Was it Worth It ?

Was it worth it?

Hell, yeah.

I got to drive during JJJ’s hottest 100 of 2022..

Got to hear the First Nation’s cover of Cold Play’s ‘Yellow’,

a wild, gritty banger

by King Stingray

the didgeridoo barking like camp-dogs.

Eat your heart out, Chris Martin.

I got to see a quilt of sparrows whirring across a blue denim sky

in a 45 degree tilt.

Wild and acrobatic.

Most of all I got to break free,

like those sparrows,

like King Stingray

tearing it up for freedom, togetherness

like the house parties all across the nation on this special day

with forty more tracks still to go,

and I’m in my car,

one part of me driving, the other dancing to the beats.

Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeee.

Breviary

K’s fond of haiku,

Michael senryu, its jokey cousin;

Mia, ‘a struggling author’ writes tiny tales,

Richard American sentences,

put them together,

and what have you got?

a slim, selection

of shorts,

a breviary of brevities

a pocket book of poems

for the wee small hours

At the Blood Clinic

We are sitting across from each other

trying not to stare

looking down at our phones.

There are some paintings on the wall

but no one is looking at them.

Perhaps they are the sort of paintings

that are not meant to be looked at

but are there to establish a presence,

maintain a mood.

Then I notice the paintings,

half figurative, half abstract

in faded denim blue

with black, springy squiggles

like a cat’s whiskers

are not signed.

Perhaps the painter was half abstracted

when he painted them

& simply forgot.

Hiding Place: a Tiny Tale

Hiding Place.

Was wondering where the cat snoozed sunny afternoons

when I turned the hose on some groggy –looking gardenias

in a cloistered corner of the yard

and found out

as a cat bounded out of the bushes into the clearing

as if she were scalded

Greedy Gubbins

Greedy Gubbins.

I want to get up.

I want to see how much my eyes

have swollen,

want to see Kokki dash across the court

in his tiger shorts after his prey,

want to see those arum lilies again

trumpet their hosannas to orange,

want another pod coffee

another shot of Bailey’s

just a thimble full

but my partner sees me passing by.

You should rest your eyes, she says and I say,

too much to see,

and I know what she’s about to say

even before she says it:

my mummy would have called you,

a Greedy Gubbins, she’ll say

and then she says it,

Ouch!

Kiss Curl

Kiss Curl .

I love the way the wind

plays with my hair

when I whisk along the road

windows wound down

twirls my comb-over

into a kiss curl

like Bill Hayley in the fifties.

Rock around the clock, baby.

*pic courtesy of pinterest

Surly

Surly.

Bono looks surly.

Putting him beside a book called ‘Euphoria’

did it.

Bono feels anything but.

Euphoric, that is.

He’s been languishing on the Express Shelf

for three weeks

while books all around him have been flying

off the shelf.

‘Pissed’ is closer to the mark

as in ‘Pissed off’.

Bono is not used to this sort of treatment.

I would take him home myself

but I already have.

If the book was as lean and finely crafted

as a U2 song

it’d be different.

But it is as bloated as a Pynchon novel.

Please Don’t Stare

Please Don’t Stare.

It’s not as bad as the horns

on Hellboy’s head

even when filed down to stubs

or the protrusions

on Elephant Man’s face

or that raspberry stain the shape of Africa

on the barista’s cheek that day in the mountains

but the volcanic cone,

a miniature Vesuvius,

on my forehead

is an eye popper

and looks like it’s about

to go off.

• pic courtesy of Wikipedia

The Message

The Message.

Okay. Okay.

I got it.

I got the message.

No gym.

No hanky panky.

No chasing after

runaway hats

in the park.

No bending down

or reaching up..

Go placidly.

Remember.

It’s only been two days

since surgery.

*pic courtesy of pinterest

Axe Throwing

Axe Throwing

My daughter has been Axe Throwing with some friends from work.

Apparently it is the new thing.

It’s a bit like darts only more dangerous,

I’ve been hit with a dart in the hand,

Being hit with a hatchet would be a totally different thing.

People are encouraged to bury the hatchet in the target not in each other.

This is not ‘Vikings’.

It looks like fun. I’m thinking of going along.

But I keep thinking of real heads I’d like to bury the hatchet into.