The Wonder of You.
I never got to see Elvis.
I saw the Beatles.
Saw the Rolling Stones
but I never got to see Elvis,
Saw Niagara
Saw three of the Seven Wonders
Saw a rainbow sit like a tiara
over my city
but I never got to see Elvis.
But I saw my baby girl
get born
held her in the palms of my hands.
I never got to see Elvis
but I got to hold my baby girl.
I sleep in short sentences.
Roughage.
Like Tom Waits’ voice.
The grit and gristle of life.
The rumble tumble.
The rush and the roar.
Like Xmas. New year.
The whirligig and whoopsie cushion.
You’re on it, babe.
There’s no getting off,
You wouldn’t want to.
It’s the roughage that stirs things up.
That lets you know you’re alive.
Like them Brooklyn Girls on the downtown train
and you’re shining like a new dime.
*pic courtesy of pinterest
*lyrics tom waits
something psychedelic
I went looking for the dark side of the moon ’cause Dino told me it was good. If you can’t think of the name, think Pink Floyd, he said but I didn’t need to do that. I went to all the outlets in my area, but none had it: they thought I was having them on. So I drove to Dan Murphy’s ’cause they have everything. I looked for something psychedelic but there was nothing. Finally an attendant found it. It had some dumb ass, low key label. I took it home. I did not guzzle. I sipped. I savoured. Then something happened ….
When I was a kid I used to wander down the park and watch dragonflies flitter over the pond like tiny, restless angels.
Later I wanted to write poems about them the way Monet would go down to his garden at Giverny to paint water lilies.
The only difference is that water lilies stay still. They don’t dash and dart about the pond at 100 ks an hour. Even when they have sex they’re on the go, coupling like planes fuelling mid- flight.
I almost got one once when a dragonfly dawdled on the front doorknob one drowsy afternoon, after summer rains, then saw me and took off, its gossamer wings flashing rainbows.
Perhaps I should turn like Monet to waterlilies. He got 250 paintings out of them. I haven’t got one poem though I reckon I’ve made 250 trips. [ pic by loriedarlin on pinterest ]
The bus shelter at the end of our street
grinds its teeth at night.
Sometimes I sit with it, hold its hand, listen to its tale
of drunks and suicides,
of lycanthropes baying at the full moon,
of lost Lotharios weeping in their fists
I talk to it too about my problems
Of the jig-saw days when pieces don’t fit
Of the times when your heart races
Like a wildebeest on the veldt
But latches onto nothing.
After a while we both settle
and I head off home
beneath a lopsided moon.
sketch courtesy of Yofukuro on Pinterest: Yofukuro is a Japanese artistic duo, the brothers Selichi and Daisel Terazono
I didn’t know everything came with an escape hatch
but apparently it does :
my Holden Cruze, for instance,
the one I was trapped in last week has an escape hatch
on the central console;
and I have an escape hatch
everytime my gardener bangs on about bananas —
it’s called, ‘checking on the roast’;
there’s one for closed arguments:
‘responding to a call of nature’;
there’s even an escape hatch from life
when things gets too onerous but most of us
are programmed not to take it — though on World R U OK day when
the phone calls are meddlesome as mozzies,
I’m tempted
*pic courtesy of Wiki Commons
He thought
Their love
Was rock-
Solid
Not
Made
Of
Papier mache
Flimsy
As a
Piñata
To be
Smashed
Open
That day
* picture courtesy of Wikimedia Commons
our words
go round
& round
& round
the more
we text
the less
we say
maybe we
should
speak
‘Graffiti’:
be
short
succinct,
honest.
John Malone 