Ode Link

An ode to March, a month of madness
By BOB ELLIS
Monday 3 April 2000

A month of rain, and old crooks in the slammer
Restored to former lives of wealth and glamor,

A month when Alan Bond and Pinochet
Found little in their past lives to regret

Among their butlers and their chandeliers
And millions e-mailed in from Switzerland, one hears.

The month Suharto said he was too frail
To face a doctor, much less 10 years' jail.

The cops dispersed when he had tipped the wink,
Some dollars richer from Suharto Inc,

As laws on money movements grew absurder
And half the wealthy got away with murder.

A month when poor divided Danna Vale
Required one further pointless death in jail

Before she let her conscience have its head.
"Just one more death, or maybe two," she said.

And Johnno justice in the dock was pleading
It did not know where cruelty was leading

Till Amnesty bade Ruddock doff his badge
And he refused, and stamped his tiny feet in rage.

A month when on their most annoying page
The UN said we must not lock up kids
Without fair trial, for decency forbids,

But Alexander Downer, with a wink,
Remarked, "That clause is now erased, I think."

He could not quite concur that human rights
Applied to all Australians, only whites.

The month Australia's Queen did see but passing by
Some empty streets in Wagga, Bourke and Boggabri

And greeting with strained smile the roo and wombat
Avoided any risk of urban combat

With those who think Australia something else
Than one last cringing subject of the Anglo-Celts.

The month the Oscars praised a film, at last,
About a mild suburban pederast

Whose testy teenage daughter woos a drugged voyeur
By showing him her breasts in her high window with a smile,

So unlike My Fair Lady or Ben Hur
That one suspects McGauran and Fred Nile
Will ban it and the Oscars, in a while.

The month Jeff Kennett - this is not a jest -
Felt he was qualified to comfort the depressed,

Make big bucks anyway by postulating why
In Kennett's glad Victoria so many wished to die.

"My face beside the bed," he claimed, "will ease their melancholy.
The Black Dog runs like mad if smirked at by a pollie."

It was the month when cuddly, cluey Telstra chairman Ziggy
Said, "Fellow comrade workers, my announcement is a biggy,"

He paused to burn a hundred note and with it light a ciggy,

"Because we made two billion clear last year we cut our prices

And must now sack 10,000, since our profits are in crisis.

The profits come to us not you, we're pulling up the drawbridge,
Arrange your lives as best you can, you go out with the garbage.

Don't call us," he departing said, "to threaten us with murder.
You scarce can call us anyway, the phones are out of order."

The month Mal Colston sniffed fresh scraps within the trough,
And for another year put dying off.

A month when Bronwyn Bishop felt the scorch
Of her own unforgiving belly-torch

On those who say one thing and do another,
Like, "We will heed the cry of your old mother"

Or "Spot-checks will continue to take place"
Or "Ministers who fail should quit the race."

She did not say, or could not give a voucher
Of who knew what just when, and even Trevor Boucher

Grew sad to see her stammer, sweat and blither
Beseeching thanks for 18 months of sometimes deadly dither

Before she called the cops to stop the dying
Which warmed the pan in which she now was frying.

The month big debtor Pauline H, in sobbing lamentation,
Discovered there can be fates worse that mere assassination,

Like being dudded by two men called David
Of hope and glory you have barely savored.

A month when Bondy was at last sprung loose
By spending big on lawyers and turning up the juice,

Big money he'd accrued by losing millions
Selling beer to Aussies, what a man of brilliance.

A month the lovely, noisy John McCain
Was voted into silence once again,

And left the battleground to Bush and Gore,
The politics, some say, of Gush and Bore.

The month the Pope said sorry to those Jews
His church once burnt in error, in some views.

No sorry, though, to Johnno's mob was said,
Lest blood then rush to his crazed people's head

And pencil theft bring chaos on the earth.
'Twas best he died, a lad of little worth,

A burden on the state and, yes, a warning
To those who dare wake hungry Christmas morning

And dare steal food or seek some fleeting joy
With colored pencils drawing family trees; poor little boy.

The month the new Rasputin, Putin, got the prize
For slaughtering the heathen, and stifling the cries

Of some who thought he'd bombed those Moscow flats
To win the votes of Chechen-hating democrats.

The Duke of Edinburgh fouled the cheese,
By failing to observe his head was a disease.

And folk all over felt their lives less real
Than Jerry, Homer, Kenny or Ally McBeal.

A weeping busload in the night of old folk now removed
From what they thought was home, and nurses they had loved.

It's months like this, when madness fills the night,
One rather wishes Nostradamus had been right

In seeing late last year the world go up in fire,
Averting thus the bad news of the undersigned, town crier.

Bob Ellis is an author and commentator.

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Comment:
Tabled for all laconic OZ lurkers who like a dash of irony. Also tabled for conversational types elsewhere, although it's probably totally foreign to them. Bob Ellis is of course someone who thinks himself a national treasure. He does enjoy some support regarding that notion after a zestful session propping up a bar by those who do participate in madness.

Regards from Down Under

-- Pieter (zaadz@icisp.net.au), April 03, 2000