Fast and Furious
I don’t know where I was when I wrote this or where it came from. I only know this is the way I want to write. Fast and Furious.
No Kangaroos.
No cops.
Just wind sideswiping
the car.
Someone’s high beam lasering yr eyes.
Booze in yr blood.
fire in yr heart.
the ghost of Paul Walker egging u on
fleeing like a fugitive
fleeing from yrself
Origami Bats
at five in the afternoon
two days after the solstice
my soul squinches,
as the cold comes in, the evening murks
creepy as a Halloween night:
& the seed pods black as bin bags
flip
into upside down bats
chitter, chitter ….
some fly off.
What Are These?
What are these
hard balls
in fat green pouches
that hang like scrota
over our mailboxes
and clunk us on our heads
like clubs
when we stand up too briskly
from retrieving our mail?
“Where you been the last few days?” I ask him.
“Got punctuated by a redback,” he says. “Spent two days in Intensive.”
“Ouch! ” I say, “You got marks?”
He pulls his right trouser leg up.
There’s an emphatic red slash just above the ankle and below that two dots resembling a colon.
“Something to show your grand-kids,” I say. “Take a picture. They’ll be studying that stuff soon.”
*pic by pinterest
Ibis
Look at them, those ibis
larking along like teenagers spilling
from a party,
joshing, jostling each other
honking like car horns.
Did Puccini Know?
I am at my mate’s place watching an episode of ‘Britain’s Got Talent’ he had downloaded the other day. Another pudgy non entity about to receive a blast from the red buzzer, Why do these people even try? Then he opens up. That famous aria from ‘Turandot’ and the room turns gold as the golden buzzer sounds, golden stars cascade from the ceiling and the performer dances a crazy stomp of joy. The audience is ecstatic. Can anyone fail singing that song?
Did Puccini know
what a BANGER he had penned
with ‘Nessun Dorma’?
It’s the go-to song if you want to fire up a stadium,
soar to the heights.
It’s the gold standard.
Did Puccini know?
It’s his ‘Big Yellow Taxi’, ‘Hey Jude’,
‘Take Me Home Country Road’,
Leonard Cohen’s ‘Hallelujah’.
Did he even know?
Did he ever write another song that even came close?
Has anyone?
And here’s the irony:
apart from those who speak the language and know the plot
does anyone even know what it means ?
Does it matter?
He’s pushing seventy, he says,
held together by drugs and alcohol
but it’s his voice that holds me,
raw and rusted like an old door creaking
on its hinges
singing ‘Angie’ with an authenticity
that’s almost autobiographical:
‘with no loving in our souls.
and no money in our coats
you can’t say we never tried’.
I believe in him.
I slip him five bucks
which he pockets in his coat
and breaks into Jerry Jeff Walker’s
‘Mr, Bojangles’ who maybe he thought he was.
“They’re back!”
It’s 5a.m and someone is tapping Morse code in the kitchen.
Short, sharp, taps.
It’s coming from the fridge.
Those damn mice again !
That pint-sized Shackleton and his crew stuck in the ice chunks in the freezer.
Listen. I can hear them chomping.
Probably eating the kids’ iceblocks to stay alive.
I hope help arrives soon.
I want to get some sleep.
Such a rare thing :
Sgeoil
reading and commenting
on 5 of my posts
in a row.
Only Eden had done that.
A first.
I tried it on Heather’s blog.
Do you know what it was like?
It was like the old days
sitting down, listening to one side of a vinyl LP
track by track
on the turntable
and then being swept away by the one outlier
‘Let the Pigeon Nest Somewhere Else’
where the poet goes
a little bonkers
like Jesus at that fig tree
which dared to be barren.
*pic by pinterest
Convenience Store Woman.
I wouldn’t want to be a convenience store woman
in Murata’s blistering book already branded a classic
from 2018.
I wouldn’t want to work in the same job, same store
for eighteen years, six days a week
while others get promoted over me, get married and leave.
I wouldn’t want to be hissed at
by women in the street
sniggering ‘spinster’.
I wouldn’t want to be banished from ‘the village’.
John Malone 