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.,

Please Don’t Stare

Please Don’t Stare.

It’s not as bad as the horns

on Hellboy’s head

even when filed down to stubs

or the protrusions

on Elephant Man’s face

or that raspberry stain the shape of Africa

on the barista’s cheek that day in the mountains

but the volcanic cone,

a miniature Vesuvius,

on my forehead

is an eye popper

and looks like it’s about

to go off.

• pic courtesy of Wikipedia

Some Men

 
Some Men
 
Some men walk around with their hands clasped behind their backs as if handcuffed, their posture stooped. They look like they’ve given up on life, prisoners of age and ennui. If ever I get like this, I tell my partner, shoot me.

Furrow in the Head

I drove past the Snack Bar the other day where twenty years before I came across the boy with the furrow in his head.

He was in his early teens, with a patch over one eye and did not speak. His mate, a little older. spoke for him. They left with a few cans of coke and cigarettes.You could do that in those days.

What happened to him? I asked the shopkeeper after the two had left.

Well, he said, they were out in the shed horsing around with a speargun when it discharged. The spear shot across the room and took off part of the boy’s head.

We both went quiet for a while as the horror sank in.

I purchased my newspaper and left.

Everytime I drive past that shop …..

Slouch

I don’t like the way the branches slouch,

my grandfather would have said.

It shows a lack of moral fibre.

Grandfather did not approve of droop

though I think he could have cut the branches

some slack.

The best people slouch at times.

Oscar Wilde certainly did though he was no slouch.

And Tilda Swinton and Anne Hathaway were spotted

slouching at the Golden Globes.

I like the way Fridays slouch towards the weekend.
Poems should slouch a little too.

They should not appear cinched and pained

as if wearing a tight pair of underpants.

pic courtesy of Wikipedia

Recent Sighting

Pounding the pavements of Portland,

grim, gaunt , hunch-backed,

Matthew,

no singing, cheery, Disney

hunchback of Notre Dame

but a

bandy-legged, bushy eyebrowed,

Quasimodo, orange vis jacket

looks like an angry bee.

If My Poem had Long Hair

If my poem had long hair

dyed black

& a voice

gorge deep

& musky honeyed

as Chris Hemsworth

you’d listen

If it had abs

biceps

a chiselled face

like The Rock

you’d pay attention

if my poem was lean

& loose

exuded menace

you’d come onto it

so, baby, couldn’t you

close yr eyes

yr ears

& imagine?