the Blow Off

I’ve had it with you —

You’ve had yr rations —

Your cheap lusts

And easy passions

 

* photo by vera arsic on pexels.com

My iPhone is having a Meltdown

I leave my charger at home.

I’m gone for three days out in the country.

It’s not as bad as leaving your defibrillator at home

[ if you had one ] or your meds

But it’s up there.

No other charger fits.

My iPhone is having a meltdown.

What am I going to do? It says.

Chill, I say, chill.

You’ll make it. Just.

More importantly, what are YOU going to do? It says.

True, I say, true. Use you less?

We’ll pretend we don’t know each other

for three days.

Deal? I say.

Deal, my iPhone says.

We shake hands.

It’s all cool.

 

 

 

Axe Throwing

My daughter has been Axe Throwing with some friends from work.

Apparently it is the new thing.

It’s a bit like darts only more dangerous,

I’ve been hit with a dart in the hand the last time I played,

Being hit with a hatchet would be a totally different thing.

People are encouraged to bury the hatchet in the target not in each other.

This is not ‘Vikings’.

It looks like fun. I’m thinking of going along.

But I have too many axes to grind so I better

stick to darts.

 

* have you ever been axe throwing? or taken part in any other dangerous activity?

*if axe throwing is a more dangerous form of darts what is a more dangerous form of chess?

 

Anniversary

Do you realize it’s our anniversary today?

No, I didn’t.

Yes, we met a year ago today. In this pool.

Is that right?

Do you know something else?

What? She says.

We have never seen each other with clothes on.

You make it sound sexy. What shall we do to celebrate?

Swim, I suppose.

So off we go, me in my lane, she in hers, like we’ve been doing every Sunday for a year.

 

• do you remember where you spent your first anniversary?

 

How To Read Signs

Any chance of a coffee, Cheryl?

I’m busy, John. Can you get one from the machine? It does a good job.

Not as good as you, Cheryl.

She smiled but it was no go. So I went to the machine. There was a sign on it saying, Apologies. This Machine Is Out Of Order.

So I went and told Cheryl.

That’s funny, she said. It was working earlier. I’ll have a look.

A few minutes later, she brought me a coffee.

The machine’s working, John but I brought you a coffee anyway.

That’s funny: the sign said it wasn’t working.

The sign was on the side of the machine, she said. Only if it’s on the front does it hold true.

Oh? I said. Oh.

So I thanked her and after I drank the coffee, I left, a little troubled.

At home, I flipped through the community newspaper and found just the course I wanted: How To Read Signs. I filled out the form, sent in the cheque and enrolled immediately.

Never again would I be caught short before a sign.

 

 

 

the Sandbags of Time

The future is coming at us

At a furious pace

We put up these sandbags

All over the place

To keep the present in

And keep the future out

It is much too horrible

To think much about

 

by

Ozzie Ostrich

Drive-Ins

I passed the old Drive-In, the one we used to go to when I was a kid, that time we saw ‘Giant’, for instance, on the giant tilted screen, and I wanted to be cool and edgy as James Dean, and how after the movie when we were driving home around midnight, we heard on he radio that a plane had just fallen from the sky during a snowstorm over a corn field in Iowa and a chill filled our car the day the music died.

 

which movie star did you want to be like when you were a kid?

did you watch movies at drive-ins with your folks? do you remember any particular film?

what were you doing when you heard about the deaths of Buddy Holly, the Big Bopper and Richie Valens?

Humble Pie

 

After bickering over breakfast,

and stewing over it all day

she finally found what she wanted —

the clinching morsel.

Now she would serve him his just desserts.

What’s for dinner? he said.

Humble Pie, she answered

as she handed him the perfumed panties

she found in his drawers.

\

 

* have you ever had the ‘pleasure’ of having to eat humble pie?

* photo from pexels.com

Under the Influence

 

Under the influence

I wrote copiously

From midnight to morning

Dementedly

 

A devil held my hand

An accomplice flayed my side

My mind had an erection

It could not hide

 

All my past spilled out

From the attic of my mind

My pen swept it up

I was writing blind.

 

Such dark energy

Flowed through me

and out through my fingers

its estuary.

 

* have you ever been driven to write in the middle of the night that took hours?

No!

Still they come, she said, the bibles, prayer shawls, letters.

People are very supportive, he said.

But the attic is full of them.

Their grief and incomprehension are still strong. Who can explain such a thing?

And the candy?  Those bags of caramels. It wouldn’t hurt ….

What are you doing? He said, reaching out.

Surely it wouldn’t hurt to have a few? After all, they were meant for us.

No, said Peter Lanza, the father of the Sandy Hook killer, knocking them from her hand. They may be poisoned.