Day 3 – energy + Eiffel

Ironically I’m sitting at the puta writing a poem about energy when I am exhausted after a very long day.

Two Notes:
1. Formatting is an issue (the poems don’t look as good as they do properly formatted in a word doc) as is often the way with WordPress.
2. The old maxim, sorry about the long poems, I didn’t have time to write short ones is particularly true tonight.

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Australian Energy                             —                          a call & response poem

Australia is 
the third-largest exporter of coal in the world 

no, it’s the biggest

home to two of the 10 largest coal mines in the world

four of the 10 

Australians believe  {of the total workforce} :
the coal mining industry makes up 11% 

in reality it’s just 0.3% 

oil & gas employment make up 20%

just 0.2% 

Australians believe  {of GDP} :
the economic value of the gas industry is 12.4% 

2.5%

coal mining contributes 13.6%

2.6%

50% of Australians believe  {of what we should be building} :
new gas power stations

only 21% believe we should be building new renewable energy projects

my apologies i was confused

let me try that again

50% of Australians believe:
new renewable energy projects

only 21% believe we should be building new gas power stations

the 2023-2024 Australian Federal Budget has been released 
fossil fuel subsidies (such as the Fuel Tax Credit)
– will cost the Budget over $41 billion 
over the next four years

significantly more than all the funded climate initiatives combined

despite fossil fuel industries being the past

& clean energy initiatives, the future 

(perhaps, assuming

we survive)

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Funfact Day 3 – TIL how to grow iconic French architecture 

Paris’s brutal metal heart
— the Eiffel Tower can be 
as much as fifteen to sixteen
centimetres taller in summer

{ thermal expansion heats the iron up
the particles gain kinetic energy 
& in so doing : take up more space }

think how tall she will get
when The Iron Lady starts 
experiencing month long 40+ degree days

when Ville-Lumière becomes Ville-Chaleur 
& Ville d’Amour becomes Ville d’Sueur

{ City of Light melts into City of Heat 
& City of Love drips into City of Sweat }

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Funfact Day 3 (bonus)  – TIL other Eiffel things

i.
the Tower was initially 
intended for Barcelona
but those pesky Catalans
thought it an awful eyeful (ouch!)
so Gustave pitched her to Paris instead

ii.
initially the French weren’t 
overly impressed either
metal-shaming her as
“useless & monstrous” 
“a stupefying folly”
& “an odious column of bolted metal” 

always something of a prickly loner
writer Guy de Maupassant 
dined every day at the cafe directly below 
— the only spot in Paris he claimed
he couldn’t see the damn thing

but they grew to love her
— as did the whole world
till she became what she now is
(like so many modern landmarks)
little more than Instafodder

Day 27 – intertextuality (& instagram)

27 Sienna On Mushrooms III by atreyu64.jpg

Yet another poem about the joys of reading — which took on a life of its own. And even though the last line might be a wee bit much, I still love it.

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intertextuality

a startling line of text hooks me sideways
from ancient sword & sorcery Cimmeria
arcing me skywards, belly to the sun;
into other stories, real world experiences
& perfumes, already lodged in synapses flash
light silver-gilt sparkles quivering
from networked neural nest to another;
whirlpooled into the closeted green
dirty underwater of the Black Forest
where we each tread our paths on the way
to Red’s Grandma’s little log cabin.
breathing heavily behind a tree, see her skip
basket-swinging foolish innocence knock
of knuckle on the old crone’s red door

— but miss what happens next when a tap
on my shoulder reveals one angry looking
wolfskin-wearing weapon-wielding woodsman
…………
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BONUS POEM: April 27, 2018

Self explanatory.
NOTE: 2019 edit. Various minor tweakings & enjambments to improve the pome.

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#nofilter

despite gut-dropping
disappointment upon discovering
every shot of the castle
I’d ever seen had been
carefully crafted to crop
………………………………………… out
all neighbouring car parks,
camper vans, hotels, the town,
tour buses, & souvenir shops
I’m relieved to realise I need
not set an Instagram filter
on the sublime Andrews-esque
middle-earth mountains
……………………………………………beyond

27b neuschwangstein.jpg