Title: Sport 21: Spring 1998

Publication details: Fergus Barrowman, October 1998, Wellington

Part of: Sport

Conditions of use

Share:

Connect

    mail icontwitter iconBlogspot iconrss icon

Sport 21: Spring 1998

The LITTLE BOOK of BITCHING — including DOGGEREL for the DOGS

page break

The LITTLE BOOK of BITCHING

including DOGGEREL for the DOGS

page break page break

If It's Better to Bitch, Bitch

Bitching's got more guts than blubbering
and it can be smarter to bitch than blush
a bitch who can't get bitchy
can eventually become a lush

And bitching's better than bullying
since it's better to bitch than bite
a bitch is better by far
than a prick or a blatherskite

Bitching loosens the fibres
it's a bit like using a drill
if it's sharp it makes an impression
and stops you from getting ill

So come with me my hearties
come with me my pets
let's take the cluds to the cleaners
before our venom cools and sets

page break

Definitions:

1. a bitch
  • a female dog or other female canine animal
  • a malicious, spiteful or coarse woman
  • a difficult situation or problem
bitching,
  • complaining, grumbling
  • behaving in a spiteful manner
bitching upbotching or bungling
2. a dog,
  • a domesticated canine mammal
  • the male of the dog family
  • a mechanical device for gripping & holding
  • a fellow, a chap
  • a contemptible, wretched man or boy
dogging
  • pursuing, following, troubling, plaguing
  • gripping or securing by a mechanical device
doggedly onobstinately, wilfully, tenaciously

People who become bitchy are usually leading a dog's life or having to live in a dog's world. In other words bitching is ‘taking the hair of the dog that bit you’.

page break

The Bitching Shortlist

Don't you hate the ones who are kickers,
they love it when you're down,
don't you hate the ones who can't see
themselves, look at the big-shot frown,

the volley of blame going everywhere.
(The kids try to sneak outside.)
Let's spot the ones who are envy-us,
they covet, then flick to snide,

and the ones who lie down doggo
when you're in a hell of a mess,
their hands are as clean as a whistle,
so's the black Armani dress.

Don't you hate the cluds who are pushers,
scared to death going nice and slow,
the more they do & shove & get
the less they love and know.

As for the old dogmatics,
black or white's a snappy tune
but I wish they'd swambaloo a bit,
cross-dress and praise the moon.

Then the plain and dirty ruthless,
the ones who would fund to fail,
and the silly entertainer
with a trivia up her tail.

For L.P. G.H. G.S. M.B.
M.H. N.S. J.B. R.G.
in no particular order of appearance
&, like all of us, eligible for
all categories.

page break

[1] The Kickers

Most of us know that big bullies are pretty scared. In fact pretty and scared. But knowing it themselves is what they're most scared of, and to stop knowing it they keep on bullying. This makes them damned hard to handle. Best to leave them. Leave them long enough with their own kind and they become filled with a longing so sweet and so heavy that the dog-box cracks.

Occasionally they're a push-over.

One night when my kids were about 4&5 having a bath together, exuberant, my tired nerves began to jangle. Mother-hood wasn't what I'd expected it to be. Would I ever have time to myself again? Where was their father? Why were their spirits so high when mine were so low?

Suddenly my spirit turned mean and I gave one buttock a sharp smack. Then a naked delegation of 2 stood up in the bath, water dripping off their white tummies. There was silence. Then one of them — the spokesperson — looked me in the eye, and said, ‘Don't you ever hit us again.’ And I never did.

page break

Attending Tiny Plants

Here's a verse for the bully
the one who will break your bones
his sperm's as cold as ice cream
his balls as frail as the cone

let him crunch his own pestils
let him lick his own slipe

cos we're off to ride a dinosaur
we're off to quell a queen
we're off to tend rare alpine plants

while he gives his dog a swipe

page break

[2] The Blamers

The family is out on a weekend walk in the Town Belt and Graeme, 3, skipping along singing to himself, trips over a tree root. There he is, bawling, flat on his face and knees. ‘Watch where you're going, you silly dick!’ yells Brent, 7. Mum, swallowing her irritation, adds ‘Clumsy ox’, while Dad pulls him up roughly and gives him a clip over the ear.

