Tag: Books

“Invisible hands don’t like a rebellion” (A Prose Poem/Article)

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by Anton Martin Smith antonmartinsmithwrites@gmail.com or martinantonsmith@gmail.com

Australia was formed from penal colony beginnings.

But only because the Brits lost the War of Independence in its American colony.

So in what became the USA, The Brits could no longer use Maryland & Virginia to house its ‘crims’.

The Pitt Govt in England considered Africa, then Canada, but went with Cook’s ‘recently discovered Australia’.

It made sense – a massive mostly inhospitable isolated island –

In many ways – it was already a giant prison.

And so in 1788 the First Fleet sailed out of Portsmouth.

Over the next 80 years the crims flowed like cheap wine,

Australia’s went from from what it already anciently was, to a penal colony chrysalis, then to dirty winged butterfly.

But official slavery became unpopular & the Molesworth report found the obvias:

A society made & dominated by a penal colony and it’s unfree & freed criminals is imperfect, and full of unneeded vice.

So Pitts lot agreed & it was slowly wound down.

Though Van Dieman’s land continued for some decades longer.

Finally in 1868 their were no more ships coming for penal colony reasons.

And so ‘Modern Australia’ in theory started to form.

This is all very interesting.

But I find this philosophical question most interesting:

Could & can Australia ever escape its beginnings?

Or is there a forever 1788-1868 ‘penal colony cultural field’ pulling its cultural strings on the puppet citizenry?

If so there is something dark about Australia that cannot ever be wound back.

And perhaps the scariest thing that follows from that is this:

Without knowing it, everyone will be cultually programmed to re-create ‘penal colony Australia’,

By something unseen in the mostly scorching hot dry air that surrounds them.

‘All tarred with the same brush’ – if you will.

It’s a script that keeps playing – like a cosmic cultural recording & playback machine – if you will.

It is a scary thought.

And of course if this ‘permanent originating cultural field theory’ is correct –

Australia is but grain of rice among many fields of wheat.

All nations will suffer or benefit from their ‘permanent originating cultural field’.

And I personally believe the theory to be a good one –

For in my life I have seen many people all showing the signs marks of the same very-old-but-still-alive hands.

So perhaps the saying ‘The more things change the more they stay the same’.

Is more of a pyscho-physical law rather than a glib,vague, social tendency.

But in saying all this – I must must must throw some sunlight on this moonlit mire

For many people do escape a seemingly this limiting cultural field.

But how?

Perhaps they tune into, and resonate with, a higher level underlying field than the ambient one.

So let us not give up is hope for the Australians in all of us.

After all,

We know from Flanders that vibrant red poppies bloomed in the warring-rolling-fighting-fields.

Flowers can indeed bloom even if raised in a bad culture.

Flowers will always bloom in the fields of war.

Even as the invisible hands of the cultural field quash the greater rebellion.

Will all the Australian’s one day defeat the permanent penal colony cultural field?.

Well, some of them well at least some of the time.

But while Ned Kelly & Vegemite still is seen as there ‘national heros’.

The chances of redemption are slim to not great.

And yes I can here their distant psychic retorts:

“But at least we’re not New Zealanders”.

They have a point – for the NZ ‘permanent cultural field’ ain’t that flash either –

As will be covered in in my next week’s prose poem:

“The Great Trans Tasman Debate: Is it better to be dim, disloyal & lazy or scrappy, potty-mouthed & criminal”.

But all jokes aside,

I do hope we can all defeat the handcuffing fields,

Rise upwards and all find our true higher vibrational plane –

Our “fields of gold” if you will.

There is surely more and greater things out there than those things that meet and enter the eye and body.


“Don’t Be An Alco If You Can Help It – A Tribute To Buk” (A Prose Poem)

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by Anton Martin Smith antonmartinsmithwrites@gmail.com

Perhaps no writer has told of the ave joes plight in the nine-to-five drudge.

Than the great Bukowski.

Yes he was a sleaze.

But let’s be honest at least half of urban-nine-to-five slave-women like sleazes.

They can use them & throw them away.

They are convienient.

They are fun during bar night ovulations.

The other half are at least intrigued by a wild animal type like Bukowski.

I mean the cliché is that all women like a ‘bad boy’.

Clichés have to at least be half true – don’t they?

Of course they are.

Although he did say he ‘let women push him around’, & that’s why they liked him a lot.

