You’ve just had two hours of chemo
and an injection of white blood cells.
And you’re jumping out of yr skin
Where’s the party ? you say.
Where’s the party?
But there’s no party.
There’s only the house meeting.
That will do, you say.
You can turn that into a party.
Was it worth it?
Hell, yeah.
I got to drive during JJJ’s hottest 100 of 2022..
Got to hear the First Nation’s cover of Cold Play’s ‘Yellow’,
a wild, gritty banger
by King Stingray
the didgeridoo barking like camp-dogs.
Eat your heart out, Chris Martin.
I got to see a quilt of sparrows whirring across a blue denim sky
in a 45 degree tilt.
Wild and acrobatic.
Most of all I got to break free,
like those sparrows,
like King Stingray
tearing it up for freedom, togetherness
like the house parties all across the nation on this special day
with forty more tracks still to go,
and I’m in my car,
one part of me driving, the other dancing to the beats.
Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeee.
‘Ditherers’
There’s a place at the slow end of town
where the fussy and fastidious
can’t-make-up-their- minds go.
It’s called ‘Ditherers’, a little hither
of Yon.
It’s where you mull over the menu
menacingly slow.
And dishes are consumed at a pace
only snails know.
Where anecdotes meander for miles
while the night nods off
and the moon hangs low,
There’s a diner called ‘Ditherers’
where minds to and fro.
Roughage.
Like Tom Waits’ voice.
The grit and gristle of life.
The rumble tumble.
The rush and the roar.
Like Xmas. New year.
The whirligig and whoopsie cushion.
You’re on it, babe.
There’s no getting off,
You wouldn’t want to.
It’s the roughage that stirs things up.
That lets you know you’re alive.
Like them Brooklyn Girls on the downtown train
and you’re shining like a new dime.
*pic courtesy of pinterest
*lyrics tom waits
This world — we’ll never see the end of it.
So much beauty, above and below.
And just when you thought you’d seen it all,
up pops the Photographic Exhibition on Sea Slugs.
Slugs! The very name invites disdain, derision.
But these are something else: an artificer’s folly,
a frolic of design and colour, of quirky geometries
and improbable beauty — and there are 3000 varieties!
What practical use, what purpose, if not to delight?
Later I trawled through the depths of the web and emerged
staggering, reeling ; & that strange word, ‘nudibranch’
Ants
1
Like angry black hairs
the ants scatter everywhere
when I discover them
under the hem
of the water drum
2
They are like
runaway exclamation marks
on their side
their heads
the full stops
3
A year after the gulf war
I stayed with a friend in the states
who suffered a home invasion
of ants .
He sprayed , stamped , stomped
on them
till his house was clean .
That’s what Bush should have done
with Saddam he proclaimed
4
There are no ants in heaven
a priest explained to us at school .
Some how they got beneath the creator’s gaze
like cockroaches , rats and spiders .
They have no souls .
Kill with impunity
5
Smidgins of black , dashes.
a black din of limbs
an amokery of midnight slivers
through a crack in our world
they got in
*pic courtesy of pinterest
I was in bed with two Venetians, a long black
and a sleazy paperback
by Suzanne Pleshette
when an angry text erupted like a boil
on my iphone:
where were you, it said, I looked for you
& your floozy
everywhere in the cinema?
It was my old mate George.
Please don’t call her a floozy, I said.
We couldn’t make it. Sorry.
Sorry !!! Couldn’t make it.?
To see my new film, my best yet.
‘Ticket To Paradise’.
We’ll catch it on DVD, I said.
It’s not the same, he snapped,
sounding peeved and pedantic.
I don’t like hanging up on George
but he can work himself into a lather.
I dipped a Venetian into my long black
& carried on reading.
Blowing Rainbows
Maybe if I was a little less lethargic
I could turn to things pelagic
and swim in the open sea
my arms and my legs
could become fin-amajegs
and I could blow rainbows
through my nasal cavity
*pic courtesy of Pinterest
I love to sing a capella
In the rain ‘neath my umbrella
To dance like Gene Kelly did
In the puddles like a kid
I like to make a lot of noise
I love the sound of my own voice
And I’m as rich as Rockefeller
in the rain ‘neath my umbrella.
Reckless rags
ripped
by storm;
ragamuffin clouds
lounging about
like homeless people;
dark, moody
noses sniffling
with drizzle;
a hard, cold
night.
John Malone 