Little Orphan Poems

  1. Zing.

What do you want? she asks.

A zing of apricot.

A zing of apricot?

Yes, a zing of apricot and lavender jam

to set me off.

2. Frustration.

Fuss, fiddle,

turn, twiddle,

push, prod,

nup, o god !

3. The Possibility of a Poem.

No sooner does the head hit the pillow

than the possibility of a poem

taps you on the head.

4. My Mother, the Drama Queen.

I feel like the wreck of the Hesperus,

the Lusitania and the Titanic

rolled into one

  • pic courtesy of Wiki Commons

I Fractured my Funny Bone

I fractured my funny bone

on the bedpost overnight

got into a squabble with myself:

you’re wrong.

No, I’m right !

when a CRAAACK

splintered my sleep

and a SCREEEEAM

split the night

I fractured my funny bone

on the bedpost overnight.

Now I can’t pull a pun,

or even crack a joke

or wink a double entendre

I’m a sad sort of bloke.

Sidekick

Sidekick.

I’m walking down the corridor

in my zig zaggy socks

just me and my sturdy side kick.

I admire how slender, sturdy he is.

I like his bling though it’s not the sort

I would covet.

His face I like, its open and informative,

the moving lights that run across his lips

showing someone is home,

that I’m being monitored.

Hey! I’m here for you.

Walk on brother,

he says.

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.,

Playful Panda of a Poem

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

‘Indolent’

Indolent.

I’m going to lounge around like the old ginger cat

the rest of the afternoon,

‘Indolent’ is not a bad descriptor

for the disease.

makes it sound almost amiable. good natured,

like a lazy, but lovable work-shy relation.

Other cancers are hares.

This is a tortoise.

In the afternoon it takes nana naps like me.

Things I’ve Heard about It

The Things I’ve Heard about It.

It is a cancer.

It is not a cancer.

You will not die from it.

You will die with it.

It is the cancer you want to have

if you have to have a cancer.

It is indolent. Lazy.

And that strange name.

Long as the name of a Welsh railway station.

Waldenstrom macroglobulinaneamia.

Try saying that in one breath.

Whew.

  • pic courtesy of Wikipedia

Maybe it was the Meds

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.

Breviary

K’s fond of haiku,

Michael senryu, its jokey cousin;

Mia, ‘a struggling author’ writes tiny tales,

Richard American sentences,

put them together,

and what have you got?

a slim, selection

of shorts,

a breviary of brevities

a pocket book of poems

for the wee small hours

At the Blood Clinic

We are sitting across from each other

trying not to stare

looking down at our phones.

There are some paintings on the wall

but no one is looking at them.

Perhaps they are the sort of paintings

that are not meant to be looked at

but are there to establish a presence,

maintain a mood.

Then I notice the paintings,

half figurative, half abstract

in faded denim blue

with black, springy squiggles

like a cat’s whiskers

are not signed.

Perhaps the painter was half abstracted

when he painted them

& simply forgot.