But I think he was at least a hybrid of both a ‘pushover & a bad boy’.

Perhaps it was the hybrid nature that intrigued his many boozy women that he talked of in ‘Women’.

But then again most of Buk’s women were fellow ‘bottom of the barrel types’.

They were alcoholics, party animals etc.

Though later in life Buk said he couldn’t be bothered with bars no more –

He just wanted to sit in a quiet room.

Even an dive-bar-livin’-alco like Buk can’t party much past fifty.

There’s the famous video where he gets pissed at Linda his wife because she keeps partying big.

In the infamous video she is unrepentant & says “I’ll keep going out & I’ll see who ever I want”.

This makes Buk ‘see red’ – he threatens to ‘Get his Jewish lawyers to kick her out’.

She is again unrepentant to his discomfort & his view of ‘how it should be’.

He loses it, his ager boils over & as the are both at opposite ends of the couch,

He starts kicking her like a child would – it looks bad on camera but there’s no force behind the kicks.

He ruined his poise & argument there.

It was a good argument to not be an alcoholic if you can help it at all.

But if you are and you can’t, it also helps to be an entertainer, artist or writer –

They kinda issue you a ‘free pass to misbehave’.

Rest in peace Buk – may you be soaking in a giant vat of Budweiser in the clouds.

For the record I was a binge drinker for fifteen years, but not an alcoholic.

These days I just sit in a quiet room, drink two beers a night & write.

Like Bukowski my wild party days are long gone.

All I have left are a few wild memories.

And sometimes I really miss those various Bukowski Boozy Babes I had too.

Time really does turn deadly sharp edges into fuzzy warm curves.

“The Rosy Life Of The High IQ + Neuro-divergent” (A Prose Poem)

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by Anton Martin Smith antonmartinsmithwrites@gmail.com

If you have high IQ and Neuro-diversity you tend to live in your own world.

A world of ever-swirling-ideas, stacks of sky-high books & mindsets of never wanting to be ‘pinned down’.

And of course, at least a few decades of voluntary poverty – that goes without saying.

But let me explain the ‘pinned down’ thing.

You see people like us – who are smart & also neuro-divergent (I reckon I have ADHD) –

We love ‘Ideas’ much more than the current version of ‘bland Earthian reality’ dished up.

So this explains our tendency to not want to commit to a single-probability-wave-collapsed, long term course of action –

It is too much connected to the ‘real world’.

We would rather talk about the myriad of pitfalls that the ‘real world’ has waiting to ensnare.

When we do this with a beer or tea or coffee we are in our version of ‘heaven’.

For example I don’t like the idea of being a Lawyer with two kids in private school with a high price wife on a hill.

And then we would have dinner parties where we all sit & rattle off narrow upper-middleclass epithets to each other.

“Oh I’ve decided to rebalance my portfolio”

“Oh really – that’s wise”

“Yes I decided that while drinking bitch juice at Portsea Polo last week”

“Oh what a great Idea Ms X, and I have got my reno going – we are adding an extra room & two new bathrooms”

“Oh isn’t that wonderful Ms Y – but will Burt still pee on the toilet seats?”

Cue the laughing like Hyena’s & all in front of poor Blushing Burt.

That kind of life I would see as a ‘living hell’.

The performative narrow-band blandness of it all is stomach churning.

Why would anyone want to live like that?

When I see people like this I think it’s all because they have killed off their inner child.

They have ‘human sacrificed’ themselves.

You can’t think of them as the playful child they once were – it is impossible to divine from their adult faces.

Someone that has a high IQ & is Neuro-diverse sees these things very easily.

We see the unhappiness & the unhappiness out there in the world.

We see through the smoke & mirrors of this ‘reality tv’ world they’ve sneaked on us.

Of course we suffer – for we are usually poor – but perhaps a few might get wealthy off Art/Media/Music etc.

Those ones often can’t handle being back in the world of empty epithets, status, & bank balances – so they do themselves in.

So we are better off being alone on our rooms with books piled high & living off the food scraps the world throws up.

If we die under a ditch early in life – we can accept that.

For at least we saw the swindle and had a original few ideas.

We let the dull have their dinner parties, & we were happily uninvited.

It’s far more fun to make fun of them.

They can swig their overpriced bitch diesel & practice their sneers in their expensive cracked mirrors.

We will be writing of it all with full epistemological & philosophical accuracy for future generations to enjoy.

