My Writing and Art lives here….
by Martin Anton Smith
Deep down you know it’s not wise to work as a salaryman for a Cartel.
If your industry has no genuine competition – you are working for a Cartel.
The word ‘Cartel’ & “Self-Actualisation” are Oxymoronic.
Alas I also get it – as the Hamster Wheel called “The World” is a deft trickster
The trick is to know you are being tricked.
By Martin Anton Smith
A few months ago, I wrote a Poem about “Writers Block”
It was about 10 lines.
To Steal Lars Ulrich’s favourite term,
Its content was best described as mostly “Stock”.
But alas – there is reason in the madness –
Yes! Let me tell you kind Sirs & Madams – the phrase “please add stock”,
isn’t just for the pages of cookbooks – the writer needs just it as much as the happy eater.
The strategy for the writer is that it will break the hoodoo that is ‘writers block’.
To put pen to paper or more modernly, single-index-finger to dirty-computer-button.
Because in the Poem or Writing game, to not be productive is to certainly risk ‘dying off entirely’ –
And that my fine poem reading, writing, & consuming friend – is a fate worse than death.
But perhaps as the High School English Teachers used to say, I am “exaggerating for effect” –
Like a typical over-the-top-arts-flake’ – yes this is possible.
But the again – perhaps not – after all good poem’s tell a story, do they not?
And no one would argue with the truism ‘good stories have changed the world’.
Well – Maybe a Lawyer or a Politician would but that merely proves my point.
& so now that this poem has served its purpose – to break writers block,
There is no point in more placking away at these dirty, chocolaty keys.
The “kill writers block objective” has been reached and on top of that,
To do so would result in this C- poem becoming a D- poem
& that is stupid in anyone’s book -even mine.
The End
By Martin A Smith
(Please Note This is Satire)
PoorUrbanPustuleTM is hiring we require the following types of people:
– Serfs
– The easily brainwashed
– Adults that still love a high school environment
PoorUrbanPustuleTM is based in Melbourne & is listed on the ASX with 100,000 employees. We have a Generous Salary on offer, relatively speaking of course – this means it is equally as bad as other fiefdoms with a huge number of employees.
We offer 4 weeks paid leave, but it is only ‘paid’ because we pay you lower for the rest of the year. We have GREAT Superannuation scheme which utilises a strategic partnership with “Black-Holio Asset Managment” – This means a bunch of sneaky Private Equity Goons will legally steal your money, which is why it only returns 5% per annum vs the ASX index long term average of 8% – but luckily, we have a great Propaganda team that stops you from knowing this.
You will have a Great Boss, NO sorry this does not mean they are GOOD or Likable or Professional – we mean his name is literally GREAT – “Bill Great” – we could tell you about him, but *our mothers* told us ‘If you don’t have anything nice to say about anyone, don’t say anything at all’.
We at P*U*P also have a Training Team to help you, the only problem is that they don’t know anything because they are afraid to leave the safety of their back offices & computer screens – but don’t worry – somehow you’ll figure it all out yourselves – have you ever seen the movie *The Lord Of The Flies*?
We also LOVE DIVERSITY – & as such we now have a Policy of hiring *No Ethnically European Males over 35*… on top of this is you have *blue hair* – you get a 5% pay increase no questions asked. On the second day you will meet our CEO – *Ivana Urcash* – she would have met you on the first day, but unfortunately this coincides with her *last day in jail*.
We have great facilities including *one toilet, two rolls of bog-roll (1 ply) & half a basin* – sorry this is due to a poor EBITA result last year due to foreign currency fluctuations – sure we probably shouldn’t have gambled 100% of last years earnings on those Dodgy Sub-Prime China Property Shares – but the online trading platform was created to be like an online Casino & our CFO lost his composure & was mesmerised by all the dings, bleeps & musical sounds (again)!
Finally, we would like to pour cold water (from our hot taps) on the rumour of ‘that strange smell coming out of PoorUrbanPultule’s floor’ – The news article in ‘The Age’ was egregiously defamatory in the max…to clarify: pegs handed out by HR to our employees were for fashion reasons only.
How do we at PoorUrbanPustuleTM see the world? Our motto says it all:
“We strive to make the world only slightly worse off than our next biggest competitor. This hasn’t happened yet – but we believe in the “Parallel Worlds Interpretation of the Universe”
APPLY NOW
(P.s. – Please bring a large Box to the interview – this will be the successful candidates new office)
by Martin Anton Smith
I once knew a friend whose name was not-called-Derek.
