by John Clarke
More wilton than the truth it brings
Outreithage in the blitherhoard
And quicklyslip disgracerthings.
Observe how the Lowcom-de-Nom tree moves
And endowners the ground with poison fruit.
See how ‘ard the serpent has hidden his hooves
When addressing potential recruits.
You can slay the Triumphalist Smirk my friend
The vorpal sword goes snicker snap.
No defensive position could ever depend
On this particular Brandercrap.
‘Twas ruddock and the blundertrope
All romping through the perjyblade,
Did slither down the sewerscope
To the Frightenhate Parade.
Anon.
Trad. (This nursery rhyme was found near Euroa.)
WHO KILLED NED KELLY?
Who killed Ned Kelly?
I, said the hangman,
The local Sturm und Drang man,
I killed Ned Kelly.
Who saw him die?
I, said Judge Barry,
Like the stretching of Larry,
I saw him die.
Who’ll make his shroud?
We, said the Catholics,
With our Singer automatics,
We’ll make his shroud.
Who’ll dig his grave?
We, said the Protestants,
With our patronising goddy stance,
We’ll dig his grave.
Who’ll toll the bell?
I, said the editor,
Lest I’m thought a predator,
I’ll toll the bell.
What had Ned done?
Horse thief and murderer,
Outlaw, marauderer,
That’s what he’d done.
Hang on, that’s bullshit,
He was helping his mother,
The cops shot his brother,
He was deeply wronged.
Who’ll write the book?
We, cried nearly everyone,
By Friday we’ll have several done,
We’ll write the book.
Who’ll buy the film rights?
I, said a middle man,
My name is Lonigan,
I inherited the film rights.
Who’ll write the screenplay,
The complexity’s bewildering,
It should be done in Jerilderie,
As it is in heaven.
And who’ll do the marketing?
I, said Joe Byrne,
It’s my bloody turn,
I’ll do the marketing.
All the birds of the air,
Went to pieces and to jelly,
When they heard of the industry,
Around poor Ned Kelly.
Very Manly Hopkins
Very Manly was born in Adelaide, which he loved, but was posted to Newcastle, which he hated, by the Catholic Church, to which he converted while he was at university. When he was twenty-four he destroyed everything he had written and started again. No one has ever been able to understand why he did this but at least we don’t have the stuff he wrote before he was twenty-four.
PIED AGAIN
I bought this morning Monday’s paper print-press-smelling,
And read it on the train propped up and trouser-resting,
Oh Lord I’m not well: a vision brindled bottles
Glinting nervous mottled jumpy shithouse brittle
Light a blast of whiteness headache nature’s fury strobing
Don’t turn lidded slit-squint window-ward-enquiring
Senses scream alert yell nuclear attack impending
Inside noises leaping brainwards jangle jostle!
Man adjacent eating toast with amplifier up nostril,
Woman knits jazz-needled piercing jagged deafening
Scream of braking shatters system winces standing
Up when blindness striking tragic arms outstretching
Sit when sight regained and egress tunnelwise effected
Glory be to God for bottled things. Use as directed.
Billy ‘The Swank’ Gilbert
Billy was best known for his work with ‘Nifty’ Sullivan, a musician he met at a party. Together they wrote HMAS Apronstring, IoSilver, The Mickydoo, Ruddibore, Foreman of the Yard and a number of other bits and pieces that are still performed today.
THE PIRATES OF penzance.com
CEO: I am the very model of a modern chief executive,
Regardless of agenda items random or consecutive,
My salary’s enormous and related to performance,
In determining the role of which I’m always in concordinance;
My package isn’t income-based in any technicality,
Appreciating more in line with concepts like reality,
In options and in super and through trusts that list as charities,
I represent a movement in fiduciary disparities.
ALL: He represents a movement in fiduciary disparities.
CEO: I studied all the history from Adam Smith to Maynard Keynes,
And peppered it with knowledge that relates or even appertains,
To customs law and extradition, warehousing and arbitrage,
Being photographed at hospitals and other forms of camouflage.
ALL: To customs law and extradition, warehousing and arbitrage,
Being photographed at hospitals and other forms of camouflage.
CEO: I learnt the laws of real estate and how they work for foreigners,
I leveraged consulting fees to lenders and to borrowers,
I parked it in the market, there was never any fraud at all,
And if there was I cleaned it up when I became the auditor.
