Fugitive Fragments

by Mike McGuire – commentator reviewer poet

08 Apr 2013

42nd Street Flashback

It squats at its grand central beckoning place
Now dwarfed but still a monument to awe,
Stone columns zooming urgently erect
To amiably support vast marble hall;
Façade ascends – the structure’s bones enfleshed,
Toward glazed iconic Tiffany telling time,
Reminding of life’s rigid schedules yet
Or moments missed through haste or slothful pace.
Madly rushing minions freeze-blurred
To anonymity in stolen focus,
Anima/Persona’s seized élan
All turned to stone, glazed faced, awaiting terminus.

Posted in Poetry and tagged Memoir, Travel

26 Mar 2013

28 Comments

Trio

In great halls they enchanted me,
Three women – dulcet sirens
Awoke my heart, made life restart
Without us ever meeting. Read more…

Posted in Poetry and tagged Anna Netrebko, Aria, Carmen, Julia Migenes, La Bohème, La Traviata, Memoir, Mimi, Opera, Teresa Stratas, Violetta

21 Mar 2013

UNESCO World Poetry Day 2013

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Posted in Poetry and tagged #worldpoetryday, Michael McGuire, UNESCO World Poetry Day 2013 | Leave a Comment

20 Mar 2013

2 Comments

Recycling

I’ll be recycling some pieces from previous years while my attentions are diverted elsewhere of necessity but I expect to keep visiting your blogs and commenting daily – Mike

Posted in Uncategorized

20 Mar 2013

11 Comments

A Fortunate Man

My son is dying, bright eyes fever-flared,
He bravely smiles as we await his fate.
72 virginal houri abide
Visage veiled but vaginas revealed Read more…

Posted in Poetry and tagged Dramatic monologue

15 Mar 2013

15 Comments

Awards

I wish to thank Chris Black who has nominated me for The One Lovely Blog Award and the The Very Inspiring Blogger Award.

In accordance with the rules I list 7 items of Mike-trivia: Read more…

Posted in Awards and tagged Awards, Blog award, blogging, One Lovely Blog Award, Very Inspiring Blogger Award, WordPress Award, Writing

12 Mar 2013

10 Comments

Skios by Michael Frayn

This Michael Frayn comedy of errors caught my eye on the Man Booker Prize 2012 longlist when I spotted it’s ‘humour’ tag. As man’s humour and Man Booker are strange bedfellows my cocked eyebrow signalled that I have a peek. The book is a comedic gem.

It is a fabrication about mistaken identity between a crotchety academic and an impulsive playboy set on a Greek island. There’s a girl caught in the middle Read more…

Posted in Reviews and tagged Arts, Book review, books, comedy, funny, Greece, Greek, Humor, Humour, Man Booker Prize, Michael Frayn, Michael McGuire, Skios

04 Mar 2013

22 Comments

Poet’s Block

When Terza Rima came to town that day,
The people gathering round to hear its words
Were stunned to find that it had nought to say. Read more…

Posted in Poetry and tagged Fixed Verse Forms, Michael McGuire, Poem, Poet, Poetry, Terza Rima

02 Mar 2013

15 Comments

Limerick 038

A Tail of Ms Kidman

On her birthday Nicole (forty-five)

Thought her ego could use a revive, Read more…

Posted in Poetry and tagged Humor, Humour, Limericks, Michael McGuire, nice butt, Nicole Kidman, V Magazine Nov. 2012

27 Feb 2013

11 Comments

Yahoo Inc. going backwards

Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer has today reversed existing company policy regarding employees working from home. From June all employees will have to show up at the office in a decision that goes contrary to current thinking on this type of working arrangement.

