'In the Race for Fraud'

It’s not how good you are

That makes for the best leader

But how much you count;

Two and two don’t make three

But it’s close enough and

When your first and last names

Are the same, it doesn’t give

You a double claim in the race

For fraud

If two and two don’t make three

Count and count again until you

Get what you want: practice,

Practice! That’s how you get an

Accountancy degree — the people’s

Decree: Forget democracy, forget

Peace, forget the initial results.

Best vote for the Commission who

Will decide your ruler.

Martha Landman

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-28199066

Martha Landman. Martha Landman writes in North Queensland, Australia. Her latest work has appeared in egg poetry, Beakful and Jellyfish Whispers. 

Culling the World

It’s 4.32 am and a motorbike

throttles the neighbourhood awake

A sound so ferocious at first I

feared he was going to kill

himself and soon wished he would

Lying awake on this drizzly winter morning

I find no need to conspire global depopulation —

we’re fast culling the world:

49 troops killed in Ukraine plane

239 passengers in missing Malaysia Flight  

111 killed by rebels in Sudan’s Darfur —

200 000 since the conflict started in 2003 —

1 033 000 violent deaths in Iraq’s war

Untold numbers died in Africa’s genocides

7 killed in Anand road mishap in India

41 plus more in a train crash

How many in the great world wars,

Korea, Gallipoli and Afghanistan

How many teenagers on our roads,

family members at each other’s hands,

victims of home invasions and rape

Add to it the airborne ebola virus, the AIDS

virus, deadly viruses behind SARS and MERS,

mine accidents, tooth decay, gluttony and life

And in that slumber, while drifting back to sleep I

wonder: Were there any grand plans for Eden’s garden?

Tension increases in Ukraine 

© Martha Landman

  Martha Landman writes in North Queensland, Australia. Her latest work has appeared in egg poetry, Beakful and Jellyfish Whispers.

Courting on Foot

O my prince!  How colourful

the jungle sounds that

rush down the mountain stream

and silence your croak

How intimate your purple

seduction; your nameless

silence, your wishful hope

But you can dance! You can dance!

Your elegant foot-flagging calls

my name every time it hits the ground

In the water mirror I see my universe

My prince, I hear your twelve-verse

song and submit to you in a life-long duet.

Here is the link http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/may/08/dancing-frog-species-discovered-in-indian-jungle-mountains

©Martha Landman

BIO:  Martha Landman writes in North Queensland, Australia, where nature and the news are the muse. Her work has appeared in various journals.

You Don’t Get Away With These Things

            Life isn’t a dress rehearsal.

-- John Lennon

He denies murder refrains through

the courts, the woods, the softness

of my skin; penetrates the anniversary

of innocence falling off a balcony.

The fragrance of atonement is cheaper

than a finger for a finger, so we light 

candles for the genocides, we mourn

as we lay our wreaths along the road.

Passion is not a crime on Valentine’s

Day; free tickets and e-cards pay the

debt while old peace talks masterly

capture the pureness of heart from afar.

Freedom has a nutty flavour these days,

tucked away in third-generation bikie

gang outhouses - like truth, or stolen

water, conveniently discarded on a breeze.

Mountains move in the fear of missing

out on another delight, or on revolt against

holy wars for that matter. All the evidence

travels on roads layered with justice.

© Martha Landman

Oscar Pistorius trial
Martha writes in tropical North Queensland, Australia.

Blood Cry

The serenity in Abruzzo valley lies shattered. Vineyards framed by weathered stone houses unveil sad songs to a little San Pietro della Ienca church. Dogs sniff for stolen blood along ski slopes, the smell of iron like death in the air. A pontiff’s love in gold and glass soars like a speck of dust astir. Every new year in blood- soaked cassocks, every papacy distraught.

©Martha Landman

Search for stolen papal blood

 Martha Landman writes poetry in tropical North Queensland, Australia. Her latest work appeared in Eunoia Review, The Camel Saloon and other journals.

I Hear No Music

Here I am breathless, motionless
in Fort Worth minding Texan law

The breeze gently whispers my
name across Trinity River

I am the music I’ll never hear
the Nicaragua I’ll never see
I am my brother’s raven hair

After seven weeks in limbo the
authorities concede - common
sense relinquishes my father’s pain.

 Laws about Life and Death in Texas

©Martha Landman

Martha Landman writes poetry in tropical North Queensland, Australia. Her latest work appeared in Eunoia Review, The Camel Saloon and other journals.

http://www.economist.com/news/united-states/21595028-rare-case-rouses-passions-among-pro-choice-and-pro-life-alike-brain-dead-and-pregnant

Self-portrait

I faced the screen and painted a dream
In rhythm with a mourning crowd
Three of us, like wedding guests,
Hell-bent on mind-moving moments
Demanded that our walk to viral freedom
Be justified, be glorified

My paint dripped in rainbow colours
And for a minute there I thought it
Was Madiba’s hand I shook, but when
I heard the crowd: Ubuntu! Obama!
I set the imprisoned fingers free,
Surprised at my self in the Cuban eyes.

