Cold Coffee
A creature of habit in many ways,
for a long time now I’ve made plunger coffee.
This presented no problem
in regard to cold coffee
when another in the house shared it with me,
no matter how large a plunger we used,
or at other times when I had a working microwave
for reheating it.
The plunger pot I have now makes four big cups.
I live alone now,
and my microwave oven died a long time back,
which means that I drink two or three cups out of every pot
cold.
It’s not ideal, but instant is either nasty or too expensive,
and it’s something to which I’ve become accustomed.
At least it keeps me working through the day.
Serendipitous New Tactic
When I told the woman
on the telephone
soliciting donations
for the Westpac rescue helicopter
that I couldn’t talk to her then
because I was too drunk
she terminated the call
immediately, without a word,
which was fine
with me.
I’ve done it again
in such situations
even when stone cold sober.
Try it sometime.
It works a treat.
A Book Turnover
I finished one mystery and started another,
and not only was it a whole different world
in the imagination that the words revealed,
but reading it involved the personal difference
of immediately enjoying the magical prose
of a truly gifted, incandescent author
after making it through the efforts
of an ingenious, hardworking, pedestrian hack.
Home and Away
Sitting in my drinking chair,
a murder mystery open on my lap
and my front door open to the summer afternoon,
my eyes sucked up the flowers, butterflies, and birds
unconsciously decorating the patio.
All that ends at the gate, though,
as my next-door neighbour
seemed to consider
dropping rubbish
on the walkway-driveway
in front of our units
and leaving it there
to be a form of aesthetic expression,
and on the footpath and street
at the end of the right-of-way
the dangerous world dominated by
egotistical hostile-aggressive dimwits
really begins.
Companionship
Since silence has a way
of turning solitude into
loneliness,
I try to fill my waking hours
with music as best I can.
The music that fills this space
best,
for me at least,
is that which gives me amiable
companionship
without forcing itself upon me.
Found in an
Almost-Indecipherable Hand
I live in a society
in which a lonely and useless
old man
such as myself
can get stupid drunk
and then enjoy a slice of
plastic cheese
– marketed as ‘processed cheese
food’,
but we know better, don’t we? –
folded over some peanut butter,
a situation that won’t lay (or
last?),
and then write it down in an
almost-indecipherable hand
to click onto a screen some
days later,
whether every line makes sense
or not.
It Is Where It Is
I sat there in my oblivion chair,
wine bottle in hand,
a Philip Glass string quartet
coming out of the speakers –
beauty in my ears,
if not in my belly
or my legs.
Double Dipping
As I put down my book
and picked up my wine bottle –
a cheap Chilean or South
African merlot
with entirely too much tannin,
but drinkable –
it occurred to me
that I’d probably forget
what I was going to read
from about that point on,
which I supposed was a Good
Thing
because after I’d re-read it
the next day
I would have enjoyed it twice.
I Normally Don’t Do Cute
Steady rain on the roof kept me
in bed
long after I was ready to get
up
(I had nowhere to go, anyway).
It continued on into the
morning, so
contrary to my habitual
practice,
I played neither the radio nor
CDs,
and just listened to it.
I amazed myself by creating a
pareidolia effect
from its random tapping,
and appalled myself that the
tune I heard in it
was ‘On The Good Ship
Lollipop’.
Alone
Before Four
I awoke when it was still dark,
many hours before the dawn.
Once I realised that I wasn’t
going to get back to sleep,
I stretched luxuriously
beneath my triple covers
and ran my hands over my body.
My muscles had that pleasant burn
from the previous day’s dumbbell exercises,
and felt firm and defined
beneath my fingers and palms.
I massaged my buttocks
and wondered what it’d be like
to be a queer –
and felt strangely sad that I’m not.
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