He loved to cook with healthy doses of olive oil,
Which he poured from a tall oversize bottle.
Which was hoisted by way off guy ropes,
From a sturdy pyramidical latticed structure.
As a wordsmith I knew had to act quickly.
I knew right away It was my duty to rename him.
Instead of his usual name of “Percy Weatherby” –
I simply renamed him “Derrick”.
Ironically the name stuck.
By rights it should have slipped away entirely,
For with the move to clean energy –
No one knows what a “Derrick” is these days.
Now Readers I apologise for the poor quality of this Poem:
Perhaps one should never write a new Poem only –
So they can use a weird word like “Derrick”.
I only hope the audience will not “send me to the gallows” –
Which incidentily is why a “Derrick” was called a “Derick” –
In the first place – For it was a man called “Derrick” invented
The classical tall wooden plus rope structure of the Gallows.
To finish this sub par poem I will ask this final question:
Why is it not a thing to say:
“You better not do that or you’ll be Derricked”.
by Martin Anton Smith
I once met a girl called Yippy Y’Pong,
Or Y Y for short, which incidentally, she was.
O ‘culture wars’ did untie this fragile ‘Knot’.
Yes, We got what we got,
& we got the lot.
The Disagreements were decidedly epic;
The passive aggressiveness?
It was unfortunately unwaveringly,
underminingly uncomfortable.
So sadly, we soon divorced our special friendship.
The worry in the aftermath,
was equal in worth to mathematical infinity.
Yes – with My heart being so broken,
My formerly beefy baritone voice,
Became so softly & squeakily spoken.
My heart thus being swiftly & unyieldingly smashed,
Went from foppish aflutter to apoplectic palpitation.
So perilous was this heartless fact,
Its stringy moorings were no longer in-tact.
yes -it did Olympically jump out my chest,
& splattered downwards into the gruesome dingey gutter,
& Then fell down the dangling dirty depths of A sidewalk drain.
I stood wounded, literally heartless & dispiritingly dejected,
& Without much words or even a low decibel mutter.
I stood ‘stoopily’ with unevenly hunched shoulders.
Of course, it goes without saying: I was unhappy –
Suckered into being exquisitely, surgically, psychologically, ‘undone’.
Even worse the victor was watching my unravelling: it was Yippy Y’Pong
Just standing there watching, with a uneven smirk,
laughing when my heart rattled downwards with a
“Da Doink Da Doink Da Doink”.
And here’s the point:
O why O why
Did I Choose someone called
Yippy Y’Pong?
With her ‘worldliness’ in tow?
Alas! I was drunk with on Love!
Blinded by dead doves.
To her,
My flights of fancy,
were far more than just chancy,
They were deadly:
I might not just bore her to death,
I might have opened her eyes to something,
she had until now failed to see.
A dangerous idea that just simply couldn’t be.
by Martin Anton Smith
Yes I was thinking while sitting by myself.
And Now I see those thoughts of things past,
Is often so-very-much all quite daft –
For does the ‘Past’ even exist outside our minds?
Or if it does, do we go from Future to Present to Past? –
Maybe we all live our lives in reverse time order –
& to aid survival our brains reverse it yet again.
This would mean our “Future” is Set-in-stone
& Our lives are just a cacophony of different ways –
Different ways to always get to the same place.
Slowly but surely our memories & skills are wiped.
our common final resting place? – the unified consciousness
That sits outside time – ‘before’ the big bang.
At this point I guess we stop reversing,
& are happy just ‘being.’
For now we are no longer human beings.
by Martin Anton Smith
Yes, I was thinking while sitting on my shelf.
And Now I see that thoughts-of-things-past,
is an exercise in being very-much-quite-daft.
For does the ‘Past’ even exist outside our minds?
Or if it does, perhaps we go from Future to Present to Past –
Maybe we all live in reverse time order –
& our brains reverse it yet again.
This would mean our perceived “Future” is Set
& our lives are just a myriad of different ways –
Different ways to always get to the same place.
We go from Death to Life to Birth
& slowly along the way our memories & skills are wiped.
But surely we don’t stop as muling & puking babes,
In our smiling -or frowning -mothers arms.
