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John Arthur Nichol

  • Politicians grow weak with their heady
    Illusions of peace, and unsteady;
    Their glib panacea,
    Give Russia Crimea …
    Is Bucha forgotten already?

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  • A Wall of History

    A wide photograph looking across a street to the side of a flat-roofed, windowless, two-storey building. It’s a brick wall painted predominantly in deep Prussian Blue, but there are patches where other paint, or no paint, is showing. On the right, almost all the top half shows an older base colour of dark green, where the framework supporting an advertising hoarding has been removed after many years. There are two patches of bare brickwork inside the green area, one at each end, and patches of light blue, white or the same deep blue of the rest of the wall. Black stains gather along the top edge and run down the wall in streaks. Near the ground, on the left, a big section of blue has been cut back unevenly to bare brickwork beside a sign saying 'Wicks', and beneath a panel of big coloured squares. Two surfboard signs stand out at the other end, and a Customer Parking sign in the middle.

  • To hell with the wavering cluster
    Of leaders who quake at the bluster
    Of one little scrote
    Killing kids by remote,
    Which is all the success he can muster.

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  • Four children in Uman are slaughtered.
    Still counting. And Russia reported
    A strike with precision.
    I long for the vision
    When Putin is hanged, drawn and quartered.

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  • It’s a cowardly kind of disease,
    Letting tyrants behave as they please;
    Escalation’s a fear
    That we constantly hear,
    But the word we observe is ‘appease’.

    🇺🇦

  • Warm Light and Comfort Colours on York Street, Sydney

    The window display of a needlecraft shop. Against a background of crocheted blanket and plain hessian sacking, colourful balls of wool tumble from basket and bag amid examples of embroidery kits, knitting needles, bags, embroidered straps and labels, and bundles loops of thread. A tall arrangement of flowers fills the middle, with a tiny small potted succulent at its base, and on the right is a mannequin’s head and shoulders wearing loops of thick, knitted scarf in autumn colours, and a floppy knitted beret in black and yellow. At the back, on the left, an upstretched mannequin’s hand emerges from a green knitted wrist-warmer.

  • In the far distance, a colossal pole leans over at the top, weighed down, it seems, by banks of mounted objects. I know the dreary truth of it, but choose to imagine the pole engaged in studying the ground, or that someone very tall has tripped there, knocking everything askew.

  • Lyons Road, Drummoyne. A little dick in a big truck blows his horn.

  • A blokey bloke crosses the road in shorts, t-shirt, bare feet, beard and baseball cap. And backpack. With faded pink crocs hanging from a strap.

  • A man’s dress-shoe stands empty in the road, its pointy toe still aiming for the footpath.

  • The Forbes Hotel, 1836

    On the Corner of York and King Streets, Sydney

    Three sides of an old building facing a street corner. We are looking at the building’s front door, on a very narrow side facing the corner. The two street frontages angle away to either side. The building’s exterior at ground level is grey, with a line of black tiles near the ground and layers of decorative stone work at the top. The narrow front facing us contains a pair of narrow, black-painted timber doors, each containing two four-paned windows and a timber panel below them. Above the doors is a closed black rectangle with black bars, which may once have been a window. This design of door is repeated multiple times along the two street frontages. At ground level the building is scrawled with graffiti. On either side of the front door is a tall, narrow brass plate with the hotel logo - a letter F incorporating the arms and torso of a waiter in formal dress - and the words Forbes Hotel 1836. Topping each brass plate is a decorative black lantern on a metal bracket. Above these is a small half-circle balcony with a rounded sandstone base and black, wrought iron railings. Beyond the balcony is a door with nine glass panels. The first floor of the building is made of bricks, and each of the street frontages has a square sign with the hotel name and logo.

  • In the gulag he’s ruled by oppression,
    Putin sinks into fear and depression;
    Isolated, alone,
    On his paranoid throne,
    With the courts of his rivals in session.

