Sit like a Ruler

You must sit like a ruler, the instructor says.

So I do. Back ramrod straight.

What are you doing? the instructor asks.

Sitting like a ruler, I reply. A steel ruler.

No, not that kind of ruler, he says. Like someone in control. A king or commander.

Like Genghis Khan? I say.

I hear a few rogue giggles.

No. More like the Dalai llama. Posture is important in yoga.

I relax a little.

It would be very tiring, after all, to go through life in the presence of others, back stiff as a steel ruler.

[pic courtesy of wikipedia]

Secret

How was it, love? How was yr cuppa?

Dark and warm, thanks.

Dark and warm?

Yes, like a secret.

Love Yr Top

Love yr top.

You do?

Yes, it’s blue and fleecy. So soft and warm.

Like me?

Yes, like you, I reply.

And we cuddle like clouds.

pic courtesy of Pinterest by BuzzFeed

On Cue

The fat crow caws

from the top

of the peppercorn tree

kraak kraak kraak

loud, loutish, laconic

& the bloke next door calls out

to his wife

what’s that, dear?

what’s that?

Bull Ants

They do not graze in meadows.

Nor do they stare listlessly

over fences at traffic .

None , to my knowledge ,

are brindled or patchwork .

Few , if any , have horns

or tails to swish flies with .

I have never heard one moo .

Nor been charged by one

when I crossed its path .

They may see red

but are little sought after

by toreadors .

Yet they are big .

And they do pack a bite.

Your Hair Looks Nonchalant

Your hair looks nonchalant, she says, as we get out of the car.

Nonchalant? I say. My hair?

Yes, she says. Unfussed, loose like a kaftan, happy in the way it looks like some of your poems.

Happy hair? Isn’t that a good thing?

Yes, she says, but couldn’t you …..?

Comb it? Of course, as I pull my little comb out of the back pocket of my jeans,

And that’s another thing, she says. Why pink?

*pic courtesy of Pinterest

The Martian Inside Me

Comes out every now and then

When I lose the thread of an argument and desperately try to sew it up

When I chat with Tiff in her tank at night when there’s nothing on TV

When I slapstick my way across the mall just for the hell of it

In the bath on Sundays when I sing ‘Deep Water’ backwards, inside out and upside down to give my vocal chords a workout

At the hairdressers when I talk to Simon with the harelip about his dad’s imminent retirement as Lord Mayor of Mars

And lastly when we all stand together in Alex’s Salon and sing the Mars National Anthem on International Mars Day

• when do you speak Martian?

Cows in a Paddock

Someone once told me you can tell what the weather

Will be like by studying cows in a paddock.

If they’re standing, she said, there’d be

a good chance of rain, whereas if they were lying down,

you could count on fine weather. Or it might have been

The other way around. What a load of bull, I thought.

What if half were standing and half were lying down?

Would that mean a 50% chance of fine weather, or to put it another way,

A 50% chance of rain, depending on whether you were

A glass half- full or a glass half -empty sort of person? It seemed a little dodgy.

What if, for instance, in one paddock all the cows were lying down

while in another, they were practising synchronised standing?

Wouldn’t one cancel out the other?

And why cows?

What about prognosticating pigs, soothsaying sows, auguring alpacas?

The list goes on. I decided to go back to the Bureau forecasts.

At least they get it right half the time.

Tricky

Not ‘selfish’, she says. more ‘difficult to get on with’.

Ahhh, I say, that’s code for ‘tricky’.

I know I am. My best mate is too.

Human beans are ‘tricky’ all around.

They don’t grow straight. They grow with all sorts

of genetic quirks; there’s always something askew,

that rubs people up the wrong way, that chafes.

How people live together, I don’t know.

Sometimes I have trouble just living with me.

I’m not a one trick pony, but I am tricky.

pic courtesy of 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