The woman next door is howling with pain.
It is 3 in the morning.
Clearly she is doing it harder than me.
I went in ten days ago
with a high fever
and within 24 hours my frail craft
had sailed off into the South Pole
where I was hit with pneumonia
and racked with pain.
It was Scott of the Antarctic meets ‘The Thing’.
I’m in calmer waters now.
Five days with minor ailments.
They’ve brought me into dock.
Going home today.
*pic courtesy of pinterest
Stan Laurel Syndrome.
At the Blood Clinic I got a call
from my daughter
to give mum a birthday wish
and to please clear up the nice mess
I’d got her into,
I am always putting my foot in things.
It’s a gift.
Life.
One pothole after another.
*pic courtesy of pinterest
Mystic Mauve.
I’m eight miles high again, sweet Jesus
branded on my feet
been smoking that purple rain again
though I have no one to meet
in the jingle jangle morning
mauve shadows are forming
& I’m running out of time
still tryin’ to catch the wind, sweet Mary
still one toke over the line
Golden Staph, Such a sweet, mellifluous name.
Its Latin counterpart, staphylococcus aureus,
just as euphonious, a name fit for a new species
of wildflower, an exotic dessert, or a freshly discovered
galaxy, glowing golden. at the edge of the universe;
even the bacilli under the eyes of an electron microscope
look like jolly mauve mushrooms clustered in a field
not the toxic toadstools they are.
*photo courtesy of CDC
The Roofs of Queenstown.
I can look all day at the metal roofs of Queenstown
like Jacob, wearing coats of many colors:
this one matte black like my Cruize that beat
the Monaro at the lights ; that one on the corner rust red,
the colour you see striated on the tin roofs of settler cottages,
the one just built, Tomahawk with its brash of burnt umber
and my favourites, Blue Balm, and Winnipeg Fog,
the two beside the park that calm and soothe;
I raise my hat to the metal roofs of Queenstown,
stylish and stately hats worn on the heads of houses.
I am watching a man dying on a jet plane
and I am contemplating eating another slice
of cheesecake.
I don’t know yet if the man dies
from clogged arteries, but he looks well fed
up there in real life and is a senior like me.
Now they rip off his shirt and work on his chest
pale and spotted as this cheesecake
I am lifting to my lips as Logan Roy
is pronounced dead.
Brutal.
Yesterday was brutal.
It was my ‘Good Friday’,
my ‘Garden of Gethsemane’.
I thought of Jesus
up there on the cross
and upbraided myself for even
thinking of the comparison.
But my time on the throne
took some beating.
It was my ‘Calvary.’
They warned you about this,
that chemo does play havoc
with the excretory system
but this was brutal
absolutely brutal.
It was right that it happened on Good Friday.
the day of suffering.
When the lights came on,
she strode straight up to us
from three seats along.
arms folded, brimstone eyes,
and said,
I want to take a good hard look
at you two
so I know never to sit by you
in a cinema
again !
*pic courtesy of pinterest
Coffee Shop Quartet.
that quartet of oldies, cosseted in their cardigans,
smugly commiserating the homeless
and Wheatus raps rancidly over the radio
‘I’m just a teenage dirt-bag, baby’
Billy Collins on my screen reading his poem
about Goya’s chandelier hat
lighting up the gloom of his garret
and the fusspot next to me
picking at the frosted icing on his fruitcake
as though it were a scab
* pic courtesy of pinterest
My Lonsdale Cap.
I found my Lonsdale cap.
It was scrunched between the passenger seat and door.
But it’s okay now.
I’ve pummelled out the dents.
I wish it were that easy to pummel out mine.
Life isn’t a car crash.
It’s a series of dings
and plain old wear and tear.
My car smooched a green fence post once
while doing a tight turn. Some of the green glows
through the matte grey like an early Spring.
It’s bright outside today, high UV reading.
I’m putting on my snazzy Lonsdale cap
so I don’t get sunburn
& my kiss curl doesn’t get blown around
too much.
John Malone 