Pat Boone? Hard Core ?!

Pat Boone,  Hard Core??

Pat Boone, Hard Core?

People had weird ideas back then

when I was a kid.

Paul Schrader, script writer for ‘Taxi Driver’

remembers his mother catching him in the basement

listening to Pat Boone

and smashing the radio against the wall !

Elvis, I would have understood, Little Richard, Jerry Lee

but Pat Boone ?!

They were twisty, twirly times.

I was a literary kid badly wanting to read Joyce’s ‘Ulysses’

which had recently been banned

and stunned to find the only place I could get a copy

was the porn shop on the corner of the Port Mall !

And just when I thought I had it all sewn up I come across

that famous zen koan of Jesus:

‘the first shall be last and the last shall be first’.

I’m still trying to work that one out.

• pic by pinterest

Blur

A fog comes down between you and the world.

Words have to scramble through.

A dog’s breakfast of sounds.

Turning the volume up on the TV only increases the blur.

Why does one sense desert you when others

are intact?

Every now and then yr ears pop

and the world of sounds : leaf blowers.

crows caw, the Harley revving up

across the road, the postman’s whistle,

comes rushing at you with all its

clarity and clangor.

The Pink Comb

I have a pink comb

in my back pocket.

My one concession to pink.

Still, I was amazed

to read

in an article on Harris Reed,

the 25 year old designer,

that in the 18th century, pink

was stylish for men and women

as was lace,

a marker not of effeminacy

but of affluence & taste.

Tastes change.

Although I am not rabidly masculine,

I like manly cuts and colours

Still I;m fond of my pink comb.

O, and I like Kylie too.

My Sliding Doors Moment

Not ‘the last train to Clarkesville’.

Nor ‘the midnight train to Georgia’

Not even ‘the downtown train’ that Tom Waits

and Rod Stewart rode on vinyl

but that old steam train that took me all the way

from the monastery where I was sequestered

to be a priest, on the verge of making my final vows

to a life in the ‘real world’. where I met the woman who would be my wife.

and the mother of my three kids,

a career as a teacher, a writer, and the grandfather of six more kids,

the apples of my life,

a sliding doors moment:

the most momentous train ride I ever made.

A Thing of Beauty

Five skips in a row

is a thing

of beauty

says

Nik

in ‘Wakefield’

referring to skimming a flat rock

across the smooth

surface of a lake;

so too

is that bamboo toothbrush

I used this morning

light as those balsa wood gliders

I flew as a kid

over the paddocks

behind the school;

and those opening chords of ‘Sugar, Sugar’

like being tasered

by God

+pic courtesy of Wikipedia

You Scare Me

You scare me.

What did you do wrong?

Once you were the envy

of bloggers like me

hungry for numbers.

Okay, I was competitive

but every entertainer

wants an audience, Right?

And you were the king of numbers.

Then what happened?

You must have been dismayed

as I was shocked.

What does one do to shed an audience?

Put up politically incorrect posts?

Bite the hands that feed you?

Change lanes too often?

Stay in the same lane too long?

Veer off into obscurity?

What?

There is an art to alienation

& you seem to have found it.

I just hope I don’t stumble across it

anytime soon.

You scare me.

*what scares you?

*have you written a short poem about fear you’d like to share here?

*pic by hermes-rivera from Unsplash

Falling Short

I thought of the times I had fallen short.

Let the side down.

Not been up to scratch.

Been urged to pull my socks up,

My finger out

Take a good hard look at myself.

That I was always a few kangaroos short

Of a full paddock

a stubby short of a six pack

but I didn’t give a rats

I had the hide of an elephant

• thanks to K L Hale’s www,flannelwithfaith

Somewhere ‘Round the Bend

Where does the sky start?

The sea begin?

Somewhere round the bend.

Somewhere round the bend

we can all be friends,

all colours and creeds blend

Somewhere somewhere

somewhere around the bend

we can be together again

what was broken, will mend

Somewhere round the bend

the animals will be our friends

all plunder will end

somewhere somewhere

round the bend