I wash myself with transcendental soap,
it makes me shine, lathers my hope,
rinses away all my petty needs,
you know the ones: the urge to pee,
to have three square meals, to sleep
it lifts me high, takes me deep
whenever I feel that I’m on the ropes
I wash myself with transcendental soap
The cat is the forgotten candidate when they fight:
sure, they hurt each other but the cat recoils too,
even the walls and lounge chairs at the suddenness,
the squall of this. The walls and sofas cannot move,
but the cat can. Exit, pursued by bear. Only small,
but with the memory of an elephant. The cat remembers
long after they forget.
I have a very bad feeling.
Tell me I’m wrong.
That I have written myself into obscurity.
That I was too clever by half.
That no one knew what the f*** I was writing about
in the previous post ‘Not a nightingale ode’.
It was a glass of red wine.
But that’s what happens when you put up a post
while you’ve been drinking
while you’ve been rhapsodizing about a glass
of red wine
O
the voluptuous girth
of you
yr full mouth
yr
tiny tiny waist
I love
to twirl
between forefinger and thumb
yr long tapering body
rich aromas
the blush
of yr beauty
the swill
of yr full-bodied flavours
down
my
gullet
What are you doing? I asked.
Scratching my cerebrals, uncle would answer studying the crossword before him, his right hand deftly scratching his scalp, between loose strands of sandy hair, as though he had nits.
It seemed to work. The more furious he scratched, the better he got, the crossword soon solved.
Then uncle would go out in the garden and within a short space of time, as aunty used to say, he’d be ‘off with the fairies’.
Perhaps the two activities were allied.
Perhaps I caught it from uncle but whenever I work on a poem or a piece of stubborn flash fiction, I scratch my cerebrals too.
My partner caught me at it one morning.
Stop it, you’ll go blind, she says.
We both chuckle.
It’s good to make light of things then go back to scratching your cerebrals should things become difficult.
Most people think of stars when they think
Of infinity
Or grains of sand
But I think Adam Sandler,
All the films of his I haven’t seen
And all those I have
Even the stinkers like ‘Little Nicky’
I want to see again and again
and again.
There are so many.
Almost as many as the stars
and the guy’s still making them!
But as Jim Croce says, ‘there’s never enough time
To do the things you want to do,’
It’s just not funny.
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.
My daughter has been Axe Throwing with some friends from work.
Apparently it is the new thing.
It’s a bit like darts only more dangerous,
I’ve been hit with a dart in the hand the last time I played,
Being hit with a hatchet would be a totally different thing.
People are encouraged to bury the hatchet in the target not in each other.
This is not ‘Vikings’.
It looks like fun. I’m thinking of going along.
But I have too many axes to grind so I better
stick to darts.
* have you ever been axe throwing? or taken part in any other dangerous activity?
*if axe throwing is a more dangerous form of darts what is a more dangerous form of chess?
Let me in. Let me in, I say.
I’ve been locked out.
Do you know how late it is?
Maybe it’s a mistake. I forgive you.
Just let me in. Please.
I need to get back inside my own body
So I can get to sleep.
* photo by Gina Neri from Unsplash
The poems whiz past like buses ‘Not in Service’.
There is no time table.
No bus shelter.
Only a sign saying, ‘Bus Stop 29’..
Anywhere is good as anywhere else.
That’s what Raymond Carver meant when he said:
Be At Your Station.
Be alert, open.
The deus ex machina will come.
Still, I’ve been waiting here for the last twenty minutes
With the girl with incarnadine hair.
It will be good if the poem or bus pulls up anytime soon.
