Mystery Ships.
When he gets up to go to the toilet in the middle of the night,
she’d be there
or on the way back to his room after pausing in the kitchen
for a glass of milk,
she’d be in the hallway,
with her axolotl stare.
Time after time.
Passing ships in the night.
He’d look at her, and she at him,
sometimes a twitch of understanding, affection,
then they’d both look away.
After eight years, off and on,
they were still a mystery to each other.
Her cat. Not his.
They’d never bonded.
Sometimes I wake up in a room
& don’t know where I am.
My partner’s?
My daughter’s?
Home?
Sometimes I walk into a room that isn’t
even there.
carrying two cups of coffee,
one for me, one for her
and a Sunday Mail under my arm
but that was yesterday.
I’m in the 4th dimension now.
Somewhere in the distance a crow caws, a cat hisses, an old CD
is playing, ‘You’re out of time, my baby’.
I scratch my head, my balls.
How do I get back Where’s the exit door?
The entrance?
Help.
Showers acupuncture skin , pummel
angry muscles
into submission ;
like coffee they
kick-start us into action ,
the quick fix , the jab for our frenetic times but
they are ill suited
to contemplation or insight —
Archimedes
would have discovered nothing under a shower ;
nor are they
conducive to knowledge ; you cannot
read under showers nor
can you write unless it is wet verse ;
moreover showers only cater
for one side at a time — leaving the
other blue with cold ;
in this
baths are more inclusive immersing us
like icebergs with only
the head above water ;
showers have
much to learn ;
young upstarts , they lack the noble
ancestry of baths yet
arrogantly tower above them ; their heads
must constantly be lowered
* which do you prefer: showers or baths? * if you were asked to write a bath poem what would your opening lines be?
People who live here, he said, live with their backs to the sea.
And I said, how could anyone turn their backs to the sea?
And I thought of mum, before she was hauled away, saying,
I want to go back to the sea again,
how she sounded like Miranda the mermaid who had strayed
from her home
but when she got her wish, when we got her into a retirement home
on the esplanade, she grew jaded.
What’s wrong, mum? we asked.
I want to go home, she said. I want to go back where I lived with dad.
But you’ve got a ringside seat, mum, to the Southern Ocean. A view to die for.
It’s not the same, she said, not when you see the same thing day after day.
But we sat with her, watching the red sun sit on the lip of the horizon like a wafer,
the seabirds flying home, and a kind of calm settled on her.
Every poem should have a welcome mat.
to let the reader know their little house of words
is warm and inviting; is well kept,
a door bell that chimes rich and melodious,
perhaps a garden gnome suggesting fun, quirkiness
and a bird bath out the front, full to the brim,
where yellow-shouldered honey eaters frolic,
to suggest plenty
I am sitting down reading to the drone of bees.
A copy of the TLS lies open on my knees.
We must get a frizzle on, my partner exclaims
Apropos of nothing then goes off again
To attend the roast, while I attend to the Times.
There’s a lost poem by Hardy which clumsily rhymes.
A frizzle or two? Whatever can she mean?
I scratch my head then read once again.
I take another sip of my beloved cab sav
While she takes a pee in the outdoor lav.
I wonder if spiders
in their webs
at night
spin poems
‘bout me & you
nattering away in the moonlight
in neat little haiku
you with your cigs
me with my brew
of jasmine tea
spinning our memories
wishes
of how things might be
or would they instead
taking a jaundiced view
spin snarky little
senryu
The sun levers me from bed .
Slides over the smooth rump
of hills .
Steams away the frost .
The cats desert the hearth .
There are a few embers left ,
chunks of ash
warm and marshmellow fluffy .
Not a ripple of sound .
Everyone’s asleep .
I put two logs on the ash ,
a tangle of twigs
and settle back on the cane lounge
waiting for the wood to catch .
Two dragonflies clamber over
the green scrim of curtain ;
a young magpie rests high up
in the fork of a scrawly gum ;
from the next farm the caw
of a crow ,
the baaa of distant lambs ,
overhead the sudden scraaak
of galahs ;
my stomach rumbles —
breakfast !
the grey slumbering Sloth
and Mao , the red burmese cross ,
in expectation of warmth
slink around the hearth ;
a flame stirs the stubborn fuel
crackles
sets this poem ablaze
mirrors never lie : sideshow mirrors only distort the truth
you can look a mirror in the eye but it won’t blink first
ceiling mirrors are up themselves
wall mirrors have hang ups
mirrors continually surprise us in the act of being ourselves
mirrors both give and receive simultaneously
during the day when everyone’s out do mirrors contemplate their navel
do they get tired of looking at the same faces
does familiarity breed contempt
can mirrors go rogue like Hal, the computer in 2001
are one-way mirrors guilty of duplicity
do cracked mirrors have an image problem
do mirrors ever take a good hard look at themselves.
pic courtesy of wiki media
My mentor told me how to write a poem about slippers. Make it easy, he said. comfortable and cozy, warm, no prickly bits. More lamb than hedgehog.
I had a girlfriend once who forbade me to wear slippers: ‘Next thing I know”, she said, ‘You’ll be wearing a dressing gown, reading cozy murder mysteries and shuffling around the house like an old man.”
My dogs when they were puppies took a violent dislike to slippers, tearing them apart with a vitriolic zeal of which my girlfriend would have approved. For years I walked around the house in loafers until the puppies grew up and out of their habit.
Whenever I hear Bing Crosby sing White Christmas over the PA system in his hush puppy voice I think of slippers. Slippers are like bean bags for the feet.When you slump into them they have the feel of home.
John Malone 