What the hell is going on here? It's the costly culture of bullying and blaming. Modelled to us, and by us, on the hour.

Anyway, do we always have to be up? Can we never be down, can we never fall. Can we never be be up & down, naturally, like the surface of a lake? To accept that up & down are both — well — just up and down, that suffering and falling are part of life, would be to let the country buzz again with bees and kindness.

It's hard to see ourselves when pride, the oldest story, is like a giant in the way. But we can help each other see. Kids do it well because they do it naturally, without judgement. My friend Robin, like me, has a freckled, weathered, middle-aged face. One day Jessica, 3, her granddaughter, was sitting on her knee. She reached up and took Robin's cheeks in her hands, gave them a shake & said, ‘Robin, your face is like salami.’ Which it clearly is.

‘Whenever we find ourselves violently blaming circumstances, other people, bad luck etc for our troubles and failures, then we are avenging ourselves for the pain of facts, usually facts about ourselves.’ Jung.

Are you OK, Graeme?

He says nothing. He has made a decision. And he'll never tell anyone what it is.

page break

Lashing Out to Keep Clean

You see them in the department.
You hear them on the bus.

You see them at the counter
kicking up a fuss.

You hear them on the talkback.
You see them in the House.

With parliamentary privilege
their position's pretty grouse.

They love the US system,
all claims and counter claims:

they have to nail someone, so
they're sifting out some names.

Yep, they love that suing system
and the lawyers love it too,

anything wild or fallible
should be gaoled or in a queue.

They themselves are spotless,
all righteousness & charm,

heroic, cleaning up the show,
so we won't come to harm.

page break

[3] The Envious

We can open secretly
to one another
like night flowers

Envy turns us
raving
to ourselves

page break

A Dream:

A man and a woman have fallen on hard times. They have to leave their home and live in a public shelter. They are given a curtained enclosure the size of a small room with just a single bed in it. Their cubicle is in the central area of the shelter and all 4 walls are curtains. They are grateful for this, for at least they have some privacy, a place to sleep & to be together. At least they have each other. There are many others around them noisily living their lives, in and out of their cubicles. They sit on the single bed together and after a while they begin to make love. Suddenly one of the curtains is ripped open & they are exposed to all the people around them. Over the following days & weeks they patiently make the most of what they have, but each time they begin to show their love for each other one of the curtains is ripped back. They then begin to see that this is no accident. There is a particular woman, dark, thin, standing on a bed in an adjoining cubicle who is deliberately exposing them. They see, with growing dread, that she is relentless, malicious, & utterly determined to remain vigilant. She is convinced that because their lives have been more privileged than hers they deserve no privileges now. She will never let them have more than she has & her life is dedicated to that purpose.

  • 1. Have our generous values narrowed to this — a thin, obsessive, envy — and why?
  • 2. Have too many NZ journalists taken up with this scrawny woman?
page break

Tall Poppies, Sour Grapes, and a Lemon

1.
Look, Ann's got an ice cream
that's not fair
and why is she allowed
to dye her hair?

Phil's gone to Europe
—it's alright for some
I hope he gets homesick
cent-less and glum.

Now Ann's got a bonus
why haven't l?
She thinks she's so clever
why should I try?

Phil's in the A team.
Don't think I care
his father's in prison
and mine is the mayor.

page break

2.
My spirit is mean
it's stingy and dry.
If I give up snitching
I might start to cry.

If I start to cry
my rib-cage might shake
If it rattles and loosens
my meanness might break.

If my meanness breaks open
what will be there?
There'll be disappointment
—then a gust of fresh air—

and since life is a jumble
of fairness and fate,
for god's sake slip into it.
Tremble, and mate.

page break

[4] The Escape Artists

Why do some hearts go out
and some stay in
losing their song
in the metal cage?

