Especially
on Fridays
The upside of living
just a few blocks from my city’s only mosque
is that the frequent presence
of people of so many ethnicities
adds a significant amount
of colour and visual variety
to the local street scenes.
The downside is the frequent presence
of just a few more than a handful
of scowling religious zealots.
Pointless
Unattended Burglar Alarms
One of the great mysteries of urban life for many years –
for me, at least –
is the purpose of those burglar alarms
that make that loud, repeated DWEEP-DWEEP-DWEEP-DWEEP noise,
but bring no police or so-called security guards,
thereby allowing any actual burglars
to continue at their work undisturbed.
The alarms themselves do, however,
succeed in disturbing the neighbours for about a half an hour or
more.
Extraction
It’d been years,
and not enough of them,
since I’d been to a dentist.
After the horror and pain
of him injecting the local
(I have a phobia about
needles),
he took me into the next room
and put me into a monster
of a high-tech x-ray machine
with all sorts of doodads
to hold my head in place
while the camera did a circuit
of my head.
Only it wasn’t high-tech enough
because the circuiting gizmo
kept hitting my shoulders and moving my head.
My broad shoulders have always
caused problems.
They make people think
that I’m aggressive and
masterful,
when I’m really reticent and deferential.
But anyway.
Back in the dentist chair
he took my loose molar
between his thumb and
forefinger
and gently, almost casually,
pulled it out,
as easy as lifting a marble off
velour.
From high tech to low tech
in the space of two or three minutes.
Even with all my joking around,
I was in and out in about
twenty minutes.
The sky was sunny and cold as I
walked home,
one molar down.
Not
My Dinner, Anyway
Midwinter dusk on an otherwise
cold, grey day
had a magical feel to it as I
crossed the bridge into town.
Most five-thirties I’d be in my
house, instead,
but I’d bought five bags of
mandarins that arvo
and was taking them to the
Hamilton Homeless feed
then in the Caro Street
They were glad to have them.
I thought I’d stick around for
a bit
to enjoy their enjoyment of
them,
but then the coordinator said
it was time for the prayer,
so I scarpered.
I wish they’d just let the poor
people eat
without jamming their fucking
ideology down their throats
along with the soup and the
bread
and the mandarins.
Oh, well …
Skinny
Legs
I saw a fellow
in the park
on a chilly winter morning
wearing baggy shorts
with a colourful tropical-print
design.
I myself was bundled up.
He had the skinniest lower legs
I had ever seen
on an otherwise apparently
healthy
adult human being.
Now, I’m not saying that his
shins and calves
were the skinniest anybody
could have;
maybe blokes with super-skinny
legs
just don’t ordinarily wear
shorts in public,
so I haven’t seen them,
at least not in Claudelands Park
on mid-winter mornings.
Familiar
She seemed familiar,
but I couldn’t place the
context
in which we’d formerly being
acquainted,
having lived as many lives as I
have,
in just the decades that
I’ve resided in Hamilton
She also seemed familiar,
in the sense that she smiled
and waved at me
walking down the other side of O’Neil Street
a tall woman with comforting
streaks of grey in her hair,
indicating that she maybe wasn’t entirely
too young.
She still seemed familiar weeks
later,
as we encountered again
crossing River Road
saying, ‘Hi’ and enchanting me
with the definition
of the smile lines radiating from her
eyes.
She seemed more than familiar weeks later still,
as our paths crossed
whilst going in opposite directions on the Claudelands Bridge
and we stopped and chatted about nothing –
the weather, it was –
and she put her hand on my arm,
she put her hand on my arm,
she put her hand on my arm!
but I was dumbfounded,
and I failed to ask for her name,
I failed to ask for her name,
I failed to ask
for her name ...
I’m ready now,
but I haven’t seen her since.
Incident Evaluation
She
was maybe about 50,
shortish,
with fair hair and skin,
and
a round, almost baby face
with
chubby, pink, globular cheeks
and
eyes that – so help me - twinkled
as
she smiled flirtatiously at me
from
the time she was maybe 15 metres away
until
saying good-morning
as
we passed each other on the Claudelands
Bridge
her
heading east and me walking west.
It
seems unlikely to me
that
we’ll ever enjoy
another
such encounter with each other.
That’s just not
good enough.
Illegitimate Authority Ignored
He came around here,
putting signs up
telling us how to live our lives,
as if he owned the place
instead of being hired help
for a fifth of
it.
I reproached him about it over the phone,
but he was adamant.
He made the rules
based on his opinions,
and that was that.
I gave up arguing with him,
as it was
clearly pointless.
I then went outside,
took down his bloody sign,
and binned it.
I’m conflict averse,
but not submissive.
Seasonal
On a warm, muggy March afternoon
I was walking home down Thames
Street
after taking the canine unit
on her after-work turn around the park.
We were walking past the townhouse flat
at the front of a block of apartment flats
where a party always seems to be going on.
The person who resides there,
a middle-aged, chain-smoking Maori woman,
is always smiling and friendly
as we walk by,
and always plays oldies loudly
on some manner of boom box.
I did, however, find it somewhat bizarre,
that warm, muggy March afternoon,
that she was playing
“I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus.”
Grass-Roots Capitalism
The subcontinentals who now
work
at what is now Kiwi Liquor
in the Fairfield
act as if they disapprove of me
when I buy whisky from them.
Well, maybe I deserve their
disapproval,
but they can go fuck themselves.
At
The Mercy
The power went out.
It stayed out for about an hour.
This left me feeling
fucking helpless
and at the mercy
of an uncertain
and decaying
civilisation.
Maybe,
as with feelings in general,
the reality contradicted this.
Maybe not.
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