This began life as pre-dated. I was having a fishing holiday at our shack on Yorke Peninsula across the Gulf from Adelaide when I was buzzed by a chopper. I found out on the TV news that night that a local boy had been taken by a shark and the helicopter contained photographers & journos looking for shots of sharks, treacherous seas and the boy’s school. I couldn’t get the idea of predators out of my head – the media even moreso than the shark.

Onlymeith has produced an ominous soundscape to underline the mercilessness of both sharks and the mass media, using Javolenus’ disquieting sub-bass, (use your best headphones!) hints of swords unsheathing and a relentless, remorseless heartbeat.

 

Pre-dated

 

After the poor boy is taken in shallows

Another pack of sharks

Sniffs out crimson billows.

 

Even here, on the gulf’s other side

A school of choppers

Arrives for frenzied interviews and shots

Of the victim’s school

 

Politicians join the feeding maelstrom

Demands on talkback

For the creature to be shot

 

Only the boys parents won’t play the bloodlust game

It’s the last thing he would have wanted

 

But they are dismissed as

Too close to comment

 

The gulf widens.

 

Predators move in.

 

© rob walker, 2006

 

 

 

This poem appeared in my chapbook phobiaphobia – poems of fear and anxiety (Picaro Press, Australia, 2006.)

 

Thanks Carlos /onlymeith for another exquisitely-produced interpretation of my words.