God Must Love Larrikins

God must love larrikins.

He calls them home early

to be with Him.

Warnie, of course. the King of Spin

and some years earlier,

The Crocodile Hunter, Steve Irwin.

No one saw that coming.

Least of all, him.

A stingray!

A creature from the black lagoon!

Too soon. Too soon. Taken.

And Paul Walker, my favourite,

who taught me to live

fast and furious.

God took him too.

But the dictators and tyrants

are allowed to linger,

grow putrid..

If only He loved them a little more.

• pic courtesy of Pinterest by Kobe eReader

Does That Count?

You look like a man who could wear pink, she said,

handing me the mask along with the compliment.

I have never thought of myself as a man who could wear pink

but the dental assistant thought so too

though in her T-shirt and jeans and muscly arms festooned

with inky blue tatts of scaly winged dragons she wasn’t wearing

an iota of pink.

She looked indie, edgy like I wanted to look but I was the man

who wore pink.

I wore it all the way to the car park then bravely wore it

in the nearby shopping centre where Pink was playing

over the P.A system.

Was that a sign?

Then went home with it still on.

The next day I put on a blue mask but I did wear

my mauve short-sleeved shirt when I went out.

Does that count?

Taking Off

Not all poems will leave the tarmac.

Not all are destined to fly.

Some are too heavy to lift off,

weighed down with their own importance,

too mechanically unsound.

Some simply haven’t enough fuel in the tank.

Others are just puzzles, enigmas,

the captain scratching his head in the cockpit,

saying, well, it should fly. Everything appears in order.

It was checked this morning.

Not all poems will leave the tarmac.

Not all are destined to fly.

• pic courtesy of Pinterest

Gleefully Unhinged

I suppose I should be getting ready

rather than hanging out here in the garden

drinking G & T’s

reading an ode to the art of ‘goofing off’

which is sort of like Jenny Joseph’s

‘When I am an old woman I shall wear purple’

which she wrote at 29

& that pic of Bill Murray at Cannes in his short-sleeved

psychedelic shirt, baby blue shorts & panama hat

looking ‘gleefully unhinged’

• pic from Style in ‘The Age’

How Does That Work?

My mind is a scold.

It calls me sloth,

a lassitudinous layabout.

Is that even a word, I say?

Get off the couch, it says. It’s early afternoon

Attend to your blog.

Your Yorkshire mate puts up three posts

to your one.

Write that poem about airing the sheets.

How they purr like cats as they are stroked

by the sun.

Re-read that article :

‘Should Leopards Be Paid For Their Spots’.

Phone your daughters.

Go see your sister.

Give people their worth.

Go to gym.

Release your inner Thor.

Okay, okay, I grumble

but, in truth, I’m happier

and have loads more energy

when I’m buzzing around

like a gingery bee.

How does that work?

One little Letter, one HUGE difference

Bev put on a Golden Oldies disc

when Hippy Hippy Shake

jumped out of the player.

Chad Romero, I said.

Who?

Chad Romero, the singer. How good is my memory?

When she went into the shower, I sneaked a look at the CD cover

to make sure I’d got it right.

Huh? Swinging Blue Jeans, it said.

That’s funny, I thought, I’m sure it was Chad Romero.

So I Googled the name.

My heart sank.

‘Chad went home to be with the Lord,’ the Obituary began, ‘on April 23rd, 2017.’

Bullshit, I said. Chad was a hell-raiser. He wouldn’t have gone meekly as that.

There was no mention of his singing career.

So I Googled ‘Hippy Hippy Shake’ and there he was : CHAN ROMERO.Singer, composer, lyricist.

The full package.

And he’s still alive. Still rocking.

Sometimes one little letter can make a HUGE difference.

Taking Over

You’re taking over, she says.

Am I? I say. I didn’t know that.

You men are all the same, she says.

I go away and think about it.

Can one take over without even realizing it?

Did Alexander the Great conquer all those kingdoms without

even being aware of it?

Did Genghis Khan?

Did these warrior leaders perform their actions with sleight-of-hand

fooling even themselves?

Take over? Who? Me?

I talk to my therapist who is mightily amused at the very notion.

She said what? Who? You?

I take a good look in the mirror as I pass by.

Ummm. My tentacles do seem to have grown longer.

pic by pinterest. Andrei-Pervukhin on DeviantArt

The Big Day

Election day at Alberton Primary.

A long, long queue.

A slow shuffle to the front.

Hope the queue at the Pearly Gates

isn’t as long and tedious as this.

And there’s a coffee van and sausage sizzle

at the end of it

Jumping Jacks

When I was a kid

we always started with Jumping Jacks

on Guy Fawkes night.

We would light the fuses and run.

They had short attention spans.

We didn’t know where

they’d end up.

They had so much energy.

My kids were like that too.

They took after me.

You have ants in your pants, mum used to say

It’s the

Jumping jack gene.

I’d answer.

My niece, also afflicted,

takes medication and has only just read

her first novel at fifteen.

‘Adam Bede’

[ does anyone still read this?]

The dogs have it too.

Even in their sleep they are running.

Perhaps there is an evolutionary advantage

to being jittery

The Wrong Saint

We were at St, Francis Winery

& were trying to find

our way home

when you said,

Hey! Isn’t St. Francis the Patron Saint of Travellers

& I said, yes,

I think he is

so we got praying to St. Francis

but were getting

more and more lost.

Hey! let me check something, I said

so I pulled out my iPhone & Googled

‘Patron Saint of Travellers’

& found

it was St. Christopher.

No wonder we were lost.

We were praying to the wrong guy.

So this time we prayed to the right guy

& cheered up.

The car cheered up too.

It had a bounce in its wheels.

We were on our way.

Any minute now …..