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Thylazine: The Australian Journal of Arts, Ethics & Literature                                                                                                                                   #6/thyla6k-bm AUSTRALIAN POETS SERIES 6 The Poetry of Billy Marshall-Stoneking Selected by Coral Hull [Above] Photo of Billy Marshall-Stoneking by Billy Marshall-Stoneking, 2000. I Caught/(a found poem) I Learning America, 1951-1969 I Jogging I Caught (a found poem) wellington, dec 10 - police here are seeking a person who placed three steel spikes pointing upwards on the judge's chair in wellington supreme court. when mr justice o'regan resumed a sitting after lunch the needles pierced him but did not cause serious injury the chair was later checked for fingerprints Published in Off the Page (Penguin Books Australia, 1984). Learning America, 1951-1969 In America, the Life, the Land, the Law is not learned sitting on the earth beside a campfire with smoke & old people's voices chanting, chanting of the Ancestors ... but from the television set; on highways; from billboards; from a sequence of Burma Shave signs & barns painted with "Bull Durham - Born in the Woods - Chewing Tobacco". From black guys with no names pushing brooms across checkerboard floors in dingy waiting rooms. From waitresses with chewing gum smiles: high priestesses of swing shift officiating in the ritual of ice water & patty melt. "Double your pleasure, double your fun, with Double-Mint, Double-Mint, Double-Mint ..." Guns - every boy wants one. That's what the Sears-Roebuck catalogue sez. America - Diet of image, breakfast of metaphor. From the absolute salesmen of ragged souls darker than sunglasses outside the Alamo; on accordion street corners where talent goes begging & men with sandwich boards praise the Lord, aching for a bottle of lunch; where little boys lose their Moms & don't want to grow old and die, but vote for the Bomb instead, like it was the secret of eternal youth. And find success with blond instead of Erector Set. Oceans of love, definite as the sound of a sea-shell. I learned to tie my shoelaces in the back of a green '51 Oldsmobile summer vacation; past mechanical bellboys with light-bulb thumbs, waving: "VACANCY", "VACANCY" ... ; past wrestling posters obscuring circus: Pepper Gomez kissing the crucifix in the black trunks on Saturday nights in a one-fall match with Mr Fuji. I learned America from the inside, out. America - A river that starts with Huck Finn & ends with Springsteen's Greatest Hits. A postcard collection of motels & cafes. A prize at the bottom of the cereal box. A little dab'll do ya. At Wonder Cave in San Marcos, Texas, a nickel bought one minute of dancing chicken - the caged bird high-stepping it to the tune of Yankee Doodle Dandy as the hot-plate heated up under its feet. In 1956, "Davvvvy ... Daaaavy Crockett, the king of the wild frontier ..." In buckskin jackets and coon-skin caps we kept the neighborhood safe from the Indians & Mexicans. Walt Disney taught us social Darwinism - all those poor animals torn apart while the cameras kept on rolling. The Living Desert gave way to the Dying Jungle of Vietnam; the survival of the fittest, & the richest ... all those poor animals torn apart while the cameras kept on rolling ... & rolling ... America - Where everything is gigantic, amazing, incredible, symbolic, & having a nice day, obligatory. A sagebrush vista in a Saturday morning picture theatre, tie yippy yie yea! Before the film, we voted in a kiddie straw poll - the 1956 Presidential race. Most of us stuffed our tickets into Eisenhower's box because he had a kind face, & cos we'd heard our mothers say Ike would make a nice grandfather. I suspect that's still how Americans vote today. Burn Ethyl, Burn Julius ... burn, burn! America - From the pages of the Wall Street Journal to another cliché; as real as the beatniks of Time. And evil was personified as black, as red, & blind. We learned the wisdom of the tribe, not from ancient song cycles but from the Top 40, & a hospital that turned into a parking lot in 1959. From crossings and re-crossings of the continent; from two-headed calves in Mississippi; and pralines in Louisiana; from tornado warnings in the heart o' Texas to hot beer & lousy food outside Tucson with its adobe gas stations & totem pole pumps. America - In Triple-A-approved motels where