You have the attention span,
he said,
of a gnat.
I thought [briefly]
about that:
the skim
the look;
the review
not the book;
the single
not the CD;
a movement not
the whole symphony;
the single poem—
a story won’t do—
especially if short
think haiku.
Life’s short.
Try this, that.
Stay light,
says the gnat.
Nanette ‘winked’ me again last night.
I have not been on an internet dating site for years.
Nevertheless, Nanette has been constant.
A wink is as good as a nod ….
One day I’m going to weaken.
I will go down the rabbit hole of curiosity,
the labyrinth of love
and leave no note.
I may never return.
Was Jesus a funny guy?
Would he have laughed at my pelican story?
Had he a sense of humor?
And if so, was it the self-deprecating kind
or the sort that skewered the pomposity of others?
You can’t tell me with those twelve disciples alone
with all those foibles
he didn’t have sufficient material to work with.
My guess is he compiled a joke book which the early Church
suppressed.
Did he do stand-up on the mount where he gave,
in his more serious side, the Sermon on the Beatitudes?
Humour should have been amongst them.
A person with a sense of humour is in contact with his humanity.
Even the donkey and hyenas know how to laugh.
The images of Buddha show him with a rollicking belly.
I don’t mean to be disrespectful but where are the images
of the jolly Jesus?
I bet if they met he would have shared a laugh with Buddha,
even exchanged jokes over a coffee or two.
I wait for the record to be rectified.
An ampler, more approachable sort of god.
I want to play words
like Jerry Lee
plays piano
on Sweet Little Sixteen
or
Sonny Rollins
sax
on Waiting For a Friend:
hot little melodies
in the cosy confines
of poetry
*pic courtesy of Wikimedia Commons
I’ve just been informed it’s World Turtle Day.
As usual I’m a little slow off the mark
But I’m sticking my neck out now
writing a poem to Ginge
in his tiny turtle tank looking out at the world
I’ve been reading him some famous turtle poems
including Robert Lowells’ Waking in the Blue
but Ginge and I are shaking our heads:
the only turtle reference is ‘I strut in my turtle-necked
French sailor’s jersey’.
but the one by Mark Doty has a few really good lines:
‘a snapping turtle lumbered down the centre
of the asphalt like an ambulatory helmet’
Ginge liked that
I read him a few more but their meanings were slow
to emerge
Perhaps that’s the point.
I hope he likes this poem.
I’ve been working on this one all day but I still
haven’t got very far.
“Will this do?” you say to your stomach at three in the morning. “Can I go to bed now?”
“Just a minute,” your stomach says. “Have I had enough?”
I know what it’s thinking: too little, it’ll come back for more; too much it will churn out nightmares.
“Perhaps a little more?” says the stomach, looking up at me pleadingly like a cat.
“No,” you decide, “You can have more in the morning like normal stomachs do. Come on.”
“Where are we going?”
“Where do you think?”
And it follows you back to bed, shoulders a little slumped.
I go out the front to get something from the car when a voice pipes up from the fishpond.
Hey! Where are the f*&*ing fish flakes?
It’s Goldie in her usual peremptory tone.
Mind the language, I say.
You taught us to alliterate, she snaps. You gotta love the ‘lit, you said.
I know, I say.
I got three ‘f”s out of that, she says.
You did well. It was just a little inappropriate, I say.
F**&&& the inappropriateness, she says. So where are the flakes?
Coming , I say.
That’s the trouble with having a literate family. They answer back.
We were driving past cows full of paddocks when my friend
asked me whether I thought bulls considered cow udders
‘sexy’? I said I hadn’t given it much thought but added,
you don’t see many pinups of naked cows on the sides
of barns or bulls wanking off to them thoughtfully
on sunny afternoons; unsatisfied we pulled over
and did a Google Search, typing in ‘do bulls …’ to which
suggestions came up, such as ‘do bulls hate red?’, ‘do bulls moo?’ ,
‘do they have horns?’ and then the big one: ‘do bulls find
cow udders sexy?’ to which Google replied, ‘no, it’s a human thing’.
and that was that till Denzel Curry’s cover of ‘Bulls on Parade’
came over the radio, and my friend started all over again
* pic courtesy of Wikimedia Commons
can you see the little man in the middle
with the trapezoid head?
he wrote a poem:
‘I’m a little confused. My head is wonky
like a shopping cart with wobbly wheels.
I wave my arms all about
& my feet have runaway heels
If people play hopscotch on these lines
they’re going to have a crazy time.’
Look at that jetty’s
knobbly knees wading out
into the sea
