Like Bottle-tops in a Bucket.
…or maybe contemplate
my silvery thoughts
like bottle-tops in a bucket:
the days of wine and roses,
the thinning days of desperation,
the elegiac whistling of the wind,
then that text from Pentecostal Peter :
He is Risen,
Time to enter the fairground of Life
again
Creature.
That stain
on the sidewalk
something Neanderthal
like a creature
on a cave painting
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.
The Memory Paradox.
Not all words get through.
2.5 million gigabytes of memory
count for nought if words are stopped at the gate
The meaning of ‘lambent, for instance,
or the tricky title
of that Tony Joe White song,
the best cover Elvis ever did.
Not even the name of the new friend we made
at Church last Sunday,
starting with J: Jordan? Josh? Jaidin?
My daughter doesn’t remember either.
Maybe it’s a family thing.
Why do some words get blocked, while millions of others
get through?
The mind has a mind of its own.
*pic courtesy of pinterest
Without My Eyes.
I’m going out today
without my eyes
seeing without hunting
for an image to click
to post on my blog.
I’m going out today,
fresh, unprepared,
no clunky phone in my top pocket,
without my camera eyes,
just to see and hold,
and like the kind fisherman,
then release.
The One No One Wanted.
It was the one no one wanted
The last one on the shelf
The one no one wanted, I didn’t
Much want it myself.
But there were no others
So I had little choice
The one that all had shunned
I purchased myself.
And Oh it fitted the bill
To the nth degree
So the one no one wanted
Was the right one for me.
*pic pinterest
.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
We are sitting across from each other
trying not to stare
looking down at our phones.
There are some paintings on the wall
but no one is looking at them.
Perhaps they are the sort of paintings
that are not meant to be looked at
but are there to establish a presence,
maintain a mood.
Then I notice the paintings,
half figurative, half abstract
in faded denim blue
with black, springy squiggles
like a cat’s whiskers
are not signed.
Perhaps the painter was half abstracted
when he painted them
& simply forgot.
Maybe: An Enigma.
Maybe if I had played my cards
a little closer to my chest,
you wouldn’t then have known
that I had played my best;
now I have to wait
for your tom foolery
to decide what to do
with the rest of me
*pic courtesy of wikipedia
I love how songs grow from talk
in Hollywood musicals
like ‘Carousel’, for instance,
and think, maybe, that’s how we should be
in our writing, loose and organic,
let the words, when they pulse with life,
grow feathers and spread their wings
as poems up and down the page
John Malone 