A Short Venomous Tale
It is the venomous time of evening.
Sun setting. Close and muggy.
Her eyes dart around like mosquitos.
zeroing in on the small group at the edge of the pool
sipping G & T’s.
She settles on her prey, the malicious Minerva.
Punctures her composure, draws blood.
She will not be swatted.
She is feeling positively encephalitic.
*pic courtesy of pinterest
Crack
Not the crack in the cosmic egg
Nor the crack addicts smoke
Not even the crack in crack, snapple, pop breakfast cereal
but the bum crack
of Mr. Hairy
at the Eye Clinic
when he bent over to pick up
a form he had dropped
his shirt rolled up,
his jeans slipped a notch or two.
Everyone copped an eyeful.
I cracked a smile.
Some tittered.
Mr. Hairy was oblivious.
*pic courtesy of pexels.com
I was in bed with two Venetians, a long black
and a sleazy paperback
by Suzanne Pleshette
when an angry text erupted like a boil
on my iphone:
where were you, it said, I looked for you
& your floozy
everywhere in the cinema?
It was my old mate George.
Please don’t call her a floozy, I said.
We couldn’t make it. Sorry.
Sorry !!! Couldn’t make it.?
To see my new film, my best yet.
‘Ticket To Paradise’.
We’ll catch it on DVD, I said.
It’s not the same, he snapped,
sounding peeved and pedantic.
I don’t like hanging up on George
but he can work himself into a lather.
I dipped a Venetian into my long black
& carried on reading.
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?
He had a rough time as a kid, a tough time as a teenager, and did hard time as an adult in maximum-security, an ideal upbringing for a Coffin Confessor, a calling Bill Edgar, the author, pioneered.
You need balls to be a coffin confessor, a job, if you’ll excuse the pun, he fell into. A coffin confessor gatecrashes funerals, and reads out what his client, the deceased, discloses to him on their deathbed. He is entrusted to let the mourners know the bitter truth that has been largely hidden from them all this time. There is always at least one of the mourners who receives a right royal drubbing, a public flogging by the lash of truth.
He3re is his spiel: “Excuse me, but I’m going to need you to sit down, shut up or fuck off. The man in the box has a few things to say,”
You gotta read this book. Every chapter is rivetting.
They get up, rumpled, a little worse for wear. take a look, hold each other, flinch.
All that clutter.
The humble vessels and instruments of the night before, that wrought such alchemy on a lowly leg of lamb, packaged parsnips, carrots; followed by a serve of dried apricots and flaked almonds, soaked in brandy, all generously washed down with an aged red. Or was it two?
What a night!
But now …. the domestic terror in the sink.
Even alchemists have to clean up their mess.
pic courtesy of Pinterest by John Currin
I’m sorry, he said, shrugging his shoulders. There’s nothing I can do.
But surely …
I’ve never seen it this bad. Not in all my years. They’ve always responded to treatment. I threw everything at it.
But you’re ….
I know. We’re the paramedics of the trade but we can’t perform miracles.
We bowed our heads.
Then I’ll see you to the door. Thanks for trying,
And off he drove in his clean white van, the firm’s logo on the side.
Well, I said, it looks like the end of the line for you. Sorry, old mate. You heard the man. You have to go. Time for an upgrade. A new laptop.
What’s that? Under the driver’s seat?
A silver hammer.
Maxwell’s?
Lol, No, mine.
What for? In case of a car jacking?
No. In case I’m caught. In a flood.
Pardon?
You remember the floods in NSW a few weeks back when a car tried to drive through a flooded road and the car sank, the driver died? You know what happened?
Not really.
The electronics failed. The driver couldn’t open a door or window to escape. Suffocated. Now if he had a hammer.
Gives a new meaning to the old song, doesn’t it?
What song?
‘If I Had a Hammer’.
The great magician
lived behind us in the eighties
walked around in his top hat and cloak
practising
making rabbits disappear.
Once he poked his head
over the fence and asked
had we seen one of his rabbits?
I said I hadn’t.
But later
I discovered
by the cabbage patch
a hole in the fence,
where a rabbit had scraped under
and bits of fur in the yard.
We had a dog back then.
He was a bit of a magician himself.
He could make a rabbit disappear too.
( this was just published on ‘The Drabble’: thought you’d like a read too 🙂 ]
I’ve been clearing up the house
sweeping up the crumbs.
It’s a monthly ritual.
Am I mad? or just dumb?.
I clear away the cobwebs
sweep up the dust
collect and bin the rubbish.
Somebody must.
They won’t wash themselves,
mum used to say.
The sink’s full of them
so I put them away.
Make the place spotless
so it shines & it hums.
& I better get a move on
before the cleaner comes.
John Malone 