Surely the reverse journey continues:
The Stars turn to swirling dust clouds
The dust clouds disperse to atoms
Atoms dis-asemble to quarks
Quarks splits to anto matter & anti matter
Then we become blinded by traversing a cosmic event horizon
Then we become an infinitely long encoded line –
A cosmic singularity which holds all the information there is or will ever be.
But Alas perhaps we have one more step backwards
This our common final resting place –
This being the ‘grand unified consciousness’
That sits outside time itself.
At this point I guess we stop reversing,
& maybe just maybe we are happy to just ‘be.’
in closing I will say just one more thing:
I predict that most Atheists will love this Poem,
& most Believers will not.
For I didn’t mention ‘God’ once,
Or did I?
by Martin Anton Smith martinantonsmith@gmail.com
This Sir or Madam is Not a Poem
Yes Yes Yes – it looks like a Poem
But I assure you it is not.
Oh so you don’t believe me?
Is this an accusation based on my history?
What’s that?
“You’ve writen 186 consequitive poems on this blog – It must be!”
Wrong!
I have written 186 blog posts & only 99% are poems.
You see I can write stuff that’s decidedly ‘Not a Poem’.
So – I hope you will apologise to me,
& admit that this is Not a Poem.
This is Not a Poem in the same way a cat is not a dog;
A stone is not the wind;
A Beach is not a tree;
A man is not a woman – (oh wait it’s 2023! scratch that last line!)
A Breath is not a carrot.
I could go on – but why labour the point?
If I did that would be far to traditional of me as an obscure dime-a-dozen NZ Poet.
Did I mention that I won’t labour the point? I forget. Where was I?
Oh yes – now I remember where I was –
I just accidentally assassinated my thoughts,
By agreeign not to labour the point.
That this piece of writing is Not a Poem.
Oh well, it is better to assassinate a Poem than a man,
Although Historians would no doubt disagree with me.
And so I bid the reader fairwell,
I apologise profusely for wasting your artistic time,
Which you may only have 33 mins in your weekly time budget for.
I promise to make it up to you if I get rich of this Not a Poem.
If indeed this piece gets accepted & published in the famed literary magazine
“Not A Poem Galactical”
I promise to send a portion of the Galactic revenues to recompense you.
But knowing my luck I will get a rejection slip from them saying
“Sorry Martin – this was an interesting piece, if perhaps a little laboured –
but we on the panel believed it was a little to much like a poem –
feel free to ‘de-poem’ it a little & resubmit”.
Now kind people I really must messily exit this not a poem.
I only hope that this crap *not a poem* made one upward curl,
of at least one side,
of at least one galactic being’s mouth,
Somewhere out their in the cosmos.
After all –
If the universe is infinite everything that can happen, must happen, no matter how unlikely.
So to the future Alien that chuckled out of one the three sides of their mouth as they read this –
I simply say to you in thankfulness:
“A-bleetablat, A-bleetablat……..ka-blinky-blink, A-bleetablat”
by Martin Anton Smith martinantonsmith@gmail.com
I once wed a girl called Yippy Y’Pong,
Or Y Y for short, which incidentally, she was.
Sadly it was ‘culture wars’ did untie our fragile ‘Knot’.
Yes we got what we got,
& we got the lot.
The disagreements were decidedly epic.
Was there passive aggressiveness?
Yes -it was unfortunately unwaveringly,
& underminingly uncomfortable.
So sadly, we soon divorced.
The worry in the aftermath,
was equal to mathematical infinity.
Yes – with my heart being so broken,
My beefy baritone voice,
Became so softly spoken.
My heart was so swiftly smashed,
In a seismic click in the fingers,
That created a pulmonary shock wave.
The pump went from foppish aflutter – to apoplectic palpitation.
It all happened in the blink of an tear filled eye
So perilous was this fact,
Its stringy moorings were no longer in-tact.
It Olympically jumped out my chest,
& splattered downwards Into the gruesome gutter,
& Then fell down the dangling drain.
I stood dispiritingly dejected,
& Without much mutter.
I stood stoopily
Literally heartless & unhappy
At being so exquisitely most definitely undone.
Even worse there was Yippy Y’Pong
Just standing there watching
When my heart rattled down the drain with a
“Da Doink Da Doink Da Doink”
And here’s my point:
O why O why
Did I marry someone called
Yippy Y’Pong?
With her ‘culture wars’ in tow?