While they will be outed as the ‘intellectual sludge people’ of the ever-declining post-post-Roman era.

All in all I’d say us high IQ-Neuro-diverse have it pretty good.

The only draw back is we need to raid the back of the couch to buy milk,

And our rooms are book laden dusty debacle obstacle courses.

Other than that life’s Rosy for us.

The only weak point we have is when there is a sudden ‘crisis of confidence’:

Where we wake up in a cold sweat in the middle of the night with the thought:

“Are we just a rehahsed version of them but don’t know it?”.

It is a terrible conjecture indeed.

If it were true, I would act to bury it deep in my psyche forthwith – to protect a fragile ego.

If it were not true, I’d be willing to write a poem about it.

Dragon slayed my friends – Dragon slayed!

We are not at all like them – we are not like our natural enemies.

We have not yet became that which we fight against.

But this is not the end of our problems:

For what of the next conjecture:

Are we High IQ Neuro-divergent family still just ‘bunch of assholes’ none-the-less?

I call this the ‘Griswold’s theory’ and I hope the answer is not of the ‘one hand clapping in the woods’ type.

But let’s be honest with ourselves: we can easily slip into the territory without knowing it,

So perhaps all of us can be assholes some of the time,

Some of us can be assholes all of the time,

But all of us can’t be assholes all of the time.

This is called the Dylan-asshole-theory.

Of course I could continue, however this is a poem and not an essay.

And I think we can all agree, be us High Iq Neuro-divegent’s or Upper middle class pustules or somthing else:

Only an asshole would write am essay and call it a poem.

I reader pals, would never do that.

Though I am also sometimes a unscrupulous liar.

I regard this as an inalienable right my artistic license,

Which strangely is now made to expire every five years, & limits the number of passengers I can stage dive onto.

And now this essay, er…I mean poem must end.

For more than enough intellectual chaos has been metered out,

And ‘world befuddlement stocks’ have been greatly enriched.

My work is done here.

“The Journey Of The Master’s Apprentice – Part 4 – Take the Fork in The Road & You can’t not be a Soldier”:

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by Martin Anton Smith martinantonsmith@gmail.com

….Back to the analogy of the Apprentice-to-Master journey from the abysmal beginning to the Masterful mountaintops: Remember you’ve now come a long way, relaxed to much & have seemingly tumbled back to your starting point.

It was a dramatic event. Before you knew what was really happening you have stopped falling & are no longer tumbling downhill. Now you are still at the bottom – where you began the journey long ago. You notice it ‘looks and feels like’ the psychological state many have called ‘rock bottom’. It feels that way.

But now you have dusted yourself off, checked you’re bruises and broken bones over you can now see you seem to indeed be back to the ‘randomized cultural abyss’ where you started your journey between ten and twenty five years ago. You at this stage of your development (Not yet a Master) trust your immediate surroundings far to much – or should I say the ‘meaning imbued’ into your surroundings.

This natural for most for remember – you are not a Master (of Life) yet, you are an probably an experienced Apprentice – perhaps you are even a mature Journeyman. A Journeyman to a Master is of course a seen as a more primitive state than the Apprentice who can become a Master (of Life).

For the Journeyman lacks the constitution (tools) to ever become a Master (But of course we need them still & a Master knows this intuitively. But let’s say for simplicity you are not so ‘bad lucked’ to be a forever Journeyman – let’s say you can become a Master (of Life).

Again let’s go back to where you found yourself at rest after falling back from your journey to the fabled path where you spotted the peaceful, Masterful mountaintops in the reachable distance. The truth is when you woke up from the tumbling down, you were now no longer the exact same Apprentice you were immediately before the fall. Your history precludes that possibility. It must do as the inputs are much different, so must the output. You are not the same person, you are not the same Apprentice. The Master looking from the future knows this. But a forever Apprentice or a forever Journeyman will not know this at all – for his mind is not at t ha level of being able to see through surface appearances.

But this situation is where Life throws up a ‘fork in the road moment’. It is by nature a psychological fork as much as a physical one. It’s of belief. It is akin to the ‘what you Think becomes you’re Actions and what becomes your Actions becomes your Reality thesis (that saying is True – but of course Life Coaches/Internet guru’s have twisted/murdered all these good old type fables). The (psychological) fork in the road goes like this: From that point after the fall, you can either ‘roll over & die’ (do nothing at all) or ‘load yourself back into the stock barrel to be fired back into battles-scape (of Life)’ and possibly towards being a future Master (of Life).

