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Back On The Hustings (NaPoWriMo #4)

Investing in public health saves lives.

Hurts. History repeats.
Overwhelmed (even more) hospital staff. Important details omitted.
Seniors. ie. not. Bedded down in the geriatric ward. Also, still short staffed.
Pan. ie. bed. Plan B. Also, patients. Way too many (not their fault).
Investment. To fix this health care crisis. Also incomplete medical notes.
Toilet. Plan A. Please god, plan A. Also tired, ie. everyone, and stop the tax cuts.
Accidents & Errors. Inevitable when staff exhausted. Investment, not tax cuts.
Love. Not for love or money. Burnout. Get out. Real life “Survivor“.

The entrance to the Emergency section of Canberra Hospital and the complex’s main tower, by Nick D, Creative Commons Attribution: Share Alike 3.0

Aussies, give your vote to the person that shows they care by putting their money where their mouth is. Our health, public health. In Australia, public hospital costs are shared between the national and state/territory governments.

Unfortunately my TL is back in hospital, ladies and gentlemen. I may need to take another blogging break. I’ll let you know or fail to show. How poetic!

Take care, everyone.
Kind Regards.
Tracy.

Posted on by Reflections of an Untidy Mind

Admiring The View (NaPoWriMo #3)

Today three strange cars pulled up out front.
One was white, one was green, one a colour in between.
We scratched our heads, we gave a shrug,
because we had no clue what this could mean.

Perhaps their intent was simply to admire the view bucolicus
of our newest creation botanicus.
Spiky grasses, delicate daisies, a blossoming shrub or three.
Look, not even that sap sucking gum tree can stop ’em deadius!

[It gets worse.]

But maybe the onlookers’ intent was far more nefarious.
Salacious desires for substances slightly more licentious.
Or perhaps they were merely lost all three,
but we really find that very hard to believe.

Or just maybe they were salivating over our male buxus.
Told all their sketchy friends to come check it outus.
So maybe we ought to charge a fee to prevent a stampede?
Kid-free, adults a buck, carpooling receives a discount-ious. 😉

Oh my, oh my. That is truly awful. It didn’t exactly go where I expected it to go. The NaPoWriMo optional prompt today was to write a poem in the form of a “glosa”, utilising a quatrain from another poem of our choosing. Since I am a complete newbie to the formal aspects of poetry and poetic forms (not to mention proper English), I didn’t even know what a quatrain was, so I thought I would try to write one of those, ie. a quatrain, instead. I fear I got slightly distracted in the process. As you do.

Posted on by Reflections of an Untidy Mind

The Clash (NaPoWriMo #2)

Photo by antonio filigno on Pexels.com

Cockcrow to brownout, iron melts.
Fruitful and fruitless is the product of labour
under blast furnace sky. Golden age of man
built on seeping pile of manure and metallurgic sands.

Cronos has finger on the pulses,
his finger in the pies – a polyphagic appetite,
polydipsic thirst, promises profligate.
Hollow god of fortune in guise of sovereign man.

Staccato beats the seconds, the minutes,
the hours, the dread. In messianic masterstroke,
sickle wielding in parlous miscalculation,
sunders creator from his balls, heaven from this earth.

Eulogise, pathologise, mythologise to light
a conflagration. Killing time, past consuming future,
til darkness slowly dies from his seed of destruction.
Only to be condemned equally by those drunk
on his poisoned chalice and by those whose freedoms he trampled.


I started this poem a couple of weeks ago, ditching it when I advised myself not to go there. Anyway, I decided to revive it for Napowrimo. I understand that Napowrimo stands for National Poetry Writing Month. I’m a Napowrimo virgin. I can’t imagine what possessed me to join in this time. I’m afraid, ladies and gentlemen, that as far as my poetry goes, it is all downhill from here.

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The Appointment

She felt she was being judged. She didn’t want to look at the woman across from her. Would her judge think her a fraud, or worse, incompetent and weak?

“What is a good day for you?” the disembodied voice across the desk asked.

How to answer that? Think, think, but the thoughts came too slowly. Silence filled the room. She felt so weary. A psychiatrist’s couch would have been welcome at this point.

Then, “A good day is when I don’t have to rest in the car for an hour before taking my groceries inside.”

Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

As she left the office, she could feel the doctor’s eyes boring into her back. She wondered what her gait and posture said about her, but she no longer cared.

Posted on by Reflections of an Untidy Mind

Rain Or Shine

Welcome to my regular Friday song/tune day, ladies and gentlemen, where I pick a piece of music that reflects my mood or the times, to share with you.

International readers may not have heard that parts of eastern Australia have copped yet another drenching and houses and businesses have been flooded again less than a month after the last deluge. More lives have been lost. It seems we will soon be a country of environmental migrants (note: environmental refugee is not an officially recognised term). If we can’t adequately look after our own environmental “migrants”, then how on earth will we be able to offer reasonable assistance to the hundreds of millions of environmental refugees (let’s call it what it is) expected in the future under current climate warming projections?

It seems nothing is going to stop Aussie state and federal governments and their so-called independent planning agencies approving more new coal and gas projects.

I could be churlish and note that the former deputy PM in the current national government suggested that Pacific Islanders would survive climate change because they come to Australia to pick our fruit! It is no wonder some Pacific nations are making their own arrangements to secure their future.

Anyway, I couldn’t help wonder whether the Byron Bay BluesFest would be held this Easter given the flooding in that region. Apparently it is going ahead.

Photo by Max Ravier on Pexels.com

I read that some displaced people currently in emergency accommodation will need to move outside the Byron area temporarily due to the influx of tourists to the region over Easter. It never rains, it pours. What’s the forecast? Anyway, a certain video streaming service must have been reading my mind because it presented me with Australian artist, Xavier Rudd, who will be performing at BluesFest. Here is a short film made for his song, Stoney Creek. Let’s have a listen to it.

I hope the sun shines on the festival. It has been very difficult over the last couple of years for musicians and all the ancillary businesses that rely on the show going on for their livelihood.

Take care, everyone. Stay safe.

Kind Regards.
Tracy.

Posted on by Reflections of an Untidy Mind

The Final Frontier

Welcome to my regular Friday song/tune day, ladies and gentlemen, where I pick a piece of music that reflects my mood or the times, to share with you.

Photo by Jaymantri on Pexels.com

It is a game until it isn’t. Let’s listen to Peter Gabriel’s Games Without Frontiers today.

I have been hearing a lot about the hypocrisy of individuals and national governments lately. I imagine that this is distressingly irrelevant to people who find themselves in the middle of a war zone through no fault of their own. Still, it would be nice if those who have engaged in tribal warfare and rhetoric could find it in themselves to put their weapons down for all our sake. That would be true leadership and worthwhile human endeavour.

Stay safe, everyone.

Kind Regards.
Tracy.

Posted on by Reflections of an Untidy Mind

Round The Bend

There has been many a twist and turn, and a few curve balls thrown at us over the last few weeks.

My mother and step-father visited from up north, skirting the floods that have left thousands homeless on the east coast of Australia. It has been over two years since I had my hair cut. My mother plaited it for me. The plait was a bit wonky, so perfect for me.

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Oddly Enough

For the Lens-Artists Photo Challenges – A Special Place and Odds and Ends.

I have been rather quiet over the last few months living my ordinary life in extraordinary times. Ordinary does not mean dull or insignificant. Such is life in these days of extremes. I have spent an inordinate amount of time at my special place, ie. home. It might not be perfect, posh or pristine, but it has everything we need. Every window has a view of the garden and its inhabitants.

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