Sunset

Sunset.

Fascist yellow

sun,

barking mad,

see how the sea breezes run

from you,

your rabid red breath

stoking

the ovens

of night;

four days of heat

ahead.

No mercy expected.

Submariner

Submariner.

When I’m tearing up the pool

a one-lap wonder

& my goggles come loose

& the water rushes in

I feel like

a submariner

on the

Kursk.

*pic courtesy of pexels

Allayed

Allayed.

They took me up the steps

after the hall emptied

and pulled aside the heavy curtain.

And

there it was

in the centre

of the stage,

wide and welcome as a smile

a bath

tub egg yolk yellow

rim robin blue.

My fears were allayed.

Without My Eyes

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.

One Perfectly Round Ear

Locked between his headphones

the scraggly haired beachcomber

scours the beach with his detector

its one perfectly round ear

listening to talk-back from the sand

music to his ears :

dollar coins , gold ear rings

or bottle tops , tin cans —

relics of summer’s empire .

On and on he goes

in his hand a miniature red spade

and a blue bucket of hope

• pic courtesy of Wiki Commons

Things I’ve Heard about It

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.

• pic courtesy of Wikipedia

Kiss Curl

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

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

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.

• pic courtesy of Wikipedia

Gone

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?