Running Jump

What seems to be the trouble , he asks .

I cough and splutter all over the place .

He gets the message .

Sits down to write the certificate .

There , he says , handing the form to me . This should do the trick .

I peruse it quickly .

There’s something missing, I say, why I had time off .

That’s right . If you had Alzheimers or a social disease would you want

people to know ?

Certainly not .

My point exactly .

But I thought you had to put something down .

No , he says . And if they ask , tell them to take a running jump . Better still , tell them to phone me and I’ll tell them to take a running jump . Only in stronger terms .

He stands up . Shakes my hand .

 

The next day at work I hand in the certificate .

He’s right .

They see the blank space but no one says a word .

I push it a bit further .

On the official form , the one you fill out yourself , where it says Illness I put down ‘See Certificate’ .

It feels good . It really does .

I’ve found a new way to treat with the world .

The Stare

“What are you staring at?”

“You,”

“Me? Why?”

“We are watching you unravelling.”

“There’s a word for that, a German word like watching people in road accidents”.

“Please don’t get distracted. Continue unravelling.”

“What if I don’t want to?”

“We’ve been watching you. You won’t be able to prevent it.”

They were right. I was like one of those wall-mounted paper towel dispensers.

Once the roll starts unravelling there’s no stopping it and I wasn’t done yet. There was still a metre or more of me to go.

 

Greater Expectations

Someone once said to me, Expect the Unexpected.

It seemed daring at the time so I took it on board.

The only problem was because I expected the Unexpected all the time I wasn’t really surprised when it happened.

It was expected, right?

Life was losing its surprise factor.

I felt heavy as a watermelon.

My counsellor suggested — wait for it — Expect only the Expected.

So I do,

When the Unexpected happens I light up like a lantern

twinkle like a star.

It wasn’t expected, right?

The Very Short Poem

I’ve got a poem for you, a very short one, he promised with a garrulous grin, and then, in a long-winded introduction in which all the masters of brevity were cited, he proceeded to demolish the very notion of shortness. The poem took ten seconds, the intro five minutes.

The Journey

Jane Eyre

Wide Sargasso Sea

These were the books

That made a reader

Out of me

 

David Copperfield too

A Room With A View

Rebecca.

Alice in Wonderland.

What about you?

 

Falling Awake

 

I am reading a book of very strange stories.

One of them is called ‘Falling Awake’.

It is only six sentences long.

Here it is in its entirety:

 

I have no trouble falling asleep.

I have a lot of trouble falling awake.

Sometimes I sleep ten to twelve hours a day before snailing towards the light.

One day I will fall asleep and not fall awake or fall awake and not fall asleep.

Neither prospect daunts me.

I like adventures; no matter how short.

 

No One Saw it Coming

No one saw it coming. Least of all me. I was happily ensconced in a book when it EXPLODED. Such was its force that it blew the toupee off the man in front of me and propelled the stationary bus in which we were sitting two metres forward. The sneezer himself, a dread locked man in a canary yellow suit,  whooshed around the aisle of the bus startling passengers until suitably deflated he flopped beside me flatulent as a whoopee cushion.

That Helicopter Kid

There was this kid who stood at the back of the class

When I came to read my poems

And whenever I got boring he’d rotate

His arms like the blades of a helicopter

& the more I banged on the faster

His arms would whir

Until it looked like he’d take off

 

His teacher and the other kids paid him

No mind.

 

In the pause between poems he’d say,

You done yet?

And I’d say,

Almost.

And he’d say, Good and slow down.

And when I stopped, he’d stop.

The eagle had landed.

 

Whenever I do a reading I see

That kid at the back

His arms set to rotate.

It keeps me honest.