partyline

sir jack threw up his bucket throat to the garlic moon

crying 'our brains dropped out the back passage'

& his hoarse tribe went up the purple onion
gangbangers all riding vicki's high level symphonic flusher
a resounding pubic furcate

birds sang in rupture
cockchafers are into our flora

& the hard thing whisking missus muckle off her cloven toes
said with feeling, 'I hope your chickens turn to emus
& kick your foul house down'

& she grasping the fundament
with piscatorial shivers of intensity
shouted a handle for the biggest motion
put upon the table

little boy up with his horn & blew come
& at the crunch of daylight
the pianist flaked on ragtime

This poem should be recited in a loud clear voice.
Partyline was designed as a 3 part counterpoint to cover 3 notions of partyline.

1. The old telephone system that was around when I was a kid where everyone had a morse code letter as a signal to answer but some people picked up all the time to get in on the gossip.

2. The come on line at parties such as 'do you come here often?'

3. The political party line the members of the party are supposed to agree on. That includes groups such as military & religious organisations, sporting clubs, anything that has a code to follow.

There are many plays on words such as the inversion ' little boy blue come blow up your horn' & that pop up when you listen to the words .. pianist sounds like penis & so on. When I was a student I worked at the Mataura meat works. The urinal in the men's quarters was called an ' Evans High Level Symphonic Flusher.' Vicki just happened to be a girl who was applied to rent the same place as us. I have nothing against her at all. Her name just seemed to be the right one to put there at the time. Maybe it's a tribute to Queen Victoria.  In his 'Autumn Testament' Jim Baxter a dead kiwi poet wrote 'the groper's bucket throat' & as a protest piece during the Vietnam War he wrote "a bucket of blood for a dollar" which was run off & handed out around the pubs. So I guess this poem which took me 18 years to nail is a tribute to Jim, an old friend who suffered but battled on anyhow.  I like the bucket throat bit but thought that many a British peer has had a bigger throat that any groper. As to Jack. Well I knew a couple of Jacks in the Northern Territory. One Irish, the other a Pom who'd arrived in Aus before WW2 & had gone bush. Both were likeable colourful derelicts living in humpies & enjoying a nip of raspberry & metho & a root once in a while once in a while. Kings of all they surveyed. I thought I could give them the honour of a mention.