Possessions

                  My Copper Lamp

My father’s parents were first cousins.

What’s your excuse?

One of the other aspects

of this close family relationship

is that, as far as I know,

my great-grandparents,

and probably some of their parents and grandparents,

were all coppersmiths.

What this means in practical terms

is that I have a lamp about a metre off my left elbow,

as I key this onto the screen,

the base of which is a large copper pitcher

that one of my ancestors

made some time in the 1840s.

Don’t make me an offer on it.

              Sartorial Elegance

The shirt that I was wearing

as I composed this was frayed

at the collar and cuffs in such a way

as to seem tipped with a darker-coloured fibre.

My trousers,

the most recent ones that I’d acquired,

had worn holes down near their cuffs.

My black cord waistcoat,

which must’ve been about twenty years old,

had just a few loose threads

and some slightly off-coloured splotches

where I’d repaired a bleach stain

with black vivid marker.

As far as anything I’d actually wear goes,

these were my A threads,

the reality of the situation being

that I really don’t need nice clothes.

                        Cycling

I am, of course, favourably disposed

toward bicycles and cycling, in the abstract,

for all the usual reasons,

but because my cycling skills were so limited

and the traffic in Hamilton was so unforgiving,

I sold my bicycle at a Green Party garage sale

after a terrifying experience on the Cobham Bridge in 2002.

It’s not that I was afraid of dying –

fear of death is for fools of a different sort than I am –

but I had no desire to spend the final decades of my life

dependent on a wheelchair, a drool cup,

and the care of people who only care

because they’re paid to do so.

          Return to Weights

I used to be a gym junkie

until not all that many years ago.

Then, when I began to make

a sustained effort

to shift my being

into neutral,

I ceased all exercise

except long daily walks.

I don’t know why,

but one day

toward the end of the summer

I started doing exercises

with my five kg hand weights

whilst waiting for my

ten-year-old slow-mo computer

to respond to simple commands

when, all too often,

it’d become confused.

The benefits

were noticeable and immediate.

I slept better.

My digestion improved.

My neurodermatitis quieted.

My muscles felt good.

Within a day or two

I was, whilst nearing sixty-seven,

an endorphin addict

again.

    At Least Some Compensation

On a Wednesday morning

I took my first shower

with the new showerhead I’d just bought

and it was a noticeable improvement

on the crucial five minutes or so

I spend daily under flowing hot water.

At other times that morning, though,

I came up against several triggers

– of emotional flashbacks flowing all over me

more than visual memories –

forcing me to relive moments

when others joyously tormented me,

or when I consequently failed to experience

pleasures that seemed within my grasp.

I don’t think these experiences ended up

balancing each other out,

though.

  Real Deal Auction

An auction

of antique

or otherwise collectable

ceramic pieces:

watch

the faces of the people

there to bid.

All so different,

and yet …

faces of people

of a kind I don’t understand

or even want to know,

as they prepare

to spend middling

(I suppose – it’s relative)

yet absurd

amounts of money

in order to possess

– not use –

objects.

                     Fan Dreams

It was late October.

I awakened before midnight

covered with sweat,

my metabolic thermoregulation shot to hell,

a hideously demonic horror dominating my mind.

I thought, “Oh, hell – just something else I’ll have to endure,”

but an hour or so later I decided

to provide myself with some relief,

so I got up, switched on the light, plugged in the fan,

and turned it on for the first time that season.

For the next four or five hours

I enjoyed steady, therapeutic REM sleep –

interrupted only by a couple of trips to the loo –

characterised by constantly segueing absurdist dreams

that I knew were just dreams as I dreamt them,

enabling me to enjoy the show without stress,

knowing that their events

would have no consequences

and that they imparted no meaning at all.

In addition to cooling me down

and stabilising my body temperature,

it seems to me that the fan’s white noise

had helped me regain my dream worlds

each time I returned to bed,

and then to keep them going.

                               Shabby

I have a word collection

that I’ve obtained from memory,

reading books,

the documents I’ve edited,

and playing hangman at the free dictionary website that I use.

I usually post one of them on facebook daily,

and have been doing so for years.

I have that many of them.

Some time back I noticed the condition

of the garments I was wearing and posted:

“shabby, adj. 1. Threadbare or dilapidated in appearance.

2. Wearing threadbare or dirty clothing; seedy.

3. Despicable; mean [a shabby trick].

4. Ungenerous; unjust; unfair [shabby treatment].

5. Of mediocre or substandard quality [a shabby performance]”

… along with a selfie I took

and a comment that numbers one and two applied to me –

and maybe sometimes number five –

but I flattered myself that numbers three and four did not

at all.

Somebody else commented that I shouldn’t put myself down.

I wondered what that had to do with it.

                         My Brown Hat

I bought it in August 1972,

just before I left LA.

I don’t remember how much I paid for it.

It’s a brown felt fedora.

I got it because it looked

like something a detective or a reporter would’ve worn

in a black-and-white movie.

I was wearing it when I checked in with the Norm Crosby show

at the Sheraton Biloxi,

and the woman at the desk

said, “Mmm-mmm-mmm,”

or so she later told me,

and within months she was my first wife.

When the tour company I worked for,

called Star Attractions,

went belly-up

with me in a hotel room

in suburban Atlanta

that they couldn’t pay for –

making it advisable for me to

cash my worthless paycheck at the desk

and split quickly –

in my haste I left my brown fedora behind.

Two and a half years later,

my fellow roadie on that tour

returned my hat to me in San Antonio.

I didn’t wear it a whole hell of a lot,

more sort of on-and-off and sometimes,

except during times when I had long hair,

for about three decades there,

but I wear it often now,

even though it has a hole at the point of the crown

and another that seems to be growing

on the front part of the brim.