A wealth of reputable research indicates that working from home increases productivity and this is backed by the experiences of major international entities that encourage the practice. The system saves employer costs such as office space, energy etc. and saves the employee commuting time and expense, and in some cases childcare costs and allows greater personal flexibility. Read more…

Posted in Articles and tagged Australia, Broadband, commute, Employment, Global environment, Google, IBM, Industrial Relations, internet, Marissa Mayer, Microsoft, Productivity, technology, Telecommuting, telework, Working from home, Yahoo

25 Feb 2013

10 Comments

The iPad and The iPhone

I pad to my phone and I Skype her,

Her pad’s within Wi-Fi from here,

My iEye sees that she’s uncovered,

Said “put rubber bumper on rear” Read more…

Posted in Poetry and tagged Apple, Bluetooth, Dating, Friends with benefits, Humor, Humour, IPad, iPhone, iTunes, Poet, Poetry, Short verse, Siri, Skype, Wi-Fi, Wireless

23 Feb 2013

16 Comments

NEWSFLASH: Blogger accurately predicts Oscar winner

Oscars prediction – Best Movie 2013

Posted in Movies and tagged Academy Awards, Ang Lee, Life of Pi, Movie review, oscars

23 Feb 2013

2 Comments

Quick Flicks

Posted in Movies and tagged Disney, entertainment, film, Movie, Movie review, The Hobbit, Tolkien, Wrevk It Ralph

22 Feb 2013

4 Comments

Addressing Al

I was writing a rant recently about a member of the ruling al-Assad family of Syria – the wife I think, Marie-Antoinette or whatever her name is – the blind, dumb, deaf simian posing as a dictators wife but actually a morally-bereft product of the British privileged class. But I digress. Anyway, my fingers vacillated over the keyboard momentary as I typed her surname – they always do when I am typing an Arabic name. But this time I I decided that I would make good on a former good intention to delve into Sumerian grammar and learn the correct usage of the word ‘al’ in order to prevent future interruptions to my train of thought as I strive to become a better blogger. I thought my findings worth sharing with anyone who notices the increasing occurrence of eastern matters in our western world and recognises the importance of protocol and polite communication with our fellow man. Read more…

Posted in Articles and tagged Al, al-Assad, Al-Fayed, Al-Qaeda, Arab, Arabic, Arabic language, definate article, English, English grammar, Grammar, Harrods, indefinate articla, Moors, Muammar Gaddafi, names, Saif al-Arab Gaddafi, Syria, The, translation

21 Feb 2013

2 Comments

Afterword: The Ninth Wave

Note to readers on my poem, ‘Cresting the Ninth Wave’:

In Irish mythology the ninth wave marked the boundary between life and the afterlife.

Mike

Posted in Poetry and tagged Irish mythology

09 Feb 2013

47 Comments

Cresting the Ninth Wave

When evening sky foreshadowed certain night
I’d tighten sail to strike for harbour wall,
I feared the dark – had seen its evil rites
And shrank from its hallucinating thrall. Read more…

Posted in Memoir, Poetry and tagged Afterlife, Beelzebub, Hydra, Memoir, Mephistopheles, Metaphorical, Mythology, Neptune, Ninth wave, Poem, Poetry, Sirens, Succubus, Verse

09 Feb 2013

3 Comments

Limerick 047

Diva Gaga gives stadiums a list

Of weird stuff she needs to exist

Among them are Jameson Read more…

Posted in Poetry and tagged bran flakes, concerts, diarrhea, Diva, dressing room demands, Lady Gaga, Limericks, music charts, stadiums, weird stuff

07 Feb 2013

5 Comments

Widescreen Radio

My TV channel count is gone up to a much-duplicated 55 but 8 are actually radio channels. “WTF is SBS Radio doing thinking it’s a TV station?” asks Melbourne comedian Dave Hughes in his raucous new stand-up. And he’s right! Slyly infiltrating my Electronic Program Guide (EPG) using an alias like ABC Dig exceeds the duplicity of the pirate radio station I was once part of way back in the North Sea radio heydays when I fancied myself as their landlubbing prosopopoeia. But this is legal – though it seems somewhat incestuous. Or at least a bit bi.

