All the Well Ordered Books.
All the well ordered books
behave themselves just like chooks
leaping down with squawk and cluck
and soon begin to run amuck
scrambling around from door to door
for crumbs of knowledge upon the floor
The Warrior Princess
You shouldn’t have done that, I say,
flushed the wee down the toilet.
Sorry, she says. I didn’t know.
It is one in the morning.
I can’t sleep, I say.
No wonder, she replies.
There’s too much light in the room.
But I’m claustrophobic, I say.
But it’s keeping you awake, she says,
drawing the curtains.
Sometimes you have to ride through your fear.
Get to the other side.
What’s your name? I ask.
Zena. I’m your nurse for tonight.
It’s a lovely name, I say. Xena, the warrior princess.
She smiles.
She’s Greek. I’m Filipino. Besides my name
starts with a Z.
Goodnight, John. Remember what I said.
I will. I’ll try.
I sleep for four bountiful hours.
I wake up at 4.38, bounce out of bed,
write three poems, including this one.
To me, she is still Xena, warrior princess.
‘Ditherers’
There’s a place at the slow end of town
where the fussy and fastidious
can’t-make-up-their- minds go.
It’s called ‘Ditherers’, a little hither
of Yon.
It’s where you mull over the menu
menacingly slow.
And dishes are consumed at a pace
only snails know.
Where anecdotes meander for miles
while the night nods off
and the moon hangs low,
There’s a diner called ‘Ditherers’
where minds to and fro.
I was in bed with two Venetians, a long black
and a sleazy paperback
by Suzanne Pleshette
when an angry text erupted like a boil
on my iphone:
where were you, it said, I looked for you
& your floozy
everywhere in the cinema?
It was my old mate George.
Please don’t call her a floozy, I said.
We couldn’t make it. Sorry.
Sorry !!! Couldn’t make it.?
To see my new film, my best yet.
‘Ticket To Paradise’.
We’ll catch it on DVD, I said.
It’s not the same, he snapped,
sounding peeved and pedantic.
I don’t like hanging up on George
but he can work himself into a lather.
I dipped a Venetian into my long black
& carried on reading.
Blowing Rainbows
Maybe if I was a little less lethargic
I could turn to things pelagic
and swim in the open sea
my arms and my legs
could become fin-amajegs
and I could blow rainbows
through my nasal cavity
*pic courtesy of Pinterest
She loves the word ‘petrichor’
She fondles it like a pet dragon.
She repeats it during meals
and chuckles.
The next morning.
What’s that word again.
I tell her.
Her eyes gleam .
That pet dragon look.
I never knew one could love
a word so much.
*are there particular words you love, just for their sound, their strangeness?
On the shortest day
I take the longest run
between one jetty and the next
and back again
rest myself against the rump
of a dune
listen to the sea shanties of the waves
while a mermaid appears, rises above the waves
swinging her wild, wild hair
in the sun-drenched breeze
until spotting me she coyly slips
beneath the water.
The jetty wades a little deeper into the sea
to catch a glimpse.
On the shortest day I tell
the tallest tales.
As soon as I began reading it, ‘The Ice Cream Palace,’ I began to have dairy dreams.
Don’t you know it is forbidden, I said. I banished you from my diet years ago.
But the dream pulled up to me like a Mr. Whippy van chiming.
What could I do?
I settled back into my vanilla-and–pistachio armchair and read Gianni Rodari’s deliciously delightful tale.
My eyes greedily licked every sentence.
I scooped the words up with pleasure.
They melted in my mouth.
The residue ran down my chin in rainbow rivulets.
Harvesting the cane would do it, so would elite tennis,
pounding the pool for Australia,
all fodder for the physio:
you lie prostrate on the plinth,
narrow as an ironing board
head down in the gap,
arms at yr sides, feet fastened at the base —
a cozy crucifixion,
planking for Jesus,
while muscles are massaged, kneaded.
coaxed into submission,
the little pummeling fists of current bringing you
to the shores of bliss
It’s okay being a caddie
tagging along with the team
light as a butterfly
nothing to prove
floating along the lazy rhythms
of the afternoon,
the dappled sunlight,
the bodyguard gums,
the cheeky creek bed waiting
to gobble up golf balls;
you’re nimble on yr feet,
jovial as a parrot
keeping the banter going
handing out irons
as a waiter would drinks,
planting the flag after putting is done
like Neil and Buzz on the moon
*pic courtesy of Wikipedia
John Malone 