We always act within the law, we’re utterly meticulous,
We put out a prospectus and to say we don’t’s ridiculous,
In strictness of compliance either now or retrospecutive,
I am the very model of a modern chief executive.
ALL: In strictness of compliance either now or retrospecutive,
He is the very model of a modern chief executive.
CEO: I understood the principles that underlie insurances,
An actuary’s algorithms coupled with endurance is,
A scientific formula for risk in every continent,
And if you lose a billion you can say you were incompetent.
ALL: And if you lose a billion you can say you were incompetent.
CEO: My wife is unaware that she controls though being the signatory,
A unit trust that constitutes a fiscal death with dignity,
Amounts have disappeared for reinvestment by the million there,
I think I’m right in claiming that our schnauzer’s a hectillionaire.
When dividends are slow and normal salaries laborious,
My severance clause in contracts is the Hallelujah chorious,
In short in my objective that a fortune is pre-requitive,
I am the very model of a modern chief executive.
ALL: In short in matters decorative and dissolute and wreckutive,
He is the very model of a modern chief executive.
Teddy Bentley
The inventor of the detective novel, Teddy is best remembered for the fourline construction known as Cheerios, so called for no good reason.
CHEERIOS
Allan Border,
Sequestered himself down the order,
And seldom, even during a rout,
Went out.
——————
The thing about Malcolm Fraser,
Was the authority of his old school blazer.
The pants, it should not be forgotten,
He wore less often.
——————
Reactions to Keating are funny,
And indexed completely to money.
Those with lots like him best,
Nonetheless.
Walter Burley Yeats
Of
ten referred to as the authentic voice of Tasmania, Walter Burley Yeats was elected senator in 1922, and won the Nobel Prize for Shearing in 1931, 1932 and 1933.
THE FLASHING GYRE
I run with the old men, piping their song,
The moon-mad and troubled engaged in a reel,
The careless white hair of them streaming along,
As they dance in the tops of the trees,
The loopy old men, the wild-eyed and punching,
Who better than know their heart’s beat?
For old men know of old women,
And old women have dreams at their feet.
I mistook the quickening fiddler’s hand
For the swan-beat of wings passing by,
For old men are merry when roaring with fire,
And birds and old women lament with the sky.
Or why if the wandering wind-dried MacCool
And Brigid hold hands at the Hobart Fair
Should not old men salmon-leap into the ditch,
Remembering glances that sang on the air?
Arthur ‘Guitar Boogie’ Patterson
You can smell gum trees in the nation’s authentic verse, full of bush lore and traditional yarns, many slightly exaggerated in a typically larrikin way but with a strong and distinctive rhythm which seems to come from deep among the mountain wattles and is unlike any other verse in the English language.
THE AUTHENTIC AUSTRALIAN BUSH BALLAD
There was kipling at the Kipling for the kipling got around,
That the colt they called ‘The Kipling’ got away.
It was worth a thousand kiplings and it vanished overnight,
And it took off up the Rudyard where the kiplings often go.
So the kiplings came from everywhere preparing for the fray,
Every man who’d ever kippled, every man who knew the way,
Glinting sunlight caught the bridle of the youngest man among them
He was rather like a kipling under-sized.
But the shout that spurred them onward lifted hands and heels together
And they kippled up the Rudyard with their eyes upon the prize,
No one ever saw such kipling, ne’er were man and horse together
Nor as swift nor sure-footed as they climbed.
But the mob was kipling faster and was down the other side
And heading straight toward the Rudyard where they knew that they could hide.
And the old man wheeled and halted, standing kipling at the prospect
That his colt was gone beyond where even mountain man could ride.
And he knew, all hope receding, no one now could head the mob,
For never yet were horse and rider seen,
Who could follow once the brumbies made the treeline up the Rudyard
Kipling wild and kipling free in places man has never been.
Then a roar was heard of horses crashing through the rocks and tundra,
And the old man’s fingers tightened on the rein,
For any mob that crossed the river made the toughest alpine scrub,
That ever mountain soil could sustain.
But a new sound filled the valley as the brumbies broke their cover
And across the river tracings ran for home,
And the old man turned to Clancy and he thought he caught him smiling
When he asked him who could get down there alone.
And again the snap of whipcrack and the men could see the pack
With now a single rider gaining from the rear.
