Pickings: Selected handcrafted poetry by Karel Reus

  Tweet memories Karel Reus: June 2023 A lament for the silencing of the bush. In response to the Bards topic for June 2023: "Songbird" I venture out into the bush, as is my wont — with water bottle, vegan picnic lunch, a big hat and a well-thumbed copy of What Bird Was That ? [1] I hope to catch a glimpse of the fabled Southern Pied Yellow-banded Grub-chucker — wot was in these parts—once. Will I, instead come across a remnant sparrow or fancy that I hear a distant carol from a magpie of blessed memory? My present ornithological ramblings are marked by absences and memories— and regrets that I and my kind have stuffed up— comprehensively. What noisome chirping will greet the rambles of my descendants, or will a robot’s artifice do the honours from their ‘phones? Extinction is so permanent and yet, one hopes, this growing silence presages new beginnings—maybe… The big question is whether I and my lot will be around to hear it. The “Good Book” says: “See, I

  Let's privatise the church Karel Reus Let’s privatise the church let’s corner the market on scarce resources such as forgiveness and compassion and inside information on absolutely everything. Let’s sell shares and indulge shareholders with dividends including privileged access to eternal life and the means of grace and the paraphernalia of holiness. Let’s focus on growth by way of mergers and takeovers. Let’s create a cryptocurrency of spirituality to replace the economy of dogma and belief and to divert attention from a threadbare faith. Let’s trim the workforce to its bare bones and indoctrinate it with a sense of duty rather than a knowledge of rights; and assure the workers that the whole shebang is for their benefit. Let’s convince the teeming masses that their raison d’être is charity rather than justice; that gross inequality is the best we can expect from an economic status quo that sponsors a few fat cats and allows a little bit of trickling down.