Written for the funeral service of my darling mother Elaine in 2023.
This poem was written during a wild and sleepless night at Lake Crackenback in New South Wales.
On the passing of my brother in 2014, for his Memorial Service
Come, bid me farewell as I head out to sea
I’m off to another reunion
The horizon beyond is calling to me
The ocean my perfect illusion.
Push me away from the shore one last time
Cheer and laugh with me as I set course
I’m feeling the breeze and I’m trimming the sails
The forecast is clear and the weather sublime
I’m living the dream with no sense of remorse
Just a library of jokes and great tales.
Don’t pity me for the winds I was tossed
Don’t grieve for the pain of my leaving
While I agree the lost battle was tragic
There’s always a lesson to come from a cost
Your life is a tapestry ripe for weaving
And my life is part of your fabric.
So bid me farewell as I head out to sea
My bow points to an unchartered realm
The horizon beyond is calling to me
And I’m back in command of the helm.
Michael Reid, April 2014
©️ Michael Reid 2014, all rights reserved
‘“Oh that’s good, Sammy’s here, Mick’ll be okay.”
A poetic, cynical analysis of politics, unfortunately timeless….
Old people asleep under yesterday's news
A freezing denial of Capital views
Wrapped from the winter in hopeless desertion
While oil heaters soothe our leader inertia
The Ministers gag until Parliament stands
No solvent like recess for washing the hands.
Carousel fever, polepidemic
Power the plague, and glory symptonic
Good men and true have succumbed to the curse
Humanity's syphillis dressed as nurse
More power prescribed as cure for the ill
Sinecure sanctity, smoothest of pills.
Ignorant rhetoric will always appease
A ravenous thirst for mass marketing sleaze
Confidence, colour and loads of compassion
Offering silk from pork auricle rations
Bidding for destiny's role of Messiah
A flourishing specie, Earnest Pariah.
Barely beneath this posturing swagger
Is hidden a sheathed amorphous dagger
Policies hacked from pre-polling-booth crass
Poverty, pestilence, pain for the mass
Tear-streaked appeals or national fervour
Fail to dissuade the starving from murder.
Enter the honest man seeking endorsement
Shouting the truth from podium and pavement
But truth lacks conviction and wreaks of decline
So parasites push for the cosy sublime
Exit the honest man broken and bloody
Onward the bureaucrat smiling and ruddy.
Michael Reid
July 1992
© Michael Geoffrey Reid 1992, all rights reserved
As Autumn recalls the Capital's beauty
(Wasted foliage dying in style)
Government Ministers head to their duty
To gather a case of denial
The Cabinet meets in the plush furnished room
Having pranced for reporters outside
They're all looking splendid in mid-career bloom
Where their egos and ethics collide
"Agenda" begins the paper before them
Yet below it the page is quite bare
Members methodically ponder this portent
With well practised omniscient stares
The P.M. appears looking cool and robust
His suit of the best foreign label
Then speaks in a manner designed to disgust
The roughest of men at the table
"Some backbencher mentioned the dole queues to me
And the Balance of Payments, and stress
Well let me explain so we all can agree
The real issue which we must address
"There's only one cause in Australia today
That is truly worth fighting about
And that's whether we'll still be drawing our pay
When the '93 voters are out
"Real issues and cold facts are not to be seen
From this moment and until the poll
The object of course is a giant smokescreen
To make Hewson and Fightback! look droll
"This week we shall force a debate on the flag
And next week we'll sing a new anthem
And if any democrat vetos a gag
We'll hold his fat pension for ransom
"We're the battler's friend and the nation's elite
And we care for our comrades, amen
But how can we help if we're out on the street
Where we'd be useless scum-bags like them
"We must keep our efforts directed and clear
Away from these pointless distractions
And if any Member should cry like a steer
I'll castrate his whole bloody faction
"Well Gentlemen let us return to our task
To carry us through the election
And if we survive you might venture to ask
Was Keating the new resurrection.
Michael Reid
May 1992
© Michael Geoffrey Reid 1992, all rights reserved
A representation of a dream I had on the same night as With Lennon in Heaven
A representation of a dream from the night before.
A reflection following one of many times I’ve been defrauded. Sucker for punishment…
Written at Moruya Heads in 1978 during a road trip with my old school mate Harry. I added the chorus in 2019.