While the bullies and blamers are lashing out to keep themselves pure the escape artists have instantly slipped away. They're a pallid kind of bully. If they decide to kick you they do it without leaving a mark: they whisper the fog thicker until it gets its miserable hands around your throat. You'll never know where they are standing, or where you stand with them. They give nothing away so they can never be implicated. At least bullies show a clenched fist & sometimes you get time to duck.

page break

Any Taint of Trouble?

A cloud has fallen from the sky,
it's strangling us in fog.
You like us better in the sun
and go off to walk your dog.

Some say we had it coming,
others disagree,
just in case, to play it safe,
you avoid being seen with me.

The treasury is on our wings
and treasure weighs a ton,
our hearts are tearing from the strain
and what you do is run.

We've worked & fought with all our strength
—for the forest, birds and shore—
we've managed — just — to free our wings,
we're exhausted to the core,

so if you knock when trouble's gone
and the news is looking fine,
if you hover round our door
I'll tussock-moth your spine.

page break

Keeping Your Nerve at Bitching

It's easy to botch up bitching.
It's easy to let it slide.
Some say it's lady-like,
some say it's not,
so I suppose I need to decide

if it matters a fig to me
what others actually say;
what I believe in
is gentleness, & gentleness
loves to play

on a surface of firmness
and firmness on a layer of strength,
while the 3 working together
make a poem — or a lake — or a life
of a singular breadth and length.

page break

[5] The Pushers

O the prizing of competition above all, by those who are competitive above all. I can't stand pushers. They seem to hate what really matters. Time, calm, thinking, feeling, watching, listening, helping. We encourage them. We say it's ambition, drive, it's what counts, it's getting on, it's sorting out the men from the boys, it's making a name for yourself. We need a few of them, but there are so many. Can you think of anyone you know who has a calm presence? There are not many left.

No Sloth Here

Look, I was purring along
quietly in the old Honda
on a narrow South Taranaki road,
100–110 k's per hr, starting to ponder

the question of cyclonic and anti-
cyclonic gloom when this hound
came up behind and began
to tail me, leaning forward, round

every bend for 2 k's muttering
‘Stupid, middle-aged bitch’
until he lost patience & pulled out
edging me — and the oncoming car —
both into the bloody ditch.

page break

Pushers crack their way through the soft rounded reality of our lives. Don't tell me there is no other way. Don't tell me there is no other language. What is ‘fiscal viability’ anyway? What is ‘a clumsy macroeconomic tool’? Who chose ‘super highway’, ‘getting more mileage out of’, ‘outputs’, ‘through-puts’, & shot puts?

Such words have no shame in them, no diffidence
before the raging stoic grandmothers:

their glint is too shallow, like a dye
that does not permeate

the fibres of actual life
as we live it, now:

this fraying blanket with its ancient stains
we pull across the sick child's shoulder

or wrap around the senseless legs
of the hero trained to kill ———

Adrienne Rich

page break

At the End of the Day

when the small or large table is set
with expectation and with pleasure
— a child placing one firm object
beside another, a knife beside
a plate, the salt beside the pepper -
will the father be there?

How many times
this particular day
which comes along behind
all the other days
— making the one & only
story of a child's life —
will Ana, Joe & James
hear their father say
their own names?

Or must they too go out
pushing through
day after long day
to make their own names
and to do whatever it takes
to make them?

page break

[6] The Dogmatics

This lot are holding us back. We're all scared of complexity but this track is a dead end. Here are a couple of natural remedies for dogmatism that I reckon are worth trying (knick knack paddywack give a dog a bone):
  • 1. an exercise regime of very hard thinking followed by a long shower of very loose thinking and so on & so on —
  • 2. daring to say ‘I don't know’. This is a potion which no dogmatic in his own home, in a weight's room, in his right mind, having a high time on his high horse, would probably ever be able to swallow. It's beyond all reason. It's probably out of the question, if there is a question?

A good question comes from Hélène Cixous, a French writer. She asks: ‘What would become of — the great philosophical systems, of world order in general, if the rock* upon which they founded their church were to crumble?’