If again later in the journey you chose the wrong path in the road (i.e. you agree to stay an Apprentice or at best a Journeyman) you also choose a path of not being to ever become the Master. If you choose the ‘path of the Master’ you are on the ‘right fork of the road’, I.e. the path to possibly become a Master (of Life).

Of course it’s worth mentioning that Yogi Berra (the famed American baseball coach) also said wisely “if you see a fork in the road ahead – take it”. So in truth you can take the right fork (towards being a Master) the left fork (An Apprentice or Journeyman) or (as Yogi Berra warned of, & p.s. to the non-American’s – Yogi Berra is his real name & he is not the ‘Jellystone Park’ Cartoon Bear that steals pic-a-nic baskets) you can sit the grass next to the fork in the road or back at where you fell back too (falsely) avoiding the stress of making a decision.

But let’s assume your smart enough to “take the fork in the road” as Berra said. What is the difference between the two situations he talks of – ‘the barreling towards the forks in the road of life or the ‘roll over & die’ situation where you avoid life entirely?

The one that ‘loads themselves into a the barrel again’ and then also chooses the Masters path at the key ‘fork in the road’ has proven they are future Master material’ – for they intuitively know not to trust their kneejerk feelings after waking up from the fall backwards to what looks very much like that old randomized abyss of the beginning of life’s adult journey (perhaps) ten to twenty five years ago.

The future Master chooses not to take the ‘beaten down, in-the-moment, go-to advice’ – that is of choosing the options that stop

You from becoming a ‘Master’. The future Master has (psychologically) a healthy ‘dissociation’ between themselves and their minds ‘chatter’ (bad superficial advice).

I hate to admit it, but life seems to be indeed akin to a War (and I would contend is at least as much ‘attritional’ as vs a series of ‘shock & awe’ battles). Sun Tzu (The Art of War) had many fine points on the matter in fact. In wandering the wrong forked path after a blow to the mind and spirits, anyone can easily forget life’s ‘War-like-ness’ – & I think even a future Master (of Life) can even still fall prey to ‘aimless wandering’ – but perhaps I am being to optimistic, but that’s also not a bad strategy in itself, so long as it’s based on (Enlightenment like) philosophical reasoning vs blind reasoning. I’d like to think that twenty years in a psychological rest area is not also a metaphorical black hole of mediocrity (as eighty years as an Apprentice would certainly be).

The War of life is about embracing the rough & tumble, showing your battle-scars with pride. Then you are reminding yourself that you are at (some various kind of) War – with at least large attritional aspects. While a soldier in the ‘War of Life’ (hopefully to be a Master) you then must agree (as a soldier does by definition) to ward off the often ‘beaten down part of your mind. After all – a soldier worth their salt doesn’t like a ‘chatterer in the ranks’, especially while under enemy fire (to act like this would be seen as Treasonous or at least Court-Martial-able).

Isn’t it sad we don’t always hear of ‘Life’s battle cries’ hidden amongst the rest areas of the mountain’s foothills, and in the ‘randomized abysses’ we all came from, and in particular after a ‘heavy fall’. But then again if everyone was a ‘Master’, then it would also be true that no one would be – for ‘without shade their is no light’. Whatever the Truth is, Shakespeare was onto something, for life as it is and has been lived here prima facie on Earth, is surely some kind of weird alchemy of both tragedy, comedy and history – and we all need to create genuine meaning out of it all, much to the chagrin of the future-present-past slings & arrows that abound.

THE END

This writing is owned by Martin Smith Creations Ltd (NZ). For Commercial use contact Martin A.Smith at martinantonsmith@gmail.com. For non-profit Educational use, please share freely.

The Journey Of The Master’s Apprentice : Personalized Abysses & The Start of the Journey – Part 3 The Pain of Resting Too Long” (A Serialized Essay)

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by Martin Anton Smith martinantonsmith@gmail.com

The Journey Of The Master’s Apprentice : Personalized Abysses & The Start of the Journey – Part 3 The Pain of Resting Too Long” (A Serialized Essay)

……continued from https://antonmartinsmith.com/2026/02/26/the-journey-of-the-masters-apprentice-part-2-personalized-abysses-the-start-of-the-journey/

A ‘eventually Bad’ thing can take the same look. When ‘beating your own path’ to find meaning – It’s annoying that it is not always obvious that your doing either the right or wrong thing. I was listening a a 50 year old writer who wrote for 29 years with no success, & then finally at age 50 it ‘suddenly all fell together’. He said that during that 29 years every ‘normal person’ thought he was an idiot for wasting his time. He won because he knew he was good & had a thing called ‘faith’. I think the Apprentice – to Master process is like this. A budding ‘Master’ of (something original) will probably usually be known as a failure to most around them.