©Martha Landman
Obama at Mandela's memorial service

Martha Landman writes in tropical North Queensland, Australia.

The Broken Economic Clock

A found poem for Jody Elliss

I couldn’t leave it alone when I
found it lying on the
investor’s floor

An economic clock
broken like pieces of bread,
shared amongst the poor.

Big men trip over commodity prices,
trade tigers all over the globe
rising, rising
their overseas
reserves

rating
tighter and tighter
without interest

falling backwards
head over heels.

Unemployment increases
in the mean time
between the rise
and the fall

and the clock
starts
all over
again.

© Martha Landman

The Global Economy

Martha Landman is addicted to words in any form and loves to play with them.

For the Common Good

Three Catholic men breakfast at the cliff’s edge

Obeying eternal rhythm in the July sun

They sweep the canyon floor, slightly drunk

with nature’s joy – they’ve heard of a royal

child and they ask the moon to call its name

in an old-fashioned way.  All they think of

is beans and eggs – a hopeless misfit on a

plate.  They bid the stones to dance a royal

oak before the baby falls asleep.  The white

twitter of the birds colours the sky in red 

and blue until, light-headed, a lone fiddler

unhinges the silence in c-minor.  

© Martha Landman

Royal Baby Boy

Martha Landman lives and writes in North Queensland, Australia. Her writing feeds off the news and a rich imagination.

Sunday Review

Simon Marks started the week of for us with his poem "Send us Ed – or we’ll cry" 
which commented on the seeming inability of the world's superpower to find one person. 
On Tuesday Martha Landman's "Musical Chairs, A Formidable Game" commented wittily on the bloodsport known as Australian politics. It's easiest to think of it as "The Sopranos" They may sincerely regret whacking you but they will whack you.
 On Wednesday Carolyn Cornthwaite's The Future's Bright continued her excellent run of poems lately. This one captured, succinctly , the feelings of despair which are becoming the new normal in many parts of the world.
Luigi Pagano's Final Curtain gave a glimpse of the very far future and who might inherit the earth after us. It isn't the meek after all, it's the microbes. Wash your hands, folks!
Saturday brought us Martha Landman's "A Piece of the Road"a fine poem poem about Nelson Mandela. The image of the Cape Cormorant is very powerful.
Have a good week folks. There are plenty of stories out there to make poems about, it really is all happening at the moment.

A Piece of the Road

I could not imagine that the future I was walking toward could compare in any way to the past I was leaving behind.

-- Nelson Mandela, Long Walk to Freedom


I am the white-breasted
cormorant of the Cape
of Good Hope, I will spread
my wings above a cloud-
less rainbow sky.

You wouldn’t walk against your grain,
holding the aspirations of millions in your DNA
knowing that freedom is more than a step away.

That momentous Rivonia speech moved the sun and
possibility rippled across a country white with fear.
Quartus de Wet, with averted eyes, gave you life and

never witnessed the alchemy of twenty seven years:
a path spiralling towards holiness, embodied
and signatured in colourful Madiba shirts.

And here we are still imprisoned in short sighted
mediocrity, still not honouring the truth
that oppression violates humanity / Ubuntu.

It is not political freedom, but the freedom from self
that has become your legacy. A man dignified, liberated,
tampered into maturity, restored our faith in humanity.

Paved in goodness and forgiveness
The road to freedom now seems short
Yet, many more hills to climb to
work, bread, water and salt for all.

At last the future has arrived and your spirit rests
at ease. Eternally optimistic, you celebrate the move
to banquet with God and all the other saints.

For your single eyed-focus, your Zen-like discipline
the smile that won our hearts and liberated
us from fear, we thank you, Madiba: Nkosi Sikelel’ iAfrika!

I am the white-breasted
cormorant of the Cape
of Good Hope, I have spread
my wings above a cloud-
less rainbow sky.

© Martha Landman

Nelson Mandela's life and times

Martha is a South-African-born Australian poet who resides and writes in tropical North Queensland, Australia.

Musical Chairs, A Formidable Game

1.
A time to reign, a time to say goodbye
A time to swap chairs and play to the music
A new beat to an old tune: ladies first.

2.
Then, give this man another chance
Let him take the favourite armchair
While we discuss last week’s history

3.
A nation fast asleep staggers to the morning news
Turns over a new leaf and finds comfort
In a leader who changes the colour of his hair.

4.
I wanted Kevin, I got Julia
I wanted Julia, I got Kevin
Either way, I am a lucky man.

© Martha Landman

Kevin Rudd defeats Julia Gillard 57-45 in Labor leadership ballot, paving way for a return to PM

Martha Landman has published poetry in various online poetry magazines like Everyday Poets, The New Verse News, Eunonia Review, Dr Huley's Snake Oil Cure, and others.  She lives, loves and writes in tropical North Queensland Australia.