[excerpt From The Negativity Bin] Poem by B. R. Dionysius

(i) Lower than the Angels

‘Today is the first day of the rest of your life.’

(i) Woolloongabba, Brisbane 1998 AD
The first thing Helen says is,
‘If any of you touch me,
it’s assault’.
Their first session
in Job Search Training
with Work Corrections Australia.
The Maori man beside Baldwin
has difficulty filling in
his career skills survey.

How can you describe a life
in twenty-five words or less?

(ii) Misbah
Misbah does not call
the Job Network member (JNM)
to let them know that
he’s not coming in.

He figures, in one hundred
years we’ll all be jobless
(& with God) anyhow.

He’ll enjoy this day
like it’s his last.

A lick of breeze lifts.

(iii) The Ascent
‘Every animal leaves traces of what it was; man alone leaves traces of what he created’ – J. Bronowski

The Taung baby;
the first pre-millennial
Hollywood child star
raises her head & time stops.
The Rift Valley hums like
an apartment block on M LOW defrost.
Unemployed for two million years
her child labour resumes in 1924.
Australopithecus -‘Southern Ape’,
the first astronaut on that -
‘awful planet of the apes’.
No paid overtime, no holiday loading,
no maternity leave in the ascent of man.

(iv) Now, the other dole bludgers in the queue:
– fossil lemur (50 million BC.)
– Aegyptopithecus (30 million BC.)
– Dryopithecus (20 million BC.)
– Ramapithecus (14 million BC.)
– Australopithecus (4-5 million BC.)
– Homo Erectus (1 million BC.)
– Homo Sapiens (500,000 BC.)

NB. Neanderthal Man tried to jump the queue 100,000 years ago & was breached out of existence.

NB. Fire making; the first work for the dole project.

Good morning
Work Corrections Australia
This is the Taung child
How can I help you?