Without My Eyes.
I’m going out today
without my eyes
seeing without hunting
for an image to click
to post on my blog.
I’m going out today,
fresh, unprepared,
no clunky phone in my top pocket,
without my camera eyes,
just to see and hold,
and like the kind fisherman,
then release.
The grin-faced pistachios look up at me from the bowl.
Are you looking at me? I say. You looking at me?
But the dumb pistachios just keep on grinning.
You’re nuts, I say. Nuts !
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.
I like your ugg boots, I say to the jetty.
Thank you, it says.
They look sort of … clumpy though, I say.
Well they are heavy duty.
I reckon I wouldn’t mind trying on a pair. For the beach only, of course. Where do you get them?
Well, you have to become a pylon first. You just stand around. They sort of grow on you.
Whoa, I say, don’t reckon I’m ready for that.
Suit yourself , it says.
So off I go to the store on the esplanade to get a pair, off white to match the pylons.
.
Look, she says. There are two moons tonight. Do you think that means anything?
Like end times, you mean?
I don’t know, she says. It can’t be good.
We move closer. There they are above the rooftops, one higher and to the right of the other.
Someone in the ranch-style house across the road switches the porch light on and joins us.
My ex phoned, he says. She saw it too. She’s bit of a sky watcher.
So we stand there out the front as one disc, then the other veer off in a north-easterly direction, silent as full moons.
As soon as you stand outside someone’s place,
whip out your mobile camera and start taking snaps
of something in the street,
jacaranda flowers, for instance, carpeting the verge,
an ibis making love to a TV aerial,
a drunken, tilting fence,
someone starts singing loudly in a bathroom.
conversations break out in the hallway like a rash.
windows open or close,
to let you know they’re onto you
when all you’re doing is trying to compose a poem.
When did people start growing so suspicious of poets?
That photo you posted
on Facebook
of her and him
unmoored me
sent my head spinning
down
down
that whirlpool
of memory
the immaculate misconception
of my frail craft
the face in the photo
having the last laugh
M is in her cups.
Any moment now, the kookaburra cackle
the cutting off, like a hoon driver on the highway.
But for the time being I’m holding the table, telling the tale of the silver hammer beneath the front passenger seat of my car, what happens when my girlfriend spots it.
The little group leans forward, intent.
But it reminds M of something and she’s hyper now, jumps in, raucous.
This time I’m ready for her.
I took a photo today I’d like to show you. It’s for you, I say.
You did? Really?
Yes, I say, bringing it up on the screen, passing it across to her.
It’s what you do when you cut people off, how you make them feel. It’s kind of a metaphor.
She has a close look. Ouch,, she says. Lopped?
Yes, lopped.
Some of my poems end up like this,
bashed, broken , bent beyond repair,
car wrecks,
the ones you don’t usually see
in the showroom
of my blog,
the ones abandoned in the junkyard
out the back,
but sometimes I remember a part that worked
when the rest of the poem didn’t
and I go down & look for it amongst
all that scrap metal
of words
misshapen phrases
give it a polish, an oil change
a bit of love
& fit it into the poem I’m working on now
so the old gives vigor
to the new.
It works every time.
I walked past that place today.
Which one?
You know, the one we walked past last month with the nude couple canoodling in the front yard …
And …
Well, they’re still at it.
Must have happened when the wind changed.
Pardon?
You know that old saying: if you screw your face up when the wind changes it will stay like that, Well, it could extend to the position you were in when …
What if you were ….Or even ….?
Don’t even think about it.
Could be a blessing or a curse then? Let’s look at that photograph again. I can’t think of a better position to be in when the wind changes.
Nor can I.
John Malone 