This Word Dec-a-dence

I have spent a great deal of time expending much mental energy,
pondering this ancient word, calculating in my mind the many
and various methods on how to formulate the very finest poetic
lines, which would best portray, without abatement or discomfiture
these three, individually, unpretentious syllables, to you, my good friends.

Combined they conjure up a potent and abhorrent image on the
most detested form of human thought and behavior,
which is directed at the lowest outcome of our nature.
Moral, social and personal decay, brought about by
seeking uninterrupted and excessive, immoral indulgence.

Yet, when I studied further those explanations within
the hallowed covers of some excellent encyclopedia
devoted to the language of the English, I found locked
therein a journey back in time to lands so far removed
from that lexicon, I thought anew about my task.

This word then dispatched me to the most serene of places
for my disturbed imaginings, therein to perceive from
the muses of antiquity a lesson in its journey to our times.
Could not Cato, nor Cicero, nor Epictetus have given me a better time?
I would have been by far the wiser then to count its form anew.

Ah! Italia, my friends, ancient and bold Italia, in that place they knew well
how to say it keen and all the religious Latin I did learn at school
would not prepare me for its pollination to make of it
what now we do; this word to so describe such vile and demeaning
a thing as we humans could bring ourselves to act upon!

The French, they say invented a quaint description for its many
ungainly attributes; methinks the Romans by far outweigh
the diplomatic Gauls at making up a rambunctious triplet to
passionately display the core of this very base and unwholesome
set of characters. Let me tell you now in a few last lines its story.

You will know it is a noun: the process or manifestation of moral or
cultural decay. Far better it sounds this explanation: luxurious self-indulgence!
The origin I will share with thee; it’s said to come from the French decadence
And from Latin Decadentia; related to decay; you did not know don’t say!
Yet before all, from the low Latin this is how it made its way: de – down and cadere – to fall!

How apt I hear you say. To fall, to fall indeed and thus the story ran
Oh! How sorry am I, that ever a word on Decadence I began.

Adrian Kavanagh,
October 7, 2008.

Last Text from New York City

Christ it’s cold up here Nadine –
I can barely hit the keys
To send you this quick SMS
And put your mind at ease.

It’s hit the fan – it’s on the news
Wall Street’s shot to Hell –
Hong Kong’s gone and Tokyo
Is down the tubes as well.

The Nasdaq, Footsie, NYX
Are all in mad freefall.
Oil’s relapsed, Gold’s collapsed –
There’s nothing left at all!

This howling wind is freezing me
High up here on the ledge.
I’ve talked the talk, I’ve walked the walk
And now I’m on the edge.

Over there is Lady Liberty
Her torch held high and bright,
As the streets plunge into darkness
On this most awful night.

The Lear Jet’s gone, the condo,
The beach house up in Maine.
The yacht in Monto Carlo –
We won’t see that again.

The swank hotels, the ski trips,
The limos, dining out –
We’d have to start again my love,
We’d have to do without …

Remember down in Vegas
We met that broker Joe?
He’s just two guys along from me –
He says to say Hello.

They’re like lemmings on this ledge now –
They push and shove and bump.
I’ll text you later sweetheart –
Hey! They’re forcing me to …!


John McCallum

Space child

On the far side of the moon
You can’t go out to play:
The air’s too thin, it’s far too cold
And you’d likely float away:

On the far side of the moon
You have to stay indoors
In metal rooms with metal walls
And tables, seats and floors:

You sleep in zipped-up thermal pods
That hang down from the wall
Your meals are tubes of gooey paste
That have no taste at all.

Your Mum and Dad are boffins
Who’ll work six months or so –
If was either travel with them
Or stay with Auntie Flo.

Outside it’s pitch-black day and night
The dust and rocks stretch out of sight
There’s nothing there for you to see
Not a single blade of grass or tree:

There’s nowhere for a dog to romp
Or chase a stick or ball –
On the far side of the moon in fact
You can’t have pets at all.

You can’t spend the whole day texting
You can’t surf the internet –
You’re on the far side of the moon
And they haven’t reached there yet.

You must stay inside and let time bide
In your spaceship’s tiny nooks –
TV? Forget it kiddo –
Just as well you brought those books.

So on the dark side of the moon
At least your mind can roam –
But please – don’t touch the buttons
Or you may not get back home.


John McCallum

When the chips are down

Let me see now – the subject’s Digital?
Now there’s a chilling word if ever I’ve heard one.
As hard as ice: bitter, freezing: frigital
The sort of word that would flash
Past your eyes in Antarctica
As you plunged down a crevice into the darkness.
A word that gives me the shivers
A word that leaves me cold.

I miss the simple life we had.
I regret the Internet, I dread the Web
I’m up to here with Graphic Logic Controllers
Multi-protocol Gateways and
Selectable Source and Sink Models –
Driven mad by Production Information Terminals
Software Line-ups and Hot-Swap functions –
I’ve had enough of all that stuff –

Though I’m ashamed to admit I once wrote
For a multi-national computer company –
Digital Electronics Corporation to be precise
And attended a day of personnel induction:
Level 32, Theatrette B, horse-shoe table
Nervous newcomers, name cards turned inwards,
Tiered seats each side, no place to hide
From the seduction –

A breezy guy with an eagle eye strides in
And hits us with an avalanche of spin:
Loyalty’s the key to greatness –
Long hair’s out, likewise lateness.
You’ll live and breathe and dream high-tech
And very soon you’ll meet – our Chief Exec.

