Learnt a Few Things Today.
Learnt a few things today: that prunes
are prime movers;
hashi are chopsticks;
that sometimes the least visited blogs
are the most interesting
[ kudos to you, Don],
that it’s as good to stand up, clap, sing
& wave your body about as if you’re at
a rock concert,
& that endorphins are the sacrament
that a higher power has bestowed
on us mere mortals.
.Shameless.
Part of me recoils.
What are you?
Shameless?
Milking sympathy.
No, I say, I’m not.
Though I’m doing something
just as shameless,
using the disease as grist
to the mill.
Isn’t that what writers do?
I am ferocious for new material,
for keeping the old war horse fed.
Should one take advantage of an illness
or submit meekly to it.?
*pic courtesy of Wiki Commons
Indolent.
I’m going to lounge around like the old ginger cat
the rest of the afternoon,
‘Indolent’ is not a bad descriptor
for the disease.
makes it sound almost amiable. good natured,
like a lazy, but lovable work-shy relation.
Other cancers are hares.
This is a tortoise.
In the afternoon it takes nana naps like me.
Fighting Fish: an Extended Metaphor Poem
You & me
we’re siamese fighting fish
territorial as hell
in this fishbowl
of love.
You say,
I am taking every inch
of yr space;
I say,
huh, you are crowding me
but most of the time
we get on swimmingly
*pic courtesy of pinterest
and spring awake
at 4.30 in the morning
with two poems
slogging it out
in yr head,
you’re good to go
you’ve had your 8 hours
Reckless rags
ripped
by storm;
ragamuffin clouds
lounging about
like homeless people;
dark, moody
noses sniffling
with drizzle;
a hard, cold
night.
You can’t swat them
with yr hand.
spray them
with disinfectant.
or repel them
with incense coils.
They won’t buy it.
And you can’t
shut them out.
Not even
in yr room
at night.
Bite. Bite. Bite.
They whinge and they whine.
Those old anxieties, What ifs?
Those mozzies of yr mind.
Not all poems will leave the tarmac.
Not all are destined to fly.
Some are too heavy to lift off,
weighed down with their own importance,
too mechanically unsound.
Some simply haven’t enough fuel in the tank.
Others are just puzzles, enigmas,
the captain scratching his head in the cockpit,
saying, well, it should fly. Everything appears in order.
It was checked this morning.
Not all poems will leave the tarmac.
Not all are destined to fly.
John Malone 