For people on this journey (hopefully if of meaning, originality, Mastership) – perhaps after a decade or two of adulthood (if you are lucky or not forever willfully blind) you see that the trail has changed & looks less ‘abyss-ie’.

A quick surveillance as you look around shows that you have now arrived at a new location – the foothills of a hazed but surely very real, and at the least ‘partly beautiful’ towering distant mountain peak.

As you realized the improved conditions, you recognize you have ‘come a long way now’. But then you being an Apprentice (of Life) instead of a Master, you chose to celebrate and you tell yourself to take rest.

That’s what feels right. But there were risks in that decision. On this ‘celebrated rest’ you relaxed too much thinking you were enjoying yourself – that which is happening is of course the ‘Masters test’. For you don’t know it, but you’ve done something wrong by resting (too long) & psychologically celebrating too much.

The future Master-self (if you become one) who is looking on from the future, knows this is where you let your guard down (against Life’s tripwires).

The (future self) Master is watching you (as him/herself in the past) as a greenhorn Apprentice (of Life) making schoolboy/schoolgirl errors.

The future-self-Master see what the present ‘more foolish you’ has done – in choosing to ‘rest too long’ Apprentice-you has allowed a random unvetted element to sit beside you while you were resting.

While you patted yourself on the back about ‘how Far you’ve come’, some strange force came to distract you, perhaps it was a person pf a ‘collective of people’ that appeared in human form (common), but perhaps not (perhaps the destructive force was simply an obsession with electric guitars or a psychological addiction to cynicism etc.).

Because you as the Apprentice (of Life) only within the ‘adult game’ for perhaps ten to twenty five years, you have so much to learn yet to become literally ‘Masterful’.

In taking to rest & the distraction that was ‘served up’ while you were relaxing in the ‘rest area’, you lost sight of the main goal. You lost sight of the hazed covered mountaintops & the less beaten path that leads towards its peak.

So, of course in these conditions you are as the famed Roman border-guard-soldier who has over successive generations became en weakened to be casual about taking off his uncomfortable helmet while on guard/lookout duty. He is like most the other Roman guards of The Decline – he thinks to himself ‘it’s been quiet on the ‘hun invasion front’ I can relax a little”. He trusts the bad chatter in his mind, instead of being like Marcus Aurelius the stoic Roman Emperor who would dismiss the minds weak defeatist chatter with ease. That kind of creeping malaise they say is what really made the Roman Empire fall.

Thinking like that can make disaster easily strike just like an asp might strike someone ambling dreamily through the long grass on the savannah. The disaster bites, you are snapped out of you’re seemingly-always-getting-a-little-better-journey. Suddenly you’re rolling back downhill fast, tumbling, sweating, having no rest, losing parts of yourself piece by piece. That’s what they call in the vernacular a ‘rude awakening’.

Back to the Apprentice to Master journey from the abysmal beginning to the Masterful……

“Nuthouse Candidate” (Comedic Prose)

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By Anton Martin Smith Antonmartinsmithwrites@gmail.com

When I walk around town and see the people, I like to play a simple game – I ask myself: “If it was still 1950 – who would be locked up in a nuthouse? From there on is is a fairly simple taxonomy & observation exercise:

Lady at second hand book sale slams books down on the counter like they are sledgehammers –nuthouse candidate.

Lady who when talking to young German tourists can’t get over how far from home they are – nuthouse candidate.

Alcoholic old staff lady who frantically called the cops on a handsome middle aged male customer for making over-the-top jokes with the young female staff – nuthouse candidate.

Homely middle aged lady & checkout chick saying at high ‘customer audible’ volumes to similar staff lady next to her that she “hasn’t had sex in so long that it’s almost grown over” – nuthouse candidate.