Coffee break. They file from the room
I stay behind, hide in the upper gloom.
And watch a stranger casually stroll in
Silk suit, white shirt no tie and buzz-cut bold:
Pick up one name card, glance at it:
And then depart – the air goes cold.

We re-convene. Of course it’s him
Just in from New York Worldwide HQ
He’s electrifying, mesmerising –
And he turns to one fresh face and says
‘Isn’t that true, Charles, isn’t that true?’

And Charles goes home that day
Agog, aglow
He’d caught the eye of the CEO …
He’d caught the eye of the CEO!

Next day he changed his name to Chuck
Procured a flash new car
Bestowed his wife with diamonds
As befits a rising star.

The years crawled by. He never heard.
He turned into a backroom nerd.
He’s there today. You’d never know
He’d caught the eye of the CEO.

Digital Age? Digital Rage is more what it’s about
And like Cecil B De Mille – and Charles –
I say … Include Me Out.


John McCallum

Happy days are here again

Poor Dorian. Left in the attic
to fester and decay, unrecognised.
An unlike likeness blistering away
in oils, not blood and bone, while
the flesh escaped downstairs
to toast the Queen.

Old Hieronymus Bosch got it right.
Torture, carnal desire and death
stuffed in a sickly landscape
oozing from the frame.
'The Garden of Earthly Delights'—
No way out. We are what we are.

That’s what he said when he left me:
‘We are what we are.’ Pompous prick.
It was sex and the sixties that bound us.
The good old days.

My portrait doesn’t work, doesn’t suck the flesh
and smooth the lines. I’m still the same
when I open my eyes,
still in the Garden.

It’s time. Wasn’t that what Whitlam said?
The pills are kicking in, I’m outta here.
We reap what we sow.
Bosch and booze.
I’ll drink to that.




Cathy McCallum

Kaleidoscope

The Golden Book of Astronomy illuminates my bookcase still,
‘An Introduction to the Wonders of Space’
given me at five years old by my parents
playing out their own Wars of the Worlds in our lounge room.

I wanted a bride doll and had prepared her space
on a shelf near the window. No marital bed for her.
She would inhabit my room in a perpetual state of readiness
for her phantom groom:
my doppelgänger, drawn in Derwents and denied materiality.

Resigned to my loss
I quickly found the planets offered more escape.
Rings more interesting than a bridal band were Saturn’s
and the clouds of Venus moved across the page
as gracefully as a wedding dress through ether.

Mercury burned and the canals of Mars were dry. No matter.
They held the infinite possibilities of farness and survival.
Light years fell away in my room in Delbridge Street.
The moons of Jupiter were more like home.

In Room 40B of Brighton Nursing Home a shaft of light
strikes the glass beside my bed.
Prisms of memory pierce at unexpected moments
reducing me to tears, or worse,
non compos mentis.

I am eight years old and running with Spike
through the Fitzroy streets, away from Dad,
towards the stars and Jupiter.


Cathy McCallum

Meltdown

The monitor is male, and my mentor,
The genial host of my virtual world.
He tells me what to do, to think,
And I, like a novice, respond accordingly,
Hanging on every word.
I ‘Embed All Fonts’, ‘Include Linked Files’, even
‘Create New Action’. Like God.

He monitors my movements.
I click on ‘Shut Down’ and, distracted, drift away from my desk.
He beeps, urgently, and asks me
‘Do You Want To Save The Data for Other Applications?’
Yes I say Yes! Momentarily reverting to type.

My counsellor suggests a week or two away
‘Recharge your batteries – do you good –
Come back refreshed – new start.’
My pet rodent, a rare black rat of the species Rattus rattus,
Has no time for him. She Invades his Personal Space,
Condemns his Cognitive Behaviour Therapy from my shoulder.
‘Take the rat with you. She’d like that, wouldn’t you?’

I don’t think so.
Anyway, he’s crazy the counsellor – talking to the rat, for a start.
She doesn’t talk to strangers.
I end the session.

Back home, the monitor is not performing.
He’s been unwell, looks blue.
A virus, I’m told.
I’m told to ‘Rebuild’. Delete his memory and ‘Reboot’.
‘I’m not God,’ I say to the keyboard, ‘I can’t just kill him.’

Distressed, I ‘Shut Down’ for the final time, and weep.
Beep.


Cathy McCallum

Dastardly games

Dastardly games played upon the credulous senses,
Exploring all the detestable facets of human nature,
Causing limitless consequences for those malevolent
Actions that make us pay an inordinate and
Deadly price for all that is maliciously premeditated.
Except, of course, by those who ultimately feel
Nothing for the pain they consciously or otherwise
Cause the naive poet, who has spent endless time and effort,
Examining the first letter of each first word herein, as you will now.


Adrian Kavanagh,
September 26th, 2008.