Author: Doug Jacquier

Pure escapism

/ Doug Jacquier / 3 Comments

I’ll bet she’s the type that

secretly reads door-stop Gothics

and would go for a square cleft jaw

and strong silence

if she could get them.

 

I’ll bet she’s the type that

secretly craves champagne while drafting shift rosters

and would go for remembered birthdays

and the smell of someone else’s cooking

if she could get them.

 

I’ll bet she’s the type that

secretly plans Pacific cruises to ideologically unsound ports

and would go for the ship

and the more sensitive members of the crew

if she could get them.

 

I’ll bet she’s the type that

secretly cries in all the parts old Hollywood intended

and would go for moustaches in white dinner jackets

(dying of unrequited love for torch singers with her looks)

if she could get them.

 

I’ll bet she’s the type that

could move brazenly to the tropics

to have leave without pain

and to find a warmer home for her secrets.

And she would get them.

Journey to an ever-changing sea

/ Doug Jacquier / 5 Comments

 

Each of us has travelled our own thirsty roads

to arrive, spray-faced, in our own seaside town

and walked our own historical lanes

in search of where we’ve been

so that we might know where we are going.

 

Can it be that the point of the journey

is the journey itself

and that our gravest danger

is arriving at each town

clinging to our memories of the last one?

 

At the breakwater of our learning,

we risk piling rock upon rock of yesterday,

building marinas of the mind

only to wake, breached,

by the tidal wave of tomorrow.

 

Let journeys bring us to the destinations they will

and let the waves deliver the tide unguarded

and we may yet see the purpose

of a pointless compass

in an ever-changing sea.

I know what you’re doing, ScoMo

/ Doug Jacquier / 3 Comments

As part of my experimentation process in all forms of writing, I performed this piece at a recent heat of the SA Poetry Slam series. Suffice to say it didn’t go down too well with the predominantly personal angst-ridden young emo audience. Ah, well, to each his own.

PS – For my overseas readers:

  1. ScoMo is the universal nickname for our Prime Minister, Scott Morrison, who’s about to receive a State Dinner from Donald Trump.
  2.  The last stanza is a parody on our best known traditional folk song, Waltzing Matilda.

 

I know what you’re doing, ScoMo,

when you push the Dutton panic button

and Michaelia tells us there’s no cash left in the machine;

it’s the old magician’s trick of misdirection.

 

I know when you’re playing your Trump card, Scomo,

Of all circuses and no bread

While behind you the blind horses nod and wink for the cameras

And whistle up the dogs to bite the refugees.

 

I know what you’re doing, Scomo, making us pick sides

Telling women sleeping in cars that it’s all the greedy Boomers fault

And telling frozen Newstarters that it’s all their own fault

Because you’ve got a no-fault clause in your social contract.

 

I know what you’re doing, ScoMo,

Smiling at screen zombies who live their lives online,

And regurgitate their ignorance for eternity

and shape-shift their paranoia on to anyone but you.

 

I know what you’re doing, ScoMo,

Winding up mid-lifers running in the wait-for-age handicap

over the mortgage distance,

and playing dead-safe while they wait for the Lotto results.

 

I know what you’re doing, ScoMo,

waiting to zonk me out in front of the TV in a nursing home,

where immigrants shove shit in one end and wipe it up at the other,

while you’re waiting for your mess of parliamentary pottage.

 

But this ghost will be heard as I camp by your billabong

Despite all your snoopers and the cameras I see

I’m not happy-clapping, waiting ‘til the planet boils

I’m calling out your humbug and slamming it with glee.

 

SHIELD

/ Doug Jacquier / 12 Comments

This piece was written for this month’s Blog Battle challenge of producing a 1,000 word piece from the prompt ‘Shield’.

 

Simon’s aquiline nose, upon which perched small round glasses, conjured in Jonathon’s mind the image of a short-sighted eagle; not entirely successful as a hunter and vulnerable as prey himself.

“Your company has an impressive track record in our areas of interest, Jonathon. So what exactly can you bring to the Syndicate table that we don’t already know about?’

Jonathon’s tangled hair, with the beginnings of a grey zone, along with his fashionably stubbled cheeks, told Simon that Jonathon was not letting his youth go without a fight.

“Simon, we offer the capability to ‘translate’ linguistic nonsense and incoherent discourse into rich behaviour management data.”

“Go on.”

“I think we can agree that increasingly in this field we are finding it difficult to interpret meaning and nuance in the impoverished vocabulary of electronic communication.”

“Agreed. So, what’s your solution?”

“We started from the notion that modern meaning is hiding behind a shield of abbreviation and monosyllabic vocally-fried verbal responses, as well as contextually complex and ever-changing symbolic representations of emotions. Hence our new product, SHIELD – Synergistic High-level Integration and Extrapolation from Linguistic Disambiguation.”

Simon raised an eyebrow ever so slightly and said “Never was an acronym needed more urgently. Some examples of your success with ‘extrapolations’, if you will.”

