Bikinis in Bali

"If a country such as Indonesia wants to ban kissing in public and bikinis on the beach, maybe this is a country where Australians shouldn't be". The spoken words I heard as I cruised local TV channels for early morning news.

As I laboured to make the perfect cup of Earl Grey, I wondered why Australians need to use "cultural blackmail" for a bit of fun in the sun and a dip in the sea.

Australia's coastline is longer than 25,000km, add more than 7,000 beaches, pick among spectacular secluded bays framed by rocky crags and colored sands, or choose Manly Beach in Sydney, on Surfers Paradise's Main Beach the party never stops.

On the Queensland Sunshine Coast, those who feel incarcerated by a bikini strip, can stroll naked along the sea-shore of a nudist beach. Rarely is kissing seen on Australian public venues or along the streets.

A western brand of liberal conventions in Indonesia may provoke reprisal, not a joke but a spatter of perversion, to extort the forfeiting of local mores from a hard-up neighbour, inviting trade of long established modesty is immoral, dangling the much-needed but scornful tourist dollar...

Perhaps the key is language, some people "travel" to far away places eager to discover, to appreciate, to see, feel, touch, smell, taste, learn how others breethe, many more are "holiday-makers"... Drinking, drugging, kissing, disrobing on a foreign beach...

Unleashed

I can't control this venomous mood, Roland's male-chauvinistic arrogance makes me angry, it sparks in me a feuding attitude.

The way he treats Rosita, akin to a worthless slave forced into obedience school. If she makes an independent move, he suffocates her by tightening the emotional noose. What is he trying to prove?

I can't deter my own vexation, his constant brain-washing methods are offensive, his expert juggle back in time when peasant-minded-men ruled supreme, and women had no rights.

She is his vassal, a pawn, a puppet, the slave who four millennium ago carried granite blocks to build the pyramid of Cheops.

When he wants something he's rarely nice, and when he has had his want, he will dismiss her as if she were at his paid command. What gives him the right?

To ensure his undisputed rule, he his never satisfied; ten, twenty, a hundred times each day, when not whingeing from his sofa-throne, he spews instructions in royal-highness tones:

" Feed the dog, answer the telephone, did you write that cheque; the garden is dry, pick up the mail, take the rubbish out; make me a cup of tea, what food is there to eat?" And when the food arrives, do you think he is pleased?"

She washes, irons, sweeps and never wavers, while his only chore is to unfold the daily newspaper; though he does not cook he dictates how food is placed on the refrigerator shelves, and must oversee how much carpet-cleanser she will need to clean the rug beneath his feet...

Why does she agree?

That is what I see... Perhaps for Rosita and her chosen Master there is a role-reversal beteeen the sheets...

© 2006 Dallas Mariner

Canti

She will belong to no one, says my woman. Will be mine only, notwithstanding Jove's temptations, she promises, but what a woman tells her lover can be written in the wind, or rapid running water.
Catullo

I love and I hate! Perhaps you ask: How can that be? I don't know, but that's the way it is. And it torments me
Catullo

A Dash of Angostura

If we were to ask: How do you like your Scotch? We would get a variety of answers, such as: straight up, neat, on the rocks, with soda, even double with a pretty lass... I prefer mine with water and a dash of Angostura. But if I were asked: How do you like your poetry? I would have to admit my ignorance and look up the meaning of poetry in the Encyclopedia Britannica. Which I did!

The results were: Concrete poetry, Georgian poetry, Gnomic poetry, Heroic poetry, Pattern poetry, as well as Skaldic, Topographical, Jazz (my favorite), Pure, Physical, even a "Fleshy School of Poetry" associated with Dante Gabriele Rossetti, and so named by Scottish writer R.W. Buchanan.

And I thought poetry was made of: Images, Discourse, Fixed or Free Rhythm, Stressed/Unstressed syllables etc; of metrical distinction, is Pulitzer Prize winner W. D. Snodgrass's example of the first two lines of his poem "April Inventory":

The green catalpa tree has turned
All white; the cherry blooms once more.
In one whole year I haven't learned
A blessed thing they pay you for.

Ok, I got through my lesson of: line breaks, enjambments, end stops, figures of speech, similes and metaphors, I understood that the "word music" of "direct rhyme" should not be forced, the rhyming word needs not be there because it rhymes, but because it is the best for the poem's sense as well as sound, as in the example of the above four lines of W.D. Snodgrass's "April Inventory".
The subtle echo of sounds, created by the "Indirect rhyme" is also known as half rhyme or slant rhyme. "Formal structure" poetry includes sonnets, sestinas, and villanelles...

