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flaming poetry

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the old man sat in a rocking chair and

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looked at me and laughed

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i'd asked him about a poem he wrote and

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about the bush palm craft

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he stopped his cackling and sized me up

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and looked me in my eye and said you

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want to write a tale of the bush

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well this is how you try

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now the main thing in a bush poem are

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the words you want to use a bloody good

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word is flame and no it's easy to flame

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and abuse he said shove it in while

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you're mentioning a feature of the scrub

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like the fury in a flame and bull or the

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cost of a coley of the flaming pad

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well this was all very well a quite

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simple bush poetry device but i wanted

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to extract a little more of this push

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poet's sage advice so i asked him about

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the rhymes he'd use and how he made them

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fit

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and he chortled again his rocking chair

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then told me bit by bit

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you've got to pick the proper color from

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the tapestry of the land and interweave

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the pictures in the colors which come to

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hand so if you're talking about the

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dried earth cracked up by a drought

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paint pictures with the driest words and

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crimes will come about or maybe you'll

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write about bushfires as they make a

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forest blaze so you've got to use some

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fiery words to capture that flame and

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phase look towards some yellow words

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with some little licks of white

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to paint the mental image of all those

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gum trees well alight

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if it's a flood you're trying to capture

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with a well-intended rhyme then wet the

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paper with soggy words of nature's

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dampest crime coloured by a cloud gray

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sky and muds dark browns and reds

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and weave it all together with strings

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of water silver threads

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when you paint a picture with rhyming

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words of an old cocky's face don't be

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afraid to use crinkled words with some

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wrinkles just in case the farmer's

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features fade on the page and flatten in

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your mind

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because a nice craggy palm will leave an

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image of his face behind

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and he pushed his foot against the floor

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and his chair began to rock and i tried

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to think of appropriate words for his

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toe through his sock sticking out like a

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swollen thumb where the dining was

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undone

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and the colours of his leather skin from

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the weather of too much sun

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never mind my feet he said if you're

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going to write a poem of me then write

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at my love of the rhyming words in good

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bush poetry

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then his crow's feet got deeper when he

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broke open a country smile

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and a twinkle danced within his eyes in

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a burning bush-powered style

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that happened when i was a kid and i can

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still see his chair rocking his

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weathered face and a sunburned toe

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sticking through his stocking

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colorful words he plucked from the air

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of the land where he died