A Short Story is not a Car

A Short Story is Not a Car.

At the writers’ group, the first one I went to,

we were issued a list of things to check

when we’re critiquing each others’ stories,

the usual things like plot, character, setting, dialogue.

We’d put a tick or a cross depending whether the requirements were met.

All well and good.

Yet I couldn’t help thinking of the checklist that mechanics fill out

when they’re servicing your car.

So I said,

“A short story is not a car!”

This put a brake on proceedings.

They didn’t know what I was driving at.

but I felt I was onto something.

I pushed the pedal even further.

We were heading for a collision,

the tutor and me.

I didn’t know what the perfect metaphor was

nor did anyone else

but I was darn sure it wasn’t a car.

Bottle Tops

Like Bottle-tops in a Bucket.

…or maybe contemplate

my silvery thoughts

like bottle-tops in a bucket:

the days of wine and roses,

the thinning days of desperation,

the elegiac whistling of the wind,

then that text from Pentecostal Peter :

He is Risen,

Time to enter the fairground of Life

again

The One No One Wanted

The One No One Wanted.

It was the one no one wanted

The last one on the shelf

The one no one wanted, I didn’t

Much want it myself.

But there were no others

So I had little choice

The one that all had shunned

I purchased myself.

And Oh it fitted the bill

To the nth degree

So the one no one wanted

Was the right one for me.

*pic 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.

Axe Throwing

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.

I Hope They Pay the Ferryman

I hope they pay the ferryman.

I hope they pay him good.

For all his journeyings. all his toing and froings,

miles notched, hours accrued.

over the last four days.

He is resting now.

ferry in dry dock.

It is a busy time of the year. but what do you do?

You do anything for yr kids.

I hope they pay the ferryman.

And they will. Ten fold.

With love and affection.

Grow

I love how songs grow from talk

in Hollywood musicals

like ‘Carousel’, for instance,

and think, maybe, that’s how we should be

in our writing, loose and organic,

let the words, when they pulse with life,

grow feathers and spread their wings

as poems up and down the page

A Short Venomous Tale

A Short Venomous Tale

It is the venomous time of evening.

Sun setting. Close and muggy.

Her eyes dart around like mosquitos.

zeroing in on the small group at the edge of the pool

sipping G & T’s.

She settles on her prey, the malicious Minerva.

Punctures her composure, draws blood.

She will not be swatted.

She is feeling positively encephalitic.

*pic courtesy of pinterest

Neanderthal

Neanderthal.

You know how you get scrambled eggs, right ?

Well I had scrambled dreams.

I forgot my meds. That was the trouble.

All my dreams were Neanderthal.

Batty, belly up, R Rated.

My Id running amuck.

Skeletons spilling out of the closet.

Onto the sidewalk.

Under the lamp-post

where passersby could gawk.

It was one of those nights.

Overgrown

Overgrown

Sometimes my poems are cluttered with adverbs and adjectives,

subjunctive clauses, desultory detours like this front yard is overgrown

with weeds. When my poems gets like this. when you can’t see the structure,

it is time to bring out the whipper snipper. Time for a trim.