But, admitting total lack of literary discipline, in the informal delivery of my conclusion I will make a note that as I like my Scotch with water and a dash of Angostura, so I like (mine or yours) poetry, straight from the head or heart with a dash of passion.

Saddam Hussein - the goldsmith -

Among newspaper and magazine scraps packed in an inconspicuous shoe box purchased at the Sunday flea market, I found this unexpected article, which, in my humble view, depicted the multi-leveled characteristics of Saddam Hussein; of interest was also the comment on the liberal, often shadowy, trade laws (not only Swiss) that govern the marketing of prestigious collectables. I deduced the article came from an - Art News -magazine or newspaper, published in the UK at the end of the 1991 Gulf War.

Goldsmith's work

by Saddam Hussein for sale

"He finds it relaxing to use his hands"

Geneva. A large circular tray and a coffee-pot worked in solid gold by Saddam Hussein have surfaced in the Swiss market. It has been a surprise to discover that the Presidential palace resounded with the toc-toc of the metalworker's hammer and punch, as hobbies of this nature are not usually considered dignified in Middle Eastern countries, but an exiled Iraqi who was close to him, says Saddam Hussein found it relaxing to work up the elaborate embossing and punch-work that decorates such pieces, familiar to anyone who has visited the bazaars of that part of the world,

As is traditional, the pieces are decorated with pious invocations in praise of the owner, in this case, also the maker. The tray reads: "Glory to myself Saddam Hussein, the exalted sultan, the master that curbs the neck of nations, sultan of the sultans of the Arabs, and the non-Arabs, he that is supported by heaven... the exalted one, the most just, the most liberal, the most knowledgeable, the most glorious etc. etc. The long spouted coffee-pot is inscribed: "To Saddam Hussein, felicity and integrity. May I live as long as the dove coos".

Questions arise as the true ownership of these objects, which, whether one finds them attractive or repulsive from the point of view of their aesthetic qualities and associations, are worth at least their bullion value. ( 128 ozs ).

Have they been looted during the post Gulf War unrest in Iraq... or sent out by the dictator himself? Due to the extremely liberal Swiss laws regarding trade in object of uncertain origin or ownership, ( characterized by one curator at the department of Greek and Roman Antiquities of the British Museum, as belonging to the 'See no evil; hear no evil' school of thinking on cultural property), there will almost certainly be no inconvenient legal come-back for any buyer at the sale, scheduled to take place at the Hotel des Bergues on 1 April. Interest in the pieces is apparently growing: "After all", said one dealer, "the fact that Napoleon was defeated has not stopped a solid market of souvenirs of him, and there are people who collect Hitler's watercolours".

Dear God

Knowledge of you lodged in my earliest memories, your omnipresence asserted at dawn as the Matin, at nightfall as a bed time prayer, through the day via images of your only legitimate son Jesus bleeding and nailed to a cross on the kindergarten walls.

Present in most conversations you were, indeed you are: "Oh... my God, God almighty, Thanks to God... God bless or bless you God... Vaias con Dios for the love of God..." Present before and after meals, when church bells tolled or pealed, in glory or blasphemy you were, indeed you are, always here.

No need to tell you I was a curious child, You being omniscient and all, knowing what makes every clock tick, every flower bloom, how atoms split, why tidal flows are regulated by the moon. No need to jog your memory that in spite of you remaining, indeed retaining your Sacred Invisibility, I contemplated meeting you.

Many town folk were forced to worship you, fearing hell, fire and brimstone Your vengeful nature would strike with when breaching sacred Laws, laws that you, wise but contentious Commander in Chief Who Art in Heaven, imposed on us down here on Earth, yet the good and the bad folk alike , put their trust in your humble Savior-Son Jesus and his Virgin Mother Mary.

Yes God the Father, we feared you, indeed we do, because though molded in Your very own matrix, we are "imperfect seconds" in this cluttered Homo-Sapiens's factory, we break your rules, we confess, we pray... Break the rules... Repent, confess, repeat and pray... The devil makes us do it...

I was not afraid of You, as You know, my mommy was unmarried when she birthed me, I grew up preoccupied by the sound of crickets in grassy fields and too busy watching fireflies to be concerned with the meaning of paternity, I was not plagued by a daddy I never had, nor by You, omniparous Omnipotence.

I was not concerned with Thee, being so small among so many VIP's You would not have noticed me, You, abiding somewhere up in heaven and I but a tiny dot down here on earth's last station, furthermore you being incessantly engaged by those experienced in securing your high-ranking consideration.

People like the Pope in Rome, the USA President, the Monsignor, priests, nuns, monks, even the solitary little old lady who everyday upon entering Your house took her place among the empty pews and flipped rosary beads. I always postponed my prayers in favor of skipping rope and read Topolino comic book until I fell asleep...