Morning Prayer

Thank you, Lord

for teeth

to rip into

this egg and bacon muffin

for taste buds

to savour it

& for the senior’s coffee

To wash it down

to fuel me up

for the morning ahead

The Perfect Tea Spoon

It is the perfect tea spoon

small

slender

stubby handled

like the pen

I write with

snug as a haiku

in my hand

ready to stir

the sullen brew

to life

• have you a special piece of cutlery or a small everyday item that is dear to you?

Little Things

like the poem

the dreamy bus driver wrote

in ‘Paterson’

while idling at stop lights

or picking up passengers

the one about Ohio Blue Tip matches

in their sturdy little boxes

‘so sober and furious, ready to burst into flame’

as crafted as those of his hero

William Carlos Williams

the doctor who lived a few streets down

 who wrote that famous poem

the red wheelbarrow glazed with rain

And me realizing you can write poems

about almost anything

even a red pencil sharpener

a bowl of berries with a barrowful of dreams

and finding out

that’s where Lou Costello came from too

Paterson, New Jersey.

There’s even a park named after him,

Lou Costello the chubby comedian who played alongside Bud Abbot,

the straight guy.

I used to watch those guys in the fun-house

Of the fifties,

frolicking with Frankenstein and The Wolf man.

But it was Lou Costello

I loved

The funny little fat guy

And that’s where he came from,

Paterson, New Jersey.

Baths

a boat shaped vessel with room for one

when you clamber into a bath you are captain, crew, passenger

rolled into one

yet baths require no special skills

nor do they stand on ceremony; in this they are like some beaches:

dress is entirely optional

entering a bath you enter a topsy-turvy world where water fills the craft

not surrounds it — though baths will never sink

head back, you settle down but are going nowhere: baths have no destinations nor sails

yet people have been known to drift off in baths emerging rosy-skinned

and luminous as if fresh from a voyage

*pic courtesy of Pinterest

Losing One’s Lid

My rubbish bin has lost its lid

& asks me what to do..

“How would you feel if your Id,

was exposed to full view?

All that rancour, all that passion,

the outright lies and fibs

You wouldn’t want someone peering in

the trashcan of yr Id.

And what if the rain should tumble down?”

“All right,” I say, “all right, don’t be such a squib,

I’ll phone the local council up.

You shall soon have your lid.”

Everyone should have their lid,

pleasant though firmly secured.

The Id is not a pleasant spot

& should not be long endured.

the Red Pencil Sharpener: Zoom

I am looking down the barrels of

the red pencil sharpener

its holes

big as drainpipes

fat as full moons

flared like the nostrils

of horses;

 they are

deep wells

dark tunnels

O-shaped mouths hungry

for pencils

The red pencil sharpener sharpens

my imagination

Zoom Workshop: I am running a writers’ workshop on ‘Sharpening the Imagination’: tools and techniques for doing so. You are invited to attend. It will be a workshop run by the Vienna Writers Club but it will be broadcast from my home state, South Australia. participants can come from any country. It will be run towards the end of January 2021. Details can be found by Googling ‘Sunday Writers Club Vienna’.

Eyeballs of Yr Brain

Some people say I should write

More about people

Social issues

Than, say, red pencil sharpeners

Or cats with no eyes

But I reckon you’ve got to run

With what you’ve got,

Whatever grabs the eyeballs

Of yr brain,

the sad, empty chairs of the Nail Salon, for instance,

plushed as if for royalty,

the little commas at the end of sentences wriggling

like tadpoles,

that lop-sided moon like a broken smile,

Whatever,

You’re there to celebrate its otherness,

How it shines out in a tawdry world,

What brings it, and you,

In the words of Trent Reznor,

‘Closer to God’

Nice Bag

Nice bag, she says as I place it on the chemist’s counter.

Thank you, I say.

Yes, she says, admiring it.

Good looking.

Compact.

Square-shouldered.

Sturdy.

Not likely to topple over.

A bit like me, on a good day, I reply

She smiles, the sort of smile that says, I better humour this guy, he might be dangerous.

the little man with the trapezoid head

can you see the little man in the middle

with the trapezoid head?

he wrote a poem:

‘I’m a little confused. My head is wonky

like a shopping cart with wobbly wheels.

I wave my arms all about

& my feet have runaway heels

If people play hopscotch on these lines

they’re going to have a crazy time.’