The Things I’ve Heard about It.
It is a cancer.
It is not a cancer.
You will not die from it.
You will die with it.
It is the cancer you want to have
if you have to have a cancer.
It is indolent. Lazy.
And that strange name.
Long as the name of a Welsh railway station.
Waldenstrom macroglobulinaneamia.
Try saying that in one breath.
Whew.
Kiss Curl .
I love the way the wind
plays with my hair
when I whisk along the road
windows wound down
twirls my comb-over
into a kiss curl
like Bill Hayley in the fifties.
Rock around the clock, baby.
*pic courtesy of pinterest
Surly.
Bono looks surly.
Putting him beside a book called ‘Euphoria’
did it.
Bono feels anything but.
Euphoric, that is.
He’s been languishing on the Express Shelf
for three weeks
while books all around him have been flying
off the shelf.
‘Pissed’ is closer to the mark
as in ‘Pissed off’.
Bono is not used to this sort of treatment.
I would take him home myself
but I already have.
If the book was as lean and finely crafted
as a U2 song
it’d be different.
But it is as bloated as a Pynchon novel.
Please Don’t Stare.
It’s not as bad as the horns
on Hellboy’s head
even when filed down to stubs
or the protrusions
on Elephant Man’s face
or that raspberry stain the shape of Africa
on the barista’s cheek that day in the mountains
but the volcanic cone,
a miniature Vesuvius,
on my forehead
is an eye popper
and looks like it’s about
to go off.
Gone
Admittedly it ranks a little lower
than the mystery of the Marie Celeste.
missing Malaysia Flight A 370
or the disappearance of the Beaumont children
at our local beach on Australia Day
half a century ago
But I still want to know
what happened
to my snazzy blue, gold trimmed vest
I got for Xmas and took off for a shave
on Boxing Day
I only took it off for a minute
so I wouldn’t get it grubby.
Where did it go?
Where’s My Bear?
I’m not myself today.
I wasn’t myself yesterday either.
Where are you? she says. Where’s my Bear?
I’m still here, I say.
No, you look like him but you’re not Bear. Go away.
So I do.
Back to my little cubby house in the ‘burbs.
I think of her. I miss her. The good times we had.
Perhaps I have been a little sloppy, solipsistic.
I send her a card. Anyone can send a text.
She texts back. I call.
Come over, Bear. I miss you.
I buy her a bouquet of long stemmed oriental lilies.
We cuddle. We kiss. Like bears.
We have found each other.
*pic courtesy of pinterest
Ramshackle ….
I’ve made the place neat and tidy just ramshackle enough
so it looks lived in
*pic courtesy of pinterest
Someone’s been out in the garden
between the evening and the dawn.
I wonder what it was.
A rabbit or a fawn?
Yes, someone’s been in the garden
in the depths of the dark.
Someone fleet and nimble
who have left their mark.
Someone’s been in the garden
before the day was born —
the Xmas elf of Davis Court? —
& from their roots all weeds have torn,
I wake up suddenly
stunned and panicky
like a ‘roo caught in the headlights
of a big rig
an eighteen wheeler
tunneling thru the darkness.
My senses are all rinsed.
I leap out of bed
into the hysterical light of morning
pour myself a coffee
settle back into my little
skew whiff home.
To the uninitiated , mysterious as
the moon monoliths in 2001 ;
pensioned off light-houses ? a giant’s
apartment house or a giant
phallus set in cement , a reminder
to the young colony —
populate or perish ? they come in
all shapes and sizes ; rise
suddenly from the landscape like
mushrooms with their long
stalks and caps yet exist singly —
it is houses that cluster
around them ; scattered around the
countryside they are tall
as wheat silos though their bellies
seem full of water
but why windows — for fish to peer
through ? or doors — what if
someone should break in ? only the tops
hold water , I am told ,
like a water tank on a stand ; largely
redundant , now they are
being sold off like unwanted churches ;
yet I consider them ,
their brief reign ; for me they always
held more than water
John Malone 