, look at the leftover ruins and listen. Let history whisper through the walls, they speak in many voices and languages, not heard before, familiar, so close, a mother tongue you once knew. The spoken for will whisper to you, they don’t have a home and when you have no lands, you live in your stories.
We think fire is new, but it’s ancient, we have learnt to tame it before. Truths have been ignited before. Hear them speak, and the fire will be tamed into a campfire, where they will tell you their stories. You’ll hear them whisper when you read their books. Read about how Malcolm X learnt to love his red Afro, how even after all the fame, he still saw himself as a street rat and those streets still loved him too. Listen to Maya Angelou “dance like I got diamonds at the meeting of my thighs”, even if “ You may write me down in history, with your bitter, twisted lies “ . Read how they took everything that life gave them and rebuilt beautiful powerful homes out of ashes.
Take in that warmth, that wisdom, as you sit together circled by this light glow, wood of broken homes as kindling. Knowing that time is cyclical, and this has happened before. We will continue what other people brought to us. Torchbearers carrying on the truth.
Being on fire, the act of suffering, also makes you who you are. Don’t take it from me, take it from the people who have been there. We have all felt what is to be like to be burnt. Stings are part of the gig as a firefighter, but the people with burnt homes and lost loved ones have to rebuild their entire lives. Listening to them will build your resilience. You are not a survivor. You are a service provider. You do your work and let it go. Leave the shame and guilt at the door. Shame and guilt will paralyse you, and people with PTSD need you to act.
I am still learning how to use my writhing fire hose, how to not create more chaos. I am still trying to not let my fear and guilt engulf me. And as you walk into these burning buildings, these broken systems, remember you have a mask, keep it on before you aid another with theirs.
I look to these powerful figures to guide me, warm me, and remind me and I am a side character carrying their story. We carry water, they call the shots. Hear the shots fired and see what those sparks ignite. Truth will always show itself; fire will always bring the heat, whether it’s warming or burning. Listen and it will warm you, it won’t be easy, but we won’t be alone.
Stay hot and close to the wise,
Pheebee
Comments Off on What I Think About When I Can’t Sleep
1:47 am – Should I get up and have an icy pole? Or maybe some Ribena. But that might make it harder to fall asleep later.
1:50 am – Who else is awake right now?
1:57 am – Should I go wake someone up to keep me company? Not Mum because she has work the next day. Maybe Michelle. I could get her to cuddle me.
2:09 am – Should I start an aesthetic Instagram where I write these sleepless thoughts down? Mix of Rupi Kaur meets minimalist chic. Colour palette – to be determined.
2:23 am – You should watch your lecture tomorrow morning. First thing. Aditya will not be impressed in Friday’s tutorial if not.
2:29 am – If I watch another episode of New Girl will that make me more awake? Doesn’t something happen to your brain when you look at a screen? Maybe one episode will get me tired. Or two. If I drink the Ribena I can watch three.
2:35 am – Goes downstairs to make a glass of Ribena and grabs an icy pole. Watches three episodes of New Girl.
3:41 am – I need one of those weighted blankets. Everyone in Architectural Digest’s Open Door series has one. They’re probably really expensive. Am I just one of those plebs who celebrities can sell just about anything to?
3:56 am – Wow, these thoughts are really deep. You’re a genius. You should write this all down and turn it into a series of essays. You can be the next Anne Boyer.
4:02 am – If you write your thoughts down with a nice pen, does that make you feel more confident in their quality?
4:08 am – Why do we get lost in the aesthetics of writing?
4:15 am – Hey this would make a really good Woroni article.
4:17 am – Finally falls asleep.
Think your name would look good in print? Woroni is always open for submissions. Email write@woroni.com.au with a pitch or draft. You can find more info on submitting here.
Comments Off on Breaking News! Miracle Drug Cures Insomnia
In breaking medical news, a cure for insomnia has finally been discovered. Shockingly, it comes in the form of the common flower, chamomile (chamaemelum nobile), and is most effective when the dosage is delivered to the patient in the form of a herbal tea. This medicine can already be bought with no prescription at most local supermarkets alongside instant coffee and green tea.