Imagine all those poor, what…viewers? listeners? – the ‘populi bewilderus’ who just sit there listening to watching the music and waiting for a phantom TV show to start with the patience of Ratzinger’s gay admirer. Read more…

Posted in Articles and tagged Beliefs, Current affairs, Facebook, Humor, internet, Journalism, media, Radio, Sociology, technology, TV, Writing

05 Feb 2013

10 Comments

A Movable Feast by Earnest Hemingway

Hemingway’s A Moveable Feast will usher you into the romance (and it was romantic) of 1920s Paris just like Woody Allen transported Owen Wilson there in his 2011 Academy Award-winning screenplay, Midnight in Paris. As in the movie and this celebrated book, you will meet such luminaries as Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald, Gertrude Stein and her partner Alice, Ezra Pound, T. S. Eliot, James Joyce and of course, Hemingway himself amongst many other notables from all schools of the arts. I personally was moved to pound the pavements of Paris tracing the journey of these pages and would do so again before ever traipsing through the Dublin of Ulysses like so many Joyce aficionados do on Bloomsday each year. And I’m Irish!

But before any inspirational people populate the pages, the book is principally un hommage to the city itself. Read more…

Posted in Reviews and tagged 1920s, 1920s paris, A Moveable Feast, Book review, books, Earnest Hemingway, ezra pound, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Gertrude Stein, James Joyce, Jazz Age, literature, Memoir, midnight in paris, Paris, T. S. Eliot, Writer, Writing, zelda fitzgerald

03 Feb 2013

5 Comments

The Rise of the Member

Ever since first day at school I’ve heard about the Golden Rule
It says that if you cram and learn then heaps of money you would earn.
I saw that this approach made sense and studied though my brain seemed dense
The brainy kid took all my tests – not that I threatened to molest,
I gave him what he shyly stated (let him see my girlfriend naked) Read more…

Posted in Poetry and tagged funny, Humorous, Humour, M.P., Member of Parliament, Poem, Poetry, Politician, politics

02 Feb 2013

2 Comments

Song to Satan

Dedicated to Ogden Nash

Her curves

Had verve.

I thought

Why not?

I sin -

You win.

Posted in Poetry and tagged Humor, Humour, Ogden Nash, Poet, Poetry, Short verse

02 Feb 2013

5 Comments

The (Scheduled) Fall of the Facebook Empire

Social networks bring people together but like any gathering, the time comes to split. People move on, just like they did from Bulletin Boards, from Chat Rooms and from My Space. QED, historical analysis proves Facebook’s imminent and scheduled demise. The argument is put that users will always need Facebook to contact their friends but that’s what they said about the phonebook. The pendulum on Facebook’s fifteen fleeting minutes of fame has been winding down since it reached its zenith in May 2012 when its ownership went public.

Mark Zuckerberg is a talented man but he is not a businessman. His forte rises above mere commerce. Yet he presided over the halving of Facebook’s share price following the most overhyped IPO since Noah floated the Ark. I won’t delve into the apocryphal IPO debacle here but given the result that the original stakeholder(s) raked in bazillions of dollars in cash that day, I believe that the IPO marked the Facebook mission as ‘Accomplished’. The owners cashed out, regardless of what was to happen afterwards. Any shares they kept could be used as confetti because the overpriced issue on that May day got them twice what it should have. Read more…

Posted in Articles and tagged Current affairs, Facebook, Financial Investments, internet, IPO, MySpace, Social Networks, Sociology, technology, Wall Street, Writer, Writing, Zuckerberg

30 Jan 2013

Quick Flicks

Posted in Movies and tagged Anne Hathaway, Daniel Craig, Hugh Jackman, James Bond, Les Miserables, oscars, Skyfall | Leave a Comment

25 Jan 2013

2 Comments

Limerick 023

A cyclist named Armstrong once said

’tis the truth that I nearly was dead

But some pills I did pop Read more…

Posted in Poetry and tagged Drugs, Humor, Humour, Lance Armstrong, Limericks, Oprah, Poetry, Sport, Tour de France

20 Jan 2013

2 Comments

Big Sur

by Jack Kerouac

Big Sur – wild and organic with a unique ecosystem and microclimate caused by its asperous profile. That description could just as easily characterise Jack Kerouac himself.

