Guillotine.
Who devised you?
You look so cute
so placid
so trustworthy
warm wooden seat
on the toilet rim
but when I lift you up
to pee
you don’t stay up
like other toilet seats
but drop down
heavily
like something medieval
a guillotine
ouch !
I am all alone
in my shorts and T
on the naked beach.
The sun goes in.
The temperature drops.
A cold breeze picks up.
I head off towards the distant jetty.
Even the gulls have deserted.
No kite boarders. No surfers.
Something is happening to my hands.
I look down
They are changing colour.
Turning purple.
The backs.
The palms.
I am both scared and fascinated.
I can’t take my eyes off them.
I look it up on Google later
when I get home
It has a name.
Peripheral Cyanosis.
You need a hard hat
a hard hat to go in
dismantling the enigma of existence
is a dangerous thing
the ceiling may collapse on you
the walls cave in
punishing your arrogance
the plumbing dislodge spewing
its putrescence over you.
You’ve messed with the masonry.
You need a hard hat
a hard hat to go in
to write poetry
*photo from Pinterest by Kristopher King
I have a mote in my left eye
not the metaphoric one that Jesus
spoke of
but an actual one of grit.
I have amoat in my head too
which is metaphoric.
It cuts me off from needy people
which is kinda funny
coz I’m needy too.
Some people are overly guarded.
Too many moats to cross.
Australia has a moat,
a helluva big one
called the Pacific Ocean
on one side
& the Indian on the other
the one that boat people crossed
to get to Australia.
One family from Vietnam
lived across the road from us
for years.
I wrote about the man, the grandfather
in my first book.
[I’ll post it tomorrow]
A moat as big as the ocean
is hazardous.
Not everyone made it back then.
The Earth is surrounded
by a moat too
the vast star-studded ocean
of space.
I could go on but this poem
is starting to drift.
so I’m going to put a moat around it
and close it off.
* photo by juvnsky-enton-maksimor on Unsplash
You went after that photo like it was prey, she said. You were a fox, a panther, ferocious, determined.
You make it sound heroic.
It was also stupid, she snapped. There was no place to stop. You could have been hit by a car, that blue sedan in the photo, for instance, that beeped you to get off the road,
There was no other way, I said.
You could have let it go.
Never, When you are seized, you have no choice. You go after it like Amy Winehouse goes after the chorus of ‘Valerie’ or Eric Clapton the elation chords of ‘Layla’. There is total surrender to the feeling.The pursuit is everything.
The photo isn’t even that good, she said.
I got what I wanted. The sign. I would have climbed a precipice to get it
Sometimes I don’t understand you, she said.
Come on, I said, grabbing her hand, as we hopped back in the car and continued our journey, that sign disappearing in the rear-view
A rusty red rat
Rubbing its rump against the railings:
No more painkillers
John Malone 