And they could hear the young man yelling, how he’d got there, no one knew,
Clancy said that he’d be buggered and he promised him a beer.
And they watched with hearts akippling for their spirits now were lifting
And they stood up in their stirrups and they cheered.
Riding flank to flank they saw him, with the fastest of the mob,
If they made the other bank the lot were gone.
But he headed them and held them and the leaders turned and halted.
They were beaten and they knew it. They were done.
And exhausted, wet and foaming they began the journey home
In the warm softness of the steeply banking sun.
There’s a green and yellow wattle to the north of Reedy Creek,
Where the air is thick with thousands of galahs,
Where the men will treat you badly but if you can turn the mob
You can tell them all to stick it up their arse.
If you’re better off without them, if you’d rather be alone,
If you can get off on your own just near the start,
If you’re too young to be frightened and you don’t know where you’re going
And you don’t mind if you rip your gear apart,
And if you can go down hillsides very near the speed of sound,
And manage somehow not to fall or hit a tree,
Then there’s every chance some bully will extend a manly grasp,
Clear his throat and tell you ‘You’re a man, my son.’
And if you can fight the impulse to be swayed by this display
And you remember his behaviour in the past
And you can learn to shake a hand while saying ‘Jab it up your arse’,
Then you’ll find the next bit easy. Walk away.
Jems Choice
Jems is one of Tasmania’s best known exports. He left Hobart with Enid Carbuncle before World War I and never went back. He got a job teaching English in Brisbane and began work on his novels. His first works were heavily criticised in the Tasmanian press and he spent the rest of his life writing one that no one would understand.
THE BALLAD OF JASPER O’REILLY
Nearly recovered we are blathered here today
In the flight-path of Himself
Dijon disbanding this woman in howdy-doodiedom
Do you (insert your trained leer Mr Earwicker)
Take Anna Livia to be or not
To be your lawful dreaded life?
Eyedew.
Under you, Anna Livia, talk this man
(Insert your train here Mr Wicker)
To be your awful bedded strife?
Adieu.
If anybum nose often impedimenta
Speak Nowra four of a whole jaw-piece.
Unpack the voluminous dative case and lay out
The suit my grammar left me the mardi da,
The mither of the fither sun and noilly pratt
Parse the photo correction, lookit the faces,
Theres Dante, dont minchinbury legion,
Seether man in the hat? Boylan for the wife he is
Cant get enough off her always warm in the bed.
This hears Molly wither clothiers on
And thesis the dress under where just under there
The underwear sur prize sur prize
All stand while we observe the holy trinity
Come come now Mr Deedless do not toy with the caught
Put them on a good behaviour bond
Ant twatted he say when he touched you my child?
Pig in your porter butters this seat taken?
Nature of Inquiry;
Genuine, searching, passibly dooble onton,
Character of response;
Fellatious, mollified, deeply touched,
Dr Ring will free you now three cheers no waiting.
The fiddle he diddled the dada did
He middled the little La Scalas id
Belittled the riddle the fathers hid
Skedaddled and addled the sorters of
The muddle was on for supporters of
And all of the Murraying waters of
The hurry and worrying waters of
Lights going
Fights going
Sights going
All of the sons and daughters of
The trouble enchanted ought is off
For all of the martyred daughters of
Ni
ght.
R. A. C. V. Milne
Essayist, poet and commercial traveller, R. A. C. V. Milne wrote a number of verses for children. His best known works are still read today.
THE DOG’S BREAKFAST
Bob asked Neil,
And Neil asked Susan,
Do you think that we could rustle up support for the I.D.?
Neil spoke to Susan,
Susan said ‘Certainly,
I’ll go about the countryside and see what I can see.’
So Susan she took her leave,
And went down to Tasmania,
And told them they were ignorant
And stupid as could be,
And they didn’t understand,
And the government would have its way,
The card was coming in and everybody should agree.
But the people said they didn’t,
And they couldn’t and they wouldn’t,
And they shouldn’t, it was rotten,
But that even if they did,
Who was going to have access
To the facts about the taxes?
How could anybody guarantee complete security?
So Susan went to Neil,
She told him of the news,
She told him how the people felt
And how she’d been accused
Of invading of the privacy
Attempting to dehumanise
And tamper with the sanctity of individual rights.
Susan told Neil,
And Neil went to Bob,
Bob said ‘Bother’,