Located a couple of hours south of San Francisco, this land area of spectacular forest and coastal beauty was termed ‘El Sur Grande’ by the Spanish (The Big South). Kerouac installed himself there in Bixby Canyon for six weeks in 1960 to escape the attention and fame his book On The Road brought to his life. Read more…

Posted in Reviews and tagged Alcoholic, Beat Generation, Big Sur, Book review, CA, Kerouac, literature, Memoir, On The Road, Philosophy, Poetry, San Francisco, Writer, Writing

15 Jan 2013

5 Comments

Mogworld

By Yahtzee Croshaw

As a young father I quickly learned that when offered a toy telephone handset by a 3 year old I was in fact being invited into a world more enjoyable by far than my allotted one. Then, twenty years later, when the former 3 year old hands me a book of his to read, my instinctive reaction is once again to view it as an invitation into a world that I will probably find as enjoyable as the telephone chatting of those Ogygian days. Despite the cover. The puce green cover. Of a Zombie running amok.

English born but Australian based Ben ‘Yahtzee’ Croshaw is a 30 year old writer known principally for his contributions and editorial roles in video game magazines and websites. He enjoys cult status for the caustic, comical presentation of his Zero Punctuation video game reviews published by The Escapist. Mogword is his debut novel.

The hero (“I’m not a hero, I’m a protagonist”) protagonist is Jim, a recently disentombed Zombie who’s quite miffed about his unexpected resurrection and longs to return to his safe and peaceful grave. His world is now inhabited by a continually resurrecting populace who are unable to die permanently. The story plays out as a farcical, dark comedy on Jim’s avidity to achieve his desired everlasting extinction. Read more…

Posted in Reviews and tagged Book review, Comedic, Fiction, technology, Video games, yahtzee croshaw, zero punctuation

05 Jan 2013

2 Comments

Elegy for Colin

Infused on sky our brightest star
Brings heat to frail ossein,
Then suffering yields if just awhile
And sinews follow whim. Read more…

Posted in Poetry

03 Jan 2013

Patently preposterous

The legislation in place to protect patents seems to have been around since Noah invented bulk livestock carriers. But it hasn’t provided safe harbour since the great ship of modern technology let slip her moorings on the day the music of the rotary-dial telephone died.

Critical junctures such as this one tend to happen cyclically over the eons. Mankind usually trims the sails to manage the winds of change but in this instance there is gale force resistance to changing tack. Historical lessons that prove the benefit of pulling together rather than standing apart are forgotten. Nobody remembers how the Wright brothers destroyed their reputations by defending their patent for aircraft flight control until the American government had to step in to allow the allied air forces equip themselves for World War 1. Read more…

Posted in Articles and tagged Android, Apple, Corporate governance, Current affairs, Google, Journalism, Patents, Samsung, smartphone, tablet, technology, Writing | Leave a Comment

16 Dec 2012

4 Comments

Dear God

Dear God,

There are twenty-six presents hidden in Connecticut homes today that were intended for those who died in Newtown to celebrate your upcoming birthday. These presents are unlikely to be returned for refund; they’ll more likely be hidden deeper, brought out on certain anniversaries to grieve, blame or regret until one day in the distant future somebody’s executor might donate them to a charity, unknowing of their provenience. It will most likely be a church charity you’ll be pleased to know, so maybe you could consider something in return. Read more…

Posted in Articles and tagged children, Connecticut, CT, deaths, God, Letters, Newtown, prayer, Religion, Sandy Hook, school, shooting

17 Nov 2012

2 Comments

Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World

by Jack Weatherford

The Mongol Invasion was a mere apostrophe of history during my schooling and I dimly recall mention of a particularly savage slew of terrifying tribesmen from the esoteric east who touched a handful of easternmost European cities over a relatively short period before disappearing back into the vague lands that spawned them. Jack Weatherford’s book was recently recommended to me and immediately dispelled that notion. It exposed the panic propagated throughout Europe by ignorant, superstitious and hysterical Kings or (drama-) Queens.

