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.
Allayed.
They took me up the steps
after the hall emptied
and pulled aside the heavy curtain.
And
there it was
in the centre
of the stage,
wide and welcome as a smile
a bath
tub egg yolk yellow
rim robin blue.
My fears were allayed.
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 !
something psychedelic
I went looking for the dark side of the moon ’cause Dino told me it was good. If you can’t think of the name, think Pink Floyd, he said but I didn’t need to do that. I went to all the outlets in my area, but none had it: they thought I was having them on. So I drove to Dan Murphy’s ’cause they have everything. I looked for something psychedelic but there was nothing. Finally an attendant found it. It had some dumb ass, low key label. I took it home. I did not guzzle. I sipped. I savoured. Then something happened ….
Mustafa who knew me well was a refugee too: he from Syria, me from the realm of common sense.
How would you like it cut? he asked.
Like yours, I said.
Like mine?
Yes.
He didn’t chuckle. He didn’t comment on the outrageousness of my request.
Apart from the difference in hair color, there was also the disparity in volume though he admitted, even at 27, he was losing his hair.
He cut, he swooped, he shaved, he teased and cajoled but when finished he wrought a little miracle.
How did it look? Shaved at the sides , but on top what hair I had was swept to the other side of my head and held down by gel. It looked amazing.
Askew, I said, It looks amazingly askew.
Like your writing, he said.
Yes, like my writing.
If you go looking for me sometime after dark
I’m out with my flashlight, hunting for a snark,
a perfect metaphor for an imperfect poem
so I can bag it briskly and bring it home,
a perfect metaphor, so rare and so apt
that captures the mood, the Magnificat
of the vision splendid I hope to impart,
the perfect, perfect metaphor somewhere in the dark.
The way
those branches
stretch
reach out
to
the sky
their heads
of hair
bobbing
in the
breeze;
like we
should be:
reaching up,
out
yet
tethered
like trees
I like to travel in ambulances.
They seem such warm, friendly places
especially the Aussie ones shown on our screens:
‘Paramedics’ and ‘In the Ambulance’.
The ambos are calm, confident and chatty,
the ride authoritative but reassuring;
you feel you’ve landed on your feet
even if you are on your back;
There’s never any drama with these ambulances:
You scoot along niftily, the traffic parting
like the Red Sea for Moses; you’re delivered
efficiently as a package from Australia Post.
* I've never travelled in an ambulance; have you? * have you an ambulance story ?
*pic courtesy of Wikipedia
I like to read the crazed calligraphy of car tyres
on roads, the angry black swathes of rubber
on bitumen from burn-outs and donuts. What are we
to make of such marks, the road their canvas?
Do we elevate it to ‘outsider art’; Do we call them,
‘hoons’ or ‘street artists’? Do they love the smell
of burnt rubber in the morning as they furiously apply
the high octane brush of machismo? Do they,
I wonder, gloat over their works in the days & weeks
that follow, as if they were pictures hanging on a wall ?
John Malone 