The Green Gazebo: Remembered
A long time ago
I sat beneath the green gazebo.
Huddled in my ego’s coat
& this is what I wrote:
The Green Gazebo
We sat beneath the green gazebo,
Just me, myself and my ego.
We spoke of very many things,
How grief and joy both have wings.
We had so very much to say
And that is how we spent the day.
A Short Venomous Tale
It is the venomous time of evening.
Sun setting. Close and muggy.
Her eyes dart around like mosquitos.
zeroing in on the small group at the edge of the pool
sipping G & T’s.
She settles on her prey, the malicious Minerva.
Punctures her composure, draws blood.
She will not be swatted.
She is feeling positively encephalitic.
*pic courtesy of pinterest
Crack
Not the crack in the cosmic egg
Nor the crack addicts smoke
Not even the crack in crack, snapple, pop breakfast cereal
but the bum crack
of Mr. Hairy
at the Eye Clinic
when he bent over to pick up
a form he had dropped
his shirt rolled up,
his jeans slipped a notch or two.
Everyone copped an eyeful.
I cracked a smile.
Some tittered.
Mr. Hairy was oblivious.
*pic courtesy of pexels.com
This Time
I went back to the airport. This time I would do it. This time I would push on through.
The first part was easy, driving to the Drop Off point but once you got there, you had to keep on going. That was the tricky part. That’s where I messed up.
That time, the time I dropped my daughter off, I continued through , swinging around the roundabout but that’s where it got confusing, arrows pointing in all directions, a jumble of signs and always someone up your ass pushing you to speed up, for god’s sake.
That’s when it happened. A dark, chunky , sinister sedan pulled me over. It had AFP on the side. Australian Federal Police. An officer got out, walked up to my side window and tapped on it. I was packing it. What had I done? or more importantly what did he believe I had done. This was the age of terrorism. But did I look like a terrorist?
He questioned me briefly, took my license and walked back to his car. That’s when he got talking to someone. I assumed they were doing a police check on me, on the vehicle. All the time I could see him in the rear view watching me.
Finally he sauntered up to me, handed the licence back, and said I was free to go this time, but to be careful where I drove. What the hell did that mean? Where had I wandered?
That’s when I got the fear of driving to the airport to drop someone off or pick someone up.
But this time I did it. I made it all the way. History did not repeat itself. Woo Hoo !
This world — we’ll never see the end of it.
So much beauty, above and below.
And just when you thought you’d seen it all,
up pops the Photographic Exhibition on Sea Slugs.
Slugs! The very name invites disdain, derision.
But these are something else: an artificer’s folly,
a frolic of design and colour, of quirky geometries
and improbable beauty — and there are 3000 varieties!
What practical use, what purpose, if not to delight?
Later I trawled through the depths of the web and emerged
staggering, reeling ; & that strange word, ‘nudibranch’
I’ve failed.
I got my sea slug poem
but not the one about yr cataract
how when it was removed
& the dressings came off
you went out into the world
like Mary Oliver did
amazed at all you saw.
going Wow! Wow!
yr little expostulations of beauty.
Ants Doing Yoga
I was watching ants filing back and forth the other day
When two pulled ovef for a chat; and I wondered how it was
They knew each other seeing they all look alike; and I
Concluded they must have individual features like us:
Hooked noses, for instance, bushy eyebrows, little pot bellies
And carry nicknames like ‘Shorty’, ‘Ginge’ or ‘Spike’
And further ants must have little to say seeing they say it
So quickly, but mostly I wondered where ants are off to
All the time; it is hard to imagine them doing yoga, or chilling
Out at the cricket or at the beach in a deckchair or moshing out
in a mosh pit to Adam and the Ants. So where do ants go?
Ants
1
Like angry black hairs
the ants scatter everywhere
when I discover them
under the hem
of the water drum
2
They are like
runaway exclamation marks
on their side
their heads
the full stops
3
A year after the gulf war
I stayed with a friend in the states
who suffered a home invasion
of ants .
He sprayed , stamped , stomped
on them
till his house was clean .
That’s what Bush should have done
with Saddam he proclaimed
4
There are no ants in heaven
a priest explained to us at school .
Some how they got beneath the creator’s gaze
like cockroaches , rats and spiders .
They have no souls .
Kill with impunity
5
Smidgins of black , dashes.
a black din of limbs
an amokery of midnight slivers
through a crack in our world
they got in
*pic courtesy of pinterest
I was in bed with two Venetians, a long black
and a sleazy paperback
by Suzanne Pleshette
when an angry text erupted like a boil
on my iphone:
where were you, it said, I looked for you
& your floozy
everywhere in the cinema?
It was my old mate George.
Please don’t call her a floozy, I said.
We couldn’t make it. Sorry.
Sorry !!! Couldn’t make it.?
To see my new film, my best yet.
‘Ticket To Paradise’.
We’ll catch it on DVD, I said.
It’s not the same, he snapped,
sounding peeved and pedantic.
I don’t like hanging up on George
but he can work himself into a lather.
I dipped a Venetian into my long black
& carried on reading.
You apologize to the cat
the turtle in the tank
the goldfish in its bowl
and yr other half
in her room.
What got into you?
You’re not an IED
primed to go off
at the least provocation.
You coulda done better, mate.
You coulda done better.
John Malone 