their arachnophobia
but say that I’m far sillier :
I have arachnophilia .
Red-backs and huntsmen
and daddy-long-legs
I just love to visit
in grandad’s shed
while the backyard becomes
a construction site
where spiders build webs
on hot summer nights .
Halfway Through.
I was halfway through my walk ‘round the ‘hood
when the rains came.
That’s when I spied it on the corner of Broad and Spring:
the little old telephone booth that all neighbourhoods used to have
before we got mobile phones.
Okay, it didn’t have a door, but it had three sides, one of which the rain pelted against but it had a roof.
And my mind went back to the early days of DC Comix when Clark Kent dashed into a phone booth to change into superman.
All things were possible in the 1950’s.
Whenever I’ve had a bad night
nightmares,
a fright
from wherever I have roamed
I know
I only have to see the glow
of the night light
& I’m home.
They go back, my commonplace books
to 1997.
And I’ve been keeping them assiduously,
some might say, obsessively, ever since,
4 or 5 a year. So that’s ……
Well, you do the maths.
What goes in?
Rough copies of poems I’m working on
but also poems I really like,
not just famous, well known poems
but poems posted on WordPress,
yes, poems, you, you and you have written.
I let you know when that occurs.
What determines entry?
Poems that fizz and buzz with energy,
not lazy poems, boring poems, safe poems
but poems that are a little transgressive, poems with edge,
that court oddball words, that experiment with language,
but cool poems, calm poems too
poems that are marked with the individuality of the writer.
Occasionally I cut ineffective lines, passages that don’t work,
It’s the editor in me. But they are stronger for it.
I don’t need to ask permission. They are for my eyes only.
They are poems I read over and over again for inspiration,
for warmth, for comfort – even when they bristle. .
And what have I discovered in all my writing and collating?
I do my best work in the cold.
I squidge
into
my penitential shoes.
Today
we are going out
into the world.
They are bright & bouncy with anticipation:
brunch at Brunelli’s,
shooting the breeze with Ross
in our big new Zip chairs,
a walk along the lake
tuned into
Jimbo’s Jumbo Juke Box
then off to Fellowship
in worship
communing with the ‘saints’.
It’s a lot
to squidge into
one day,
one bright and beautiful day.
Ruminations on a Rock Star
I was reading Kelley’s* poem
‘Fifteen Minutes or a Lifetime’
where she says: ‘I’d Like to be a Rockstar/
Wearing rock star clothes …’
& I thought, Hey! I used to be like that :
I wanted to be a rock star like Mick Jagger’
or Elvis , only I couldn’t hold a note ;
and then I wanted
to be a famous author like Salman Rushdie
until the fatwa hit him;
but eventually
I settled for anonymity —
that’s more my style:
pottering and pondering, soaking it all in
not giving it all out,
family, friends, Fellowship.
*’piano girl’ blog
The Best Bits.
I refuse to wear a beanie when I go to bed,
refuse to stiffen up; I’m not yet dead.
I want to be loose and happy as a rope,
to say, Yes! Yes! Yes! more often than Nope!
Would love to talk in parables like Jesus did
so I can reveal that which is hid,
Want a life of wonder, new experiences too;
not a life that’s 1 ply, 3 ply will do.
Wish time were a horse and it would giddy –up
to get to the best bits where I don’t stuff up.
Don’t want to die and then be forgotten.
Want to be remembered like Johnny Rotten,
Showers
Showers acupuncture skin , pummel
angry muscles into submission ;
like coffee they
kick-start us into action ,
the quick fix , the jab
for our frenetic times but
the y are ill-suited to contemplation or insight —
Archimedes
would have discovered nothing under
a shower ;
nor are they
conducive to knowledge ;
you cannot
read under showers nor
can you write unless it is wet verse ;
moreover showers only cater for one side at a time —
leaving the
other blue with cold ;
in this baths are more inclusive immersing us
like icebergs with only
the head above water ;
showers have much to learn ;
young upstarts , they lack the noble
ancestry of baths yet
arrogantly tower above them ; their heads
must constantly be lowered
Bath
A boat-shaped vessel with room for one ;
when you clamber into a bath ,
you are
captain,crew, passenger
rolled into one —
yet baths
require no special skills
nor do they stand on ceremony ;
in this they are like
some beaches — dress is entirely optional ;
entering a bath
you enter a topsy-turvy world
where water fills the craft not surrounds it —
though baths will never sink ;
head back , you settle down but are going nowhere—
baths have no destinations
nor sails and are permanently in
dry dock —
yet people
have been known to drift off
in baths emerging
rosy skinned and luminous as if
fresh from a voyage .
Peroni Ode.
tall
& tapered
like
an elegant woman
thin-waisted
you are a
delight
to hold
the cold beer finding
perfection
in you;
no ingenue,
you are sophisticated
& true
……. and a little ditty :
You can’t upstage these
they have flair up their sleeves;
nothing else surpasses
Peroni pint-size glasses
John Malone 
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