Weatherford is an American anthropologist and ethnographer who got side-tracked into a fascination with Mongol affairs while on a research expedition studying the role of tribal people in the development of trade along the Silk Road between China and Europe. He diverted his attention to compiling a history of a Mongol boy named Temujin, born in 1162, who grew to annex the diverse central Asian tribes into one Mongol nation. As Genghis Khan, Temujin went on to conquer the land from China to Hungary via the Middle East and Russia. As Weatherford points out, this is a greater land mass than any other conqueror in history – including Alexander the Great. Read more…

Posted in Reviews and tagged Biographical, Book review, death of stalin, Genghis Khan, History, history of genghis khan, Jack Weatherford, life of genghis khan, Mediaeval, middle-east, Mongol, Mongolia, politics, Sociology, The Making of the Modern World

04 Nov 2012

Sonnet 001

The Melbourne Cup comes round but once a year
All colour, flowers, silks and dresses bright.
Both horse and lady vie for punter’s leer
But bonnets win the day for fashion’s height. Read more…

Posted in Poetry and tagged Hats, Ladies, Melbourne, Melbourne Cup, Poetry, Sonnet | Leave a Comment

07 Oct 2012

The Bachelor

You waited for Friday night to come around. There were some weeks when it arrived in nothing flat and the other weeks when you’d nearly give up on it arriving at all. You’d have the cows milked a bit early, shave, dress and when your father looked up from staring into the coals in the fireplace he’d say, “Are you goin’ out then?” Rather than risk argument, you’d remain silent, just nodding and holding your hand out for the ten-bob note that he eventually had agreed to give you. A grunt would serve as acknowledgement, then off with you into the fading light for the two mile walk to the village chewing on a pig’s cheek by way of dinner. Within a mile the collar stud might be biting into your throat and you’d curse yourself for not leaving it out until you reached your destination. The old fella’s greatcoat from the war kept the mist off your brown pinstripe suit. The cloth cap you bought on your first and last trip to Dublin nine years ago kept your head dry.

The walk was distinguishable by its sameness. Read more…

Posted in Stories and tagged Ireland, Sociology, Story, Way of life, Writing | Leave a Comment

07 Oct 2012

The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky

This book is a refreshing departure from more regular coming-of-age stories both in style and approach. Stephen Chobsky takes a literary risk in requiring his readers to follow the narrative in epistolary mode – the central protagonist communicating entirely through his letters to an unnamed confidante. The risk pays off once the reader gets the cadence and language of the first-person writer and from there the voice becomes very natural for both the character and the story.

Clues like Nirvana’s Smells Like Teen Spirit and the popular practice of boys making music ‘mix-tapes’ for girlfriends, put the action in the early nineties. The wallflower is Charlie, a mid-teen schoolboy without friends until he ventures to approach fellow students Samantha and her gay stepbrother Patrick. Read more…

Posted in Reviews and tagged Book review, coming of age, Letters, Monologue, Sociology, Teen, Values, Writer, Writing | Leave a Comment

09 Sep 2012

Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand

Rand’s mind was conditioned in pre-revolutionary Russia and honed in the USA. Having been witness to the bloody birth of Communism, then migrating to the most capitalistic country on Earth, it is no great leap to understand how her mind works; in a nutshell – Socialist bad, Capitalist good. She built an empirical philosophy based on this (which even enjoyed some popular support for a time) but the obvious flaw to her idealistic cause was its undemocratic core (it favours Meritocracy). Even in plutocratic America such radical thought finds little long-lasting purchase. With the dilution of Communism that has taken place worldwide since the book was published in 1957 her dogma could be considered simplistic, idealistic and impractical. That said, Rand does successfully draw attention to some of the flaws that persist in liberal and socialistic thinking and her arguments towards the acceptance of personal responsibility, self-sufficiency and a high work ethic, are commonly accepted and adopted today.

