The Big Day

Election day at Alberton Primary.

A long, long queue.

A slow shuffle to the front.

Hope the queue at the Pearly Gates

isn’t as long and tedious as this.

And there’s a coffee van and sausage sizzle

at the end of it

Horoscope for Cats

 
I have been advised to make a list
of what needs ‘to be tweaked a little or altered a lot’.
My soul mate’s cat who shares my horoscope
has been similarly advised.
Come on, I say, give the scratching post a rest.
We have work to do.
We have to make a list.
At first she seems a little indifferent
but after a time she gets into
the spirit of the thing.
I have a peak over her shoulder
and can’t help
but notice most are about food,
a sort of bucket list of what she’d like
to be fed and how often.
Mine’s a little more modest, how I could be
less demanding towards my love, more appreciative but on reflection
much of my list seems to be about food as well.
It seems we share
more than just a horoscope.
                                  
 

Overshooting the Mark

I was driving towards my destination

a place I had never been

when I missed a number of turnoffs.

I had overshot the mark.

It made me wonder how often in life

I had overshot the mark

& missed some vital turnoffs

where, for instance. I could have become

a famous novelist like David Foster Wallace

& worn a red bandana

or rakish rock star like Keith Richards

or, god forbid,a prominent politician.

Or even married someone else!

What if you didn’t marry grandma?

my granddaughter once asked,

would I have still been born?

Most of us overshoot the mark.

It may be a good thing.

Danny Kaye, that Court Jester, once famously said,

we always land where we were meant to be.

Maybe it’s true.

I could have done worse.

Yesterdays

All the poems about yesterday are nostalgic

As are the songs.

My mother called Macca’s ‘Yesterday’ mawkish.

But my yesterday was shit.

If yesterday were a punching bag I’d pummel it

To a pulp.

There are some things like the Holocaust you can’t

Say anything good about.

Yesterday was like that.

Sometime in the Future it might be possible

To say something good about yesterday

But it’d be a stretch.

 

• photo by Rotorn Kuperman on Pixels.com
• you ever have days like that?