Jonathon thought, how is it that some people in conversation can effortlessly indicate inverted commas around a phrase without using hand gestures? Must look into that later.

“Let’s start with ‘like’”

“As in Likes on Facebook?”

Jonathon tried not to transmit his internal sigh and put on his best diplomatic phrasing.

“Well, that’s an important sub-set of ‘like’ but the overall contextual unravelling requires detailed analysis of ‘like’ in language. For example, what are the deeper meanings behind someone saying “So, like, I’m in this like shopping mall and like this tattooed freak like looks at me like really weird and I’m like WTF? Like, what is his problem?”

Simon smiled wryly. “I would have thought that example would represent the antithesis of an indication of deeper meaning.”

Jonathon could feel Simon edging ever closer to the trap. “You would think so, wouldn’t you? But what if I could tell you that from that banality, in association with other intelligence from the speaker’s social media habits, we can extract rich data about their school performance, their relationship with their mother and father and what colour sneakers they will wear on any given day.”

Simon tried not to overplay his indulgent smile and his growing sense that Jonathon was trying to sell yet another short-lived app.

“Jonathon, we can already get most of that data from credit card records, social media and a myriad other sources.”

Slowly, slowly, catchee monkey, Jonathon mused.

“True, but only up to a point. Essentially that’s historical data that’s only partially predictive of future behavior. Our program can take that piece of dialogue and analyse it in real time to provide a 90% successful prediction rate of what the speaker will do today and how socially interactive they will be, based on their current physical context, including who else is in the vicinity, the number of times they use the word ‘like’ and what they are looking at in that precise moment in time.”

“And how exactly do you obtain this information”

“From their umbilical cord; their phone.”

“OK, we’ve been chatting for a while now. What can you tell me about myself that I don’t already know or the phone company doesn’t know or my ISP doesn’t know?”

“Simon, I am but a bear of little brain and my pathetically inefficient neurones can only make educated but notoriously imperfect guesses. However, our software can do exactly that once I have access to your phone.”

Simon thought he’d spotted the fatal flaw in Jonathon’s scheme.

“But what if I don’t want to give you that access by putting your software on my phone?”

“Oh, we already have our software on your phone.”

“How?”

“It’s embedded in almost all of your other useful apps.”

“But surely that’s illegal?”

“Not at all. It’s in the terms and conditions you agreed to when you downloaded those apps.”

“Who’s got time to read those?”

“Exactly. Which is how we’ve sold your soul to the Devil and acquired the rights to your first-born son.”

“What?!!!!”

Jonathon chuckled inwardly. The look on Simon’s face was priceless.

“Kidding.” He paused for effect. “Mostly.”

Simon was now truly rattled and it was Jonathon who was rattling the firmly secured cage. He decided to counter with one last haymaker.

“The example you gave was based on dialogue. My daughters only communicate with me in one word answers, grunts, sighs and eye-rolls. What’s that going to tell you?”

“Everything. Their phones never leave their sides, right? So we know what time of the day each of those actions occurred, in whose direction they were looking, who else was in the room and much more. Combined with their other electronic data and the algorithms we have developed from millions of their socio-economic peers, we can tell you what each of those grunts and eye-rolls mean, if anything.

“What do you mean ‘if anything’?”

“Some of those behaviours are simply learned reflexes, like ducking when a bird swoops, and our software knows that.”

“OK, say I’m convinced by the technology. (Jonathon heard the cage door slam shut.) What about all the ethical dilemmas it brings?”

“Simon, all of your current shareholders will be dead before that’s fully understood and you yourself will have shuffled off the mortal coil as a relatively impoverished man, leaving behind a resentful wife and children who will know what they could have had.”

Defeatedly, knowing what the Syndicate would decide, Simon said “Alright, I’ll put it to the Syndicate but I can’t promise anything.”

“Thank you, Simon, that’s all I’m asking.”

“By the way, what’s the algorithm in your product called?”

“Protocol for Assessing Relational Energy Needed with Teenagers or PARENT for short.”

An uncommon future

/ Doug Jacquier / Leave a comment

This poem emerged from a conversation with some older relatives, where I talked about a vivid memory I had of a time we shared. They looked at me as if I’d arrived from another planet and told me none of the things I recalled ever happened.

Since the elders told me I only remember myths or dreams,

I’m not sure what past I share with you.

Often enough, until now,

I assumed a shared memory space,

a common time.

 

But if none of it was real

it means we can be anything,

now and in the future,

because the past is only what we make up

from hatred and desire.

 

The challenge now is to grab this thing,

this weightless freehold,

this rule change,

and enter this corridor of a thousand doors

and dare to knock on them all.

 

I want in my remaining years

to say the unsayable and deliver the unaddressed

and release the never-to-be,

before it can hide in safe corners,

waiting for something-to-turn-up.

 

Never again will I wrap my tiny fortune,

like a sixpence,

in the corner of my childhood hankie,

waiting for the tuck shop to open

and fulfil my desires.

