Les in Real Life

Les in Real Life,

The book of Les’ s poetry just fell off the desk

onto the polished wood floor.

At 783 pages it created quite a bang.

The millipede on the wall twitched.

The fluff sausage dogs in the corner jumped.

Les in real life was as hefty as his ‘Collected’.

He wrote poems celebrating the fat, his tribe,

including Quintets For Robert Morley,

the bushy-browed, triple-chinned English actor.

with the plummy voice.

There’s nothing plummy about our Les’s poetry.

It is wide of girth as Les himself, capacious,

containing jokes, puns, outlandish rhymes,

skew whiff metaphors., and clever insights.

It is written in Aussie English.

I bent down, picked dear old Les off the floor.

No need to go to gym tomorrow

lugging Les around.,

What’s the Big Deal?

  
What’s the big deal about me doing gym three times a week?
 
You don’t need to, you say. Do a little more around the house. Like gardening.
 
Gardening isn’t cardiovascular, I say. It has a lot of health benefits but it isn’t cardiovascular. It isn’t enough.
 
And you’re seeing the skin specialist next week. What’s that all about?
 
Looking after myself, I say.
 
You fuss too much, you say. You even check your car out during the week. I’ve seen you in the driveway, wiping away the bird shit off your car. Birds gotta shit somewhere.
 
Sure but it eats away the paintwork.
 
It’s becoming a fetish, you say. And now you’re off to gym, I suppose?
 
I treat my body like my car, I say. It’s the vehicle I travel through life in.
 
 

Iron Man at the Gym

 

 

Iron Man isn’t up to it today.

You can tell by the way he slopes around

in his baggy shorts and tee

dazed like he’s been smoking weed.

He dawdles a lot between reps.

Guzzles the urine coloured liquid to replace the energy he hasn’t used.

Plays with the machines like a cat with a mouse.

Jabbers at Stella how she isn’t doing it right,

to anyone really with a loose ear.

Truly he is more motor-mouth than Iron Man.

Where They Speak Crow

I don’t speak Chinese.

Nor do I speak Russian

though I do speak Latin

[three years at Uni]

though no one speaks it anymore

nor do I speak Crow

like those blokes at the gym

who ‘follow’ the Adelaide Crows footy team,

speak the arcana of the game,

the iconography of past champions,

the minutiae of every quarter,

pumping statistics rather than iron.

I’m on the outer of the inner circle

though I get far more gym done.

Low and Lusty

I like a poem with muscle

a poem with vim and vigor

I like a poem with its hand

firmly on the trigger

Love a poem low and lusty

a poem that readily scans

the sort of poem that you hear

at a poetry slam

A Skylarking Poem about a Belligerent Tree — or We’re All Allowed a Misfire now and then

I like to flex my muscles,

says the tree,

waving its branches

militantly,

I’m coming at you,

wait and see!

You’re on, I say,

just back from gym,

in an adrenaline

driven whim.

I’m going out

on a limb.

I engage it

in an arm wrestle.

Something snaps,

sadly droops.

Round one to me,

I whoop.

Since the Break-Up

I’ve been taking myself to the cinema again

watching brooding masterpieces like ‘The Dry,’

learning  to play Scrabble by myself but not too often

as I’m a bad loser; giving my self-esteem a face lift,

shed a few kilos, muscled up, become sharper;

I post more , comment more especially on posts

that comment on mine: the noble art of reciprocity;

but, most of all, I move more easily in the world.

have got to know myself more, and know in spite

of slurs like ‘nutcase’ and ‘creepy lizard’ I’m not

such a bad guy

Miracles

It’s not the big ones

like walking on water

that interest me

But the little ones

like walking freely,

doing gym again

without medication,

being able to hear

stereophonically

without ear surgery,

able to love again

without the king’s men

struggling

to put me together;

the body’s palliative care unit

working in unison.

 

Not a Black Cat

It was not a black cat

But a red rooster

That crossed my path this morning

On my way to gym.

I waited

As it waddled past the car

Oblivious to the honour

I had accorded it.

 

Why the rooster crossed the road

I do not know

Though it waddled

With intent.

It had the whole day

In front of it

Provided it did not cross

Too many roads.