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
Timing is Everything.
It’s like stand-up.
The audience is a bowl
of expectations.
Can you pull it off
this time?
Now you’ve taken your meds.
You stand tall,
clutch the old mike.
Come on, baby, you say.
Don’t die on me now.
Then weeeeeeeeeeee
out it comes
in one joyful, exuberant stream
like a stallion.
What a performance.
You will sleep well tonight.
You prophesy
there’s a flood coming
so I make a run for it
dash inside
flip the lid —
there’s only a trickle.
You fickle !
A Playful Panda of a Poem
She glows and she glitters
from sunset to sunrise
she is an all night lady
with tachycardic eyes
She loves the crickets of Quorrobolong
the whimsy of the wind
the noisy cross-eyed mynah
the clatter of rubbish bins
She has a tachycardic heart
and tachycardic toes
and takes herself off
wherever the wild wind blows
She loves the smell of coquetry
the stars, the perfumed black
and when she finally settles, eats
French Fries and Big Macs
*pic courtesy of pinterest
People Chat More in Pools.
People chat more in pools.
You walk up and down.
Say hello.
You talk, share stories,
laugh, banter,
trade histories.
Find your tribe.
It’s like being in a pub
without the alcohol
or in church
without Jesus.
You slip under the nylon ropes,
do a few laps,slip back
then chat some more.
You can even write poems in pools.
I go to gym a few times a week too
but people chat more in pools.
Maybe it was the Meds.
Maybe it was the meds
but I felt a little trippy
so when the nurse leaned over and said.
we’ll give your cannula a good flush in a minute
I said, O wow! It’s been a long time since I’ve had my cannula flushed
& the room broke up.
Rhianna and Jacob joined in the fun.
It was that kind of treatment room.
Don’t worry.
We all have our heads screwed on
but with the lids a little open
to let the silly in.
Surly.
Bono looks surly.
Putting him beside a book called ‘Euphoria’
did it.
Bono feels anything but.
Euphoric, that is.
He’s been languishing on the Express Shelf
for three weeks
while books all around him have been flying
off the shelf.
‘Pissed’ is closer to the mark
as in ‘Pissed off’.
Bono is not used to this sort of treatment.
I would take him home myself
but I already have.
If the book was as lean and finely crafted
as a U2 song
it’d be different.
But it is as bloated as a Pynchon novel.
Axe Throwing
My daughter has been Axe Throwing with some friends from work.
Apparently it is the new thing.
It’s a bit like darts only more dangerous,
I’ve been hit with a dart in the hand,
Being hit with a hatchet would be a totally different thing.
People are encouraged to bury the hatchet in the target not in each other.
This is not ‘Vikings’.
It looks like fun. I’m thinking of going along.
But I keep thinking of real heads I’d like to bury the hatchet into.
‘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.
Where’s My Bear?
I’m not myself today.
I wasn’t myself yesterday either.
Where are you? she says. Where’s my Bear?
I’m still here, I say.
No, you look like him but you’re not Bear. Go away.
So I do.
Back to my little cubby house in the ‘burbs.
I think of her. I miss her. The good times we had.
Perhaps I have been a little sloppy, solipsistic.
I send her a card. Anyone can send a text.
She texts back. I call.
Come over, Bear. I miss you.
I buy her a bouquet of long stemmed oriental lilies.
We cuddle. We kiss. Like bears.
We have found each other.
*pic courtesy of pinterest
John Malone 