Love on the Wing

When I was a kid I used to wander down the park and watch dragonflies flitter over the pond like tiny, restless angels.

Later I wanted to write poems about them the way Monet would go down to his garden at Giverny to paint water lilies.

The only difference is that water lilies stay still. They don’t dash and dart about the pond at 100 ks an hour. Even when they have sex they’re on the go, coupling like planes fuelling mid- flight.

I almost got one once when a dragonfly dawdled on the front doorknob one drowsy afternoon, after summer rains, then saw me and took off, its gossamer wings flashing rainbows.

Perhaps I should turn like Monet to waterlilies. He got 250 paintings out of them. I haven’t got one poem though I reckon I’ve made 250 trips. [ pic by loriedarlin on pinterest ]

Love Yr Top

Love yr top.

You do?

Yes, it’s blue and fleecy. So soft and warm.

Like me?

Yes, like you, I reply.

And we cuddle like clouds.

pic courtesy of Pinterest by BuzzFeed

How I Like It

Short,

sharp, snarly,

tight as a a haiku

assured.

amped,

giving it to me straight

like a track

from

Amyll & the Sniffers

• pic courtesy of Wikimedia

Low and Lusty

I like a poem with muscle

a poem with vim and vigor

I like a poem with its hand

firmly on the trigger

Love a poem low and lusty

a poem that readily scans

the sort of poem that you hear

at a poetry slam

One Special Place

I thought about what Fiona had said,

the female lead in ‘The Bear Came Over the Mountain’

about her developing interest in Iceland,

how she looked at travel guides,

read accounts of famous writers who had visited,

Auden, William Morris,

but didn’t really plan to travel there herself.

There ought to be one place,

she said,

one special place,

‘you thought about and knew about

and maybe longed for

but never did get to see’

*have you a place like this?

Nursery Crimes

Waddle waddle

toil and twaddle

the cat’s in its cradle

the boy’s in the bubble

The king’s in the counting house

counting out his money

the red back’s on the toilet seat

in the outdoor dunny

Old Mother Hubbard’s

in lockdown at home

 the poor little dog

still hasn’t a bone

but the cow’s over the moon

the sun’s in the stubble

and Basho’s feisty frog

plops in the puddle

Spiral Staircase

My extension cord is kinky.

It winds around itself, gets tangled up in knots.

What can you do?

Iron them out?

I have kinks too.

The world would be a straighter, sadder place were it not

for kinks.

Our quirks, our oddities, the little handbag we carry around our talents in.

How we’re wired, the way we spin, the bands we listen to.

Kinks.

They’re in me and you.

Those pairs of long thin strands coiled like the banisters of a spiral staircase.

Our DNA.

You don’t want to untangle them.

post courtesy of dykeanddean.com on Pinterest

The Beasts’ Revenge

Those rosemary & garlic sausages

we bought

to ‘beef up’ the barbie

in case the eye fillets weren’t enough

were beginning

to stink out the fridge:

‘the beasts revenge’ ;

so when we took them to your place and you declared

your barbie was ‘lamb intolerant’

we hit a snag

so when I said, I’m going to have to put them in your fridge

I thought you would say,

my fridge is ‘lamb intolerant’

but you never did;

in spite of those setbacks

we had a pretty good evening

though when we left we forgot to take home

the snags

so we hope you enjoy them

in one form or another

and no, we do not need them back

My WP Friends: an Ode

.

I love my community of bloggers.

They’re fun.

I love them

Each and everyone.

There’s Hobbo, Beth,

Eden, the Don,

dear old Ed

& a Coyote name John.

There’s Chel. also,

formerly Chelsea,

a big fat can of worms

Little Charmer’s pithy poetry.

There’s eob2

with her eyes of blue

her mystical poems

their music too.

Karen, of course,

her Yard Sale of Thoughts

teasing us with ruminations

her imagination has wrought.

Then there’s foresty Ulle

what can we say of him?

A man , sharply observant

with a taste for whim.

Then like a shooting star,

there’s our phantasmagoric friend:

David, jester and artificer

on a trip that will never end.

Not forgetting Jewish Young Professional

and Sarcastic Fringe Head

like my mum used to say,

you wouldn’t for quids be dead.

So to my fellow bloggers,

one and all,

each day spent with you

is a real cyber carnival.

On the Nose

You don’t see many poems celebrating the sense of smell.

Sight rules the roost, cock-a-doodles its pre-eminence

on every page; the nose rarely gets a look-in.

An anthology of ‘Smell’ poems would be very thin indeed

and would be ‘on the nose’ for most readers.

I haven’t had a whiff of a good smell poem for years.

• I can’t think of a single poem celebrating the sense of smell, can you?
• have you written a short poem, perhaps a funny one, on smells you could put in the comments column for the delight of readers?
• have you a vivid memory of a particular smell?