environment

Mr Redback

Standard

Male Redback Spiders attract the female by plucking her web and emitting chemicals. The female then devours ‘successful’ males during mating.

Your web I’d like to strum,
Like a harpist having fun,
Watch me roar, I’m all male,
My loving ways will not fail.

I’d like to tug your string,
Just before our fling,
Smell my sweet love potion,
C’mon do the locomotion!

A final tug of your rope,
Just before we grope,
We’re about to do the job,
Why do you open your gob?

Oh…it’s my first time to be bedded,
I’m feeling awfully light-headed!
Light-armed! Slightly shredded,
A little ball in a massive glove,
This is all-consuming love!

© Neil Dufty

Storm front

Standard 
There’s a storm front building out to sea,
Seething, heaving,
Wanting to worry me

Black clumps of cloud spreading like rage,
Boiling, roiling, 
They enter the stage

Who will protect us? Where will we go?
Instability, fragility,
We all try to lay low

Maelstrom of lightning and thunder above,
Beckoning, threatening,
Think of those we love

The presence lingers then exits the fray
Tenacity, veracity,
Staying strong this way

© Neil Dufty

The Pigeon

Standard 
What is the point of a pigeon?
Have you ever pondered this thought?
I’ve scanned the books, all religions,
And believe this bird to be a rort.

There you waddle, pecking at refuse;
Fat head bobbles, you coo and scratch;
And you can home (that’s no excuse);
Those other birds you cannot match.

But God must’ve something in His mind:
A niche, a role for you my friend;
In pity I wink, reason sure to find;
Stop this poem reaching a sad end.

But now white goo splatters my eye;
Then a wink from pigeon up on high!

© Neil Dufty

Old Hall

Standard 
We came from near and from far,
To the hall at the end of the tar, 
To dance to Frank and his band,
Far from war in another land.

We waltzed long into the night,
Till night gave way to first light,
Two tops in a twirl and a spin,
We danced with aplomb and a grin.

We joined as one in barn dance,
Chance to romance and to prance,
We thought our life was just made,
No chance of the bombs from a raid.

We slipped to the back of the hall,
None saw our stealth and our gall,
Not to think of whether we should,
We carved our love into the wood.

the floor has sprung
boarded windows clatter
in wind like a percussion solo
rats scuttle to their pit
battered paint peels
uncovering
‘Albie loves Essie’

a developer eyes the structure
‘Yeah, it’s a knockdown mate’.

© Neil Dufty

A poem about cows and climate change

Standard 
A CHANGE IS IN THE WIND
Belch! 

They’re watching us, these things called humans
Pens out, monitoring our rumens
Cows no fun

Pointing their fingers, shuffling their sheets
Murmuring about the planet’s heat
Cows help sun

Worried faces, showing their petulance
About our burps and our flatulence
Cows need bung

Uttering words, most common ‘methane’
Hoping cows would kindly refrain
Cow’s bad bum

With a gut like a still, our only torment
Grass sloshes around, slow ferment
Cow’s big drum

Big cows with balls are the worst offenders
Blame males, that’ll help defend us
Cows well hung

They think it’s best to fit us with gas masks 
Give us new grass to stop the farts
Cow’s new tum

They’ll want us to dispose of our very own cow pats
Placing them into underground vats
Cows no dung

See they carve us up or milk us bone dry
Now they say we make all things fry
Cows hard done

And we’re so over all their bovine jokes
Go away, pick on some ‘udder’ folk  
Cow bad pun 

And don’t they belch things out, that’s a fact
What’s spewing from that factory stack?
Cows not dumb

See all we want to do is chew our cud
Moo, poo, trudge though the mud 
Cows hum drum

So it’s over, all of this crap is enough
We’re taking a stand, getting so tough
Cows done fun

Let’s fight for ruminant freedom
Run with the buffalo, the sheep
Let’s herd together, fight to the end
Cows are one

Let’s stampede the Golden Arches
Go on long protest marches
Fight on beaches and on pastures
Even take to air in the fastest
Cow Top Gun

And now the end is very near
The day that all of us cattle fear
The last to the abattoir is to be tanned
Our fight was called ‘Muster’s Last Stand’
Cows out gunned

So if this story shocks, scares and amazes
That we Daisies could be ‘pushing up daisies’
Next time you question our windy emissions
Consider the risk of milk and meat omissions
Cow’s life done

(Author’s note: It is reported that ruminants, including cows, are directly responsible for 6.3% of anthropogenic global warming. Apologies to Dana Lyons for using some ideas from his song ‘Cows with Guns’)

© Neil Dufty

Whittlin’ our life away

Standard 
See me and me cousins - old Daryl and Bede,
We sat on the porch at the front of our home,
We used to laze ‘round, have a drink and a feed,
Coz we had to make sure them cows didn’t roam.

Some say folk in the sticks have so little to do, 
They say we have plenty of time on our hands,
But now we are part of the active crew few, 
Coz for whittlin’ we are the biggest of fans.

We started to whittle the odd gum tree stick,
Carvin’ them sticks into nothin’ much at all,
But then after a while we gave sticks the big flick,
Coz there weren’t any more on the trees to fall.

We then took to whittlin’ all the wood that we found
(I know you must think this is pretty outrageous),
And all that was left were some chips on the ground,
As whittlin’ for us was becomin’ highly contagious!

