Reptile Fossils, Pop Art, & Roses
Small to giant reptiles
once dominated the ecosystem
of this medium-small planet,
spinning its way through space
around a medium-small star
part-way up one of the spiral
arms
of a galaxy that’s one of
trillions
in this part of the universe;
they did this
for hundreds of millions of
years
without telling anyone
and, as far as we know,
without reflection or wonder or
self-awareness,
then went extinct or evolved
otherwise
hundreds of millions of more
years
before our species
evolved to study their fossil
record,
and to think about it,
and to talk about ourselves,
doing which has made us think
we’re somehow significant –
an odd word in the context –
while in the mid-1960s,
in our quirky way of reckoning
time,
Andy Warhol listened to the
song,
‘Sally Go ’Round the Roses’
over and over again for hours
as he produced garish pop art
with the same old universe
around him
that had surrounded the
dinosaurs.
Pathos & Scorn
A small blue car
bearing just the driver,
male or female,
I couldn’t tell,
zoomed down
the otherwise
somnolent street,
its engine all revved up
into a howling growl,
or maybe a growling howl,
the end of the street
and its stop sign
less than fifty metres away,
and I thought of the driver:
What a pathetic person!
Then it occurred to me
that I’m pathetic, too,
only not as aggressively
noisy about it in public,
and that,
when viewed dispassionately,
our entire species
is pathetic to the core.
Eggshell
We have protection
surrounding us,
an eggshell
dangling from a spider web
in a good, stiff breeze.
We have sustenance,
with vapour billowing
from our cloud cleansers,
where we wash off
the thin film of soil
that also sustains us.
We have transportation
inside of which we run errands,
mobile eggshell replicas
we can barely control,
and sometimes we die
when they crack or shatter.
We have jobs,
which bang us against
the inside of our eggshell
without our even noticing
or thinking twice about it,
because it’s there.
We look at each other
using mirrors and blindfolds,
sonorously exchanging
tall tales about worlds
without eggshell or dirt,
convincing each other
that make-believe is real.
Small Compensation
Sometimes it seems to me,
probably stupidly,
that all our lives and deaths
are fractions of a world soul
that encompasses all of the
pleasure and pain,
joy and terror,
purity and pollution,
artistic experiences
and dull drudgery
of all living things,
and I rejoice myself
to observe my dog
adding to his enjoyment
of smells and fellowship
that I can barely imagine,
which adds to my experience
of the world soul
when it absorbs me
from my limitations,
although I can’t forget
that this is small compensation
for all the agonies and terror
resulting from human cruelty
inflicted on each other
and other animals
in our billions.
Intimate Secrets
She hid her face in the pillow
in a paroxysm of embarrassment and fear,
and I said, ‘Hey! Don’t worry!
‘This is me that you’re talking to.
‘I’m never going to tell anyone,’
and so I’m not going to tell you now;
no, you’re not going to know her secret,
even though she later done did me wrong,
with heaps of hurt involved,
and told me all sorts of lies
along the way
that I’m not even
going to report now, either,
because it would embarrass me too much
to recount publicly, in specifics,
what a predictably pathetic mark I was,
anyway.
The Smirk
She smirked.
Then she said something
that she clearly thought was
clever,
but was actually dimwitted and
rude,
but it was the smirk:
the sides of the mouth
turned barely upward
and the middle of the upper lip
pushed down over the lower,
with the chin lowered slightly also,
to give just a hint of the impression
of looking down at the recipient,
the whole face arranged to convey
smugness,
self-satisfaction,
scorn,
condescension,
derision,
contempt,
and I’ve-got-your-number,
a nasty, affected travesty of a smile
that expressed
no humour or warmth.
I have no ability to tolerate smirking;
it trips one of my triggers,
and only my commitment
to the principle of non-violence,
my aversion to being absorbed
into the criminal-justice system,
and the context,
a high-school hall
crowded with parents and teachers,
the smirker being one of my daughter’s teachers,
kept me from smashing that smirk
right off of her face.
Colourful Surnames
I know, or have heard of,
plenty of people
in the English-speaking world
with the surnames
of White, Black,
Grey (or Gray), Brown,
Green (or Greene),
Gold, Silver,
and even a few
surnamed Rose and Blue,
and can google up people with
the surnames
Pink, Violet,
and Redd (but not Red –
although Rossi is common in
Italian),
but I can find no mention of
anybody
with the surname Yellow
since 1653
(although Huang is common in
Chinese).
I wonder why?
I wonder why about all sorts of
odd stuff
when I’m walking my dog around
the park.
From
I’ve been a bloke with an
accent
for forty-five or so years,
and during those years
from twelve to fifteen thousand
essentially dull and superficial people
have asked, upon encountering me,
where I was from,
or some variation
of this.
People with Asian facial features,
from what I’ve heard,
get hit with this at least as often,
no matter what
their accent.
From.
Nadia from Pussy Riot rapped,
‘Don’t be stupid / Don’t be dumb /
Vagina’s where you’re really from.’
The superficials don’t like that answer,
any more than when I’ve responded,
‘From my father’s
balls.’
From.
I feel like I’m from Hamilton
since I’ve lived here longer
than I ever lived anywhere else,
but of course the superficials
won’t accept
that.
I moved to Hamilton
I moved to Otorohanga from
Guam .
I moved to Guam from Texas
where the superficials also
interrogated me
about my accent.
From.
Am I from my birth
country?
We left when I was seven weeks old.
Am I from where my
ancestors lived?
Recent or distant ones?
Am I from where I started school?
From.
Does having been a lecturer
make me from Academia?
Does my work as a labourer and
my grandfather’s trade-union loyalties
make me from the working
class?
But my father’s working as
a small-town GP
makes me from the middle class.
From.
I’m from a dysfunctional
nuclear family,
which is much more to the point
than where I went
to school.
From.
My geographical location
a half-century or more ago
tells you little about who I am,
unless, of course, your objective
is instead to tell me what
I am
and to jam me into a box
that’s the wrong shape
and far too
small.
From.
Like John Frum and the isle of Tanna,
I’m not going back.
