The Girl Who Loved Rain

The Girl Who Loved Rain.

I remember the girl in year nine

who used to stare through the window

at the rain

when the class was doing silent reading.

They would all be reading their books

but she would be reading the rain,

 its steady rhythms

stroking her as if

she were a cat.

*pic courtesy of Unsplash

The Outhouse by the Sea

I’m glad I got to go to the outhouse by the sea.

I got to see the whales go by, far below me,

those sleek black submarines in the golden light

dozens of them dozens, an armada of might

dark, silent mysterious, they forged through the waves,

out through the headlands, to a distant sea.

I’m glad my bladder was full, got to take a pee.

And when I got back, and fell back to sleep,

I could see them still, moving through my dream.

*pic courtesy of pinterest

Stunned and Panicky

Stunned and Panicky

I wake up suddenly

stunned and panicky

like a ‘roo caught in the headlights

of a big rig

an eighteen wheeler

tunneling thru the darkness.

My senses are all rinsed.

I leap out of bed

into the hysterical light of morning

pour myself a coffee

settle back into my little

skew whiff home.

• pic courtesy of pinterest

Neanderthal

Neanderthal.

You know how you get scrambled eggs, right ?

Well I had scrambled dreams.

I forgot my meds. That was the trouble.

All my dreams were Neanderthal.

Batty, belly up, R Rated.

My Id running amuck.

Skeletons spilling out of the closet.

Onto the sidewalk.

Under the lamp-post

where passersby could gawk.

It was one of those nights.

I Never Heard it Coming

We’d just got back from the beach.
I pulled out a book, she put on a CD.
Peaceful, floaty music.
Music to paddle-board to.
But then it changed.
The tempo picked up, the violinists
Played furiously
Like The Two Cellos playing AC/DC.
It was ‘Winter’ by Vivaldi.
I thought, what’s there to get worked up about
With Winter?
Spring, yes, but Winter?
Sluggish, soporific Winter.
But those violins were working up a storm.
You do get storms in winter —gusts, gales, blizzards.
I wanted to get up and fight someone.
Bloody Vivaldi.
All I wanted was Peace. And I got Fury.
You just can’t trust classical music

*pic by Pinterest

Baths

a boat shaped vessel with room for one

when you clamber into a bath you are captain, crew, passenger

rolled into one

yet baths require no special skills

nor do they stand on ceremony; in this they are like some beaches:

dress is entirely optional

entering a bath you enter a topsy-turvy world where water fills the craft

not surrounds it — though baths will never sink

head back, you settle down but are going nowhere: baths have no destinations nor sails

yet people have been known to drift off in baths emerging rosy-skinned

and luminous as if fresh from a voyage

*pic courtesy of Pinterest

Hittites

You jerk

awake

black thoughts

scuttle across

the floorboards

of yr brain

little

armour-plated

Hittites,

the cockroaches

of yr mind

• photo by Hermes Rivera from Unsplash

The Cookie Man

[in honour of National Cookie Day in the U.S]

I used to give my Sydney Morning Heralds

To the Cookie Man

for his customers to read;

they’d devour the weekend papers with their cookies and cappuccinos

and dream

of the Harbor City they’d visit one day;

and I’d go away feeling

I had spread some wealth:

the Saturday supplements:

Food, Fashion, Film, Fun —

The Land of Plenty

& the Cookie Man would give me

the thumbs up;

Then one day

He was gone,

The whole edifice had crumbled

Like a cookie.

Now my Sydney Morning Heralds are looking

for a new home

& I miss the cookie man