    🇺🇦

  • The Dedicated Work of Sydney City Council Game Designers

    Druitt Street, Sydney

    Beside a city street sloping sharply downhill, the wide footpath is covered with geometric shapes in orange, white, yellow, blue and red. Stick-aeroplane shapes in orange and white predominate, running down the slope in tandem, but there is are rectangles as well and lettering like 'Ausgrid' and '50mm Cov'. A stooped man in black looks uphill at the camera.

  • The jungle has conquered a tall brick building from within, and lush green leaves are rioting at the windows.

  • Pandemic oddities: maskless, a woman stabs the pedestrian button with a naked elbow.

  • Near the turn-off to Long Reef Beach, a square is cut from the undergrowth and filled with small white cylinders in rows.

  • An upright, tall old woman climbs to the top deck and stumbles back as the bus takes off. She grips a pole and recovers with a rueful smile, pushes forward and eases into the seat that overlooks the stairs.

    She wears a bright red cardigan over several cheerful layers: a wide-collared blouse whose floral design is like a watercolour; a pink scarf drawn close at the throat and looped once, loosely, at the chest; an ankle-length skirt with a pattern of tiny mauve and purple flowers on their stems; grey socks, and sandals whose straps are bronze, silver and gold.

    Her hat is all coloured bands and layers, with the brim turned up at the back, where grey hair tapers neatly behind the ear. At the front the brim turns down, shielding the tops of her glasses.

    Before she can relax, she has two bags and a book to organise. One bag is dark brown leather, with orange ornaments and strap, and the other is a light-weight olive green sack whose bottom hangs heavy. She tries various arrangements before settling the green bag on her lap and the brown bag on top of it, upright on its base and leaning against her middle.

    Holding the book in both hands and looking down over the brown bag, she reads. Her hands come together to turn a page, and the cover is revealed: A Man’s Got to Have a Hobby, by William McInnes.

  • A man on a big black motorbike pulls up his tank top to wipe the left side mirror, leaning right forward with his belly hanging out. His beard is big and black, his legs are hairy and his camouflage-brown helmet is shaped like a soup bowl. He chucks an illegal u-turn at the lights and parks on the other side, blocking the entrance to a lane.

  • Cocktails, Curry and a Happy Ending

    Three shopfronts viewed between parked vehicles on the far side of a city street. The middle shop has a rectangle of bright yellow above its entrance, with a bright pink and orange logo saying Pinky Ji's and stylised floral arrangements on either side. A neon sign at the top of the window says 'Cocktails & Curry', and a much bigger neon sign near the base of the window says 'Happy Ending' in block letters. A man stands in the foreground, near one of the parked cars, looking at his phone.

    Pinky Ji's on York Street, Sydney

  • In Russia you’re free to be free,
    If you’re not against bending the knee,
    Or denouncing a friend,
    And you’re able to bend
    Your reality, watching TV.

    🇺🇦

  • Queen Victoria Building, Up Close

    Delicate vine-leaf carvings at the end of a wall and on the side of a column, beneath the beginnings of a sandstone arch. The wall-end carving is a square shape, with a vine stem rising up in high relief and curling under on either side. The patterns within are symmetrical and meet in the middle. On the column, the carving is a half-cup shape, with the same stem in high-relief at the outer edge and the vines inside forming circles and overlapping curves, avoiding symmetry. Each section is crowned with three narrow layers of stone, and above these the arch begins; plain with a rounded trim above the column, but above the square section incorporating an echo of the leaf patterns in very high relief and deep shadows.

  • A black-haired girl thumps into the seat and slides down out of sight, her knees pressed up against the seat in front. Her hands press deep between her thighs, taking her face-mask with them.

  • A girl with a white-nosed teddy bear in a t-shirt stays under the radar as she creeps around the cafe: soft white shoes, round white collar, checked skirt, lemon cardigan with embroidered flowers. She leans against the wall, all innocence, and stealthily flicks off the power points feeding a pair of laptops round the corner.

  • An island in the Parramatta River. A terra cotta roof like a pagoda.

  • In Neutral Bay, a woman walks stiffly in her stained glass coat, all black lines and coloured triangles. She has long grey hair.