Reaching from a wind-swept dream, oh yeah
A silent pleasure-ground
Of smiling sun
And dancing seas, eternity above,
A fire within,
A fire within.
Sailing, gliding, sifting promises
Of love-dried sand through answered cries;
A seagull diving, I above, unclothed
And free, licking salted lips of time -
And life, a fresh-blown memory
On morning’s eyes.
Oh the wind-swept dream
Oh the smiling sun
Moruya memories
When the world was one
Oh the wind-swept dream
And the smiling sun
Fading memories
One by one
Alive, enchanted, feeling with the sky
And for a world apart, a past denied
A dream embraced, my wind-swept dream,
My sailing, silent carousel of love,
This freshness draining tears to sighs,
And pleasure to our Mother’s mastery.
Oh the wind-swept dream
Oh the smiling sun
Moruya memories
When the world was one
Oh the wind-swept dream
And the smiling sun
Fading memories
One by one
Fading memories
One by one
Fading memories
One by one
Moruya Heads, November 1978 (as amended)
© Michael G Reid 1978-2019, all rights reserved
This was essentially the original version, before it was turned into a song.
A hilltop of green saw the soldier,
In pain as he cried to the mist;
For the soldier saw only his father,
In death to a black morningʼs fist.
Persephone watched from a rise
And sighed for the pain at her ʻneath,
And the father in white watched beside,
As the young soldier courted the wreath.
ʻI have but the one life to giveʼ he cried,
And felt his judgement true,
And then he wept for truth to wilt
And faith to drown in dew.
ʻAs againʼ cried the thoughtless Aegean,
ʻI have lost only morningʼs attire;
But the prayer for a tear of remembrance
Is the wood for the next mourningʼs fire.ʼ
Sweet Demeterʼs child spake at last
With a strength for the dying to learn,
That the voice of the winter be broken
As the harvests of honour return:
ʻFor the dew shall once more breed afresh
And shall plunder fateʼs deepest domain,
And while man follows peace through the darkness
He may never wear deathʼs coat in vain.ʼ
ʻAnd so hold the courage of lightʼ cried his father
ʻAnd would to the tunnel unseen -
And feel in the nightʼs dew a warning
And see, in the morning, the green.ʼ
Not brooding in the clammy light
The Aegean took death by the sword,
And headed in time for the darkness,
And soldiered the light by his word.
I wrote this poem shortly after finishing high school, around the time of my 18th birthday.
We left the cries to find the heart,
And headed north to pillars new:
Then found the place we hoped would be,
But never thought, could never see.
We rang the bell and crawled inside
To lovers high on nightly gin,
Of skies and breathing honey beds
In snow of old, yet newly fed.
The turkish camel coat addressed
As if to speak, or clear its throat,
And love returned in dripping burns
As stifled memories to learn.
Night shining over wandʼring eyes
As clever owls fought natureʼs minds -
Yet silent, fearing grassy tombs
Of clouds coersed by butter-wombs.
Together praying into webs
Of mothball eggs on pillow heads,
We cried aloud to desert ears
In barking cracked and willow tears:
Please let us leap into that mound,
And be devoured by deathʼs delights,
By Natureʼs past, where love the song
As manʼs dry fear, in graves belong.
The beacon, as a lover, turned to dust,
Yet spoke in language without sound
To say, you may return to love or lust,
But never to your wishes - all was still.
Michael Reid
February 1977 (as amended)
© Michael G Reid 1977-2011, all rights reserved
I see the light, I feel the fire,
Piously burning as the souls of tired
Adventurers search for the valleyʼs heaven -
Mystical, avenging, uneventful mode,
Still fearing callousness of heart yet
Hoping then, as now, but even fonder
For the tireless stream of memories to come.
I cry for time, I know the signs,
Hindering all mortal, meaningless thought,
All frigid dying sanctities of mind;
For those who overthrow shall be divine,
But not as this, for now they are dry
As dusty bread, and shall remain only
To feed the soberly judged, the captive soul.
I wish to rise, in death of mind,
To be the hinge on the prophetʼs door,
And as such to ponder on the wise
And smile, as a child, at the blind.
Clarity in death of fostered fears,
Flowing like a hundred intermingled loves,
As one, free for life, in beautyʼs web.
Michael Reid
Woollahra, NSW Australia
October 1976 (as amended)
© Michael G Reid 1976-2011, all rights reserved.
A little poem I wrote of our splendid Day Five:
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