The discovery was made by Canberra GP, Doctor McAdiot, who suggested the warm beverage to his patient, Celia Sleepless, at her appointment just the other morning. Sleepless had come to the doctor on Thursday before work, complaining that she had been awake for two days in a row and was not sure if the neon pink shapes she was seeing in the air were real.
McAdiot at first suggested “minimising stress” and “exercising a couple of times a week” but then brought out the tea in a final, drastic attempt to help his patient. A bold move in the eyes of his colleagues at the practice, but one that really paid off.
“I mean I’ve been on pretty serious sleeping medication for a few years,” said Sleepless. “It’s a bit of a chronic issue for me. I’ve tried low doses of antipsychotics and am regularly on valium, but it hasn’t really been working for the last couple of weeks. I’ve done so many sleep studies that I’ve lost count. When McAdiot suggested the herbal tea I just thought wow, why haven’t I tried this before? I’m so stupid! Chamomile tea has changed my life. I now have no sleeping issues whatsoever. It’s honestly a miracle.”
McAdiot had some sage advice when asked what he would tell Woroni’s readers who had issues with sleep. “Look,” he said. “You’re not going to actually die if you don’t get enough sleep. Sure, you’ll feel really ill and like you’re losing your mind, but eventually you will just pass out and things will be fine. If you can’t handle it, head to your local GP so they can undermine your health concerns and leave you in tears.”
McAdiot said he is now looking into other cures for insomnia, notably crystals and yoga, and is just waiting on the funding before the research project can begin in earnest.
Pesky little eavesdroppers, their red bulbous heads nosing out of the dirt. Pompously round, suspiciously still. Like a snob with a secret.
I want to know the secret. So I’m crushing dried caps into my banana-berry smoothie.
Fly agaric, amanita muscaria, or the fairy toadstool if you don’t know your shrooms. Look for the big red hats with white freckles popping out under pine trees. Even an amateur like me can’t get it wrong.
Now they’re shrivelled and flaky in my fingers. The rotting odour digs down to my stomach, hurling my guts around. I gag and slam on the Nutri Ninja lid. Any second thoughts drown in the whirr of the blender.
***
“The girl treks, unabashed, over the mountain summit,” I murmur like a literary David Attenborough, “empty cup hanging limp in her hand, having slurped her way into imminent abandon.”
My guilty pleasure when I’m alone is self-narration. What else am I supposed to do, while I’m waiting for the yawning to begin: the tell-tale sign of the mushies taking hold. Nausea inches up from my stomach, which shoots me a suspicious glare: This, again?
I stumble along a walking track that is only just visible in the dead leaves. The Canberra bush is a smudge of thick eucalypts. A sign stands by the path: “Warning Poison Baits”. My bowels squirm. Why are these plants so difficult to digest? Mother Nature gifted us with psychedelics, only to chuck in the drawback of neurotic nausea. It’s no coincidence that the poison in fly agaric is the psychoactive component: you’ve got to work for your fun. Cheap thrills, huh? When Centrelink can’t afford you real drugs…
“She focuses only on the next footstep.” I’m breathing hard. Why did I do this? Don’t look back. My head hangs and my eyes droop down my face like a Dali painting. I yawn.
A yawn! Praise the Lord! My body is processing. Another yawn: I march on in victory and gulp down a retch, knowing it will subside soon. The aftertaste of fungi still clings to my tongue.
“She staggers like a public drunk, leaning on scribbly gums for support.” I chuckle at what I must look like. The landscape is coated in an ugly winter grey and it swamps me with its uniformity. The path shivers and shakes into a blur, then disappears into my huge yawn.
Voices crackle ahead of me and my eyelids fly open. People. “She was wholly unprepared to come across her own species,” I whisper.
Two young mothers appear through the trees sporting puffer jackets and leggings. They look disproportionately gigantic on the path, but that’s probably the pelopsia. One woman has a proud baby bump swelling through her lycra. I wipe at my ruffled hair and clutch the jumper trailing off my limbs, my mouth ajar in panicked paranoia.