The setting is a dystopian USA where an undefined event has caused changes that result in a communist-style government. Orwellian pigs govern from Washington and citizens are brainwashed to become almost drone-like. Read more…

Posted in Reviews and tagged Beliefs, empirical philosophy, politics, Sociology, technology, Values | Leave a Comment

29 Aug 2012

1 Comment

The Aran Islands

THE ARAN ISLANDS

That Celts arrived in Ireland via the Caucasus should come as no surprise to those familiar with Tchaikovsky’s ‘Swan Lake’ which shares elements with the story of the two figures from Celtic mythology, lovers Aonghas and Caer. There is an ancient fortress bearing Aonghas’ name on the Aran Islands off the west coast of Ireland. The location on the receding continental shelf of Europe identifies both the little archipelago’s geographical position, and its extreme isolation.

The dominant feature is not only the grey/white stones, but their layout. They weave a flywire grid of low walls enclosing the tiniest green plots that could never be called paddocks. In a remarkable achievement, the Islanders broke and cleared the stone. To dispose of the shrapnel, they created walls with it, forming the boundary of the cleared patch of dirt. This backbreaking, courageous labour is staggering at first sight. Read more…

Posted in Articles and tagged ancient fortress, aran islands, composting seaweed, History, Ireland, Journalism, Sociology, Travelogue, vacation

01 Jul 2012

The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky

The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Translation by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky

Finishing the last page of Dostoyevsky’s last book can be regarded as a personal milestone. You are entitled to congratulate yourself for having had the courage to tackle it in the first place (no such kudos for finishing though – that’s a given). In attempting to write a review however, the milestone becomes a millstone. Many have shared their opinions before you – Kafka liked it and Hemingway did not; atheists and Popes have applauded it antithetically; historians and ethicists have polarised and galvanised opinions while many persons of universally accepted wisdom have referred to it has the greatest book ever written.

Descriptions of the story abound so I will not retell it – it is merely the pinhead on which Dostoyevsky’s angels dance. The plot is only the portent of the themes and these are exposed by the players. To convey what he seeks to deliver, Dostoyevsky uses his exceptional gift for characterisation to portray the contradictions of the human condition. Read more…

Posted in Reviews and tagged Beliefs, History, Philosophy, Sociology | Leave a Comment

21 Jun 2012

Desert Rose

Asma al-Assad (36) is the glamorous First Lady of Syria, a Londoner from a privileged background who graduated from King’s College and worked in international finance at JP Morgan before marrying the wealthy and westernised eye surgeon whose father was the then President of Syria. She must have known at the time that her new father-in-law conducted the (original) Hama massacre back in 1982 when an estimated 20,000 died in a single night.

Despite that, the latest unrest in Syria has taken Asma by surprise. Due to bothersome international sanctions against her adopted country, she is unable to get the (northern) summer collection of the jewel-encrusted Louboutin shoes she is so attached to. It is also reasonable to assume that she has by now emptied her last musical tin of Fortnum & Masons English Digestive biscuits. Worse, the once dubbed ‘English Rose of the Desert’ is today whispered to rank alongside Elena Ceaușescu, or Lady Macbeth, perhaps even one of the “tricoteuses” of the French revolution who knitted in their front-row seats through the daily performance of another trendy Madame – the guillotine. Read more…

Posted in Articles and tagged Arab Spring, Current affairs, Human rights, Journalism, Syria | Leave a Comment

09 May 2012

1 Comment

A history lesson

Greece was occupied by the Axis powers until 1945. Some 300,000 Greek civilians perished during the Nazi occupation of Athens alone. The entire populations (or in some cases, the male population only) of scores of towns and villages were executed and those towns razed to the ground. One million Greek children, women and men lived homeless. An estimated 70,000 Greek Jews were transported to the Nazi motherland.