a quarter got you thirty minutes of TV & Ronald Reagan on Sunday nights appearing for G.E., selling toasters & washing machines: "At General Electric, progress is our most important product." Diet of image, breakfast of metaphor. America - Heading for the top or slumping toward the weekend, we learned its myths and legends; from baseball trading cards to the Pledge of Allegiance: "One nation, under God, indivisible ..." I can remember when they added "God". I can remember Sputnik, looking up at the stars over Texas a coupla weeks before Halloween. I remember Elvis; I remember when "rock'n'roll" became part of the language; I can remember Bobby Thomson's home-run that won the Giants the pennant; & my parents remembered Lou Gehrig - first baseman for the New York Yankees - dying of a nerve disorder. His farewell speech to 50,000 fans, featured on a Columbia "Masterworks" - KL5000 - his voice echoing over the ballpark: "Today (Today) I consider myself (I consider myself) the luckiest man (the luckiest man) on the face of the earth (on the face of the earth)." America - From the eyes of Lombard to the timing of Keaton; from Kansas City jazz & hip-flask blues; Me-me-me-me-me-me-me-me-me : finding the pitch in the key of "me" - Almost everybody remembers the words; almost no-one remembers the tune, & already the song is ending. Ending with Benny "Kid" Parrett dying under the glove Emile Griffith, coast-to-coast; America - Ending on Elm Street in Dallas near the umbrella man; ending in Chicago with the whole world watching; ending in Holly's plane, in Joplin's veins; in a motherless bar outside Spokane with the idiot box tuned to the football game a century after the gold rush; ending in Australia with nobody home ... I learned the myths, the legends, the hype, the symbols, happy-ever-afters" ... America - Diet of image, breakfast of metaphor. Jogging "You call what you do work? That's not work. Try running up & down 15 steps maybe two, three hundred times a day, waiting tables. Now that's work," she said. "What'd you do today?"       "I wrote a poem."       About jogging." "You hate jogging," she said.       "Yeah, I know," I said.       "It's about why I don't jog." "That's easy," she said. "You don't jog because you're lazy. How many joggers do you know?"       "I've watched them," I said.       They're everywhere." "Some research. Is that as close as you get?"       "Close enough," I said. "It was exhausting.       I lost a coupla kilos thinking about it." "You're full of shit."       "Maybe," I said, "but have you ever noticed?" "Noticed what?"       "The fear.       They're not running for nothing.       You can see it in the eyes.       It's almost desperate.       Now, take someone like Mr Mislimov." "You think too much," she said. "A little exercise would do you good."       "All right, all right," I said.       "But I'll take mine walking." She didn't have time to discuss it. She was running late for her squash lesson. I didn't get to tell her about Mr Mislimov. He lived to be 166. The secret of his success was:       "What's the hurry?" And he only had one rule: "Don't eat unless you're hungry". About the Poet Billy Marshall-Stoneking Billy Marshall-Stoneking has been living and working in Australia since the early 70s. In the 1980s, he edited The Stories of Obed Raggett, the first collection of original stories written by an Aboriginal writer in his own language (published bi-lingually in Pintupi/English parallel text). In 1991, he co-wrote and staged the first-ever poet-written, poet-acted and produced, verse play, Call It Poetry/Tonight, at the Sydney Theatre Company's Studio Theatre at the Wharf, that was subsequently aired on Australian national television. Billy's first, full-length dramatic play, Sixteen Words For Water was published by Harper/Collins in 1991. Much of Billy's work has been influenced by his long association with tribal Aboriginal people. He is conversant in several Aboriginal dialects, and his film documentaries - Desert Stories, Nosepeg's Movie and Pride & Prejudice draw heavily on his time spent in the desert. Among his many script-editing credits is the Australian film, Chopper. Currently, he is head of the MA writing programme at the Australian, Film, Television and Radio School in Sydney.    [Above] Photo of Billy Marshall-Stoneking by Billy Marshall-Stoneking, 2000. I Next I Back I Exit I Thylazine No.6 (September, 2002)