What is the cat looking for under the gate?
Perhaps the old tom two doors down trudging across the road like a sloppy sentence.
Perhaps the purr that left her mysteriously six months ago.
Or maybe she’s dreaming of the Krazy Kat cartoons she loved read to her as a kitten.
Or what the rest of her siblings are up to at the Pet Barn and whether they landed on her feet like her when she was adopted.
Or maybe she’s just curious. She’s a cat after all.
My mind is a scold.
It calls me sloth,
a lassitudinous layabout.
Is that even a word, I say?
Get off the couch, it says. It’s early afternoon
Attend to your blog.
Your Yorkshire mate puts up three posts
to your one.
Write that poem about airing the sheets.
How they purr like cats as they are stroked
by the sun.
Re-read that article :
‘Should Leopards Be Paid For Their Spots’.
Phone your daughters.
Go see your sister.
Give people their worth.
Go to gym.
Release your inner Thor.
Okay, okay, I grumble
but, in truth, I’m happier
and have loads more energy
when I’m buzzing around
like a gingery bee.
How does that work?
Election day at Alberton Primary.
A long, long queue.
A slow shuffle to the front.
Hope the queue at the Pearly Gates
isn’t as long and tedious as this.
And there’s a coffee van and sausage sizzle
at the end of it
We were at St, Francis Winery
& were trying to find
our way home
when you said,
Hey! Isn’t St. Francis the Patron Saint of Travellers
& I said, yes,
I think he is
so we got praying to St. Francis
but were getting
more and more lost.
Hey! let me check something, I said
so I pulled out my iPhone & Googled
‘Patron Saint of Travellers’
& found
it was St. Christopher.
No wonder we were lost.
We were praying to the wrong guy.
So this time we prayed to the right guy
& cheered up.
The car cheered up too.
It had a bounce in its wheels.
We were on our way.
Any minute now …..
in my back pocket.
My one concession to pink.
Still, I was amazed
to read
in an article on Harris Reed,
the 25 year old designer,
that in the 18th century, pink
was stylish for men and women
as was lace,
a marker not of effeminacy
but of affluence & taste.
Tastes change.
Although I am not rabidly masculine,
I like manly cuts and colours
Still I;m fond of my pink comb.
O, and I like Kylie too.
I have always wanted to work in a pencil factory
like Henry David Thoreau.
I could draw inspiration from my work each day,
pencil in appointments with imaginary friends
during coffee breaks or smokos.
Do they still have smokos by the way?
‘The pen is mightier than the sword’ but what about
the pencil? & which one?
2B or not 2B? Hamlet famously dithered just after
he had asked Ophelia [ in an earlier draft of the play ]
to come and look at his etchings and she had refused.
I may not be the sharpest pencil in the box but I still
want to make my mark upon the world.
O brittle love
O brittle love
whatever were we
thinking of?
one careless word
misplaced phrase
put us in a spin
for days
but now in each
other’s arms
we appreciate
our twisty charms
locked in firm,
solid embrace,
steady as stone
we’ve found our place.
I like to travel in ambulances.
They seem such warm, friendly places
especially the Aussie ones shown on our screens:
‘Paramedics’ and ‘In the Ambulance’.
The ambos are calm, confident and chatty,
the ride authoritative but reassuring;
you feel you’ve landed on your feet
even if you are on your back;
There’s never any drama with these ambulances:
You scoot along niftily, the traffic parting
like the Red Sea for Moses; you’re delivered
efficiently as a package from Australia Post.
* I've never travelled in an ambulance; have you? * have you an ambulance story ?
*pic courtesy of Wikipedia
This time he’s really shitted off.
Had a turd of a day
and now he’s come home to find
dog poo AGAIN
on his freshly mown lawn.
His fury diarrhoeas out
of his mouth, and here we draw the veil of decorum
over the expletives to protect our readers.
A little calmer now he pulls out his pen,
the ballpoint
he uses to write romantic missives to his love
and pens
a warning. on the nearest stobie poll,
a friendly warning
but its double-barrelled exclamation marks cannot hide his intent.
He grabs
a can of beer, and plonks himself near the front window,
watching, watching.
John Malone 