Neanderthal.
You know how you get scrambled eggs, right ?
Well I had scrambled dreams.
I forgot my meds. That was the trouble.
All my dreams were Neanderthal.
Batty, belly up, R Rated.
My Id running amuck.
Skeletons spilling out of the closet.
Onto the sidewalk.
Under the lamp-post
where passersby could gawk.
It was one of those nights.
The world is a cat.
It knocks things over
that should be left standing.
It turns on you with tooth and claw
even when you are affectionate
towards it.
It draws blood,
pounces with unbridled savagery
on the weak and defenceless.
It has no shame, remorse.
When have you seen it
hang its head?
Yet, the world can surprise you
with sudden turns of affection
as it rubs against you
and purrs.
You look like a newt
in yr birthday suit
she said with clear élan.
A little blemished.
Somewhat unfinished.
A strange fit of a man.
I’ve read yr text.
I know what’s next
& up the stairs she ran
Perhaps it stung someone.
Perhaps that’s why it’s hurt.
I’ve watched it for half an hour
struggle across the pavers and dirt
stumbling into things like a drunk
fall over, get up again.
It’s painful watching this
but what can I do to assist?
I just happened to look down
and saw this old soldier hobbling along
and followed him. I hope I did no wrong.
“You won’t even know it’s there,” said the surgeon.
“My brother-in-law sure did,” I replied referring to the incident in the ICU which I witnessed.
AS he was coming out of his sleep, he became aware of the tube down his throat and began struggling with it so violently that he had to be held down by three nurses while he was put into an induced coma. He stayed that way for three days.
“You won’t even be aware of it,” the surgeon said, “and if you are you won’t remember.”
I decided to go with that. In the end you have to put your faith in something.
Still, some days later as I was wheeled into the operating theatre, the last conscious thought was of that tube down my throat.
Many hours later as I slowly awoke, I remember the doctor saying, “the breathing tube is out now, you can speak.”
“What breathing tube?” I asked.
The thing is, if you don’t know something has happened to you, has it really happened?
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.
I like to flex my muscles,
says the tree,
waving its branches
militantly,
I’m coming at you,
wait and see!
You’re on, I say,
just back from gym,
in an adrenaline
driven whim.
I’m going out
on a limb.
I engage it
in an arm wrestle.
Something snaps,
sadly droops.
Round one to me,
I whoop.
You hear a noise. It’s past midnight.
So what do you do?
You hop up, turn on a few lights, tramp down the passageway. open and close cupboards, bang doors, make a lot of noise.
Then you stop and listen.
There it is again.
Those bloody mice, you say, though you’ve seen no evidence of any.
It’s nothing, you decide, nothing. House noises.
You head back to the bedroom, turn off the lights.
Someone taps you on the shoulder.
1
my coffee cup
is
an atlas
of stains:
a dark blotch vast as Asia,
another,
a continent of khaki
shaped like Australia;
there’s a South America too
[but no North]
And around the rim
an aurora borealis of brown
when the sun
lights it up.
2
Clean it, a visitor declares.
Clean it? I say.
This miracle of incidental art?
This repository of rudimentary remarques?
It’d be tantamount to the Taliban
blowing up
the Buddhist statues
in Afghanistan!
No!
Me and the Ant go way back, ever since we discovered
our mutual Achilles’ Heel: coffins made of steel: Lifts.
He’s not a big fan of car boots either or small caving tunnels,
so the Thai cave rescue would not have been high
on his agenda. One thing’s for sure: Ant is an SAS commando
& instructor and if he can’t handle lifts, what chance
have marshmallow men like me got? It’s in my Will:
‘to be cremated’; just in case
John Malone 