A Little More
I think it’s okay to want a little more.
A little more love.
A little more applause.
That second glass of red.
Another night in paradise with you.
We were not built for abstemiousness.
We have gullets, appetites.
It does not mean excess.
A modicum of more will do.
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 ….
I was watching the Xmas Special of ‘Call The Midwife’ when the plot ran into a red telephone booth on a remote Scottish island. It reminded me of the red telephone booth I ran into some years ago:
The Red Telephone Booth
No one writes poems about telephone booths anymore
So I thought I would write one,
about the time I drove down
A series of side roads to avoid a booze bus,
when I almost ran into one.
It was so nostalgic.
It was the sort of booth that Clark Kent would dash into
to change into superman.
I opened the door and went inside.
It stank of stale urine and cigarette smoke.
The paintwork was peeling. There were no phone books
Only numbers,
‘if you’re after a good time call …’, that sort of thing
and anti-gay graffiti.
It looked like
the last telephone booth on the planet before mobile phones
took over.
I closed the door, climbed into my car and drove off,
Heavy as a telephone booth,
into the arms of the booze bus.
I have a very bad feeling.
Tell me I’m wrong.
That I have written myself into obscurity.
That I was too clever by half.
That no one knew what the f*** I was writing about
in the previous post ‘Not a nightingale ode’.
It was a glass of red wine.
But that’s what happens when you put up a post
while you’ve been drinking
while you’ve been rhapsodizing about a glass
of red wine
I’m out the back writing, throwing back a cab sav,
The royal purple trumpet flowers bowing before me.
It’s not a big backyard.
But it’s mine.
I can enter my own little world if I want to.
Don’t have to answer stupid questions about my failings.
Fuck that.
There’s a balmy sea breeze blowing
And I’m reading an article by Peter Schjeldahl
Who barfed in the bright green bushes when he came home
From a college party.
The vomit was bright orange, the sky a pastel blue.
He was amazed at the colour. Later he became an art critic.
I wrote a post about barfing in the bushes, the one before this
But hardly anyone read it.
And no, I’m not TRASHING it. It’s good !
I could drink the whole bottle of wine out here
And forget about the bushfires, the bloody bushfires and the threat of war again.
Fuck that too.
It’s good out here. So good.
I’m king in my board shorts and tank top and bare feet
under a crown of blue sky
kicking back the shit
putting it in this poem.
Perhaps I will drink the whole bottle.
Cheers.
Hey! Who’s been drinking my wine?
Rosco shrugs his shoulders.
It’s not the first time I’ve noticed the level’s fallen, I say. Do you know anything about this?
I only had a few mouthfuls.
But you’re a cat!
What is this? Can’t a cat be allowed to drink now? The RSPCA would have something to say about that.
Indeed it might but it might not be to your liking.
I thought I had him there.
Well, the top was off.
To let it breathe! Not as an invitation to drink!
Oh.
Drink your own wine, I snap.
I just can’t walk into a bottle shop you know and ask ….
Look, I’ll put a few mouthfuls in your bowl each evening if you must drink.
It’s for medicinal purposes only, you understand and looks up purring with innocence — and hope.
You tell yrself
You’ve got to stop reading when you’re feeding yr face
That coffee, wine and honey leave stains
On the crisp, pristine pages but then you think, nah !
They’re the stains of life like grease marks
From yr fingers,
The collateral damage from reading;
Rain spots too when magazine’s are left outside,
Creases from the wind speed reading again
As though the story you found a bore was a real page turner;
Sometimes too blood stains from a nose bleed;
Marks like footprints in the sand saying
That someone’s been there
And, yes, had a good time.
No one writes poems about telephone booths anymore
So I thought I would write one,
about the time I drove down
A series of side roads to avoid a booze bus,
when I almost ran into one.
It was so nostalgic.
It was the sort of booth that Clark Kent would dash into
to change into superman.
I opened the door and went inside.
It stank of stale urine and cigarette smoke.
The paintwork was peeling. There were no phone books
Only numbers,
‘if you’re after a good time call …’, that sort of thing
and anti-gay graffiti.
It looked like
the last telephone booth on the planet before mobile phones
took over.
I closed the door, climbed into my car and drove off,
Heavy as a telephone booth,
into the arms of the booze bus.
The bus shelter at the end of our street grinds its teeth at night.
Sometimes I sit with it, hold its hand, listen to its tale
of drunks and suicides,
of lycanthropes baying at the full moon,
of lonesome Lotharios weeping in their fists
I talk to it too about my problems
Of the jig-saw days when pieces don’t fit
Of the times when your heart races
Like a wildebeest on the veldt
But latches onto nothing.
After a while we both settle
and I head off home
beneath a lopsided moon.
Two men sit at either end of a bar.
One has a gun in his right hand.
He is nervous, twitchy.
The other is heavy set.
They look at each other.
“What’s your name?” one asks across the space.
“I don’t have one yet. What’s yours?”
“Me neither.”
They sit quietly for a few minutes, sipping their scotch, looking into the shadows, when one turns to the other.
“I wish he’d come soon instead of just planting us here”
“Calls himself a writer”, the other laughs. “He doesn’t know what to do with us. That’s the problem. Still long as the drinks keep coming ….”
John Malone 