Awkward Not Balanced.
Can I tell you my dream, she says,
when talk turns to flowers.
What I really like
is a bouquet,
with one long sprig off to the side.
Awkward not balanced.
I like my poems like that too:
eye-catching,
with fascist suns,
ladies with tachycardic eyes,
a girl with incarnadine hair,
poems with flourish,
quirk
like Tintin’s quiff.
Your canal’s very narrow, he says.
Narrow?
Yes, like the Thai tunnel cave divers had to negotiate to get those boys out. Not much sound can get through. There are no cave divers small enough to help it along.
Like that film in the sixties? I say.
Which film is that?
‘Fantastic Voyage’, where a submarine crew are shrunk to microscopic size and injected into the bloodstream of a scientist to repair his brain.
Can’t help you there, he says.
Is it hereditary then?
Quite possible. The left auditory canal is quite large. Can carry a lot of sound.
Maybe that’s why I lean a little to the left, I say.
Politically? he asks.
No, doc. When I walk.
Last night was brutal.
We fought like Godzilla vs Kong.
Boxers slugging it out in the ring.
Cage fighters gouging and kicking.
Oooops. Is that an eyeball in my hand?
We were earnest. Furious.
Mean as gorillas. Cut-throat as pirates.
In the end we smoked the peacepipe.
What was that all about? she asked..
I don’t know, I said.
Look, next time, can we please agree what we’re fighting about?
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
The crow
in the crossbars of
the power pole
is saying, Hey John.
You don’t have to worry, man.
You are not one of those who bring so much courage
to the world that it has to kill you
So don’t ruffle your feathers.
Pardon? I say.
I can read you like a book, he says, speaking of which
‘But it will break you.
It breaks everyone.
But you are one of those strong in the broken places’,
as Hemingway would say.
You read Hemingway?
Of course, who do you think I’m quoting?
You are a most learned crow, I say.
But it will kill you, he says,
‘It kills everyone
the very brave and very gentle
but if you are neither of these it will still kill you
but there will be no special hurry’.
That is sort of comforting, I say. Thank you.
‘Farewell to Arms’, he adds. Due attribution.
You should read it sometime.
I think I have, but not with the diligence you accorded it.
And with a flick of his suave black wings, he flies away.
Seven year olds will always ask, at some stage when you are least ready for it, the mermaid question.
Granddad, Tina asks me, how do mermaids go to the toilet?
While you are grappling with this one, they ask another, THE BIG KAHUNA of questions, usually in the car while you are driving them to or from some event:
Grandad, where would I be if you and grandma never got married?
It’s the sort of question you need to pull over the side of the road for, but I kept on driving, hoping an apt answer would ‘pop’ into my head. Where’s the Muse when you need her? Surely she’d good for things other than poetry.
I don’t know what you would have done? I mean, how do you answer a question like that? There’s an obvious answer but that might depress the hell out of her, Who wants to be confronted at that age with self obliteration? And there’s the ontological answer but she wouldn’t get it.
I thought I’d go with the mermaid answer. That’d be the easier of the two …. maybe.
Simon rambles in. He rattles Alec’s equanimity.
I’m getting my haircut. I see it all in the mirror.
Simon’s his usual self: brash, bold, bloody stupid, He lisps some errant remark.
Alec drops what he’s doing, reaches for the fly swatter and chases Simon down the street.
It’s like a well rehearsed routine.
A month later I go back.. Simon doesn’t look so good. His eyes are puffy, his face a little swollen, his hare lip is bleeding.
What happened? George says, one of the assistants. Your girl friend beat you up again?
Simon blubbers out an obscenity. Alec reaches for the fly swatter and the chase is on again.
Simon is a sad sack, the world’s punching bag but he does have one trick up his sleeve. His dad is Lord Mayor of Mars. No one else can claim that.
How he got there long before Elon Musk is not explained but Simon basks in his glory. On Mars International Day — yes, there is one —Simon comes in, wearing his red skivvy and breaks into the Mars National anthem till he is chased out by Alec’s furious flyswatter.
One day Simon slumps in. Dad is not well. Dad needs Simon to take over. How will he get there? Everyone knows by now that Simon has a rocket ship tucked in a corner of his bedroom at the ready. But Simon as Lord Mayor? Would those Martians treat him seriously?
Simon doesn’t appear the next month nor the one after that.
In fact, he doesn’t appear again.
Can one disappear into one’s own fantasy?
*pic courtesy of Wikipedia
Sometimes
my poems
look
like this:
speckled,
blotchy.
left too long,
overdone;
should have served them up
fresh,
still young
John Malone 