Slavering..
Snivelling.
Sneaky.
Three naked men in a cage
in an Edward Steed sketch,
the Jonathan Swift of cartoonists.
Husbands for girls to choose from.
Hobson’s Choice.
pic courtesy of Pinterest by Edward Steed from The New Yorker
If my poem had long hair
dyed black
& a voice
gorge deep
& musky honeyed
as Chris Hemsworth
you’d listen
If it had abs
biceps
a chiselled face
like The Rock
you’d pay attention
if my poem was lean
& loose
exuded menace
you’d come onto it
so, baby, couldn’t you
close yr eyes
yr ears
& imagine?
Your face, my friend, is a poem.
An ode to youth,
masculinity,
not the toxic kind
but the Howard Keel kind
of Seven Brides & Seven Brothers
cocky, confident, wholesome.
I bet you have a brawny baritone too,
can hold a song
in any amateur musical;
I bet there’s a bit of the buffoon about you
as well
that swaggery moustache
that raucous smile;
it’s not a bad dial
to go through life with
Sometimes my mind
runs off
like that bloke’s mouth
outside the gym
pontificating about those fisticuffs
at the footy
“those weren’t friendly fisticuffs;
that was full on, mate”,
about George Pell:
‘ someone will pop him off one day,
like they did JFK’
or the Black Lives Matter protest rallies —
you don’t want to know’;
but I round my mind up
before it goes too far off the tracks
& give it a little talking to:
mostly I keep a close watch on this mind
of mine
It is time to bring out the woman in the glove box again.
There are no gloves in there.
But there is Olive,
Quirky , off-kilter as this blog which is perhaps why I like her.
I like her feistiness too,
How she tells her husband,
“Stop shouting! Do you think that makes you a man?”
“All men need to be told this,” my partner tells me
Who likes Olive too.
She is getting the new book, the sequel, when it comes out.
But she is not like Olive.
Olive has a big personality and is not backward in coming forward,
As my mother used to say.
She is curious but curiously vulnerable.
She is the engine of the novel, the fuel, the vehicle
That takes you there.
She waits in the glove box like a car in a garage.
* have you a favourite fictional character?
* what do you admire in them?
Perhaps I’m missing out, I thought, but the more he banged on about his lathes, routers and table saws, whipping out his mobile snaps of bench tops, bread boards, dodgy cricket bats and the blocky blokes around him in the Men’s Shed, I thought not and when he finally asked me what I did and I said chirpily, I write poetry, conversation shut down like a roller door.
(130 words)
It’s Carol’s 70th so we have to go and I know what’s waiting for me as soon as we rock up. The Test! My partner doesn’t have to submit to it, nor do the younger males, only the senior ones. Each Xmas, Easter, special occasions, he waits for me. Bone-crusher Bowden.
We lock eyes, hands like deer lock antlers, while my partner settles down to chat..
He grips. I grip. Harder. Tighter. Grimace. Grunt. Grin. Faces redden. Eyes almost pop. “What are you men up to?” the women say. Then one of us weakens. It’s always me. He was a wharfie. I was a teacher but it’s getting closer. He’s losing his edge.
I’ll get you next time, I smile. Not on my watch, he says. But he doesn’t know. I’m working out at the gym. Can’t wait till Xmas.
John Malone 