*
I can’t believe
some days
that I’ve landed
on my feet.
I have to pinch
myself.
My monasticism
was brief
Believe
musings
The Getting of Wisdom
went teaching , I came across them ;
flimsy paper tickets as evidence you’d paid
for your journey on the tram or bus;
you’d turn them over discovering a world of wisdom:
‘it’s the spouting whale that gets harpooned’,
‘it’s not enough to point the gun , you’ve got
to pull the trigger’ ….. ‘the past is dead,
the future’s not here, the present is your home’ ;
little homilies to help you along life’s journey ;
I collected them all until they stopped using them —
then one day left them in a carriage and never
saw them again ; I was like a disciple
who had lost his guru ; I had to seek
other sources for the getting of wisdom .
The Bum on the Sidewalk
She wasn’t really a bum.
She had a name.
Lauren.
She had a face too
but she asked me not to
photograph it.
But what really attracted her to me
was she was reading a book.
You don’t really associate street people
with reading.
And it was a big book.
Like a Russian novel.
Dostoevsky or Tolstoy maybe.
But it was a home grown novelist.
Bryce Courtenay
a true story about a girl called Jessica.
She was on page 237 and she was only halfway
into it.
We talked briefly.
I put some coins in her cap and left her to it
on the cold sidewalk.
I would like to have known her story
but you can’t be intrusive.
Under the Gate
What is the cat looking for under the gate?
Perhaps the old tom two doors down trudging across the road like a sloppy sentence.
Perhaps the purr that left her mysteriously six months ago.
Or maybe she’s dreaming of the Krazy Kat cartoons she loved read to her as a kitten.
Or what the rest of her siblings are up to at the Pet Barn and whether they landed on her feet like her when she was adopted.
Or maybe she’s just curious. She’s a cat after all.
On My Own Again
I’m on my own again.
My partner’s hit the sack.
The cat’s snuggled up in her basket.
Tiffany’s asleep in the tank, light out.
Even the mozzies have called it a day..
There’s nothing on TV.
Perhaps someone will text. Someone …
Is this what it’s going to be like?
Who Has Written These Poems?
Who has written these poems ?
I say
as I browse through the pages
of this commonplace book.
I have neglected to name their authors.
There’s one about
Tennessee Fainting Goats
which calls to mind
my ‘Cows in a Paddock’ ;
another about women in a junkshop staring through a window
at the rain
‘where a taxi as yellow as a forsythia
is turning a corner’,
and a snippet about snow over Xmas and New Year
hanging around long after
‘like the drunk at the bar
who needs to go home’
Hmmmm.
Could any of these be mine?
But the one about the fortune cookie is Ed’s.
It’s got his mark all over it.
But the others? I just don’t know.
Could I be that good?
I don’t think so.
One Monster at a Time
The honeysuckle bush out the back can wait.
I mean, how much more fecund
can one plant get
in 24 hours?
But my sister can’t.
She’s in ICU.
But I need to pick up her walker first
in the maze of streets her house is tucked into.
I just hope the German Shepherds are under control this time.
I’m ravenous but that will have to wait.
the toilet call can’t.
And when I get to the hospital I’ve got to find a park
somewhere in the surrounding street and not get lost again.
My equanimity scrambled like eggs.
So many things to accommodate.
That stobie pole like a Good Friday cross.
Then there’s the vertical coffin-shaped box I have to squeeze into
to get to ICU.
One monster at a time.
Blur
A fog comes down between you and the world.
Words have to scramble through.
A dog’s breakfast of sounds.
Turning the volume up on the TV only increases the blur.
Why does one sense desert you when others
are intact?
Every now and then yr ears pop
and the world of sounds : leaf blowers.
crows caw, the Harley revving up
across the road, the postman’s whistle,
comes rushing at you with all its
clarity and clangor.
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.
Gleefully Unhinged
I suppose I should be getting ready
rather than hanging out here in the garden
drinking G & T’s
reading an ode to the art of ‘goofing off’
which is sort of like Jenny Joseph’s
‘When I am an old woman I shall wear purple’
which she wrote at 29
& that pic of Bill Murray at Cannes in his short-sleeved
psychedelic shirt, baby blue shorts & panama hat
looking ‘gleefully unhinged’
- pic from Style in ‘The Age’
John Malone 