She knows how to make you feel small
loudly with-holding favours
she bestows on all
She makes you wait till the very last minute
then tends to you
but there’s not much love in it
She doesn’t brook criticism, praise
& rejects the crawl
she’ll squash you like a snail you’re so small
Her kind multiplies in prisons, offices,
re-education camps
to some she’s a monster, others a champ
pic ourtesy of Pinterest by behanc.net
when someone says, the ball’s in yr court
you know you have to do some heavy lifting.
It’s up to you.
If the shit hits the fan,
yr responsible.
The ball’s in yr court, remember?
I used to play tennis a lot, so the metaphor’s
sort of apt, but I remember tennis as a lot
of to and fro, you and someone else at the other end
but somehow it ended up just me:
the bunny holding the ball.
I can’t even remember asking for it.
How does that work?
I wish I had a name
something exotic like Sterling Holy White Mountain,
the name of the author whose story I’m reading now.
Not my name.
My name is bland as white bread, white as the face cream
my mother used to apply,
and shorn of all mantric significance,
It’s cute and cuddly like ‘Iggy’.
I want something mildly mischievous like ‘Flea’ or ‘Slash’.
‘Slash’ is good but I’d settle for something less edgy
as long as it was colourful. ‘Vance Blossom’, for instance,
named after a deep-pink velvet used on a sofa for the Cobble Hill line.
It is apt as I like to lounge around.
Chandler, Chandler Manning, I like — I made that one up,
the sort of guy
who doesn’t run away from fights or who is scared of lifts,
a bit like me in my more mythic moments.
It was like something from the Marie Celeste
the remnants of a meal — the last supper?
a half full stubbie of Fosters, tele still on:
‘A Current Affair’ with Tracey at the helm —
he never would have left Tracey in the lurch —
car keys still on the mantelpiece, signs
of a scuffle in the hall, the whiff of a cigarette
in the doorway but no note, nothing — and then
that call from the watchhouse:, cold & bleak
‘Your boarder, Adrian ….’
I want to make a bee line for the shop —
there is panic buying again —
but my bowels won’t let me,
Please let me go, I say.
But my bowels are recalcitrant.
When they get in this mood there is nothing
you can do.
I threaten them with torpedoes,
my moondrop grapes
but they grip their fists even harder
against the attack.
So rather than sit and wait & twiddle my thumbs
I write this little poem.
My bowels immediately relent.
There are enough bad bowel poems out there
anyway.
Mine does not want to be added to the list.
My bowels heave a sigh of relief.
There’s only one way to live in the world —and that’s to stay alert, interested.
So I couldn’t help but notice the reader in the pub sitting at ‘our table’, vigorously engaged in his book. He was dipping into it with his biro, busily marking passages, totally oblivious to his surroundings, And he never had a drink in front of him.
I went over to him.
Hello, I said, I’m a fellow reader. I just have to ask what book it is that’s got you so enthralled?
Ah, he said. Let me allay your curiosity.
And then he showed me.
Christ, I said, it’s a bit crumpled. Like it’s fallen in water.
It’s a well worn book, helaughed. And Christ is right. Look at the title.
I did but I could barely read it. Can I take a shot? I say, to show my mate in the wheelchair.
Of course, he said.
Is it fiction? I asked.
No, it’s factual,well researched, about the devilish goings on in the Papacy and in the clergy in general. Terrible things went on. When my friends bring up religion I whip out my book and quote passages from it.
But it’s condition?
Ahh, he said, I read it in the bath and sometimes it’s fallen in. And sometimes it’s been left in the rain and I have read it a few times. It’s an old book. It was battered when I bought it. Would you like to borrow it when I finish?
Awfully nice of you, I said, but I might give it a miss. Too much else on my plate. Are you by any chance an old Catholic boy?
Yes, he said. How did you know?
It takes one to know one, I said. Happy reading.
While I was sleeping
the nine towers rose
in my head
from the TV news
the night before;
They were nothing like
the Eiffel Tower
or the Burj Khalifa
of Dubai
not even the Tower of Babel
though their residents spoke
in a multitude of tongues,
Instead they were the nine
po-faced Tower Blocks of Melbourne
ringed by police
like a besieging army
in ‘hard lockdown’:
a term we had never heard before.
They looked more like the Grenfell Towers
though the fires consuming them
were a virus and fear
She likes the new me, the gentler me.
The one that’s considerate and consoling.
The nicer me. The fun me.
The accepting me.
Not the old one
Who criticizes and condemns
From his high moral ground.
Though we all know the old me lurks
just beneath the surface.
The creature from the black lagoon.
Don’t be creepy, I said, as she slunk down the passageway when she heard me
come inside and began circling the bowl.
I just fed you an hour ago.
But she looked up at me with her one cold, implacable eye.
Look at you, I said. You’re tubby.
I’m not fat, she said, Just fluffy. Will you please feed me?
I had no comeback for that.
You can’t argue with a cat.
The witch hunt has begun.
Under the viral sun
Men step over each other to confess.
Fallen stars
They beat their breasts
Then slink out through the gate.
What punishment awaits?
John Malone 