You might notice a pattern emerging from this: a lot of middle-aged females. Well this is an understandable but technically false assumption: I would have written down the ‘nuthouse candidates’ who were ‘male’, however as they are all business owners of stores that I regularly frequent (Bookstores, Takeaway Joints, Bars, Pool houses, Cafes), and I am worried they will swiftly ban me on account of if write of them, and they duly recognize themselves in the text.

This is why I will not ever mention a guy like “Joeblo” the vertically challenged snot-nosed barmen who breeds Guinea Pigs and whose nickname is “Richard Gere don’t do that”.

Moreover they also get a free pass from being ‘nuthouse candidates’ as they are economically too important, are often very stupendously witty, & I on too many occasions often agree totally with them.

The moral of the story? Don’t let a flawed research methodology get in the way of having really fun a day out around town.

And always remember to love the crazies because of the ‘it takes one to know one ‘thesis’, and also the other so-true thesis of “there’s nothing worse than being boring”.

And as a postscript – whatever you do, don’t ever listen to the thesis of “If you don’t have anything nice to say don’t say anything at all”, after all your grandmother was a statistically probably a bitch, and following that thesis would rule out the entire arts & literature game entirely – clearly this is bad-bad-bad.

“An Embarrassing Mishap at the MIDCLAPS” (Prose).

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By Anton Martin Smith antonmartinsmithwrites@gmail.com

The Envelope was delivered to the smartly dressed compere.

It was a ritzy affair, all paid for via legally stolen cash (of course).

The compare had a blank face even more blank than a blank page,

That was about to be filled with soulless blank copy-cat words,

From one of the many blank-headed nominees.

You know the ones – the ones that put the B in Banal, just as much as they put the ANAL in bANAL.

The compere’s smile was at least as fake as a Politician’s or a Real Estate Agents, or a Dentists for that matter.

He opened the letter slowly & with the accompanied ‘tinny’ drum roll sound playing from a 5 watt speaker.

And then his cold flappy bloodless gums started to flap, with sound coming out.

“And the winner this year …Of the Stock-Standard Middle-Class Poetry Awards, aka the “MIDCLAPS”… is…as it has been every year since inception…It Goes to….

Yes me Zombies! – ‘The Anti-Poetry Non-Truth Factory Poetry Division Collective’ strikes again!

And yes, I’m afraid to say they have one it for the 100th straight year!

Ain’t ‘Rigo-nomics’ grand folks!

They’ve won with the exact same poem, but they’ve slightly rehashed it!

Ooooh! This is so…so…anti-surprising, isn’t it?!

Let me read it to you, as I know you’re all dying to hear it.

Wintery Forest Leaves

As the wintery leaves fell through the dense windswept forest,

The agile birds swooped between the trees,

Like a thread going through a needle,

Their spirited cries echoed though the valley gorges,

And reminded us of our long ago forgotten home,

Which had the strange but stylish hyphenated name of: I-coonta-fookin-recalla”

WAIT A MINUTE DEAR AUDIENCE!

SOMEONE HAS ILLEGALLY INTERFERRED WITH THE WINNERS ENTRY!

THEY’VE FALSELY ADDED AN EXTRA THE LAST LINE OF THIS POEM!

They’ve made it interesting and/or witty and/or unique and/or truthful!

They went BIM BIM BIM

When it was BLAND BLAND BLAND we wanted!

THIS IS ILLEGAL POETRY MY FRIENDS AND WILL NOT BE TOLLERATED!

The MIDCLAPS Awards are on hold indefinitely pending an investigation into this travesty!.

For who knows dear audience & sponsors? –

Perhaps there is a coup going on inside ‘The Anti-Poetry Non-Truth Factory Poetry Division’?

If we don’t nip this in the bud ASAP where will we be hmmm?

Meaningful, Witty Unique & Truthful poetry will abound about the world!

‘The Masses’ will surely un-enslave themselves!

‘The Evil One’ won’t like it!

Yes, Yes Yes, calm down now, take your seats…quell your murmurs…I know we cannot have that folks.

Yes Yes Yes – to the Doctor Sir standing up, I can understand that – Yes ‘we cannot upset Satan’, I agree that ‘it’s against our oath’.

Yes Yes Yes to the madam Lawyer standing up, I agree ‘it’s against our mandate’ – to ‘keep all that’s good in the dark’.

Yes Yes Yes to the Real Estate agent standing up with the for-sale sign on forehead, I agree it’s against clause 6-66 of our constitution ‘Good people cannot be allowed to have good things’.

