Lol. I am deeply ensconced in sorting croc's poems for his upcoming book (to be launched at ''The Inaugural 'Copper Croc Poetry Event' in April) & thought you lot may like to read this old one of his...it made me laugh, so I hope it does so for you too. Cheeers...GlennySam McCabe
The old pedal radio, valves, box and all,
was removed from the house on the station.
The wires that ran over the door, on the wall,
had been privy to many a long distance call
from a life weighed in miles where luck came by the pinch
and the thought of hard work never made a man flinch
from the faces of nature and nation.
Replaced by a ‘phone, with one crank on the handle
you'd have the whole valley on line.
If you just picked it up you could hear all the scandal
on how old Bert’s daughter conjoined Billy Randal...
and one bloke told all how a storm from the south
was bound to hit somewhere just north east of Louth,
but the next two days forecast was fine.
Sam McCabe was a man who found life by himself
very good, and to some it agrees...
the wallet he bore was stuffed fat with the pelf
that he’d harboured and horded and kept to himself
from his earliest labours; his very first pay
he relentlessly rounded up quids like a stray,
and on any loose change he would seize.
Time now happened apace, and p/c’s came along,
he’d been man for the wireless set;
for he’d spoken on radio, sung the odd song
‘‘Eb ‘n Floe’’ on the local, he couldn’t go wrong.
He knew all of the call signs for ten miles around,
he knew well every voice by its staticky sound...
and now Sam had heard tell of the ’net.
So he went to the smoke just to look at the sites,
and at all things on offer, and show...
then he saw in a sales room, ‘Our bits have no bytes,
get a p/c right here and escape to the heights;
with a yahoo or microsoft messenger you
can talk to your friends, sort your pictures out too...
Sam McCabe thought ‘We’ll give that a go’.
Sammy entered a shop that said ‘P/C’s For Sale’
and he asked, could he hear one on station.
Assistants who heard him thought on a grand scale,
and they showed Sam a huge one... electronic whale.
Old McCabe looked it over---“Will it do ship to shore,
can I speak to the old girl who lives on the Tor”?
“With all this, you can speak to the nation.”
So Sam bought the ‘packaged with keyboard and mouse’
and he took it back home in the ute.
He then plighted all rules of the net he’d espouse,
as he set the lot up in the back of the house...
when he’d plugged in the p/c, the screen and antennae,
he went to the back shed and started the genny,
and stood there and vowed it a beaut.
Next he tuned the lot in, and he got it to go,
he announced himself wide to the nation.
He thought he might have a few minutes with Floe,
but the click of the mouse put him on a chat show
with the call signs the likes of which he’d never heard,
and a language of which he knew nary a word;
and he couldn’t get Floe on the station.
Those clicks of the mouse in an unwary hand
bring a contracted pit in the gut
and from snow laden peaks in some far away land,
through a tropical jungle, and fine desert sand,
animated the jpegs, and giffs, and the spam,
they are all at the call of a poor bloke like Sam
as he sits all alone in his hut.
Then he clicked on a groupie who called herself ‘Norse’,
and she started in typing away.
Now our Samuel thought ‘...oh how clever, of course,
this here new fangled p/c’s just untangled morse’.
and he sat there as pure as the Lord’s Holy Lamb
while he clicked on the hot mail, the junk mail, the spam,
and the pop ups a la Nordic soiree.
She said, “Sam do you like it, the look of my site,
do you like now the site that you see...
is it now I look better in old black and white,
there’s a lot that don’t like it, I guess that you might;
do you think any good of my thin negligee,
there’s a little square box where you type out your say...
you can see and say more for a fee.”
A few moments went by, Sam tapped back his reply,
and he told her that he had no dough.
‘You’re a fair dinkum looker …no one could deny,
with a good depth of shoulder, and firm in the thigh;
and you make it apparent your broken to chain,
and I love the fresh look of your long flowing mane,
but young Norse my old horse, you’re not Floe...’
and so the crap continues...
In the back of an old bushman’s hut sits a bloke
where old bushmen have sat through the ages,
and he fwd’s the gist of an incoming joke
from some sheila who calls herself ‘Ima Sheoak’.
He knows not where it came from, or wither it goes,
but the dance that she leads him keeps Sam on his toes
as he flips thorough the internet pages.
Private e/mail from friends, well old Sam he gets none;
all he gets is just junk mail and spam...
now he’s hooked on a chat show, and this one’s a fast one,
and anything posted can never be undone
or changed, or retrieved or deleted from site
where the same type of garbage runs day into night
and the whole thing is purely a sham.
It’s a sham to the bygone days... youth of a man
who lived under the north western skies;
where he carried a swag and a quart billy can,
and the morning sun’s glory alone held the plan
of his travels, and which was the way he would tread...
and the night star would show him a place for his head,
midst the moonbeams and nocturnal eyes.
He could shear and class wool, and fell timber, and ride,
and he knew every watering hole
in the Kimberly region, the man took great pride
when in charge of large mobs that he ne’er lost a hide
to the all searching, all searing bloody hot sun;
he was asked for by name by the bloke on the run,
who knew Sam had the bush in his soul.
But that was in days before modern technology
came and then took us by force...
and it makes not the slightest of any apology
for how it’s disrupted our own sociology;
weakening with electronic addictions...
a very few facts, but a lot of raw fictions;
now Sam McCabe talks to a ‘horse’.
©croc
