Simon’s Space Odyssey

Simon rambles in. He rattles Alec’s equanimity.

I’m getting my haircut. I see it all in the mirror.

Simon’s his usual self: brash, bold, bloody stupid, He lisps some errant remark.

Alec drops what he’s doing, reaches for the fly swatter and chases Simon down the street.

It’s like a well rehearsed routine.

A month later I go back.. Simon doesn’t look so good. His eyes are puffy, his face a little swollen, his hare lip is bleeding.

What happened? George says, one of the assistants. Your girl friend beat you up again?

Simon blubbers out an obscenity. Alec reaches for the fly swatter and the chase is on again.

Simon is a sad sack, the world’s punching bag but he does have one trick up his sleeve. His dad is Lord Mayor of Mars. No one else can claim that.

How he got there long before Elon Musk is not explained but Simon basks in his glory. On Mars International Day — yes, there is one —Simon comes in, wearing his red skivvy and breaks into the Mars National anthem till he is chased out by Alec’s furious flyswatter.

One day Simon slumps in. Dad is not well.  Dad needs Simon to take over. How will he get there? Everyone knows by now that Simon has a rocket ship tucked in a corner of his bedroom at the ready. But Simon as Lord Mayor? Would those Martians treat him seriously?

Simon doesn’t appear the next month nor the one after that.

In fact, he doesn’t appear again.

Can one disappear into one’s own fantasy?

*pic courtesy of Wikipedia

Phone Call at 3a.m.

I get a phone call at 3a.m.

Who calls at 3a.m?

You think the worst.

I glance across at the screen.

The call’s from Algeria.

I don’t pick up.

I don’t know anyone from Algeria.

I used to get phone calls from ‘my mate’

in Mogadishu asking me how my bank account’s going

but since I told him I’m a pisspot he’s stopped calling.

But Algeria?

I don’t even know where the fuck it is.

Africa somewhere?

But here’s the funny thing.
It rings three times then silence.

What’s the point of that?

Is it a scam?

How can you scam someone unless you speak to them first?

Perhaps he’s inordinately shy.

Perhaps he’s a mute.

Perhaps he only speaks Martian.

I knew a young man once, Simon whose father was the Lord Mayor of Mars but that’s another story.

I look up Algeria on the map.

No clues there.

But he’s there. Somewhere.

On his cell phone.

Now who shall I phone tonight? he wonders.

Whose puffy slumbers can I puncture?

Bizarre.

My Furry Friends

You are furry like a dog

sit at my feet like a dog

follow me around like a dog

always under my feet

but you don’t woof.

You are my slippers,

a handsome, friendly pair.

My ex never liked you.

She said I’d be wearing

a dressing gown next,

smoking a pipe,

reading cozy murder mysteries

in front of a log fire

but now it’s just you & me.

You often hear the phrase

‘let me slip into something

more comfortable’

as a prelude to sex

in steamy novels

but comfortable to me

means something else.

You can’t get into much trouble

wearing yr furry friends.

• pic courtesy of Pinterest

A Bit of Love

Some of my poems end up like this,

bashed, broken , bent beyond repair,

car wrecks,

the ones you don’t usually see

in the showroom

of my blog,

the ones abandoned in the junkyard

out the back,

but sometimes I remember a part that worked

when the rest of the poem didn’t

and I go down & look for it amongst

all that scrap metal

of words

misshapen phrases

 give it a polish, an oil change

a bit of love

& fit it into the poem I’m working on now

so the old gives vigor

to the new.

It works every time.

The Ninth Crypt

I am about to read a book called ‘The Ninth Crypt’,

A novel I acquired for twenty dollars at the supermarket

But fear I may have made a grave mistake:

Browsing through the blurb I see mention of only

The ninth crypt, all well and good, but what about

The other eight? Perhaps the author is planning prequels

Based on the success of this volume but seeing he is

Now a septuagenarian who came to writing late,

This is most unlikely; perhaps if I bury myself deeply

in the text I shall disinter enough cryptic clues

To keep me happy — but at 800 pages !!! I await

Clarification; in the meantime this tombstone of a novel

Shall stand on my shelf of great unread books.

• have you got any big unread books on your bookshelf?
• photo by Grangeburn on Pinterest

Just Another Evening in Paradise

The Kings of Leon could still use somebody, Caleb sings in his Kurt Cobain voice

& the Kurdish Freedom Fighter comes on too strong to Lynne, wanting to whisk her away with his Hindu Kush eyes

& the woman with the Mastiff shoulders walks past in her low cut dress

& sniggering sneer

& Des starts knock knock  knocking on Heaven’s Door again because he knows we’re all here and I tell him to get back in his box coz you’re in the undiscovered country from whose bourne .. well, you know the rest

while Ruth limps off to the Ladies and Ted calls after her, that’s the best part of you gone,

and Sirocco knocks over his second glass of red on the white table cloth and Jarrod frowns and Gerry rushes over

and Max is cuddling Peter in the corner and the mulberry mutt mourns for its owner outside the window

& I’m talking much too loud but I’m in my cups And I tell the funny story about the pony walking into a bar again and I won’t be put down like a mad dog

& an officer from the penitentiary phones and says, no, Ades cannot be let out because it’s a Friday night

& we’re going round and round like skid marks on tarmac

& it’s just another Friday night in Paradise

Ambrosia Lite

The sun peeps behind a cloud

I hope it is not too loud

The swallows doze in the trees

I’m in dreams up to my shiny knees

tweedledum and tweedledee

the honey-eater swings on the trapeze

of the scrawny twig

& I have another swig

of ambrosia lite

and this poem is shining much too bright

unmoored again I chase links

but my cottontail heart shrinks

• image courtesy of Wikipedia

Inherit the Day

You inherit another day.

So what are you going to do with it?

Melancholize ?

Rhapsodize ?

What?

Sift through it for cigarette butts?

Scrambled messages on billboards?

What you gunna do?

Rehearse it like a song you’re going to record?

Look it straight in the eye?

Shoulder your way through it like an NRL star?

Squeeze the juice right out of it?

Hitch a ride on it?

Or lean against it like a lamp post and watch it amble by?

You inherit another day.

So what you gunna do?

The Third Sentence

Many creative writing classes and manuals will stress the importance of the first sentence, that it must grab the reader’s attention. Even Hemingway espoused this fallacy. But the first sentence is never enough.

Yes, it must grab the reader’s attention, If it doesn’t the reader will go elsewhere. There are plenty of options — but if the second sentence is flaccid, all will be lost. The second sentence fulfills the promise of the first.

But it is the third sentence that seals the deal. The third sentence assures the reader that the writer is authentic, that they are worth listening to, that they have something to say and have the command of language to say it with flair and authority. They can be trusted.

After that the writer will be ‘in full swing’. The reader will be committed;  will go along for the ride.  

Shooting Star

I was driving back from the gym when I heard it

for the very first time,

that unmistakable voice,

a little gravely now, less freewheeling,

that knocked me  right out of orbit.

It was one of those moments when you have to pull over

to the side of the road, and give yourself

completely to the song;

“Purple Rain’ was like that,

Neil Young’s ‘After the Gold Rush’

and the soaring piano, guitar segue from ‘Layla’.

You receive the stigmata of otherness.

It changes your whole day and lingers for weeks.

 Perhaps never leaves you.

Then there’s the personal accounting,

where you’ve messed up, missed out,

fallen short of the mark, the roads not taken.

It takes a song to shake you like this:

‘Guess it’s too late to say the things to you,

you needed to hear me say,

Seen a shooting star tonight

slip away’.

*what songs have the power to transport you?