“Hi.” The expecting woman nods at me on approach. She narrows her eyes. What are you on? She glances at her friend and purses her lips: Is she alright?
I blush. Pity is infinitely worse than disapproval. My facial muscles push into a smile.
“You doing ok?” the other woman says.
I gape and flap my hands. They’re doubting me; I need a reply. Good. Or, good, how about you? Maybe a I’m fine, thanks. How are you going? Enjoy your walk! The possibilities are insurmountable.
“Goo–” I gurgle and look up to face nobody. I whip around and see their ponytails bobbing down the path.
I take a sharp left and bolt from the path. Enough of that civilisation shit. I canter through dry bush, the bumpy ride matching my internal mayhem. It was only two small caps, I shouldn’t be at hallucination level. Nothing pretty, nope, just my vision hopping before my eyes like a game of jump rope. England, Ireland, Scotland, Wales. The top chunk of my visual field flicks to random images from memory: just now, a flash to a tree trunk I stopped at earlier.
Panting and scrunching my nose, I claw through leafless shrubbery, branches clipping at my dress. Perhaps the running was too much. My organs stir: my brain, my eyeballs, my stomach. Something is shooting from my centre up my throat.
I halt and heave. Berry smoothie spurts from my mouth. I hobble over the earth, eyes shut, a puppet to internal reflexes. I purge up another round of purple water, and another, returning the mushies to the dirt. Each hurl washes me with the relief that it only gets better from here. The tide subsides on my empty tummy.
I open my eyes. Eucalypts encircle me, all muscle and height, warning of their surveillance. “Sorry about the spew,” I cough.
“You’re sorry?” a voice crackles.
I stumble backwards and whip my neck around, but no one is there.
“Down here, halfwit! I didn’t die on my feet only to be puked on by an inebriated human.”
I squint at my vomit between my feet. A white lump lies in the dirt, beneath the puddle of berry water. I nudge it with my boot and dead leaves fall away from the chalky cranium.
“Bones?” I murmur. The skull glares up at me from its eye sockets, grinning from its jaw of neat teeth. Purple sludge drips off the crusty horns. Vertebrae are scattered like stars around it.
“Bones!” the voice screeches. “Is that all you think I am? And who do you think you are, staggering around desecrating graves?”
My eyes boggle. Maybe my self-narration was getting meta, but this didn’t sound like Sir David. The scene shifts a few centimetres and my vision flickers to an image of mushrooms for a millisecond – where did I see that? I push harder to concentrate but my perception is all out of whack.
“At this stage,” I exhale wearily, “the hallucinations are beyond psychedelic. The poison is hijacking the central nervous system.”
The skull lets out a throaty cackle. “Don’t talk poison to me, little girl. You know nothing of poison.”
My knees wobble as I squat at the grave site, glancing around me to check if anyone is watching. “I’d rather think I do,” I hiss as my vision strobes.
“Ha!” it grunts, a purple droplet rolling down its snout. “You don’t know of the piercing pain, the convulsions, the final breath. You don’t know of the agony of having your carcass torn apart by wild dogs. Nor the terror of rats scrabbling and gnawing your bones.” The skull gnashes its brown teeth. “Then to finally rest in peace, only for some tripper to vomit purple grot over your corpse.”
I stare at the decomposing carcass. Hair, blacker and thicker than mine, balloons beneath the bones like a dark cloud. The shadow of the animal that once was: a sheep or goat or deer. The air smells of rot.
It glares at me with its scraped out eyes. “You’re the one I feel sorry for. Don’t you know anything? Look closer, little girl.”
I grab a stick to poke at the matted hair. My face looms over the microcosm as I lean in and unstitch a piece from the dirt. Underneath, a tiny white nub is nosing its way out of the leaf litter. A faint bloom of rouge paints its skin.
