The morning was full of parrots They clambered over chairs many perched amongst the maples and through the windows they did stare their incessant voices calling their colours deep and and bright I wondered how long they had been there? had they been out there all night? it was bedlam on the verandah it was getting messy on the deck all so they could have a gander the new occupants they came to check would we feed them like they were used to? or leave them to their own means? were they welcome to visit regularly? or was that just a parrot dream?
I met a hungry echidna with spiky spines all over I’m not kiddin’ ya it flicked its tongue from its beak for the ants it did seek you thought I was kiddin ya, didn’t ya?
Half an hour one forty eighth of each day should be consistently allocated to the following practice should be consistently adhered to at the expense of all other things the undertaking of regular exercise no matter what your age this is a good use of your time such that the time that is left to you may well be longer
In a world where unprotected justice is just another manipulative tool those who believe in blind justice look increasingly like naive fools
where chaos replaces transparency with the purpose of obscuring truth evidence based learning falls from aspiration, to work fragmented and moot
when lies are an accepted part of political discussion for misuse the power lies with those who societal values they readily abuse
if public denigration of dissent is a routine weapon of discourse then know ye that they will come for you too by threat as well as force
if wealth and appearance are the only currency around the majority may well end up in position genuflecting from the ground
if deceit tricks and hacks are permitted to taint the heart of democracy then notional democracy becomes yet another self defeating fallacy and the corrupt, malign and unread will rule over every land empowered by the inevitable sycophants and their militarised bully bands
The poetics prompt for we dVerse poets https://dversepoets.com/2025/08/12/dverse-poetics-tuesday-power/ comes from the deep thinking Lisa this week. It is topical, omnipresent and scary – as it has been throughout history. Is it worse today than in past eras? I am not sure I can make an absolute statement about that. However, with the likes of social media and AI now available as part of the dissembling and propaganda mix I suspect it is to become so.
I cannot resist a more personal comment about two principled men from Australia’s political history who I believe represented the antithesis to the forms of abuse of power described in my poem above. Two men whose democratic modelling, and leading of social justice and cultural reforms could be learned from by many leadership figures engaged in the power plays of today. My father Race Mathews with his friend, colleague & mentor Prime Minister Gough Whitlam.
poetography.ink 