Olympics 2012
Our species believes it progresses without limitation
Offer coaches more money
We shout when a swimmer wins silver that's no inspiration
Our consumption of carbon turns climate to high agitation
It's too hot and sunny
We complain as we gobble more fuel without limitation
We want it all faster we scream at computerisation
This program's not funny
We shout as we wait modem struggling without inspiration
Long essays aren't worthy of effort in their compilation
Twitter leaps like a bunny
We'll get there before we can start without limitation
We'll leave this poor planet too messy for our habitation
Our toast needs more honey
New fields are required for our plunder and fresh inspiration
Our species might pause but no worries there'll be good mutation
Waste goes down the dunny
As humans pound forward no burden of care limitation
We deserve only winners our species the sole inspiration
Jill Sutton
At the Olympics
At the Sydney Olympics we sat and watched the crowd.
At one final down thirty rows in front and to the right of us there was
a young woman, who was dressed as a cheerleader
with two great big green and gold pom poms,
and whenever the music started
she would stand up and do some
elaborately rehearsed routine, waving the pom poms about
in front of the people in front of her.
She would look up at the big video screen
and if she wasn't on it she would stop dancing and sit down.
Now, of course, I know what she went to the Olympics to see,
and what we saw at the Olympics.
Mark Carkeet
Sun rituals
Surging, thudding,
blood-in-head alchemy;
dreams are thoughts.
Stale, yellowing actions?
Best intended evasions?
Half-life memories.
Pounding, rolling waves
of foam lubricate skin,
blades sever follicles.
Streaming, pulsing on skin,
bone, sudsoaps
cleanse the shell;
distant kettles sound.
China, tectonic, shifts.
Hydrogenated oxygen spills
cascading, revelling in
caffeinated sludge.
Kind cups guard the
sleepdrivers' odyssey.
Cards flash, portals acquiese,
machines print, copy,
hold us, baying,
fingers claw at words
passed, past and recalled.
Electrons dance. Flee.
Communing with nature's
bastard children; faces
of long ago, spaces claimed.
Cyberdunked into connections
lacking soul. Light. Touch
bereft of human ichor.
Medea's enchanting revenge
gains fresh blood. Poisoned gifts
intimate satiation's lure:
fulfillment, hope, unity.
We're left grasping.
Barry Gittins
Jill Sutton is a Canberra writer.
Mark Carkeet is a Brisbane Solicitor. He missed seeing Australia winning the Water Polo at the Sydney Olympics because he was abusing an American spectator at the time.
Barry Gittins is a Melbourne writer.