No Comments Written by Uncle David Jester on November 28, 2008 – 4:35 pm

A raucous bulb, a turnip ring
A chance to seize a fleeting thing.
The light’s not on and no-one’s home,
My best friend is a garden gnome.

Melbourne’s poetry scene has been running up a snow mountain of discovery for some time now and people are starting to notice. You can now wonder aimlessly through our littered streets and stumble into a sweat soaked bar to find some of the most evolved poets and story tellers of our time… it is true. You will seldom hear the phrase muttered from behind a dry beer crusted mouth, “Shit man, there is nothing to do. Nothing is on…… FUCK!” those days are “circling the drain” as our medical professionals would sqwark rabidly at us.

Now we have poetry slams, readings, yellings, thrustings, pushings and strokings. More poetry than your conciousness has time for! Speaking of blowing away tradition with a army tanker and rusty nails, gone are the days of the egoist on stage, orally masturbating through a lent microphone shooting out all kinds of ‘isms’ or the words, ‘capitalist’, ‘communist’ or the old favorite, ‘FASCIST’.

Marc Testart (the barefoot poet) still remains one of my favourite local melbourne poets. He, among a handful of other poets have used humour in their poetry as a tool of communication instead of a tacky crowd pleaser for the masses. Here is a poem that you can find on his myspace page.

Crash Diet

A raucous bulb, a turnip ring
A chance to seize a fleeting thing.
The light’s not on and no-one’s home,
My best friend is a garden gnome.

A plastic horse, a capsicum
A flash of intermittent rage.
Grey bullets fall, the meek appalled
By onions on a well-lit stage.

My vision’s lacking, sound amiss
I ripped out my oesophagus.
Tomatoes borne, fish from a can
Throw every last thing in the pan.

The butter’s in emulsifier
And I’m trapped in a pumpkin maze
Of seeds which lock the burner higher
And keep you in a muddy daze.

Allay your traffic finely spun,
I’m bored with these things often done.
A recipe with Cajun flour
Would make emaciation sour.

For with a skinny mottled thought
A ruptured valve patrolling near
You would not see things over-wrought
With petals hung and stifled fear.

Surrender now, defend me how
From every sacrilegious cow?
A golden hue of ox-tongue stew
And maple syrup born anew.

To reach a criminal crescendo
From bulimic pink façade.
An anorexic can pretend, oh
Curse the metabolic hard.

A little girl who’s not been kissed
A brass ball and a bottle top;
A greevilled rank apologist
Were mixed into a vomit slop.

Give us this day our daily dread…