Dambo

Dambo.

I want to be a gangly recycle artist like Dambo,

the builder of wooden trolls.

Instead of discarded furniture, I use discarded poems,

snippets I’ve copied down in my commonplace books,

bits and pieces on suffering coz I know what’s that like now.

All the best poems have been written, Daz says.

He’s the one who wrote ‘The Parable of the Albino Pigeon’

so I listen.

“About suffering they were never wrong the Old Masters’,

says Auden, and I added:

while someone is bringing in the bins, watching ‘Bullet Train’

on Binge, or cleaning the car of dogs’ fur like my neighbour

who asks, Hey Bro, how’s it hanging? Do I even want to answer that?

‘This seeing the sick endears them to us, us too it endears’

says Hopkins in ‘Felix Randall’

who taught me empathy;

and those lines from Mary Oliver;

‘Someone I once loved

gave me a box full of darkness.

It took me years to understand

that this too was a gift’.

You can’t better that, Daz would say.

So is cancer a gift?

Anyhow I want to build my wooden trolls of poems

coz like Daz says, the best poems have all been written.

pic courtesy of pinterest

Something in the Air

I don’t like the look of them

these runaways

the way they huddle darkly

in alleys,

in vacant lots amongst

the runtish grass

with their hangdog faces

and surly looks

they’re up to something

but if you edge closer to eavesdrop

they clam up

look at you with bloodshot

insolent eyes

what have they been drinking

smoking?

perhaps they are planning

a revolution

against their colonial masters

the supermarkets.

Found

.I drive down one of the backroads of desolation, full moon in my eyes, when I see him, shuffling along, hands in pockets.

Hop in, I say..

Are you still whoring with yr other voices? he asks.

Nah, I say. I was trying them on. They didn’t do it for me. You’re the one I want.

It sounds like a song.

Would you like me to sing it?

With your voice? No thanks.

I was sorta lost, I say. You’re my natural voice. Demotic, lyrical at times, a little looney.

You’re my man, my voice says, hopping in, giving me a manly hug.

We drive on, slow, easy, companionable, the full moon in our eyes.

• pic courtesy of pinterest

Stragglers

Don’t be in a hurry, the buds tell me.

Open when you’re ready.

What does it matter if others blossom

before you?

Remember the gulls

how they fly in loose formation over the sea

at sunset,

how there’d always be some bringing up the rear,

the stragglers.

It’s not a race as our Prime Minister said.

They get there in their own sweet time.

Like my teachers said of me, you may be slow, John,

but you get there in the end,

It’s okay to be a straggler.

Off the Rails

 when I go off the rails

I’ll eat strawberry flan and chocolate cheese cake

wear my slippers to the shopping mall

my pj’s to the mail box

play my beethoven string quartets real loud like I did

my elvis records when I was fifteen

when I go off the rails I won’t be nice to mr fydler
just because he’s a senior

nor put the tv down when my kids ask me to

nor empty the dishwasher when

I don’t eat home at night

when I go off the rails

I’ll leave my newspapers just where I’ve read them

blare my horn all morning just to let my neighbors know
I’ve got one too

say what I really get up to when I “ go for a walk “

change my pass word on the internet so my brother-in-law
can’t sneak on

and when I go off the rails

like tootle the train engine

chasing butterflies

in the meadow

I hope no one puts me

back on track

too soon
 

Parable of the frangipani

That tall,

leafless

stick of a plant

I thought needed water

I tended each morning

the constant gardener

till the real gardener came back from leave

and told me it was dead

slicing a stalk to show me

it was hollow as a straw.

All this time I lavished my love on this plant

and had killed it

& I couldn’t help but see

the seeds of a parable here

one that Jesus or Buddha could have touched on.

It just needed cultivating, that’s all.

Reach

The way

those branches

stretch

reach out

to

the sky

their heads

of hair

bobbing

in the

breeze;

like we

should be:

reaching up,

out

yet

tethered

like trees

Who Let the Cat Out?

Who let the cat out?

Sleep did.

Sleep lifted the lid.

Let it roam

the alleys and backstreets

of the mind

rummaging through

memory’s bin;

Look what the cat

dragged in —-

half-buried scraps,

dead rats,

old what ifs.

Who let the cat out?

Sleep did.

Baptism

When you were gone

when it finally sank in

you had left

for good

it was too late

to make amends.

I wept

& shook

that long night —

& was cleansed.

The Albino

So these pigeons wing in from the wild sky,

their coats a rainbow sheen, but when the sun goes in,

they’re all drab, all except one, a pretty little albino,,

white as the Taj Mahal, and when they descend

on the grass patch near the footbridge, and start pecking away,

happy as diners in a food court, you can just tell

these guys all hang out together, weekends, whenever,

them and their albino mate and I ask Daz, ‘cause he knows

everything, why we can’t do that, Daz, coloureds and whites,

one happy family and he says because we’re not pigeons, that’s why.

*pic courtesy of Rodolfo Clix on pexels.com