THE OMICRON RIDE

“I am Alpha and Omega,
the beginning and the end,
the first and the last.”
(Revelation 22 : 13 KJV)

Trip to
Heave and ho
Up down
To and fro
Mask and hide
For the omicron ride.
QR code
Smart phone upload
Check in
Check out
We know where
You’re all about
We will fine you
If you flout.
Trip to
Heave and ho
Up down
To and fro

Mask and hide
For the omicron ride.
Casual contact
Legal contract

Endless testing
Much less resting
You’ll get it right

Mandarins' delight
We’ll let you out
Don’t hang about
Trip to
Heave and ho
Up down
To and fro

Mask and hide
For the omicron ride.
Variants
Experts’ rants
Tidal waves
Leaders’ raves
Slippery wet
Worst kind of threat
Close the borders

Sack the porters
Repel them
Expel them
Trip to
Heave and ho
Up down
To and fro
Mask and hide
For the omicron ride.

With acknowledgements to ‘Octopus’,
a song by the immortal Syd Barrett.

ONE OF THOSE

It’s one of those days
That comes for no reason,
No matter what the season,
When the tears come,
And come, and then some.
It’s one of those days
When the pallor stays
From the night’s slow creep
Through hours of no sleep
In the dark’s baffling maze
Lit only by a bitter blaze
Fuelled by pages of regret and shame
And dossiers of failure and blame.

LOCKDOWN

Perhaps, when we were young,
There was far too much sun.
It was there almost every day —
Until a metallic sky trickled rain
And stiff breezes pleated a briny bay.
In childhood, it seemed, we never knew pain.
There were freedoms then —
Some people had fought for them
(Or so we were assured)
And discarded their swords.
Then, laughter was our wordless friend,
Before we were targets for faraway blames.
That all came later — an unimaginable end,
Beyond the sidelines of our youthful games.

Confined to the roads
Of a tedious neighbourhood,
Away from the exceptional sea
And the wild windblown heath,
I walk the wearisome streets
And look at the humdrum houses,
Wishing that I owned one
Or two —
I’d rent one out
To someone poor
Like me.

I have known cold.
No, much more than cold —
Chilly days,
Glacial nights,
And icy hindsight.

Now we are old, under skies unkind.
We squint behind our eyeglasses
So we can see the sugary sun shine
And the mulberry moon gleam as it passes.
Somewhere, mad waves still roll with a roar
Across shivering sands on an uncertain shore.
But the main events have all been concluded,
With the awards allocated to the somewhat able.
Luckless others lost their lives or mistook their way,
Like bankrupts who found they could never pay.
Jinxed paupers weren’t ever invited to the table
Where the spoils were eaten by those who colluded.

A LAND THAT YOU DO NOT KNOW

Paperback versions of David Morisset's newest novel are available via Amazon in Australia and overseas. Various eBook editions can be purchased through Kindle, iBooks and other online retailers.

Many of Australia’s first European settlers were convicts transported across the seas from the British Isles. There were also free immigrants. They included entrepreneurs, farmers, soldiers, mariners, miners, and clerical and industrial workers. While online databases have made it possible for today’s Australians of European descent to trace their ancestry and acquire an understanding of the outline of their family trees, amateur genealogists usually confront baffling questions. What events led to criminal transgressions that deserved exile in a distant penal colony? How did convicts win their freedom and earn an ostensibly honest living in unfamiliar surroundings? Why did men and women leave urban slums and industrial occupations for rural lives on the other side of the world? How did their progeny — the sons and daughters of convicts and free settlers alike — fare as the decades unfolded?

Partly inspired by Patrick White’s ‘The Tree of Man’, David Morisset’s novel, ‘A Land that You do not Know’, imagines the lives and times of Hugh Wadkin, an English convict, and Maggie Kintyre, a Scottish free settler. Both became residents of the Hawkesbury District on the outskirts of Sydney — although Maggie arrived seventy years after Hugh had first trudged along the Windsor Road on his way to the foothills of the Blue Mountains. Their circumstances were dramatically different. They brought with them sharply contrasting expectations. Eventually, their Australian family trees would intertwine.

THE TRAVEL BAN

It’s two years now since I held your soft hand

Beside the lake, while the sun set so red

It almost set the long jetty aflame.

Two years of wasted time and stabbing dread

That our days — our moments — are passing by,

Bringing us nearer to the night we die.

The lake is cold in this viral winter.

Sunsets are diminished, and never warm,

And the jetty is twisted and broken

After the havoc of the last freak storm.

Each night at dinner I cry, unstable,

I can’t see your face across the table.

THE LOVE SONG OF CHARLES MARLOW*

When did the world become so hostile
To everyone but the chosen few -
The princesses and the princes
Who, either unwittingly or cunningly,
Serve the father of lies?
It seems to degrade with every passing day,
As I grow old and stoop
To roll the bottoms of my white flannel trousers
And stretch my arms upwards,
Guiding my brush and comb
To part my hair behind,
Before I walk upon the beach
To search for silent mermaids
Who always swim just out of reach,
Eluding the ragged claws
And fang-ridden maws
That lurk beneath the water,
Wind-blown, white and black.

Although I am present,
I am, seemingly, invisible.
And, yet, dogs bark at me,
Baring their teeth and growling
As if they’ve perceived a ghost.
Perhaps they can see me
As I was at my top, my biggest, my most,
But, then, I would have banished them,
Craven curs that they always were,
Their harangues would end with a whimper.
Or maybe they can see the black mutt
That yaps at my heels.
Are they dogging me with howling
Aimed at my best fiend?
For it seems I have no friends
To fill my evenings, mornings, afternoons,
Beside porcelain and coffee spoons.
They have gone, dispersed
Like a fog that once lingered by pools,
For there is no more time for them and me,
No more ancient kindnesses from each to each.
So I spend my days inventing scenarios
That might approximate the real,
Inhabiting a fictional realm as its king,
Or, more literally,
Its omniscient third person,
Fearful that I will be read
As a fool, and ridiculed for it,
Or, much worse,
Derided as a mere attendant lord.

Some days I raise my eyes
And look beyond the window sash,
Wondering whether I dare
To reach for that fleece again.
But usually the view is fouled by clouds,
Gathering just above the marshes
That fester in the waste land where I live.
So, I consider the case for oblivion
And often find it compelling,
Until I ponder how it might turn out
For a suicidal heart of darkness.
When Kurtz, with his last pant,
His ivory face intense with despair,
Gasped ‘the horror, the horror’,
Was he looking back
On his vicious existence?
Or was he looking ahead
At the misery and mistreatment
That awaited him in hell?

* With acknowledgements to TS Eliot and Joseph Conrad.