“A baby fly agaric,” I say. A fleeting vision comes to me: colonies of baby mushrooms, silky white heads squirming up out of the earth. Their spores sprinkle, their tiny ears open, listening for rain.
I wait for a reply, but the skull is still and silent, smiling wide.
Think your name would look good in print? Woroni is always open for submissions. Email write@woroni.com.au with a pitch or draft. You can find more info on submitting here.
I was trying to work out what was different about the day. It had been gnawing at me you know – you know that feeling like something’s twitching just outside of your peripherals, twitching on the ground but you can’t quite turn around to see what, or where, or how it started twitching in the first place? Yeah, that feeling had been gnawing at me all day as I walked around, dropping off some stuff at Genevieve’s and stopping by the café. Genevieve and I called it quits about a week ago. It was her idea, mind you, but I still felt bad about it, as if I’d run over her cat or something and had to go up to her front door and tell her about it myself. I still felt bad, even though it was like she had run over my cat. Anyway, maybe that’s the feeling I had that day, although it wasn’t quite so sombre as a dead cat. The twitching felt blunt and grating in the kind of way that melancholia wasn’t.
As I was passing through the city on my way back from Genevieve’s to drop off her things, I was feeling the twitching so strongly that I even turned and looked over my shoulder a couple of times. I know I looked ridiculous, looking around behind me like that. Usually I try to be cool about things, especially in places like the city where there are so many people watching. Anyway, as I was walking, I was trying to figure out where it had come from. There had been nothing unusual about this week, except that it had started with Genevieve and ended without her. I wasn’t all that bothered by it, except for the fact that I felt bad about it.
She wasn’t the sort of person you could write about. She was too unassuming, I suppose. I got a story published once, you know. That almost makes me a writer and a writer can’t be with someone that they can’t write about. I made that rule up, but it just makes sense, I guess. Anyway, by the time I’d started thinking about Genevieve again, I was halfway across George St and on my way to the train station. I walk with quite a determined stride, and I was so caught up in Genevieve and the fact that the twitching hadn’t stopped that I was walking rather too determinedly, and people started looking up from the ground and watching me as I crossed the street, except that I didn’t even notice until I’d finished crossing and then I remembered to slow down and look cool again. People are watchers in the city. They watch and watch until you start to feel your own goddam skin burning up. That was the good thing about Genevieve, I guess. You never felt watched when she was looking at you.
I was halfway down the stairs to Platform 3 by this point, and my hand was twitching against the railings. I wasn’t even thinking really, wasn’t thinking about where I was going or the fact that it was towards the train that led out west, back out towards Genevieve’s place. The linoleum was ripping up underneath my feet as I walked onto the train. That’s what it felt like anyway. It felt like my body was ripping at the train. Like it could tear the whole thing apart. Across the carriage a man kept folding and unfolding his newspaper, folding and unfolding like he was looking for something to distract himself. His suit was pinstriped, but in a sort of obnoxious way, as if he really wanted everyone to know that he was wearing a suit. I was looking real hard at it. I was looking too hard and two seconds too late I realised that I was staring. The man looked at me strangely, like he knew I was the sort to not watch people, but who slipped up every now and again and to kick themselves over it.
The train ride was too long, and by the halfway point I think the man had given up. He hung his newspaper hung limply over his knee. By this point, I was really starting to get into my own head. I kept telling myself, over and over: she won’t be home, she’ll be at work still. Over and over. Because even though I was on the train on the way to her house, I knew that if I saw her I’d start to feel bad about everything. It’s not like I didn’t already feel bad. She’ll be at work. At least that’s what I told myself, over and over. She won’t be home. She’ll be at work. Like watching her move around behind her curtained windows would be like seeing my cat being run over, and then again in reverse. Just to make certain that it was dead. She’ll be at work.
I was sort of tense by then, because the sun was starting to set which meant that maybe she would be home. She wouldn’t be at work. I tried not to think about her as I walked off the platform and onto the street. It’s funny, considering the fact that I’m nearly a writer and all and could hardly bring myself to write about her, I sure did think about her a lot. Her. Genevieve. It’s funny to write her name. It almost shouldn’t exist on paper. She’s too unassuming, I guess.