Her answer is: ‘All the stories will be told differently, the future will be incalculable, the historical forces will change hands, bodies; another thinking, as yet unthinkable, will transform the functioning of all society.’ Oh yes. Yes.

* rock (and track) = if one thing is good or right, the other or opposite thing must be bad or wrong.

page break

‘Each Time a War Breaks Out’

Not many old lefts left
and not many new lefts about
though plenty of old rights
still right and plenty
of new rights right too
but if they are always right
something must be wrong

and I think it could be
that the only sex in this argument
is forced sex
and the thought of venturing
into an unmined field
of limbs & flowers, fallible
yet truly welcome
is inconceivable

on the other hand if the new
right is bright and shining
the old right must be wrong
which makes the old left right.
Of course! They certainly think so.
But no that can't be right
because both the new & old right
and even the new left
say they're old socialist rubbish
which I suppose must be right

page break

[7] The Mean and Dirty Ruthless The Pesthole

The same things come up year after year
but it's the first year
I've squatted down to see
how beautiful a particular
five-petalled faintly orange
geranium truly is and I know
there are worms
in the buds of the roses.

Two red buds
whose scripts
are simply to open
have turned onto their sides
and are lying here
dry and shrivelled
on the table.

I've just had a glimpse
of the pale round head
of the worm

sickening and tiny.

Now it's come again
thrusting up and down at the entrance
of the hole
in the half-dead red rose.

It's ecstatic with life.
Madly at work
at its core business.

page break

Here, doggerel won't do. This isn't the place for the lift of rhythm and the comfort of rhyme. These are the pit-bulls, the wolves. The devils of this century. And first of all we must face them. But we go blind, we fumble with the light switch. It's taking me years to look them in the eye, to write them down: the plain manipulators, the rapists, the drug dealers*, the arms traders*, the child prostitutors, the deliberate liars. They do it for a headline, for power, for sex, for votes, to make their names, and for money. They do it with a camera angle, with blackmail, pure logic, intimidation, a slick ad, force, a PR angle, seduction, language we don't understand. They count on our fear, and our ignorance. And they keep their distance, like terrorists.

The greatest challenge for us now — as it long has been and always will be — is how to deal with heartlessness in others, and in ourselves, without resorting in turn to the ruthlessness which we truly want to stop.

* These are the two largest industries in the world. Is that what we want?

* These are the two largest industries in the world. Is that what we want?

page break

The Story of the Monster

A caravan of men and camels crossed a desert and reached a place where they expected to find water. Instead they found only a hole going deep into the earth. They lowered bucket after bucket into the hole, but the rope each time came back empty — no bucket and no water. They then began to lower men into the hole, but the men, too, disappeared off the end of the rope. Finally a wise man among the party volunteered to go down into the hole in search of water.

When the wise man reached the bottom of the hole, he found himself face to face with a horrible monster. The wise man thought to himself, ‘I can't hope to escape from this place, but I can at least remain aware of everything I am experiencing.’ The monster said to him, ‘I will let you go only if you answer my question.’ He answered, ‘Ask your question.’

The monster said, ‘Where is the best place to be?’

The wise man thought carefully to himself. Then he said to the monster, ‘The best place to be is wherever you feel at home — even if it's a hole in the ground.’

The monster said, ‘You are so wise that I will not only let you go, but I will also free the foolish men who came down before you. And I will release the water in this well.’

page break

[8] The Entertainers

For all we know most people in the world would prefer a small, crisp, delicious apple to a big, shiny, floury one, a good belly laugh to a cool twitter, a tui singing to a broadcaster barking. Entertainment can be fun, light and a distraction, and it can be silly, superficial and an avoidance. But there is too much of it. Call me puritanical and I call it sloth. Cheap & easy, there is no protein in it, no punch. It swoons us mindless just when we need our wits about us. Watch us going witless, easier to manipulate, getting thinner & thinner, dressed like a dog's dinner, or fatter & fatter, as compliant as cushions. Watch us.