Today, May 8, 2012, 21 members of the National Socialist Party (Nazi, or Neo-Nazi) were voted into national parliament by Greek citizens. Their leader insisted that members of the press stand as he entered his first news conference where he announced the swastika as their official emblem and Read more…

Posted in Articles and tagged Human rights, Journalism, Values

07 Apr 2012

2 Comments

The Square

You turned the corner into Donegall Square – trust the Brits to add the redundant letter at the end of an Irish placename; yet another separatist sore thumb dismissive of the border county of Donegal that birthed the O’Donnell line of High Kings right back to times in the mist. Across the park the Belfast City Hall hit you with a pain in the eyeball. A monolith to monolithism that some would tell you had been constructed as a declaration of whose prick was biggest. It looked more like a folly that the Shah would have built for himself in the desert with his oilwells. It was an offence in scale with the city’s poverty when it was erected barely a hundred years ago when the builder and Messrs. Harland, Wolf and their ilk hired only workers who prayed at the right church. Read more…

Posted in Memoir and tagged History, Ireland, Monologue

17 Mar 2012

A personal plunge.

The current Australian national reading initiative seems little different to the many similar promotions that have preceded it. What sets it apart for me is its synchroneity with the announcement that Encyclopaedia Britannica will no longer produce their illustrious and time-honoured 32-volume publication. This concurrence prompts me to finally relax my Canutian resistance to the sea of eBooks. This inevitable and tremulous personal milestone will mark my participation in the National Year of Reading 2012.

Before I take the plunge however, Read more…

Posted in Memoir and tagged Australia, Current affairs, technology | Leave a Comment

06 Nov 2011

Dedication to Hawking

Black night, pin-pricked with messages from the universe.
Bright, sparkling questions dimly milked for metempirics
Conceive counterfeit antiphons from a nescient chorale
Until one chanter, corpus crushed but nimble in percipience,
Finds the needle in the needlestack.

Posted in Poetry and tagged Astronomy, Science | Leave a Comment

12 Oct 2011

1 Comment

Viannelle pour Google

Happy birthday Google – thirteen years.
You intuit my meaning at first letter.
No longer do I need my mind to think.

That mind was once quite good at mental math,
Could translate quelque French without computer,
Now it’s happy birthday Google – thirteen years.

Where once before I’d browse my cranial depths,
I now browse search results to find an answer.
No longer do I need my mind to think.

At times your seeming godly omniscience
Tempts me to genuflect, devotion offer.
Felicem Natum Google – XIII annus.

Enlightenment, intelligence and learning
Are at my touch yet faint suspicions linger
That no longer do I need my mind to think.

Worse! Seated search – unlike my former pacing,
Makes waistline grow and clothes pinch even tighter.
Sigh. Happy birthday Google – thirteen years.
No longer do I need my mind to think.

Posted in Poetry and tagged technology

08 Oct 2011

Fishermen

Long waders, stout tweeds,
Rod, reel, net, and wicker bag
Hat with hooks, flies, badges;
A picture of proficiency personified -
Until he moved. Read more…

Posted in Poetry and tagged Transcendence | Leave a Comment

26 Sep 2011

4 Comments

Fairy tale update

Little Red Riding Hood grew up and moved to the city. She met some more wolves who got her hooked on crack so she turned to prostitution to feed her habit. When Prince (the artist formerly known as Charming) was in town for a concert at the MCG, he booked her for a quickie and was so impressed that he paid for her rehab then set her up in her own brothel. Read more…

Posted in Stories and tagged Story, Writing

25 Sep 2011

12 Comments

Writing without the letter ‘e’

