Submariner

Submariner.

When I’m tearing up the pool

a one-lap wonder

& my goggles come loose

& the water rushes in

I feel like

a submariner

on the

Kursk.

*pic courtesy of pexels

Death on the Double Decker

We were coming home from the pictures, dad and I —

we had seen one of the great ones: Gary Cooper in ‘High Noon’,

when an announcement came over the bus radio,

that the King had died. Everyone fell silent then as the announcer

proceeded with the details. I never knew the king — I was only a kid —

but later he meant much to me. I wear a silver ring now with his image

on the head for he was a stutterer too. But he overcame it.

Whenever I spoke in public and felt nerves coming on I looked at the face

Of King George VI

the Insoluble Problem of Motivation

It had been on the vacant lot next to the church

For over half a year and no one in all that time

Could rustle up enough motivation to mow the lawn

Or clear it of rubbish. I thought of calling

The number on the back a few times but just couldn’t

Get motivated enough to ring or attend one

Of their weekly meetings

& I thought about something

A friend had said about running a Special Olympics

For the Motivationally Challenged but the problem

With that, I said, was that nobody would bother

To turn up. I thought then of the historically highly

Motivated: Hitler, Stalin, the rapacious bankers, Isis

And concluded that a low motivated populace isn’t

Necessarily a bad thing.

You See Things

You see polio.

You see the boy down the street locked inside

an iron lung.

kids in callipers.

You see the abducted children from your home town —

Joanne Ratcliffe and Kirsty Gordon from the Adelaide Oval

and the Beaumont children taken from Glenelg Beach

on Australia Day ’66 who are never found

& the parents who die not knowing

& you witness the epidemic of fear that keeps yr children

in lockdown

& your own daughter whose boyfriend is taken off a suburban street

and killed by an infamous child abductor

and there are more: the Truro murders and it never stops.

And Debbie Anne Leach who you taught in Year 11

murdered at Taperoo Beach after school with her dog.

And the drug deaths and the suicides

and that lovely Year 9 girl who found her inner poet

And the darkness that swept the world after 9/11

But you’ve seen nothing like this.

 

No!

Still they come, she said, the bibles, prayer shawls, letters.

People are very supportive, he said.

But the attic is full of them.

Their grief and incomprehension are still strong. Who can explain such a thing?

And the candy?  Those bags of caramels. It wouldn’t hurt ….

What are you doing? He said, reaching out.

Surely it wouldn’t hurt to have a few? After all, they were meant for us.

No, said Peter Lanza, the father of the Sandy Hook killer, knocking them from her hand. They may be poisoned.

 

 

The Insoluble Problem of Motivation

 

It had been on the vacant lot next to the church

For over half a year and no one in all that time

 

Could rustle up enough motivation to mow the lawn

Or clear it of rubbish. I thought of calling

 

The number on the back a few times but just couldn’t

Get motivated enough to ring or attend one

 

Of their weekly meetings & I thought about something

A friend had said about running a Special Olympics

 

For the Motivationally Challenged but the problem

With that, I said, was that nobody would bother

 

To turn up. I thought then of the historically highly

Motivated: Hitler, Stalin, the rapacious bankers, Isis

 

And concluded that a low motivated populace isn’t

Necessarily a bad thing.