The Proliferation of Lap-dogs and Pussycats
I put the silly-entertainer-with-a-trivia-up-her-tail
right at the end so tail would rhyme with fail.

You silly-entertainer-with-a-trivia-up-your-tail,
look entertainment's fine, hearty and hale

but we're sick of the hype, there's too much to lose
— not just the cricket, your shares, or your booze—

there's clean air & truthfulness, the ability to choose.
Between you and the ads we get saggy — we snooze

while the corporates get slicker & re-arrange our views.
Get your smug and hazy brains away from our news!

page break

A Break from Bitching

I can't wait to finish bitching,
finally its a bore.
It serves no surly purpose
when your gut's no longer sore.

So come with me my sweeties
come with me my pets
let's swoop on off, swambaloo
and take a load of bets.

Before we go and leave these hounds,
let's split to the Hutt Park Track
it's the GRC Farewell Stakes
(the field is in the back).

My hunch is Corporate Tiger,
his record's pretty slick,
trained, like Horny Critter,
by Ruth & Roger Dick.

But I hear the track is fast and hard
so Nico Teen could take the front
— in softer conditions
I'm not sure he's got the grunt.

page break

Look they're off, they're off, my sweeties,
they're bounding wild & keen,
it's Thrust'n Hunt & Simon's Guy
Torque Back & Glycerine Queen.

It's Glycerine Queen & Thrust'n Hunt
fighting out the lead.
Nico Teen & Mad Dash Max
are putting on some speed.

Behind them running steady
Horny Critter's up there too,
Torque Back has gone, and running wide
Tuff Cookie's coming through.

Tuff Cookie's coming through the pack,
streaking through with style.
Glycerine Queen & Thrust'n Hunt
are falling back now, while

Tuff Cookie, Horny Critter—
who's this? — it's Tip Topp Twin,
an absolute outsider, and my god
she's going to win!

page break

Post-script:

Socrates says not to let a day pass without discussing goodness,

so now I will dwell on the small raft
of kindness, its five totara planks strapped
firmly together with flax, shifting amongst
the currents and travelling wickedly on,

now I will dwell on the small raft
of joy, poling away from the dogged shore
my faithful bitch by my side
leaving a little pile of shit at my feet,

now I will dwell on the river
of great appreciation for all
thoughtful and staunch,
message-sending friends

and for every boss who can
keep shrewdness and compassion
like two lively identical twins
in the heart of the office

and for every politician who can
keep ambition and compassion
like two lively identical twins
in the heart of the country

and for every journalist who can
keep accuracy and compassion
like two lively identical twins
in the heart of the story

and for the long clear message of the river itself
whose phrases we will naturally hear
when our spirits rise like robin and kakariki
in the buoyant layers of the beech forest.

page break

Notes:

I have used ideas and quotes from various sources including:

Parabola: The Magazine of Myth and Tradition, NY

Volume X, 1995, The Seven Deadly Sins

Volume XII, 1987, Forgiveness

The Way of Women: Awakening the Perennial Feminine

Helen M. Luke, Millenium Books, 1996

‘The Story of the Monster’ is from the above book. Apparently it had been told to the Sufi poet Rumi by his master, Shams-i-Tabriz. Rumi in turn had told it in his Discourses. Helen Luke, telling it in her turn, believed it to have particular relevance to the spiritual needs of today.

Adrienne Rich is an American poet. The lines I have quoted are from a poem called ‘Transcendental Etude’, The Dream of a Common Language, Norton & Co, NY, 1987

Hélène Cixous is a French feminist and writer.

Farewell Stakes

Torque Back
Simon Said
Tuff Cookie
Corporate Tiger
Tip Topp Twin
Glycerine Queen
Nico Teen (Essentially a show dog)
Vengeance Plus
Horny Critter
Thrust'n Hunt

page break

Copyright © Dinah Hawken 1998

Published by Very Cross Books

in association with Sport

PO Box 11-806

Wellington