Point of View
By John Muk Muk Burke
Water’s near my house……………..
not far from the rest in fact.
Nasty stuff, water,
in its muddy track.
Birds migrate with fleas
and other parasites
shedding shit
across the bank……………..
in the stream.
Cockatoos scream
car crash screaks
while leeches
lurk in fetid mud.
Mosquitoes harass like harpies
siphoning the blood
of warmer critters
as they litter thistle-groves
with acid-dripping muck
tossed without a thought
from arses in the sun’s bright light
or sometimes spread pink and white in moonless
nights along the moving mess.
I guess it’s all a point of view.
STC had much to say of this.
But I just want to know…………………
WHO PUT THEM THERE?
WHERE ARE THEY FROM?
WHAT’RE THEY UP TO?
WHEN DID THEY GET HERE?
WITH WHO’S PERMISSION?
And, more to the point,
WHEN WILL THEY GO AWAY
out of here?
WHO GAVE THEM THIS SPACE?
(and why do they occupy this space
when they are themselves
such a waste of space?)
Tiger snakes
dig beneath the banks………………
compete with destructive platypus…………….
old duck-bill wins………………
but both leave shit outside holes………….
don’t bury it at all.
Small mounds there are
steaming up the air
while no-one seems to care
if dry-shed skin lies unarranged,
not tidy, but melting into earth
where it began.
The land seems not to mind
not even though trees carelessly
mess the ground and steal
food from lesser grasses
that struggle to survive…………..
just to stay alive like
those spiders catching flies
in traps strung all between the sticks
and other tricks
about the place.
The stream itself colludes with the very sun,
confiscating moisture willy-nilly……………..
encouraging theft with careless disregard
for property.
High winds behave with havoc…………
sweep the river valley
much like goths and visigoths,
blasting bees and moths,
butterflies, tiny finches,
great black crows
and meaner, murderous other birds
of prey.
I say, does the sky care?
Do mammals give a toss?
What’s one beast’s gain is
merely someone else’s loss.
Lightning strikes the hugest trees,
scrambling bark on dirt,
belching flame and smoke,
flattens work that made the nests,
roasting fledgling flesh and feathers……..
even eggs all fried-up in a conflagration.
Who knows?
Who cares?
Some mammals made a pile of dirt
to keep the fast stream back
from nests of smart device.
Nests with drains
deposit shit at last down in the river
sort of saying……………….
That’s what we think of you!
They are
arguably
the only ones with something of
a point of view.
You might even say
a poo-view
or piss-poor way of
doing business.
They even made a bridge
of trees
to pass across the putrid flow:
It served them well a hundred years
but then it had to go.
Great loss?
Who gives a toss
if monster galaxy
slips silently down the drain of
some black hole?
Who hears the crying stars?
The mournful planets
tossed like toy cars
by a brutish boy
into the family’s trash?
Smash they go
and then get gathered up
by the celestial rubbish mob
who dump them somewhere else.
Where?
Through some worm-hole?
Across dimensions yet unknown?
Some cosmic Bermuda triangle……………..
like a spider’s trap along
the river’s bank?
Who said something
about someone
somewhere
somehow
caring
for a sparrow?
Another point of view
I s’pose.
Who knows?
Not I…………