Shrek

This is Shrek.

Say hello to Shrek.

As you can see this Shrek is NOT a fictional character

but real flesh and blood.

Nor is he green or ogre-ish.

Shrek works at the Stunned Mullet,

the best fish and chip shop in the suburbs

cooking and serving customers.

His real name is Srikanth and comes from India.

Workers at the Hilton near the airport where he used to work

contracted his name to ‘Shrek’ in 2016.

Srikanth loves it and has been called ‘Shrek’ ever since.

He is warm and amiable and has a wicked sense of humor.

When you get served by Shrek it brightens your day.

Three Men in a Cage

Slavering..

Snivelling.

Sneaky.

Three naked men in a cage

in an Edward Steed sketch,

the Jonathan Swift of cartoonists.

Husbands for girls to choose from.

Hobson’s Choice.

pic courtesy of Pinterest by Edward Steed from The New Yorker

Burger Art

at Barry’s Burgers

at Semaphore

on the esplanade

they’ve put up art work

on the walls

to keep customers amused

while waiting:

drawings

fresh, inventive, zesty,

a little wacky

like Barry’s burgers

themselves

Almost Normal

Reading about Roz Chast’s parents in her cartoon memoir

‘Can’t We Talk about Something Pleasant?’ makes me feel

Almost normal. I do know how to use the toaster,

I can change a light bulb, open cereal packets neatly

so it doesn’t look ‘as if a raccoon had tried to get into them’

AND I was comfortable using the new stove after only

six months. Compared to them I’m a genius.

 

Meeting the Parents

But I do ‘walk around with my feelers out’ like her old man

and ‘get distracted by interesting words thereby missing

the larger point of what was being said’. And I am a fast eater

like her mum. ‘Stop gobbling your food’, I was told as a kid,

[and am still told from time to time].

 

I’m only on page 30 of this 230 page memoir but I’m enjoying

meeting the parents. It’s like meeting me in a book.

 

• what book are you enjoying at the moment?
• Have you ever ‘met yourself’ in a book? how did it feel?
  

Barfing in the Bushes

There’s a cartoon of a couple in a car

tearing down a roller coaster

and the woman says to the man, “With you screaming all the time,

I can’t hear myself scream.”

Men are so much noisier than women, my partner says.

When I began barfing in the bushes at a country fair

She implored

, “Can’t you barf quietly? Everybody is watching.”

Barfing has no volume control,

I wanted to say

but I was too busy being sick.

 

• photo by Claire Satera on Unsplash

 

Before I Met Her

 

Before I met her

I always laughed at cartoons

alone,

was astonished before paintings & poems

privately;

 

but now I pass the magazine to her,

the one with the crazy cartoons.

Look at this, I say, & she does    and smiles

Span our faces & rumble our bellies

like little laughing Buddhas;

 

Trouble shared is trouble halved,

my mother used to say — but Joy

Works inversely:

It is doubled when spent with another.