You can’t stutter in writing,
my speech therapist said
before I had thought much about it.
Maybe that’s how it started.
I felt I could sprint in writing
while in speech I hobbled.
I was good over short distances:
haiku, poems, flash fiction,
the occasional story.
Any further I flagged,
my efforts stuttered
then stopped.
But I don’t know.
I can speak now
but I still write.
Like George V1, the king
subject to stuttering
I had a speech therapist too
who taught me how
to word switch
to philander with synonyms
I could slip into
how to pace myself
and summon the scribe
of stutterers before me
Lewis Carroll
Neville Shute
Updike
& dear old Aesop whose thoughts
often outran
the tired tortoise of his tongue.
It wasn’t an affliction
like polio
though it crippled you
just the same.
There were no calipers
for crippled speech.
You had to hobble around
conversations
as best you could
hoping no one would notice.
They did.
When things went badly
when you were teased
you put yourself into
the iron lung of shame —
& stayed for days.
*pic courtesy on Pinterest
Sometimes
my poems
look
like this:
speckled,
blotchy.
left too long,
overdone;
should have served them up
fresh,
still young
We’re marching towards mid-summer now.
Midsummer can be murder here,
the heatwave capital of Australia.
I can feel the heat in its loins already,
smell its sweaty armpits
hear the swagger in its step.
I’m coming, he says, like a general
on the march with his troops,
heatstrokes and bushfires,
& his meddlesome minions,
mozzies, snakes, spiders,
outcasts from Eden.
Not looking forward to this
but at least there’s the beach to go to,
the air-conditioned palaces of libraries
and shopping centres, the reverse cycle at home
and, of course, beers with the boys!
It was hard at first .
Coaxing him down from
the white pedestal .
But when he came
he complained of the heat
how it was melting
the grease paint
on his face ,
how someone the other day
had written
“ I Love Fish ‘N’ Chips “
on the back of his white jacket
and how the gold statue
chased him down the mall when he
came too near his spot .
Of the monotony of standing
for four hours .
And how he came
to life
when people gave gold coins
bending down to thank them
but that didn’t happen
nearly enough .
And anyway , he added ,
looking at me meaningfully ,
time is money .
I put two dollars in his white hat .
He climbed back on the pedestal
and froze .
You’re invited to join a Zoom workshop:http://sundaywritersclub.com Sunday the 24th at 8.30 pm Adelaide time. I will be running it. It will be fun, you will meet other writers, and have your imagination sharpened. You will be the sharpest pencil in the case 🙂 just click on ‘Vienna , online workshops for details
I was driving towards my destination
a place I had never been
when I missed a number of turnoffs.
I had overshot the mark.
It made me wonder how often in life
I had overshot the mark
& missed some vital turnoffs
where, for instance. I could have become
a famous novelist like David Foster Wallace
& worn a red bandana
or rakish rock star like Keith Richards
or, god forbid,a prominent politician.
Or even married someone else!
What if you didn’t marry grandma?
my granddaughter once asked,
would I have still been born?
Most of us overshoot the mark.
It may be a good thing.
Danny Kaye, that Court Jester, once famously said,
we always land where we were meant to be.
Maybe it’s true.
I could have done worse.
I was in McLaren Vale, the heart of the wine growing region, trying to find a well-known winery called Fox Creek.
I didn’t have a GPS in the car but I checked on Google Maps before I left so I had a pretty good idea. Pretty good, as anyone can tell you, is not good enough.
I knew it came off Almond Grove Road. Locals would know where that was.
I asked some passers by. Some said it was a little north, another somewhat east, a third said ‘straight ahead’, the honest ones shrugged their shoulders. Dunno, they said. I stopped and asked a guy in the coffee shop. He was adamant it was the next road to the left. It wasn’t.
Honestly, does anyone know where the ^%$&* they are???
* do you know where you are?
ps: I wrote this while I was exasperated
( this was just published on ‘The Drabble’: thought you’d like a read too 🙂 ]
I’ve been clearing up the house
sweeping up the crumbs.
It’s a monthly ritual.
Am I mad? or just dumb?.
I clear away the cobwebs
sweep up the dust
collect and bin the rubbish.
Somebody must.
They won’t wash themselves,
mum used to say.
The sink’s full of them
so I put them away.
Make the place spotless
so it shines & it hums.
& I better get a move on
before the cleaner comes.
I have a mote in my left eye
not the metaphoric one that Jesus
spoke of
but an actual one of grit.
I have amoat in my head too
which is metaphoric.
It cuts me off from needy people
which is kinda funny
coz I’m needy too.
Some people are overly guarded.
Too many moats to cross.
Australia has a moat,
a helluva big one
called the Pacific Ocean
on one side
& the Indian on the other
the one that boat people crossed
to get to Australia.
One family from Vietnam
lived across the road from us
for years.
I wrote about the man, the grandfather
in my first book.
[I’ll post it tomorrow]
A moat as big as the ocean
is hazardous.
Not everyone made it back then.
The Earth is surrounded
by a moat too
the vast star-studded ocean
of space.
I could go on but this poem
is starting to drift.
so I’m going to put a moat around it
and close it off.
* photo by juvnsky-enton-maksimor on Unsplash
John Malone 