Alas! I was drunk with on Love!
Blinded by dead doves.
To her,
My flights of fancy,
were far more than just chancy,
They were deadly:
I might bore her to death.
& what started it all?
A conversation…a silly conversation!
She said ‘alls fair in love & war’
& then I replied glibly
“Yes, but we all know war is a racket”
then she added to my words
“..but love is a club”
Yes audience – to that –
I groaned loudly at her.
From then on,
For Yippy Y’Pong
I was as they say – ‘well gone’:
For She couldn’t stand a hypocrite…
Let alone be married to one.
P.s. To my knowledge YY is still single & annoyed with me
But is now known as “Dennis McLloyd”.
by Martin Anton Smith martinantonsmith@gmail.com
Post Covid – the ‘Sneak Aways’ had all but ‘dried up’.
Prior to all the madness,
As orchestrated by the Politician ‘Bond Villain’ control freaks,
That not only litter the landscape, but carve it up,
Via slights of hand & its extension – the Missile.
Yes – The regular ‘Sneakaway’ jaunts did flow smoothly,
As did the hazy ales & Burger Joint meals.
As did the Rock ‘N’ Roll tunes,
Played by many the lesser known,
Young but also more known & aging,
‘Semi Traveling Wilberrys’.
And the ‘Sneakaways’ always ended as they should:
Half content & half disorientated,
That comes with visitation to mass transit points,
Aka locales of ‘Spiritual Vortexes & Clandestine Battlefields’
Yes – these are ‘The Sneakaways’
The Spots Where There Are Always & Many
Souls for someone to save.
I did take my modern-day petrol eating horseless wagon,
And parked it by the lake – where later I would later rest my head.
The Pool Joint I did end up.
To cut a too long Poem shorter,
It contained the following:
Ten Big Pool Tables
Pizza’s
30 odd Patrons – aka The ‘New Age Gold Diggers’,
The Ones Working in Low Wage Hospo & Labouring & Paying a Tonne For Rent-
i.e half the town & three quarters of the most visible town-walkers
These “most visible town-walkers” are not mining gold any more but are mining ‘experiences’.
But in Truth, the real reasons they are here – will only crystallise years later – after deep life introspection.
When ‘Old Father Time’ strips away all the smoke & haze & thus reality can emerge with perfect clarity.
Yes – here I am in the Pool Bar.
As an aging semi-life-experienced fella, I begun dishing out ‘how the world works’ epithets –
Which were lapped up by these scattered young men, who all pine for the fatherly & brotherly guidance,
That they probably, almost certainly never got.
I Of course, didn’t mind playing the role, as I played Pool & chugged the affordable beers.
But I ask you – what single, childless 45-year-old man wouldn’t?
He would & does for himself – and he helps heal some wounds as the by-product.
I mean it’s far easier & immediately rewarding AND entertaining than being
A a REAL DAD or even a Older Brother.
It Is All reward with ZERO risk.
The Pool night was short sharp & fun & over fast,
A few of us even talked about “If God Exists or not” topic.
Half agreed & Half didn’t.
I found the ratio quite surprising, for a town like this.
After the Pool Bar,The rest of the trip was just sleeping & waking to a semi officious voice:
“Are you living in your car”,
She said to me as I stood outside my car.
“No I live in the other town, I’m just up for a rest”, I said
“Oh ok we are filming a documentary on the housing crisis down here” – she said chirpilly.
“I don’t see it changing – unless they build totally new hermeticalluy sealed towns” I said.
“I think you’re right” she said.
I drove away & left the scene, realising how lucky I am these days.
For I begrudgingly must admit to myself,
I am now probably a ‘Have’ but was formerly a ‘Have Not’.
And I could now simply ‘drive out of it all’.
But the new age gold diggers & car sleepers here cannot do this –
& I ask ‘who will save them’?
It seems no one who is wedded to this earth is willing to.
because they are ok, & human nature is to be selfish –
& That, in a nutshell, is why suffering occurs in this world of bounty –
Millennia after millennia.
And maybe that problem is why, perhaps – I keep visiting.
A force compels me to ‘sneak away’ to the two-sided,
Spiritually Warfare’d,
Poorly Welfare’d
Ex Gold Mining,
‘Car Sleeping’
Escapist
Shiney
‘Bountified’
Two-Sided Town.
Anton Martin Smith Writer 