Was photographed
on a bus seat with sunglasses
smoking a cigarette,
on a pedestal wearing a tiny
camouflage boonie hat,
floating on a little pillow in a
wading pool with flowers
behind its ears,
& in ninety other poses —
and because it had no eyes
that cat from Abu Ghraib
they put pebbles in the sockets
of its mummified head
which looked out at the world
with a blank stare..
[ based on a New Yorker story on Sabrina Harriman: the woman
behind the camera at Abu Ghraib]
I hate being a cat, she says.
Not that I’m a wuss
But there’s more minuses than pluses
at being someone’s puss.
You have to wait until they’re ready
To get food put into yr bowl
The one you sit behind so patiently
and try not to scowl.
And when they have a friend stay
Then it’s a hey diddle-diddle
You’re no longer alpha female
but playing second fiddle.
I like to go out and in, she says
Or in and out at will
But someone sadly has other ideas
Which is why I’m here still.
Oh I could write a novel, she wails
There’d be fury on every page
Not that I’m a Prima Donna
But I like being centre stage.
It’s a great day to be on the roof. You coming up?
I don’t know, I say. It’s an awfully long way.
Don’t be a wuss! She says.
Watch it, I say.
But she scrambles up, climbing the tiled slopes and disappears.
What’s it like? I call.
Fan—bloody—tastic!! She says. You should see this.
You can tell me about it later, I say. Write me a poem.
The sun climbs towards its zenith, begins it s long slide towards the sea.
I hear nothing till dinner time when I hear plaintive cries.
I let her stew for a while then go out the back, look up.
She’s near the gutter but doesn’t go any further.
What’s wrong? I say.
Get me down, she whimpers.
What’s wrong? You can get up. You can get down.
It’s an awfully long way, she wails.
Who’s a ‘fraidy cat now?
I’m sorry I called you a ‘wuss’, she says.
I reach up, lift her down. She runs straight to her bowl.
What’s the forecast tomorrow? She asks after she’s finished eating.
Overcast with a chance of showers.
Damn! She meows but sounds almost glad.
It had been on the vacant lot next to the church
For over half a year and no one in all that time
Could rustle up enough motivation to mow the lawn
Or clear it of rubbish. I thought of calling
The number on the back a few times but just couldn’t
Get motivated enough to ring or attend one
Of their weekly meetings & I thought about something
A friend had said about running a Special Olympics
For the Motivationally Challenged but the problem
With that, I said, was that nobody would bother
To turn up. I thought then of the historically highly
Motivated: Hitler, Stalin, the rapacious bankers, Isis
And concluded that a low motivated populace isn’t
Necessarily a bad thing.
I envy the patience of pearl oysters
Which can labour up to twenty years
To produce a pearl of great price.
The freshwater ones lacking the deep
Patience of their seawater cousins
Produce a pearl in a mere six.
But I have the shallow patience
of a gnat: a poem in a few minutes
else I lose interest.
No wonder I produce little of lasting
Value.
Hamstrung by my hamstring
I can’t dance when I sing
My humerus is strained too
But I can still crack a joke or two
As soon as you walk in you see them paraded
along the walls
exemplars of Beauty and Strength:
Warnie unleashing a leg spinner,
Its eye on middle stump, Krygios rocketing another ball
past his opponent,
Thorpie diving into glory,
even one of cane growers in Queensland,
big blocky blokes in blue singlets
bringing in the harvest;
of Cathy Freeman at the Sydney Olympics.
But my humerus and hamstrings
were playing up.
On good days
I can do almost anything, but
on bad ones I can barely put one foot in front
of the other, bounce a ball
let alone slam it down centre court
at 200 kph
and the only way I could get in a pool is to fall in it.
The challenge was to write a book review in haiku form. Here is my first attempt. Do you want to try one? It will be interesting to see what people come up with.
‘The True Color of the Sea’
didn’t flow for me
its prose flat and monochrome
as a pancake sea
Something niggles you
All week
Like a nail
in yr shoe
And you put up with it
That’s what
You do.
And then it’s all over
In two minutes
Flat
and you wonder
hey! why did I
Ever worry that?
But listen up! here’s
the sting:
The very thing
You gave no thought
to at all
burdens you all week
like an extra ball
in yr pants.
Life is brief.
Loosen up. Don’t worry.
Dance
“I have never read Jane Austen.”
I said.
“Emily Bronte and Jean Rhys but
never Jane Austen.”
“You should be ashamed of yourself,”
she said.
So I hung my head in shame and kept on
not reading Jane Austen.
John Malone 