The Boy Who Ate Brisbane
As I’ve previously talked about on here, back in 1999, I created and ran an online writer’s collective called The Final Carrot, which lasted for 3 years. Sadly, the platform that it was built on (Geocities) was acquired by Yahoo, which rolled the functionality into Yahoo Groups. With Yahoo’s dramatic decline in recent years, Yahoo Groups was shut down, and all of that content is long gone.
I did try searching on the Internet Archive Wayback Machine, but sadly, all you can see is a tantalizing list of entry headers, but none of the underlying pages are included in the archive. You can see the original description for the group, which is as follows:
The Final Carrot is a virtual writer’s collective coming together in the name of root vegetables (ok.. that bit isn’t exactly true) to provide support and creative stimulus for writers of all types.
The intent is for this to grow into a regular e-zine where we can share our work and set each other new challenges. Oh, did I forget to say the plan is to have a lot of fun in doing it too?
Well, consider it a given!
The following poem was my response to our second assignment, when I asked everyone to write a poem about a city. Given the quirkiness of my entry, I’m thinking that there must have been more to the assignment, but that detail is now lost in the mists of time.
Before Yahoo Groups disappeared, I had started to try and capture some of the content for prosperity, and so here is an image of how this poem originally looked, which I think was hand-tagged HTML.
Header photo by Jesse Collins (source: Unsplash)
The Boy Who Ate Brisbane
He didn’t mean to do it
He really didn’t think
Let’s hope it all can be hushed up
Let’s hope there is no stink
Do you think a letter of apology?
Might head off a holy row
He’s really rather sorry, you know
He’s taken a solemn vow
He’s sworn off eating lots of things
He’s said those days are done
Your village, city, state is safe
He says we’ve spoiled his fun
For where’s the fun in eating things
If people get distraught
No, he won’t do it any more
Or at least he won’t get caught
Brisbane was too big, you see
Its demise could not be overlooked
The trail of crumbs led straight to him
Caught out, his goose was cooked
It’s not as if it was a metropolis
Oh no, it wasn’t like that at all
But people knew where it used to be
And when it wasn’t, then they bawled
If you’re going to eat a city
You should start with something small
Something not so obvious
Or preferably, don’t bother at all
Why not eat a building or two?
There are lots of those to spare
All those ugly tower blocks
No one will even care
You’d be doing us all a service
You could hold your head up high
One less eyesore to look up at
One more bit of sky
So next time you feel a bit peckish
And a landmass starts to appeal
Just turn your back on temptation
And stick with a low calorie meal
© Robert Ford 1999