Just met up with a biker
back from Sturgis, South Dakota
where the Black Hills are,
where the world’s largest bike rally
is held each year.
He’d been drinking with this mates
at the Full Throttle Salon
after a rally.
That’s how life should be lived,
he said.
Pardon?
Full throttle, he returned.
When the lights came on,
she strode straight up to us
from three seats along.
arms folded, brimstone eyes,
and said,
I want to take a good hard look
at you two
so I know never to sit by you
in a cinema
again !
*pic courtesy of pinterest
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.
You look like a newt
in yr birthday suit
she said with clear élan.
A little blemished.
Somewhat unfinished.
A strange fit of a man.
I’ve read yr text.
I know what’s next
& up the stairs she ran
Where is Raymond?
Everyone loves Raymond.
But no one is saying.
They’re tight-lipped.
Christine is gone too.
But no one is asking after her.
It’s Raymond we love,
Raymond the Joker,
the Energiser Bunny that kept
the whole thing humming,
the convivialist who could talk
to children, animals.
Why, he could talk to a stone
& it’d open up.
Did he blot his copybook?
Perhaps he ran off with Christine,
some wag suggests.
The world just seems smaller
without Raymond.
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?
I was sitting at Maccas
chomping
on a cheeseburger
reading
what the Buddha had to say
on Generosity:
how it benefits both the giver and receiver
when this aboriginal woman
came up to me and said,
have you got two dollars. For chips?
Sure, I said,
digging deep,
pulling out a coin I plonked
in her hand.
Gee thanks, she said,
It’s my birthday today. I’m 29.
Lucky you. I said. Have a good one
and go easy on those chips.
She beamed me a smile
big as Uluru
& I knew what the Buddha meant.
Whenever I come across you, you light me up.
You are
Helen of Troy,
Layla,
that host of golden daffodils Wordsworth came across in the field,
I drop everything,
reach for my ruler, my pen and underline you
firmly and lovingly with indelible pink:
you are the amazing phrase,
the freshest of images,
the startling sentence,
the delightful ambush hidden in my reading.
pic courtesy of Unsplash by Alexander Krivitskly
Look, I’m sorry I have to show you this but I deliberately left it blurry so you would not have to confront its ugliness.
No, it’s not a mouse or rat that the cat I haven’t got killed.
It’s an ugly mass of dust particles that we call ‘fluff’ in this neck of the woods.
It’s what the cleaner left in the bedroom wardrobe after I had paid him sixty bucks for doing ‘such a superb job’ [my words]
It was like the shower scene in ‘Psycho’ for me where instead of being confronted with a blade I’m confronted with a rat-sized piece of woolly fluff.
I almost fell backwards and yes I did utter the blanked out word above and I photographed the evidence straight away.
I just had to tell you about it and I feel better already.
Get thee to a rubbish bin, I said, and to its credit, it hopped in the one provided.
The funny thing is, the rest of the house is spick and span. So how did he miss this?!
and btw I’ve just been informed this is my 500th post 🙂
Whales!
I heard there were whales lunging out of the water
At Henley South,
“sleek and smooth as peach slices”,
One eye witness said.
I finished what I was doing and went down
For a look.
But the sea was flat and empty.
There were only a pair of cyclists on the other side
Doing up their clips
And a pelican amongst the gulls gazing wistfully to a spot
Where something might have been.
No sun was out. The sky was whale-grey.
I had missed the moment.
John Malone 