What Were They Thinking, My Parents?

What Were They Thinking, My parents …… ?

What were they thinking, my parents,

when they took me,

a kid of ten,

to the drive-in back in ’55

to see ‘Rebel Without A Cause’?

Weren’t they aware

of its rating?

the furore it caused when released in the States?

the horrific ‘chicken run’ scene ?

You know the one

where two cars, one driven by Dean, the other by his rival,

race towards a cliff over looking the ocean

and whoever jumps out first is the chicken?

Dean jumps out just in time,

the other driver, his jacket sleeve caught in the door handle,

plummets to a fiery death onto the rocks below

his bulging eyeballs

filling the screen.

It was horrific, thrilling and a great moment in cinema.

But should I have been watching it?

You Know You’re in a Canadian Novel when ….

General cargo ship, ELM K – IMO 9614294, in English Bay at West Vancouver, BC Canada, heading towards Lions Gate Bridge on January 9, 2022.

You know you’re in a Canadian novel when people

are nice to each other.

apologize when they’re not

and take themselves to task when they entertain

un-neighborly thoughts

and when someone does step a little out of line

they’re met with:

‘And who gave you the green light to get personal?’

• pic courtesy of wiki commons

Poems I Have Not Written: Archive

The Poems I Have Not Written.

I am outside late at night

writing poems

about the poems

I have not written

the ones I’ve shied away from

because of embarrassment

or timidity

or , worst of all, for fear

that I might offend

and find

somewhat alarmingly

that the poems I have not written

Far outnumber those I have

How Could I Not?

I put up a post the other minute that I knew might offend people but I wanted to honour the veracity of the experience. Would it be more acceptable if the man was the one shouting, and he was the bear of the title rather than his female partner? She did unleash a scatological attack upon the poor guy. What he had done was unclear; more likely it was what he hadn’t done. The title of the piece was unavoidable, though might have been more acceptable were it the man hurling abuse.

It was what happened. Security was called. I overheard the remark, ‘woman screaming in the mall’. It was quite an event. It stopped everyone in their tracks. I could bend over backwards to sugar-coat the experience or ignore it but I’m a writer. How could I not respond to it?

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

Speechless

.

courtesy of Unsplash,com by ecemwashere

Dark Spots

There’s an ad on some Word Press posts saying,

‘Don’t Cover up Your Dark Spots’ and I thought,

Whoa, isn’t that what we’re supposed to do?

Keep our sins and prejudices in the attic,

not hang them out like dirty linen in public,

to hide our inner trolls, I know what the ad means.

I’m not stupid. Just got carried away by the metaphor.

And anyway I almost put up a post yesterday

Revealing a darker, nasty side of me but my therapist

Urged me not to put it up, that there are dark spots,

she said, that are best concealed.

• Tribute to Blenholt by Natalia Zaratieger on Pinterest

Recklessly Dumb

When I get burned

by love

spurned

like an old glove

ghosted

I want to be

a pachyderm

an elephant

or hippo

thick-skinned

numb

but for an artist of any kind that’s

recklessly dumb.

But is it poetry, John?

But is it poetry, John?

You mean, is it like Wordsworth’s ‘Daffodils’

you know the one, ‘I wandered lonely as a cloud’

or ‘The Rime of the Ancient Mariner’?

Probably not.

Well, How about Milton’s ‘Paradise Lost?

Come on, we’re talking 2020 here.

Then what?

A little bit of Billy Collins, I say, and Billy Connelly,

a sort of mad mix, the demotic and demonic.

We let our dirty laundry hang out. moon the pious,

but always in an Aussie accent. Your country first.

Does it have to rhyme? you ask. Probably not.

It’s not like Aussie Rules. There are no rules.

Though it’s a game anyone can play.

Just let it rattle off the tongue, roll off the mind,

Ignore the referees.

Have fun.

Perhaps I Shouldn’t Have Said It

Perhaps I shouldn’t have said it

But I was just a kid

Stuck inside a senior’s body

And so I did.

 

I thought it showed a little wit

But it was way off grid

A sort of Heathcliff on the moors

A fugitive from my Id.

 

I should have kept a lid on it

Would have been better if I did

But not everything condescends

To sit sedately in the Id.

 

• do you think there are things we shouldn’t speak about?
• what do we do with these primal feelings that keep threatening to ‘come out of the closet’?