People Chat More in Pools.
People chat more in pools.
You walk up and down.
Say hello.
You talk, share stories,
laugh, banter,
trade histories.
Find your tribe.
It’s like being in a pub
without the alcohol
or in church
without Jesus.
You slip under the nylon ropes,
do a few laps,slip back
then chat some more.
You can even write poems in pools.
I go to gym a few times a week too
but people chat more in pools.
Hiding Place.
Was wondering where the cat snoozed sunny afternoons
when I turned the hose on some groggy –looking gardenias
in a cloistered corner of the yard
and found out
as a cat bounded out of the bushes into the clearing
as if she were scalded
The Green Gazebo: Remembered
A long time ago
I sat beneath the green gazebo.
Huddled in my ego’s coat
& this is what I wrote:
The Green Gazebo
We sat beneath the green gazebo,
Just me, myself and my ego.
We spoke of very many things,
How grief and joy both have wings.
We had so very much to say
And that is how we spent the day.
I do my best work in bed, she said.
I do my best work in bed.
When all is said and done,
I do my best work in bed.
Scurry beneath the covers,
pull the sheet up over my head.
I do my best work in bed, she said.
I do my best work in bed.
It’s where my magic garden is,
my fantastic flower bed
where poems and images blossom
& music plays in my head.
Some think better sitting up,
but I’m too easily misled.
I do my best work in bed, she said.
I do my best work in bed.
It’s funny I saw that other place as Home
& not my place; but now things have unravelled
I see my own place anew; love its peace, its warmth,
its acceptance of who I am,
the quirky writer with special needs,
that I can move freely within its borders,
its little backyard big as the other’s big yard.
Home is the dog that wags its tail when it sees you.
like the poem
the dreamy bus driver wrote
in ‘Paterson’
while idling at stop lights
or picking up passengers
the one about Ohio Blue Tip matches
in their sturdy little boxes
‘so sober and furious, ready to burst into flame’
as crafted as those of his hero
William Carlos Williams
the doctor who lived a few streets down
who wrote that famous poem
the red wheelbarrow glazed with rain
And me realizing you can write poems
about almost anything
even a red pencil sharpener
a bowl of berries with a barrowful of dreams
and finding out
that’s where Lou Costello came from too
Paterson, New Jersey.
There’s even a park named after him,
Lou Costello the chubby comedian who played alongside Bud Abbot,
the straight guy.
I used to watch those guys in the fun-house
Of the fifties,
frolicking with Frankenstein and The Wolf man.
But it was Lou Costello
I loved
The funny little fat guy
And that’s where he came from,
Paterson, New Jersey.
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?
Somewhere
Somewhere remote
somewhere bespoke
for those
who practice civility
a castle you can row out to
a stronghold
of equanimity
no messy emotions
no urge to outdo
a castle with a billy goat
nestled in a sea
of robin egg blue.
pic courtesy of Pinterest
Reading an article by David Remnick,
editor of ‘The New Yorker’
since 1998
I discovered
he was born in Paterson, New Jersey
the same place as Philip Roth,
the novelist whose biography Remnick was profiling,
as was Ginsberg,
the man who wrote “Howl’
that poem that still echoes down the decades.
the same place too
as William Carlos Williams,
the man who wrote ‘the red wheelbarrow’
and wait for it,
Lou Costello,
the comedic partner of Bud Abbot
whose films split our sides
in the fun house of the fifties;
what do they have in the water of Paterson, New Jersey,
that so many famous people
grew up there;
it must be quite a place
So where are you?
In a galaxy far far away.
No. Where are you really?
Tralfamadore.
Isn’t that where …?
Yes, where Billy Pilgrim went.
That time traveller from ‘Slaughterhouse Five’?
Yes, he went there on his days off.
His days off? From where?
Reality. Reality bites, you know.
But what if you never came back?
Like Hugh Conway in ‘Lost Horizons’? Dorothy in Oz ?
Yes.
And Peter Pan in Neverland.?
Exactly.
Would it really matter? You’d be where you want to be. Would you even want to go back?
Have you a favourite fantasy place ? Which fantasy world would you live in if you could? What if you couldn’t come back?
John Malone 