Is This How It Happens?

I have just come back from the shopping centre, I wrote, ten years ago

and have discovered the boot empty. Where is all that food I bought?

Back in the trolley where I left it in the car park ready to heft into the boot.

An action I never completed. I dashed back to the shopping centre

but the trolley was gone. I had supplied a needy family, I like to think,

with a week’s supply of free food. In the end, I remembered.

My memory had rebooted. But what if it hadn’t? Would you even know

you had forgotten something if you had no memory of it? 

Is this how it happens?

Colloquy with Self

Do I feel like a Venetian?

No, I do not feel like a Venetian.

How about a banana?

No, I do not feel like a banana.

Well you have to have something.

What then?

How about some raisin toast? bowl of cereal?

Berries?

Ummmm, but no.

Have some coffee then. You can always have coffee.

Yes, but what to have with it?

Houston, we have a problem.

I know I want something.

Look, you just can’t flail on the lounge like a fish

on a jetty.

That’s it.

What’s it?

I’ll have fish then, that salmon left over from last night.

Deo gratias.

In Which We Become Two Famous Men

We hadn’t seen each other since Covid began and had forgotten each other’s names.

It was at the gym and the pulsating music upstairs during a class made hearing difficult.

Martin, he said.

Pardon?

Martin as in Martin Luther King.

Ah. I’m John.

Pardon?.

John as in John the Baptist.

Ahh, he said.

We shook hands and had a brief chat over the music.

Henceforth when we saw each other, especially after a long time, I’d remember him as Martin Luther King and he’d remember me as the preacher who baptised sinners in the river Jordan.

*which famous person first comes to mind when you say your first name?

the Red Wheelbarrow & Frankenstein

It’s the little things I love

Like watching

 ‘Paterson’, the movie

About the bus driver

Who wrote his little epiphanies in his note book

like William Carlos Williams

the doctor who wrote

the red wheelbarrow

And finding out

That’s where Lou Costello grew up,

Paterson, New Jersey

There’s even a park named after him,

Lou Costello the chubby comedian who played alongside Bud Abbot,

The straight guy.

I used to watch those guys in the funhouse

Of the fifties,

Frolicking with Frankenstein and The Wolf man.

But it was Lou Costello

I loved

The funny little fat guy

And that’s where he came from,

Paterson, New Jersey.

Wolf Down

A few years ago I read a book called Wolf Hall.

Now I’m writing about Wolf Down

what the cat does with food when it’s been stuck

on the roof all day;

what we do now

wolfing down pleasure,

sunshine,

the great outdoors,

going for drives,

doing stuff together,

hoping to outfox the old virus for another day.

Not Another Cat Poem

I’ve written another poem about a cat.

I promised myself I wouldn’t do that,

But this one leapt upon the page

and as usual took centre stage;

the other poems took off and scurried,

looking set upon and rather harried.

There was one about a lecherous leer —

that would have to wait another year;

and one about my old dog Trigger

who humped his mattress with manly vigour.

So may things about which to write

but this cat poem purrs with delight.

Thoze Cranberries

Thoze Cranberries

in the morning

not the ones you eat

though they’re pretty good too

but the ones you listen to

the ones from Ireland playing now

over the PA system in the mall

‘Dreams’

thoze impossible melodies

thoze haunted lines

playing through my blood

my brain,

such beauty,

such ‘harmonious madness’

hinting at what?

we’ll never know

joy or tragedy?

I go outside.

The day moves slow.

* what piece of music moves you?

A Good Writer Can Do That

You hear those gunshots last night, Matt? Boom, boom, boom , one after the other. Six in a row.

Firecrackers, he chuckled. The kids down the road.

What! You killed the romance, Matt. I had a great piece of flash fiction on the go: about an active shooter on the prowl, a gang fight … it was going to be a ripper. I was up half the night writing it. I couldn’t sleep.

You can still do a great piece of flash fiction, John. Just make it comic, not horror. A good writer can do that.

When I Come Back

When I come back

I want to come back as a book.

No matter how rambunctious, vitriolic,

passionate the life within,

I can’t get over how composed

each one looks.

• if you could come back as a book, which character would you choose to be?

No More

No more typhoons,

he said,

tornadoes,

no tsunamis of emotion.

Just calm seas,

plain sailing,

no commotion