Dambo

Dambo.

I want to be a gangly recycle artist like Dambo,

the builder of wooden trolls.

Instead of discarded furniture, I use discarded poems,

snippets I’ve copied down in my commonplace books,

bits and pieces on suffering coz I know what’s that like now.

All the best poems have been written, Daz says.

He’s the one who wrote ‘The Parable of the Albino Pigeon’

so I listen.

“About suffering they were never wrong the Old Masters’,

says Auden, and I added:

while someone is bringing in the bins, watching ‘Bullet Train’

on Binge, or cleaning the car of dogs’ fur like my neighbour

who asks, Hey Bro, how’s it hanging? Do I even want to answer that?

‘This seeing the sick endears them to us, us too it endears’

says Hopkins in ‘Felix Randall’

who taught me empathy;

and those lines from Mary Oliver;

‘Someone I once loved

gave me a box full of darkness.

It took me years to understand

that this too was a gift’.

You can’t better that, Daz would say.

So is cancer a gift?

Anyhow I want to build my wooden trolls of poems

coz like Daz says, the best poems have all been written.

pic courtesy of pinterest

Sidekick

Sidekick.

I’m walking down the corridor

in my zig zaggy socks

just me and my sturdy side kick.

I admire how slender, sturdy he is.

I like his bling though it’s not the sort

I would covet.

His face I like, its open and informative,

the moving lights that run across his lips

showing someone is home,

that I’m being monitored.

Hey! I’m here for you.

Walk on brother,

he says.

Quilt

Quilt.

Lynne is weaving a quilt

based on a pattern

in the happy cancer ward.

Do you ever deviate from it?

The pattern? I ask.

Rarely, she says.

If I do things can go horribly wrong

but sometimes, she says with a tinkle

in her voice,

they can go wondrously right.

• pic courtesy of pinterest

Party

You’ve just had two hours of chemo

and an injection of white blood cells.

And you’re jumping out of yr skin

Where’s the party ? you say.

Where’s the party?

But there’s no party.

There’s only the house meeting.

That will do, you say.

You can turn that into a party.

Les in Real Life

Les in Real Life,

The book of Les’ s poetry just fell off the desk

onto the polished wood floor.

At 783 pages it created quite a bang.

The millipede on the wall twitched.

The fluff sausage dogs in the corner jumped.

Les in real life was as hefty as his ‘Collected’.

He wrote poems celebrating the fat, his tribe,

including Quintets For Robert Morley,

the bushy-browed, triple-chinned English actor.

with the plummy voice.

There’s nothing plummy about our Les’s poetry.

It is wide of girth as Les himself, capacious,

containing jokes, puns, outlandish rhymes,

skew whiff metaphors., and clever insights.

It is written in Aussie English.

I bent down, picked dear old Les off the floor.

No need to go to gym tomorrow

lugging Les around.,

Creature

Creature.

That stain

on the sidewalk

something Neanderthal

like a creature

on a cave painting

What If on a sunny day

What If On a sunny day …….

the sun suddenly blacked out

had a power outage

while you were hanging out

the washing

or the dog was taking you

for a long walk through a maze

of streets?

You can’t fumble for a switch

phone your power provider.

You can’t even use the torch

on your mobile phone

if it’s not on you.

What would you do

if it lasted?

What would

Jonah

Jonah.

One moment the house is all lit up.

The next it is plunged

into darkness

as though hit with a heart attack.

I scramble around the black cavern

of the sitting room

for the door handle.

I have to get out

amongst the stars

out with my beautiful garden,

the pig weed and the white magnolias.

I sit down on my little bench

by the birdbath

and catch my breath.

Now I knew how Jonah felt

when swallowed by that whale.

Timing is Everything

Timing is Everything.

It’s like stand-up.

The audience is a bowl

of expectations.

Can you pull it off

this time?

Now you’ve taken your meds.

You stand tall,

clutch the old mike.

Come on, baby, you say.

Don’t die on me now.

Then weeeeeeeeeeee

out it comes

in one joyful, exuberant stream

like a stallion.

What a performance.

You will sleep well tonight.

Bad Prophet

You prophesy

there’s a flood coming

so I make a run for it

dash inside

flip the lid —

there’s only a trickle.

You fickle !