Anyway, by this point I was so caught up in not thinking about her that I barely even noticed that I was outside her apartment, across the street and to the left a bit. We always used to say goodbye here. She was the sort of girl to walk you to the door when you had to leave, and then walk you down the stairs and all the way across the street. Just to make sure you didn’t have to do it alone. The twitching had eased up. The twitching had eased up although I didn’t notice that until afterwards, because I was too busy noticing that her lights were on, and that they were framing two silhouettes in the window. I recognised Genevieve’s right away. I guess you start knowing people like that once you’ve been around them for long enough. The other silhouette wouldn’t detach itself from Genevieve’s, so I couldn’t make it out. I was really kicking myself now, telling myself that I shouldn’t have come, because I’d known that I’d feel bad if I did, and yet I still had to come and check up on her. As I turned away, I thought I saw her tilt her head towards the street. Maybe I’d imagined it. Either way, it doesn’t matter. Either way, I don’t even own a cat.
This poem begins with Tycho Brahe (known long previously)
Who owned a rather strange animal that acted deviously
This pet chiefly being Alces alces (also known as a moose)
Had a slight little issue of overindulging when set loose
This odd configuration of a moose and man
Became famous in Denmark for the way they ran
So one day a nobleman wrote to Tycho and said
‘Do you have something faster than a deer on a sled?’
Tycho responded with great satisfaction, ‘Indeed, I do!
I’d be perfectly happy to lend my fastest moose to you!
But you will have to wait until after Christmas Day
If my moose (who enjoys Yuletide) is to have his say.’
The truth was that the moose was rather partial to
The festive smörgåsbord that was now to ensue:
Pickled herrings, Lucia’s lussekatter, Christmas ham with mustard,
Gravadlax salmon, Jansson’s Temptation, different sorts of custard!
But of all Nordic delicacies that day
It was Uncle Jørgen’s mead which made him bray
Oh, it was lovely! So dark and thick and sweet!
So much better than their bread or cheese or meat!
The moose would admit that he had indulged a bit too much
(To the point that for dinner the company had none such)
And Uncle Jørgen took him by his antlers and said,
‘You bloody moose! You’ve drunk all our ale and ate our spread!’
So Tycho ordered his pet back to stable
The moose bowed his head, feeling quite unable
And began to meander down the stairs
Swishing and swashing, having passed all cares
Then he stumbled: bumbling, falling and tumbling quite far down
Children laughed at the clown while women did begin to frown
Uncle Jørgen shook his head, ‘No more mead for that goose of a moose!’
A chill ran through Tycho’s synthetic nose and he cried, ‘What the deuce!’
As it was, the moose knocked his head against a cannister
And crumbled to the floor beside the wooden bannister
Two days later he died of haemorrhage and was mourned
By his owner Tycho who sobbed, ‘Poor dear, you were warned.’
A fortnight passed and he took up his quill (dipping it in ink)
And he wrote to the nobleman saying he was in a kink
‘My best moose (for whom you recently asked) has suddenly passed
And now there is no one to beat a deer on a sled going fast
‘However, I have one comfort to suggest
(Don’t think badly of the moose—he was no pest.)
But I do now have this ever-slightest hunch
That I can send you the remaining moose munch.’
Might I remind you
Of a hurtful gravitational tug you
Once placed on us.
You told me
Take your sorries to the gavel hot boy,
Because I had eaten all the ripe plums. No,
In fact I pleaded for help for my grimly steep
Actions, I had – under wills of divinity,
Laundered from the overflowing green pocketssssss of
The Fund.
You… you enforced,
If the money is the root of all evil,
Why would you wilfully swallow the corrosion.
Are you idle or stupid.
Does the Trust Fund know
You can’t be trusted with funds: you added solemnly.
I said yes and cried because
The entire sail struck stiff in the squall
Until your head got in the way of a collapsing mast
That
Struck
You
DEAD.