By John Dickson, The Westsider Newspaper Poet Laureate and winner of the ‘highly recommended’ commendation in the Betty Olle Poetry Award 2018, proudly conducted by the Kyabram and District Bush Verse Group.
You’d never notice Bronchia
It’s a nothing little town
Overshadowed by a mountain
Underdressed in shades of brown
A river ran right through it
A measly little leak
Not stream, not brook, nor rivulet
More dampened ditch than creek
A stranger passed through Bronchia
This man of rocks and earth
Had met the council late at night
To tell them what they’re worth
‘This hill you turn your backs on
This hideous brown lump
Is a licence to print money
It hides a fortune in its hump.’
The stranger said ‘It’s magic,
This lumpy browny goo
It converts to light and power
And riches for the few
The few who know its value
And you could be that few
If you pay me for the secret
I’ll tell you what to do’
Mayor Seymour Plug had appetites
Always waiting to be fed
Whether at another’s table
Or in another’s bed
When he heard the stranger say this
The pig in him rose up
A way to sate his hunger
A constantly-filled cup
The council was just like him
Always looking to make hay
To maximise their incomes
In any slippery way
They grinned across the table
They allowed themselves a smirk
How good is lots of money
Without doing any work?
But the stranger had a coda
He warned of future tears
He signalled future problems
But it fell upon deaf ears
He said this clay was lethal
If too much of it was burned
But they’d already started spending
The money it could earn
And they paid him what he asked for
And they sent him on his way
They were drooling at the prospect
Of a permanent pay day
No-one heard his warnings
His cautions were ignored
These avaricious greedheads
Were measuring their hoard
Plug was in his element
The town was doing well
The villagers distracted
By a needy clientele
Greedy for their mountain
Of magic dirty dirt
The council thought it endless
And they mined it ‘til it hurt
From everywhere the cash poured in
And they filled up every truck
From this pile of wealth-in-waiting
This magic mucky muck
It smelt like it was dug from
The bottom of the grave
The scrapings off the sewer pipe
The guano from the cave
The council just ignored the fact
That the magic soil soiled
For the more it lined their pockets
The less they had to toil
Plug of course was first in line
And second through to ten
Taxing everything that moved
Then taxing it again
And then it was all over
The magic was all gone
When customers from everywhere
Discovered what goes wrong
When too much muck incinerates
It burns holes right through the sky
It fattens up the air we breathe
And we all begin to fry
The villagers had had enough
Of their council’s dirty snouts
Where trickledown was promised
There was nothing but a drought
Now the income stream had dried up
And they were left without a cent
It was time for Seymour Plug and Co
To tell them where it went
Plug could hear the townsfolk stir
But there was no way to explain
How the loss that they were feeling
Had become the council’s gain
Add to that the anger
Of those who bought the sludge
Never knowing what might happen
When they burned this deadly gudge
The council met in dead of night
Once more to hatch a plan
To escape the town with wealth intact
For every sticky-fingered man
But the mountain had its own ideas
And from its hacked-out side
It twisted, creaked and changed itself
Into a deadly muddy slide
The gudge poured down the mountain
And filled the river bed
It oozed and spewed and rumbled
Towards its destiny it sped
The council heard its mighty roar
But would not change objectives
To get out clean, their wealth intact
For this gluttonous collective
Town clerk Fop was first to go
Quickly drowned in goo
Dog catcher Barry Fudget
Went swiftly that way too
Then Wobbleman from drainage
Then Spinifex from parks
Then garbageman O’Blimey
Then Meter Peter carked
And that left greedy Seymour
Caught reaching for the door
Slowed by bags of readies
He had stashed beneath the floor
Refusing to let go of them
Plug was quickly overun
The goo that made them wealthy
Now brought them all undone
And that was it for Bronchials
Their town now too maligned
So they bought new homes in Poshton
With what the council left behind
The moral of this story
The lesson to be learned
Is beware of streams of riches
That you haven’t really earned.
© Verse and illustration
John Dickson 2019