 

For time is the only kingdom,

the power and the glory,

for ever and ever.

And if we have no common past

we must have an uncommon future.

 

 

Not shy but retiring

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I don’t know how to be yet

when I am being nothing that I used to be

in my rapidly fading workaday world.

I don’t know how to speak the language

of nothing.

I don’t know how to begin and end the day at the same place

and radiate contentment.

I don’t know how to say the things

that a person who is alright would say.

I don’t know if I will go mad

and I don’t know how I will know when it starts,

if it starts,

or how it will end,

if it ends.

I don’t know how to say I am a writer when the words won’t,

when the words, when the ……….

I don’t know how to be nameless and hatless in a community,

to be, for all intents and purposes, irrelevant.

I don’t know how to be adrift without a network,

with no-one watching me for worrying signs

when I don’t even know what the signs are

to worry about.

I don’t yet know how to be still

long enough to be

nothing,

so I can decide

if there is any something to be.

And what if I want nothing

and to be

nothing?

Will there be anything left to love?

And will there be anything left of me to care?

Eureka

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This Eureka lemon,

this only true lemon,

this mother of all lemons,

was planted in someone’s field of seaside dreams

a generation ago.

Now in serial tenant territory

its untended bounty reaches for the sky

and rains down a citrus glut

that no gluttony can satisfy.

I box them up to share

and Mr. Across-the-road-but-one barters fish

in return for freezing the squeezings

for the summer lemon drought,

but there’s a limit to how many lemons

a street can absorb in its life.

I’m only renting the tree

but I can watch its random neglect no longer

and, having given up on myself,

I’m slowly getting it fit

and in shape for the next generation,

as I try not to think of bulldozers

and two-storey eyesores with sea views.

Amongst its criss-cross branches

I find mundane secrets

of upturned plastic bottles filled with pest bait

and a pair of men’s shorts snagged in the canopy,

a victim of wind-blown snowdropping.

Hardly Eureka moments

but a connection across the decades

to someone else who believed there was a future.

Just lousy with charm

/ Doug Jacquier / 9 Comments

Written for the Carrot Ranch‘s 99-word Flash Fiction prompt for August 22, 2019, ‘Old world charm’.

In my old world, nits were removed with kerosene, visits to the spider infested outhouse were completed with newspaper squares, mothers bored into your ears to stop the potatoes growing in there and rubbed at your face with their spit on a handkerchief, fathers twisted your ears as they dragged you to the scene of your latest sin, teachers clipped your ears to instill learning and the local copper handled juvenile delinquency with the toe of his boot. Charming. I tell my grandson but he just scratches his head. Now where did I put that kerosene?

We will not go quietly

/ Doug Jacquier / 2 Comments

As you can tell, I’m getting a bit sick of boomer bashing as the latest millennial blood sport.

 

You can honk your horns all you like

as we drive along the roads we paid for

visiting the health system we paid for

while you were at the schools we paid for

only for you to choose ignorance.

 

You can call us feeble-minded

when your life is just a screen, replicating your ignorance for eternity

and shape-shifting your faults on to anyone but you.

We’re as sane as hell

and we’re not going to take it anymore.

 

We will not be your scapegoat

(or whoever vegans blame)

for every ill in the world.

from a sick planet

to not having a job

that doesn’t involve you being rich and famous.

 

We will not be zonked out in front of TVs in nursing homes,

where immigrants shove shit in one end

and wipe it up at the other,

because you don’t want to get your hands dirty

while you’re waiting for what you think you deserve.

 

We will not sit freezing in the dark

living on bread and vegemite,

because we were structurally re-adjusted

or spent our life nurturing our country’s children,

so that you can have your mess of pottage.

 

We will not be told by politicians

when we can choose to end our life

in this God-forsaken wasteland.

We will decide when we leave

and the manner in which we make our leaving.

 

But, before we leave, we’ll embarrass you

by swearing loudly like sailors

and continuing to have sex

and throwing parties with lots of loud music

because we won’t sit in silence.

 

We will not go quietly.

Bushwhacked poetry

/ Doug Jacquier / 12 Comments

Note: Aimed at an Australian audience, though I imagine similarly execrable hackneyed forms occur in other cultures and languages.

 

I love a well-worn cliché

Where the Snowy River reigns

We don’t need no quiche, ay,

On the Oodnagalabi Plains.

 

Some doggerel out of Gundagai

Old regrets we used to know

And stone the crows that fill the sky

Along the Malonglo.

 

Our patron saint, The Banjo,

Of Waltzing Matilda fame

Makes our very hearts glow

With his verses, both halt and lame.

 

Close behind is Henry Lawson

With his tales of outback life

Though goodness knows what Freud would’ve made

Of the snake and The Drover’s Wife.

 

The Bulletin let them have their say

And the bush bards told it true

Of characters met along the way

But no Afghan, black or Jew.

 

So Akubra on and pen in hand

Churn out some turgid lines

About some Never-Never land

And make sure the bastard rhymes.