So we called for whittlin’ help from all of our relos, 
(There are lots, as not much happens in them hills),
Whittlin’ was now a big job for gals and the fellows,
Coz we were sellin’ more chips than them log cuttin’ mills.

Now as we’re all whittlin’, I gets to do some thinkin’,
Started to make up a tune for all of us to know,
A song ‘bout whittlin’ that would get us all a hootin’, 
Let’s call it: ‘From Big Things, Little Things Grow’!

And thought all big words could do with a whittle,
Cut them down to size, get rid of the word pith,
It would make them word books be ever so little,
For doin’ this craft, they’ll call us a ‘wordsmith’!

Could word whittlin’ catch on across our great land?
Would it be fine with our Mister Gough Whitlam?
Now we don’t want to upset our current boss man,
Coz if you cut the ‘wit’ out of him - all that’s left is a ‘lamb’!

Back from my thoughts to our whittlin’ adventure,
There’s not much wood left as you look around,
Gone are fences, the house door and its wood floor,
And there’s none of them trees still growin’ on the ground.

Hey, we might of overdone the extent of our wood work,
May be we couldn’t see ‘the forest for the trees’,
But we’ve just heard some news that made us all smirk:
There are lots of big trees in Brazil that are free!

© Neil Dufty

The Plain

Standard

capture

The plain: uniform terrain. Plains-people: strong, resolute against drought, flooding rain … and the boredom of the plain. Does the rain fall mainly on the plain? What about the orographic effect? You’ve probably guessed by now that this is a planar poem – as flat as the plain: it rambles across this plain page. A road train rumbles through the plain to make noise to liven up the plain. The plains-wanderer is a bird that wanders across the plain trying to find and eat something that likes the pain of the plain. It builds a mound to lay its eggs and make a mountain out of a molehill … or is that bird the mallee-fowl? The plains-wanderers sometimes get run over by road trains. Stratus clouds work in parallel with plains. Planking is people trying to be plains. I would like to live on a plain, then I wouldn’t fall down a hill like Jack and Jill. Life can be a real plain: they always want you to stay calm, not show your emotional highs and lows. Have you felt emotionally controlled before? That’s a plain. And when you die and your heartbeat stops, the line on the machine you are attached to shows a plain; a plain life from birth to death. This poem is flat-lining: it’s dead. Mirages are shimmering, glitzy sirens like the Lorelei that lure you to keep travelling across the plain (beware of plains-wanderer’s mounds, road trains, bored plains-people, and death). Plains of the world unite as one – the prairie, the tundra, all plains come together and adopt a flat earth policy. But then, see, if you’re in a plane and you look down, the plain is not plain, it is: Creased, Cracked, Contoured, Colourful

I

Now

Have

A

Different

View

Of

The

Plain.

© Neil Dufty

Fly

Standard

Black-shouldered Kite (3)

Don’t you wish you could fly?

Leave the ground and touch the sky?

Don’t you want to break the mould?

Be strong? Be brave? Be tough? Be bold?

There you lie, thinking of what can be,

Banal life preventing you to be free,

Weighted down by routine, daily pain,

A prisoner coupled to ball and chain.

So look for the wings within your reach,

Fix them on, so the sage would teach,

Be Pegasus, take flight towards the sun,

Don’t give up till you’re number one.

© Neil Dufty

The Procrastinator

Standard 
I almost didn’t write this poem
I wondered, I pondered
Walked around my home.

I thought of an excuse not to write
Fed the pet, placed a bet
Went and got a bite.

I went for walk around the block
To clear the mind, find a line
I must have writer’s block.

I turned the computer on again
Stared at the screen, at a scene 
I was finding this a pain.

I almost put off procrastinating
What a shame, no words came
Sat there contemplating... 

We almost didn’t save the Earth
Thought of money, of our tummy
Didn’t know what it was worth. 

© Neil Dufty

Poem about the rubbish in our oceans

Standard

Plastics in The Ocean

THE GREAT PACIFIC GARBAGE PATCH*

Now
We’re in the North Pacific Gyre
To the horizon, a flotilla of plastic flotsam
Hey, there’s even the odd tyre!

We’re in the doldrums of PET remains
Bobbing up and down like sailing boats
Far from the shipping lanes.

We’re in a mire of goopity goop
A slowly spinning whirlpool of waste
A ‘messpool’ of plastic poop.

Future
“This is the best eco-tour of the fabulous five hundreds! So fly on over for a once-in-a-lifetime experience and join us for the Fantastic Plastic Tundra Tour across part of the spellbinding Northern Plastific Ocean. There’s solid pristine plastic as far as the eye can see, borne from over five hundred years of natural accumulation. You’ll be amazed at the white wilderness expanse; wonder at our plastic effigies of extinct animals like the seal, the polar bear; marvel at the size of our plastic Blue Whale – a species that once roamed the vast waters below. Far from the rat-race of our land masses you can even shed your breathing mask and take in our sterilised air. Relax in the comfort of our air conditioned skidoos that float effortlessly across the plastic ice. And then brace yourself for an exhilarating ride up Tyre Mountain from where you can take in the full expanse of the eerie, white wonderland similar to that former frozen landscape: The Arctic. And for the ultimate in ultimate experiences…bungie off a massive tyre cliff stopping only centimetres from the rock-hard plastic icesheet. This and much more to explore with our company: Plastiglorious Tours. And don’t forget our motto – ‘A Plastic Tour will mould your life!’”

(Author’s note: * There sadly is such a place)

© Neil Dufty