Chicken Run

Chicken Run.

It was like that classic car duel

in ‘Rebel Without a Cause’

where two cars race towards a cliff

and the driver who jumps out first

is the chicken.

I was in my Holden Cruize,

he in his yellow Monaro

and he wasn’t going to let me in his lane.

This went on for half a mile.

So when we were at the intersection,

I looked across, gave him

the ‘You’re on, buddy’ sign

and soon as the lights turned.

I gunned the engine,

shot across as if flung by a catapult

my batman black against his banana yellow

burning rubber, billowing smoke,

cars horns beeping, a voice yelling,

HOOOOOON !!

which was kinda funny considering my age

but I made the turn I wanted

got my sausage sizzle and this poem.

I don’t know what got onto me.

It was my James Dean moment.

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.

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

Timing is Everything

Timing is Everything.

It’s like stand-up.

The audience is a bowl

of expectations.

Can you pull it off

this time?

Now you’ve taken your meds.

You stand tall,

clutch the old mike.

Come on, baby, you say.

Don’t die on me now.

Then weeeeeeeeeeee

out it comes

in one joyful, exuberant stream

like a stallion.

What a performance.

You will sleep well tonight.

One Day They’ll Wake up to Me

One day they’ll wake up to me.

They’ll say, he doesn’t read the books he requests we purchase.

He just flits through them

Why does he even bother?

And I’ll say, ‘coz the book reviews were inspiring

or I read an extract in ‘The New Yorker’ or ‘SMH’,

But when I went to read it I got bored: the characters were flat, the plot rambling, the writing uninspired.

A bit like some of your posts, a snide librarian might say.

My Friday friend once said, I had the attention span of a gnat.

Ouch!

I don’t know what’s wrong with me.

I did finish a book a few years ago.

That was a book of short stories. Does that count?

Anyway, they’ll blacklist me soon, and everyone will be happy.

Oooops

Oooops. Looks like I turned the heater off prematurely.

I seem to make a habit of it.

Maybe because I was born prematurely.

I don’t finish novels either.

or most short stories.

Even half my poems I bail out from.

Relationships too.

I have meltdowns. Walkouts.

But hey ! I have three kids.

Nothing premature there.

And I’m still with my gal.

Maybe I can finally say, I’m over it.

But that might be a little premature.

I’m Good at Last Lines

I’m good at last lines. I really am.

The rest of my poems are crap but my last lines

Are really something.

I’m thinking of bringing out a book called ‘My Fifty Best Last Lines’.

The trouble is it’d be like bringing out a book of punch lines without the jokes.

‘By gum, I wish I could do that’ or ‘It’s okay for you two. I have to walk out by myself’ fall a bit flat without the jokes attached.

I suppose I could make the rest of the poems as good as the last lines but it’s a pretty big ask.

Now I can’t even get a good last line to this poem.

Low and Lusty

I like a poem with muscle

a poem with vim and vigor

I like a poem with its hand

firmly on the trigger

Love a poem low and lusty

a poem that readily scans

the sort of poem that you hear

at a poetry slam

A Petulance of Poets

Not a tower of giraffes

Nor a bloat of hippopotami

But a petulance of poets

Gathered in a side room

Of the library

Each champing at the bit

Wishing the bore out the front

Would bugger off and let someone

Worthy get on

Not really listening

But when their turn comes,

Oh the words, the words,

Such melody, such sweetness,

Was ever anything ….

Barely noticing that many who had already read

Had buggered off home or hit the bar.

I have heard Stand-Up Comics are much like this.

It is no laughing matter.

• pic courtesy of Wikipedia

In Which the Dog Loses His Cool

I’ve got a bone to pick

with you,

says the dog to Mrs. Hubbard.

How come when I go

to look

there’s no food in the cupboard?

No meat, no cans, no biscuits.

Why there’s not

even a single bone.

And you have the cheek,

the temerity

to call this place a home!

It’s not as though you’re

the old woman

who lives downstreet in the shoe.

Look around. You haven’t

any kids to feed.

There’s just me and you!

Whatever can be the cause

of this

outlandish state of affairs?

Why if I was goosey goosey gander

I’d kick you

right down these stairs!