Don’t worry folks leave it with me and the good folks at the Anti-Poetry-League-Limited aka APOLE

You good folks can rest easy now as you know as much as I do:

SATAN himself – our CEO – would never let anyone take a bite into APOLE and get away with it.

Please enjoy the snack buffet on your way out.

“The Disease that Was Killed with a Slogan” (Prose)

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I walk back from the place & see my neighbour.

They are Gen Z – about 23.

We’ve Been Neighbours since he was born.

I am a young Gen X – I’m 47.

I haven’t ever really said much to the young fella,

Probably because neighbors these days avoid each other in general.

But he knows I’m his neighbor & vice versa (of course).

Anyway, so I’m walking home.

He sees me from about thirty meters away he’s walking towards me.

And so he doesn’t have to interact with another human being,

He sells a dummy & pretends he’s going to the other direction.

But I’m on to him – he’s bad at executing.

As I walk pass him, not five meters later, he veers back to his original plan and direction.

Proof he’s gone out of his way to avoid me, because it obvious that a passing nod is all too much for him.

If this is the future of our species WE have no hope.

They try to avoid all stress – even the smallest tiniest piece of it.

Thinking more deeply about it, this is surely the behaviour of an endangered animal that is inevitably soon due for extinction.

Let me illustrate the point with a wildlife analogy.

If it was a nature doco about the small endangered ‘Furry Zwapzwap’ of Gonkswania,

The narrator would say:

Sadly the small furry Zwapzwap has become so reclusive over the last century, that it has given up entirely on the stress of communication at all, & is now mute. It is now unable to make it’s former muffled warbling sound. This also means it has tragically lost it’s mating call. It no longer reproduces at all, except by accident when one furry Zwapzwap falls over onto another member of the opposite sex. The Gonwanian Zwapzwap is so now shy it only ventures out when it has to eat, and only eats the minimum so to the reduce stress of being outside to long outside its safe warm underground burrow. Sadly, with all this lack of vitality, Furry Zwapzwap numbers have fallen dramatically to the point of-no-return where even a ‘massive accidental copulation event’ will not stop their total extinction by the year 2075.

The world needs to realise that the under 35 crowd- aka the species future hopes – are the f*cking weak afraid-of-livng furry Zwapzwaps that are breeding themselves and ‘future us out’ of existence.

And p.s. I don’t really care about us aging Gen X’s – we’ve done ‘the tour of duty’ – we’re allowed to start slowly fading away. It’s the Future that matters. No one should start fading away at age sixteen, twenty three, thirty one.

I think we need a new ‘Manhatten Project’ to stop all this ‘scaredie cat’ nonsense.

I’m not saying this is the best strategy option – but perhaps the following scheme easiest way to save future extinction:

Cheap Rent,

Cheap Alcohol,

Lots of late night shitty meat-market bars re-open,

A shitty but guaranteed job for every and any dopey schmuck loser.

I call this theory by a very interesting name:

“Roll back the Wowsering, Roll on the Partying”.

And I reckon you’d win an election with it as a slogan.

If I come up with a less based, more refined way to save us all – I’ll let you know.

But I have a sneaking suspicion there is none.

Hopefully by the time I am 125, I trust someone long ago with more energy than me will have read this prose as a young man or woman, & then championed my idea in the real world of high Politics.

And then perhaps all going well, I will be reading a History book of the Twenty First Century just ended that has a chapter called:

Roll back the Wowsering, Roll on the Partying: The Disease that Was Killed with a Slogan.

But if not we’ll certainly go the way of the Romans, which is sad but probably fitting – given that we are technically the last remnant of The Roman Empire anyway.

If this latter case is the case, I’ll be the last Human on earth age 125, casually reading a dirt-salvaged History book with the chapter:

No One Rolled back the Wowsering, No One Was Partying: And Isn’t It a Pity That We’re All Now Extinct

“Some last musings in the last moments of 2025” (A Blog post)

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First some housekeeping – I have just greatly updated my last post – the link is here https://antonmartinsmith.com/2025/12/30/the-ex-high-school-nerds-coalition-prose/.

It’s a witty piece about the nerd/jock high school thing – from the aging nerds perspective. It’s as irreverent as possible…but I hope it strikes a chord to a few readers – it should do as I can only guess most people here as writers or readers were probably ‘nerds’ in high school (as I was).