It’s not just sentimentality.

The brim wears a white splotch as well –

a reminder of how fortunate we all are

that cows can’t fly.

Getting Through

                     Happiness & Love Skills

I see people who are apparently happy,

I guess, or some of them say that they are;

they’re in the shops and on the footpaths

and all over the internet,

and it seems to me

that the main reason why

they’re happy

is that they know how to be,

and that they probably know how to be

because they learnt the skill

when they were children,

through plenty of practice as grown-ups,

or both.

The same goes with love.

People whose lives are filled with love,

it seems to me,

had plenty of experience with it as children

in the warm bosoms of their families,

reinforced by plenty of practice as grown-ups,

or both.

Lovability,

this ability to be loved,

is also a skill,

like the ability to be happy.

I never learnt either one of them

worth a shit.

Advice to Self

Don’t reflect on it.

Don’t analyse it.

Don’t dream it.

Just be it.

               Empty Days

Days like this one,

as I key this onto the screen,

when I have no jobs in my inbox,

are definitely hazardous to my wellbeing,

as if that makes any difference to anything

except me, and I don’t matter.

Although frequently maddening,

my work also has the advantages

of being distracting and fatiguing.

Days like this one

I write verses that I’ll never get to perform

because I’ve written too many,

having had too many

days like this one.

Days like this one

I read at whatever book I have

fitfully on and off,

play countless games of computer solitaire and hangman,

and check my inbox every few minutes,

even when I know my chief editor in Australia

must still be asleep.

Days like this one

I have to do my best

to concentrate on not thinking about myself

and my emptiness and sorrow.

Days like this one,

after ten or so hours of tedium,

I sometimes get offers of seven-hour rush jobs

just as I’m signing off

with visions of wine and whisky

dominating my mind.

  Coffee, Gluten, and Solitude

Whilst watching some bullshit

world cup football match

to the droning of vuvuzelas

at seven o’clock or so

in the morning,

I found myself crying

because no one was in the kitchen

making me coffee and scones,

or was sitting beside me

waiting for me

to make her coffee

and tortillas.

                          Fixing the Fan

My early conditioning

to lack self-confidence in general,

combined with no one ever teaching me

how to do bloke stuff,

has resulted in my default setting

when it comes to simple home repairs

being to forego even attempting them.

The pedestal fan in my home office

had been in serious decline for a few years,

needing to be jumpstarted first up in the morning

by spinning its blade like the prop of a Sopwith Camel.

I’d asked my son-in-law, who knows about such things,

what it would take to fix it.

He’d just laughed and said that it wasn’t worth fixing –

that I could get a crappy new fan at Bunnings for $30.

Capitulating like that to global corporate capitalism’s

efforts to manipulate consumers

into cooperation with its waste-increases-profit agenda,

would have gone against my grain, of course.

It finally got to the point

at which I had to spin the bloody thing

for ten minutes each morning to get it to work,

and then when it was on high it was still fairly slow.

I noticed that the price of fans at Bunnings had dropped to $20,

but I decided first to take the bull by the tail

and face the situation.

I removed the blades and the collar behind them

and injected a few squirts of all-purpose household lubricating oil.

It worked a treat.

An Unproductive Pastime

It really makes no sense

to sit in a comfortable chair

by myself,

swilling cheap red wine,

while memories of

a series of women

with whom I fucked up

thirty-five or so years before

dominate my brain.

No, not at all –

wallowing in

mistakes from which

whatever I’ve learnt

doesn’t help at all

really makes no sense.

                     Clean Sheets

One Wednesday I washed my bedclothes –

that’s my sheets and pillowslips –

for the first time in six or seven months.

As an aside,

even though the forecast was for clear weather –

I refuse to call clear weather ‘fine’ –

I removed them from the line

shortly before an unexpected lunchtime downpour.

Thursday morning I was surprised to notice

how radically better they felt,

having turned sour only gradually.

                    Downtown Lunchtime

Being without an editing job

for the third of the past five days –

and the two jobs I did have having been piddling –

at about a quarter to one I got tired

of checking my inbox every few minutes

and walked downtown

to go to the library,

to see if anything on Victoria Street

that might take on an old codger

had a Help Wanted sign up –

none did –

and to buy a lottery ticket.

It seemed as if every pebble on the footpath

found the holes in the soles of my shoes,

and the aroma from every lunchtime eatery

found its way to my nose,

reminding me of how little I had to eat.

                    Deferential Till It Matters

As long as it’s a whatever (with adolescent shrug) situation,

I’m perfectly willing to defer just about anything

to just about anybody,

as what there is of my ego

doesn’t demand that I be in control or otherwise be top dog,

and the older I get the better I get

at not sweating the small stuff.

Funny what people,

including me, of course,

consider to be

small stuff,

and what falls into

other categories.

The tricky part, of course,

is when we poke about

in areas that don’t qualify as small stuff

to me

at all.

I’ve noticed, upon rare occasion,

that some people have trouble

analysing the fresh data

coming forth from my behaviour

when they step over

the whatever line into serious shit

or I perceive that they’re

pushing me around

just because they think they can,

and I stop being eagerly deferential

and dig in my fucking heels.

Even if that means me going off the rails,

… and I don’t like being angry.

            The Final Fatigue

I’m tired of having to do everything for myself

and even more tired of everything I do,

with all-too-rare exceptions,

being only for myself.

Humans didn’t evolve to live this way.

          Your Aunt and Your Uncle

Whilst throwing sticks

for my dog

in the park

one morning,

the old nursery song,

‘Where have you been,

Billy Boy,

Billy boy?’

earwormed into my head

and wouldn’t leave.

I wish it hadn’t done that.