We now have appointed at great expense our own Poet Laureate - Frank Faust hand delivers his missives to our door in a beat up orange Datsun 120y with a black vinyl top. Frank also has his own pages chock full of the goodness of sublime poetry and writings here - http://tales-of-faust.com/

We have a page of ARABIC WAR POEMS: Baghdad is now like Beirui t in 1982 when it was besieged by Israel. Other Iraqi cities will soon be a terrible mixture of siege and civil strife, making them even more like Beiruit then. These are some poems about that time.

Wednesday 26 March 2003 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ a shoe of frustration I said you 've misinterpreted me that isn't what I meant she said so what did you mean then I said I didn't really know but it wasn't what she thought she said well that's a cop-out I think I've called you on this one and you won't admit it I said no yep she said I got you and then she walked I thought she's wrong she's wrong it isn't true I may have spoken out loud before I strode away kicking a small shell-burst of dust up into the innocent air with all the vented force of an irritability I could hardly contain within my tight-laced shoe of quite minimal destruction

Monday 24 March 2003 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ confusing realities (a sound of thunder) Good morning. I am in Baghdad. It is one o'clock in the morning here.The weather is fine. Except for the bombing. Radio interview with a resident of Baghdad, 25 March, 2003 I thought I heard the sound of thunder but the clouds are light and high there is sunshine it was a low threatening rumble though I see a father and his son trimming lawn-edgings on the street and it seems they heard nothing it was a sound like an impending storm of hail yet golfers are unhurried playing out the ninth on the course that parallels the Aspendale wetlands I was sure I heard the sound of thunder but it must have come from the television from the Persian Gulf where each night now is a tempest of unceasing noise where the earth seems to tremble and the lightning flashes fire on and off like a faulty neon signboard that blazes right across the sky until dawn I think I better step outside the house think it's time I breathed clean air I need a better grip on these confusing realities

Sat 22 March 2003 ~~~~~~~~~~ a poet at war He's like the bird in a cage in a pit in a tunnel, and he sings just to celebrate air. Don't you love to hear his tune, the song of life? Doesn't it make your heart beat sound a little stronger? He is the bird in a cage in a pit in a tunnel, where light won't fall any more. Where the air has turned bad. Can you touch the emptiness, feel the silence grow? He was the voice at the centre of the heart. He used to sing to celebrate air, loved the sound of a song. Until the light fell away. Until the air could not be breathed any more, and sound wouldn't come. Sat 22 March 2003 ~~~~~~~~~~ Baghdad rain, or a movie? ~~~~~~~~~~ Would you like a cup of tea, dear? They're fighting in Iraq. Sugars two, milk for you, no biscuits please they make me wheeze and did you notice they're lighting up Baghdad? Let's spend the evening with the TV, (are flares all green, or is it just the sheen from lenses made for night?) because they've thrown a war inside Iraq, and they might be raining down on Baghdad, but we're all right, safe here at home the house is warm and I'm cosy, are you, too? If it gets too bad or noisy, there's a truly excellent movie on channel twenty-two.

resigning from australia Appeared in: Dancing Shadows – ‘An anthology by members of the Fellowship of Australian Writers (F.A.W.) : Bayside Writers Group, 2002 – 2003’ – Melbourne, Australia are there no flowers in Australia? well that cow Hansen was a passing thing just a racist blip in a multicultural landscape really nothing to worry about and we all knew sense would prevail not saying 'sorry' to the aborigines was hard to take but you know where these buggers are coming from they're frightened some poor part-black prick with a left-wing lawyer on government money will use an apology to squeeze compensation out of the rest of us it doesn't feel right but you can sort of follow the logic and the children overboard thing was... well look there was an election to be won and they knew damn well they were on a winner half the bloody country is frightened to death of strangers that are capable enough to steer across thousands of miles of nasty ocean in leaky boats god knows what they could do if we let them run loose and now we can all be absolutely certain that we elected a mob of sneaky lying shonks to rule the country I'd hate to have to die wondering yeh, yeh anyone can make a little currency trading mistake that costs the tax payers five or six billion dollars at least they didn't have to give it to the aborigines it's no secret what a turn-on and what a come-on fourteen year old girls can be for some grown men so the governor-general not acting on a church sex case back when he used to be a bishop and suggesting it could have been the girls fault and not the vicars is pretty understandable I suppose for a man of his generation and clerical background going bare knuckles over the fitness of a high court judge to preside over cases about the abuse of kids based on the judges homosexuality and a badly faked car log-book is par for the course for the rabid parliamentarian running a vendetta against the judge for years so it's no big deal in any case he wasn't actively encouraged to abuse parliamentary privilege of course he wasn't and as usual the prime-bloody-minister knew nothing about it at all so he's not to blame and it's really nothing to do with the government but the flowers have done it having to listen to a captain of the Sally's on radio telling how a little girl has been in this country for months all the time behind that bastard razor wire in some government-funded prison camp for asylum seekers that they've parked in the naked forty-five-degree desert with only one small tree in the compound that a dog can piss up against and her asking if this country had any fucking flowers in it that's too much this guy from the salvo's told how they held an appeal and he went there with some bunches stacked into his car just pretty normal arrangements from local shops a few native blooms thrown in multiple buds wherever possible so that as many kids as possible could have one each well the poor mongrel says he only lasted a half hour before he had to leave so he could have a cry he was that overwhelmed by the appalling gratitude and the lingering hope and the deadness in some of the eyes shit I nearly howled myself just from listening to him there's people there locked up for over eighteen months there's people there throwing themselves on razor wire there's people there on hunger strike there's people there sewing their lips together there's people there thought they were escaping tyranny there's people there that know an Australia that I've never seen and there's children there don't even know if we've got flowers we call this the lucky country lucky be buggered the kids got some flowers churches and others gave them some flowers all right but I've had enough I'm resigning from Australia until some bastard in government can give me a reason to stop feeling ashamed I quit