Anyway go read it – I’m sure it’ll make you laugh, or cry – or maybe you’ll hate it…perhaps you will feel indifferent. Those are the only four options are they not?

In my writing it’s easy to have a bunch of neurosis. Of course I am currently a ‘nobody’ – so I don’t want to sound ‘preachy’ when I don’t have the write to, er I mean the right to. But my point is that I am thinking you need to not let the worries about what (disembodied not actually real) people might think (or be annoyed at) when you write.

In my mind there’s a too conservative middle class boring person who is tsk tsking – or a overly white liberal pretending to be offended. But I tend to ignore these neurosis & just write what I’m trying to tell. But the whiney ‘don’t do that’ super-ego parental cartoon character on the shoulder definitely makes themselves heard – they are just there outside your choice. I guess assuming you are not a psycopath you just need to learn to ignore that annoying shoulder tsk tsk’ing guy.

Maybe if I ever properly publish something I’ll get to know if those white liberal complainers will have a go at my stuff – maybe that’s when I know I’m not totally terrible.

Anyway on the writing in 2025 it’s been a good year on my WordPress site – now I have 75% more of ‘not very much’ traffic – so I should pop the cork of some fancy French wine (that I don’t have). Beer is my thing. Beer is a wonderful thing, especially now that I drink properly & no longer need ten in a row (ah I am so so mature these days, drinking like the Europeans!).

Anyway it’s now five mins to midnight, & being in NZ we get the New Year first – so It’s a good time to hit ‘publish’ for the last time in 2025.

Whoever reads this, now or in the distant dystopian future (I guess it could be a utopian future but I doubt it!) thankyou so much for the effort in listening to my ordinary tales of madness (nod to San Pedro’s finest ‘dirty old man’ – the late great Bukowski)!

See you in a few days (give or take) & happy reading (& possibly) writing!

Anton Matin Smith

“If The Results Are Good” (A prose Poem)

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by Anton Martin Smith antonmartinsmithwrites@gmail.com

A Gas-station coffee run it is.

“I’d like a flat white please”, I request.

“Do you wan’t sugar?”, she queries.

“No honey”, I say cheerily.

“If you keep talking like that you’ll get it served in your face!”

She is serious.

Her face is contorted, pained.

She’s in her 50s she has grey dreadlocked hair, a face lined by a share of hard times.

Up until that moment our customer to customer service relations had been friendly enough, perfunctory.

Aiming to quickly diffuse the moment I apologize.

“Oh sorry I didn’t mean anything by that, I didn’t mean to offend…I must be getting old”.

It seemingly half works – after all scolding hot coffee has not hit my face, has it not?

“Would you like a marshmallow?” She says in a as-per-standard-question way.

“No thanks” I say, wondering why she is offering marshmallows for a flat white.

She finishes & hands the coffee over.

I matter-of-factly pay, & leave to my awaiting vehicle which with my ‘ troublesome coffee’ in hand.

As I drive away wearing sunglasses, I glance in to see the counter area.

I’m ascertaining the body language after the unsavory event.

The other staff member that had witnessed it all is looking at me black faced – I take that as a minor win.

The one who served me is obscured.

As I post-mortum the situation – my internal narrative is of two strands:

One is self serving:

“Geez some people can’t control their emotions at all, why no sense of humor – especially in that role”

The other is of a negative bent:

“Oh no you’ve put your foot in it again – why did you say that you fool – ‘no honey’…Geez!“.

As I drive away to my home, I take a sip of the “troublesome coffee”.

I now know why she offered a marshmallow after I ordered.

The sweet taste is sickening.

It is very much a hot chocolate, & not a flat white.

So she has either intentionally or unintentionally punished me on the spot.

I do half a u-turn & then I think better of it & abandon the u-turn.

I’m again driving home.

I’m feeling a little mentally deflated about it all – not that it’s a big deal or anything.

When I enter my driveway I park & disembark & I suddenly perk up a notch.

“Ah…This is good writing material!” I have suddenly realized.

“Thank god I took up writing!” I say to myself with relief.

Writing really has added so many silver linings to the blackest of social thunderclouds that abound.

Of course the worry about this phenomena is that you will create drama in order to write about it.

I wonder – Am I already do this without knowing it?

the problem is of course. as they say – an old chestnut – but is it good or bad?

Well, I cannot categorically answer that – as the answer embodies a conflict of interest.

But as an imperfect, rough & contaminated answer I will say this:

If the results are good…