Your hair looks nonchalant, she says, as we get out of the car.
Nonchalant? I say. My hair?
Yes, she says. Unfussed, loose like a kaftan, happy in the way it looks like some of your poems.
Happy hair? Isn’t that a good thing?
Yes, she says, but couldn’t you …..?
Comb it? Of course, as I pull my little comb out of the back pocket of my jeans,
And that’s another thing, she says. Why pink?
*pic courtesy of Pinterest
It had been on the vacant lot next to the church
For over half a year and no one in all that time
Could rustle up enough motivation to mow the lawn
Or clear it of rubbish. I thought of calling
The number on the back a few times but just couldn’t
Get motivated enough to ring or attend one
Of their weekly meetings
& I thought about something
A friend had said about running a Special Olympics
For the Motivationally Challenged but the problem
With that, I said, was that nobody would bother
To turn up. I thought then of the historically highly
Motivated: Hitler, Stalin, the rapacious bankers, Isis
And concluded that a low motivated populace isn’t
Necessarily a bad thing.
pic courtesy of Pinterest
Comes out every now and then
When I lose the thread of an argument and desperately try to sew it up
When I chat with Tiff in her tank at night when there’s nothing on TV
When I slapstick my way across the mall just for the hell of it
In the bath on Sundays when I sing ‘Deep Water’ backwards, inside out and upside down to give my vocal chords a workout
At the hairdressers when I talk to Simon with the harelip about his dad’s imminent retirement as Lord Mayor of Mars
And lastly when we all stand together in Alex’s Salon and sing the Mars National Anthem on International Mars Day
Someone once told me you can tell what the weather
Will be like by studying cows in a paddock.
If they’re standing, she said, there’d be
a good chance of rain, whereas if they were lying down,
you could count on fine weather. Or it might have been
The other way around. What a load of bull, I thought.
What if half were standing and half were lying down?
Would that mean a 50% chance of fine weather, or to put it another way,
A 50% chance of rain, depending on whether you were
A glass half- full or a glass half -empty sort of person? It seemed a little dodgy.
What if, for instance, in one paddock all the cows were lying down
while in another, they were practising synchronised standing?
Wouldn’t one cancel out the other?
And why cows?
What about prognosticating pigs, soothsaying sows, auguring alpacas?
The list goes on. I decided to go back to the Bureau forecasts.
At least they get it right half the time.
I like a poem with muscle
a poem with vim and vigor
I like a poem with its hand
firmly on the trigger
Love a poem low and lusty
a poem that readily scans
the sort of poem that you hear
at a poetry slam
That photo you posted
on Facebook
of her and him
unmoored me
sent my head spinning
down
down
that whirlpool
of memory
the immaculate misconception
of my frail craft
the face in the photo
having the last laugh
Not ‘the last train to Clarkesville’.
Nor ‘the midnight train to Georgia’
Not even ‘the downtown train’ that Tom Waits
and Rod Stewart rode on vinyl
but that old steam train that took me all the way
from the monastery where I was sequestered
to be a priest, on the verge of making my final vows
to a life in the ‘real world’. where I met the woman who would be my wife.
and the mother of my three kids,
a career as a teacher, a writer, and the grandfather of six more kids,
the apples of my life,
a sliding doors moment:
the most momentous train ride I ever made.
Not ‘selfish’, she says. more ‘difficult to get on with’.
Ahhh, I say, that’s code for ‘tricky’.
I know I am. My best mate is too.
Human beans are ‘tricky’ all around.
They don’t grow straight. They grow with all sorts
of genetic quirks; there’s always something askew,
that rubs people up the wrong way, that chafes.
How people live together, I don’t know.
Sometimes I have trouble just living with me.
I’m not a one trick pony, but I am tricky.
pic courtesy of Pinterest
John Malone 