I thought that writing a paragraph without an – oops, without…you know, was too difficult. So I put off doing it for a substantial duration. Could I do it? Could any paragraph stand intact without that most common but important of functional alpha-signs? I took up my, you know, my whatyacallit…writing thingy – Biro, and got down to it, Read more…

Posted in Memoir and tagged Writing

20 Sep 2011

Book review: Julia & Julia

Julia & Julia by Julie Powell

Subtitled “My year of Cooking Dangerously” Julie Powell’s “Julie & Julia” suggests conflict the ilk of Khrushchev & Kennedy; Tweedledum & Tweedledee; Blackadder & Baldrick. There are times when the book lives up to these classic pairings but so too are there times when they resemble Caesar & Cleopatra; Barnum & Bailey; Jack & Jill.

The book is a jocular journey through a woman’s perceived change-of-life event – her encroaching thirtieth birthday. Powell is not satisfied with what she has achieved in her life to date. College trained, she had hoped to become a writer but abandoned her unfinished first novel, resorting to secretarial temp work. She feels unfulfilled, stuck in a rut, and believes that if she does not do something meaningful before she turns thirty, she will be a failure. Read more…

Posted in Reviews and tagged Writer | Leave a Comment

15 Sep 2011

The hearth

For at least nine months of the year there was always a fire in the hearth in the Living Room. The tall coal-scuttle always shone in contradiction to the begrimed contents while its mouth yawned at the ceiling as if bored with staring at it. A large brass dog sat to heel in opposite alignment across the grate, cleverly concealing the four tools hanging behind in his hollow shell; tongs, poker, brush, shovel. Read more…

Posted in Memoir and tagged Biographical, Ireland | Leave a Comment

09 Sep 2011

Blight

He surveyed his domain from the hillock behind his family’s one-room, thatched cottage. The landlord’s domain to be precise, but for the four generations preceding this year of Our Lord, 1845, his forefathers had paid the rent that made it theirs to call home. All three acres and only half of it rock and stone.

He pulled his knit cap down to shelter his immaturely balding pate against the mountain wind and focused his steady grey eyes on the troop of Redcoats on the shore road far below. He released his breath when he realised they would not bother the family today.

He set off to the potato patch, his smock flapping noisily in the wind, his legs kept dry from the mist by coarse leggings. His bare feet found purchase on clod and stone with a dexterity that told of familiarity with the exercise. He moved neither quickly nor slowly, just with the efficiency required by the task in relation to the sinking sun. Read more…

Posted in Stories and tagged History, Ireland | Leave a Comment

28 Aug 2011

2 Comments

An overdue letter.

Dear Vincent,

As we are unacquainted it is somewhat presumptuous of me to write this unsolicited letter. I felt compelled to do so following my visit to the Museé d’Orsay this afternoon, where I had the pleasure of viewing the gallery dedicated to you.

Like many of my generation, you were humanised for me in Don McLean’s 1971 tribute composition “Vincent”. The song described you, your tragic life and a number of your works, in particular “The Starry Night” 1889 which has since become the most representational of your works worldwide.

Currently on display at d’Orsay is “Starry Night” 1888, Read more…

Posted in Memoir and tagged Biographical, Letters, Paris, Travel

12 Jun 2011

2 Comments

A sensory monologue

I am sitting at a promenade table beside the river at Southbank, scribbling with a pencil into a little notebook. The atmosphere is cosmopolitan, the mood stimulating, the people animated, the venue, trés-chic. I write, enduring the minor discomfort of the restaurant chair, which is of course designed to maximise customer turnover. Only in Paris can you own a restaurant chair all day for the price of a cup of espresso. I can feel the organic texture of the lead pencil traversing the fibrous paper, sending a tiny reverberation through my fingers. Read more…

Posted in Memoir and tagged Australia, Biographical

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by Mike McGuire – commentator reviewer poet

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