Under the influence
I wrote copiously
From midnight to morning
Dementedly
A devil held my hand
An accomplice flayed my side
My mind had an erection
It could not hide
All my past spilled out
From the attic of my mind
My pen swept it up
I was writing blind.
Such dark energy
Flowed through me
and out through my fingers
its estuary.
* have you ever been driven to write in the middle of the night that took hours?
Where’s Uncle Midge? I asked
one sunny afternoon.
He’s off with the fairies again, aunty said
Then quickly changed the topic.
Off with the fairies? How did aunty know?
Did he leave a note saying he’d be back
By so and so a time?
It was hard to imagine Uncle frolicking with the fairies
if that is what
One does when one is ‘off with them’.
He seemed too weighty and substantial for that.
And anyway where was he off to?
Where does one go when one is ‘off with the fairies’?
I looked out the lounge room window out
To the backyard where uncle often used to wander
But there was nothing — only a pair
Of garden gnomes who seemed to be smiling
As if they had seen something.
John Malone 