Are You Lost?

Are you lost? he asks.

I don’t know, I say. I think so.

What’s that bracelet around your ankle?

Oh that, it’s a monitoring device in case I get lost.

So are you?

I guess so. I was wandering like Wordsworth. Only he saw daffodils.

So what do you see?

I was just looking at the windy lake, how the waves arch like dolphins through the water and i thought of that song

What song?

The one that goes: ‘I wish I could swim like dolphins can swim’

You see that?

Yes, don’t you? Excuse me, that’s my phone ringing. I really have to take this. Alright, alright, don’t get your knickers in a twist. I’m coming right now. I have to go, I say.

So you’re okay then?

Yes, Someone’s waiting for me, waiting out the front.

That’s good. Anyone you know?

Yes, someone I know very well. But it’s okay.. He found me. We lose each other from time to time.

Pardon?

Soon as I get home, I’ll lock myself in. for the night. That’s when my mother used to wander too. It’s for my own good.

Calm

I like to read calm sentences, she says.

No ugly exclamation marks that bully and harass.

No question marks that interrogate.

No dots or dashes.

Nothing jittery or jagged

Calm.

Calm sentences.

Placid as a billabong.

Soothing as slumber,

Pachelbel’s  canon.

You Really Have to Lift Your Game

You really have to lift your game, I say to my poems:

pull the finger out, push the envelope, think outside the box;

you’ve been resting on your laurels too long.

Other poets are doing amazing things with words,

smashing them together like neutrons in a Hadron Collider.

Get this: ‘these widowed months’, ‘the dents of highway laughs’,

and my favourite: ‘the soul is a runway for anything willing to fly’.

Whew! they say. Is that all you can say? I say.

Will you try a little harder? I say to my poems. Come on, guys.

For the Home Team. They look a little hesitant, abashed.

I don’t know, they say. It’s just not us.

We’ve been through this before. Okay, okay , I say. I’m sorry.

Just be yourselves. Just occasionally, Huh? Would it hurt?

They look at me. Give me the thumbs up.

Then I play them Slowly Slowly’s ‘Jellyfish’ as a stimulant.

They light up, move to the music.There’s hope for them yet.

* quotes from Bob Whiteside’s blog: naïve haircuts

You’re a 78 now

You’re a 78 now

like

a vintage vinyl record

from the fifties

an Elvis or a Buddy

fresh

forever young

may you spin long

on the turntable

of life

Parable of the Tea Towel

I was halfway through the dishes when a call of nature distracted me.

When I resumed I could not find the tea towel anywhere. Where’s it gone? I said.

It’s on your shoulder, my partner laughed & there is was, dangling like a limp flag.

Made me think of that line from ‘Hey Jude’ , ‘the movement you need is in your shoulders’

& I thought, that’s it! that’s the answer: not carrying the weight of the world on your shoulders like Atlas

but shouldering your way through difficulties, so they part before you like the Red Sea did for Moses.

Seized

You went after that photo like it was prey, she said. You were a fox, a panther, ferocious, determined.

You make it sound heroic.

It was also stupid, she snapped. There was no place to stop. You could have been hit by a car, that blue sedan in the photo, for instance, that beeped you to get off the road,

There was no other way, I said.

You could have let it go.

Never, When you are seized, you have no choice. You go after it like Amy Winehouse goes after the chorus of ‘Valerie’ or Eric Clapton the elation chords of ‘Layla’. There is total surrender to the feeling.The pursuit is everything.

The photo isn’t even that good, she said.

I got what I wanted. The sign. I would have climbed a precipice to get it

Sometimes I don’t understand you, she said.

Come on, I said, grabbing her hand, as we hopped back in the car and continued our journey, that sign disappearing in the rear-view

While on the Subject of Udders

We were driving past cows full of paddocks when my friend

asked me whether I thought bulls considered cow udders

‘sexy’? I said I hadn’t given it much thought but added,

you don’t  see many pinups of naked cows on the sides

of barns or bulls wanking off to them thoughtfully

on sunny afternoons; unsatisfied we pulled over

and did a Google Search, typing in ‘do bulls …’ to which

suggestions came up, such as ‘do bulls hate red?’, ‘do bulls moo?’ ,

‘do they have horns?’ and then the big one: ‘do bulls find

cow udders sexy?’ to which Google replied, ‘no, it’s a human thing’.

and that was that till Denzel Curry’s cover of ‘Bulls on Parade’

came over the radio, and my friend started all over again

 

* pic courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

Sandals

I like a guy with sandals.

Jesus wore them.

Buddha too.

I bet Mahatma did as well.

All the good guys wore sandals.

Allan Ginsberg did when he delivered ‘Howl’

on that memorable day

and The Archies when they sang ‘Sugar Sugar’ on the cartoon channel.

They’re not exactly power dressing

but you can trust a man who wears sandals.

or Woman.

My yoga teacher wore sandals.

She taught me the value of non attachment

though we were both attached to our sandals.

Socrates too.

He died in his sandals like cowboys with their boots on.

And so it goes.

I don’t know about celebs.

I think Clint Eastwood did in ‘A Few Dollars More’.

and Justin Bieber in his clip ‘Love Yourself’

Our Prime Minister wears sandals when he goes to the beach.

There’s a picture of Jesus walking on water in his sandals.

I tried it.

It doesn’t work

but I still wear my sandals.

 

It’s My Birthday. I Can Say It If I Want To

I hope ‘Drive’ is playing when I get there

And the radio’s tuned to Triple J

And they serve my mocha just the way I like it

That they have the bar open on Fridays

And a barbie every second weekend.

And the New Yorker arrives promptly

On my doorstep each Wednesday

That they have a gym and an ocean you can swim in

When it gets stinking hot

[ or hasn’t climate change hit Heaven?]

If not, I’m not going.

Yesterdays

All the poems about yesterday are nostalgic

As are the songs.

My mother called Macca’s ‘Yesterday’ mawkish.

But my yesterday was shit.

If yesterday were a punching bag I’d pummel it

To a pulp.

There are some things like the Holocaust you can’t

Say anything good about.

Yesterday was like that.

Sometime in the Future it might be possible

To say something good about yesterday

But it’d be a stretch.

 

• photo by Rotorn Kuperman on Pixels.com
• you ever have days like that?