Last Dance.
Look at them skedaddle along the sidewalk
like runaways, dash across the boulevard,
full of beans, reckless as buccaneers,
realizing perhaps this could be
their last dance
before Winter
closes the whole show down.
Just met up with a biker
back from Sturgis, South Dakota
where the Black Hills are,
where the world’s largest bike rally
is held each year.
He’d been drinking with this mates
at the Full Throttle Salon
after a rally.
That’s how life should be lived,
he said.
Pardon?
Full throttle, he returned.
I thought about what Fiona had said,
the female lead in ‘The Bear Came Over the Mountain’
about her developing interest in Iceland,
how she looked at travel guides,
read accounts of famous writers who had visited,
Auden, William Morris,
but didn’t really plan to travel there herself.
There ought to be one place,
she said,
one special place,
‘you thought about and knew about
and maybe longed for
but never did get to see’
*have you a place like this?
On a road trip the other day
we got talking about birth marks
and how you never see them any more
then at the airport
I saw this barista
with a mulberry stain on his face.
I had to ask him,
is that a real birth mark? I asked
we were talking about them
and how you never see them anymore.
Yes, he smiled
as if it were just another feature
on his face
like a mole or scar.
It looked almost beautiful.
Then he made me the greatest cup of coffee.
Thank you, I said
glad that I had asked him
and didn’t wuss out.
It’s okay to be curious.
is anyone else fascinated by birth marks ?
what would you have done?
His stomach feels knotted. Should he, or shouldn’t he? Will he? Once again he flings his frustrations hard into the distance, but they twist and turn in the cold air and boomerang back at him, landing at his feet,
No one saw it coming. Least of all me. I was happily ensconced in a book when it EXPLODED. Such was its force that it blew the toupee off the man in front of me and propelled the stationary bus in which we were sitting two metres forward. The sneezer himself, a dread locked man in a canary yellow suit, whooshed around the aisle of the bus startling passengers until suitably deflated he flopped beside me flatulent as a whoopee cushion.
What sort of wuss wears a beanie around the house?
It’s not Outer Mongolia for fuck’s sake.
And I do have the heater on.
But it does look exotic and its warm and woolly.
A tower of a hat from Ulaanbaatar, the trader tells me.
I had to have it with its burnished reds and browns and its black leopard spots.
But I look a proper Charlie wearing it in the mall or library or on public transport.
In restaurants people just stare.
So I wear it in the yard when I’m gardening or evening walks along the esplanade before disappearing into my yurt
where I cuddle with a copy of Sonomyn Udval’s ‘Collected Short Stories’
When I wait for her to do a spot of shopping
I wait in the car.
When she’s getting ready to go out,
I wait in the driveway, the sun
like a lamp. with my stash of magazines
between the seats:
my New Yorkers, National Geographics
and that lady in the glove box,
Olive Kitteridge.
It is my loo, my library, my study,
My five-seated reading room,
My Chapman’s Homer.
My car really takes me places.
You’re my Oxycontin
My Valium
My Iron Jack
My slug of Scotch
My Gin & Tonic
My second glass of red
My six-pack of beer
My magic board that surfs over anxiety & tedium
Just the thing for a long flight
my paperback of Tim Winton’s ‘Breath’
Each morning when
The sun
Blooms overhead
They set out for
a walk
The shih-tzu &
the snowy-haired
lady he has
on a short leash.
He knows the way
like the back
of his own paw.
John Malone 