Life At Home

          1 February 2014 – 5:45 am

I’m listening to music that speaks to my soul,

drinking hot coffee,

and reading a good book.

I have three bottles of wine in the pantry,

two bottles of beer in the fridge,

some sleeping pills in a vial in my office,

four plums in a bowl and one in my belly,

and a bit of money in my pocket.

No point lamenting the likely loss of love

or the unlikeliness of ever experiencing it again.

         Afternoon Dilemma

Every afternoon,

after tucking away my daily meal,

I settle down in my favourite chair

with a mystery novel on my lap

and a bottle of plonk on the table,

not far from my right elbow,

and confront the dilemma

of which takes precedence.

The bottle will inevitably make the book

irrelevant,

but I do enjoy reading what is for me

the literary equivalent of comfort food.

I know I should limit my interaction

with the bottle – and its successor –

to occasional wee sips,

but I never do.

The book will be there the next day.

I’m never all that certain that I will.

     Mundane Everyday Soul

Traversing the familiar tracks

from bed to toilet to computer and back,

which I do daily, and often

– and likely do nightly in my sleep

without remembering –

is something ingrained in my being.

It’ll mean nothing

and be nonexistent

once I’m incapacitated or dead.

                     With the Sound on Mute:

watching daytime TV during August 2014 included seeing:

young Swiss and Scandinavian women

with expensively even dentition

competing at snowboard half-pipes somewhere in the Alps,

every dimension of the half-pipe meticulously set –

a young widow in Nepal wiping away tears –

ads featuring self-satisfied, confident, upward-mobile types

gloating about the dream houses

that they’d paid the contractors who put them on the telly

to build for them –

houses exploding from drone strikes –

a re-run of a documentary

about a Hungarian-speaking town in Romania

whose citizens are mad

about ice hockey –

a doco of reptile-eyed Brazilian military torturers from the 1980s –

adorable soft-nosed cattle munching on hay

somewhere in Australia,

followed by a shot of an adorable little girl

helping her mum put a roast in the oven –

archaeologists and tourists examining Angkor Wat –

men from around the world wearing camouflage fatigues

strutting while they flaunt assault rifles –

the sheer joy of dark-skinned cricketers playing their game –

country Kiwis growing turkeys for slaughter –

a flag-waving American redneck mob

shouting and snarling at wretched migrants at the border –

self-righteous, sadistically psychopathic Daesh shitheads

rolling over brown landscapes

killing for fun as they go

and making claims about establishing a global caliphate,

their flag flying over the White House –

lying neo-fascist politicians smirking.

          Obvious Strategy

It was mid-afternoon in mid-Spring.

The weather outside was pleasant

and my front door was open.

The first fly of the season zipped in,

but my pyrethrum spray convinced it to depart.

I was less than halfway through

my first bottle of wine for the day

when my loneliness overtook me,

making me shudder and sweat.

The obvious strategy for addressing this

involved concentration upon

drinking, not thinking.

               Habitat

A really large arachnid

crawled up onto my arm

as I was settling into my reading chair

with a bottle of whisky

and a Nero Wolfe mystery.

I flicked it off onto the coffee table,

then went and got a paper towel,

picked it up,

squooshed it,

and put it and the balled-up paper towel

into the bin.

The poor thing had just entered

the wrong habitat,

as I’d done so many decades ago,

only I haven’t had

the easy escape

of a fast and unexpected death.

           Preferring the Rut

I was waiting for someone,

so I stepped out onto my balcony

shortly after noon

on a midsummer’s day –

something I rarely do.

The songs from what seemed like

dozens of species of birds

filled the air around me,

and blessed clouds easing by

blocked the discomfort

of exposure to

direct, ozone-free sunlight.

It struck me that I should do this more often,

but I haven’t.

  

                            Beyond Me

It’s a block of five townhouse units

away from the street

at the end of a longish right-of-way.

The row of five letter boxes

stands facing the driveway

just inside the footpath.

I’m in unit three.

A young couple who moved into four

had a newspaper subscription,

but never collected their papers,

which became soggy and spilled out onto the ground.

I couldn’t figure this out.

Maybe they found a vista

that included rubbish on the ground

to be attractive,

or spiritually or morally uplifting,

or a mark of class,

as they passed it every time they came or went.

Maybe they thought that removing it was their mothers’ job.

I’m not their mother,

but since the sight of their rubbish on the ground

in front of my home

did nothing to please my aesthetic sensibilities

or to lift my morale,

I picked it up from the ground

if I was walking by

and stuffed it into the back of their letterbox

until recycling day,

when I’d have to set it out.

I would rather have stuffed it somewhere else,

but squabbling with neighbours never pays off,

and they moved away

shortly after I called noise control on them one midnight.

                       Indoors-Outdoors

I’m fondest of the colder months,

when I can close myself inside my house,

away from the unpleasantries teeming outside,

dress warmly, and seal my body snugly away

from the elements.

My heating bill during the colder months is, however, a worry.

As the days lengthen and warm,

the temptation grows to open the front door

when I’m downstairs

in order to let in the balmy breezes,

the view of my potted flowers and herbs,

and the smell of the jasmine

growing over my front patio wall.

It also lets in the pollen,

and means operating the pyrethrum anti-fly spritzers,

but that’s way cheaper than heating.

By February the jasmine’s finished and it’s fly season;

the fly-repellent devices can do only so much,

and leaving the doors and windows open

and running the fans

against the heat

is sometimes only marginally effective.

Autumn is always welcome.

I like closing the front door with the earlier sunsets.

I’m basically an indoorsman, anyway.

Urban Encounters

           George Street Incident

After putting myself

on the outside of a couple of sandwiches

and a bottle of cheap Aussie plonk,

I went out to mosey about Claudelands

with my fox terrier.

We were stop-and-going down the footpath

along magnolia-shaded George Street,

the dog stopping frequently

to sniff at stuff on the grass verge.

An apparently well-dressed young man

walking in the other direction

veered from his line on the footpath

to block my progress on the grass verge.

He said in a pleasant voice

that reminded me of my old mate Gary

who now lives in Sydney,

“Got any money on yuh?”

I replied that all I had was plastic, and he said,

his voice still soft and pleasant,

“You fuckin’ with me, man?”

I said, “No – who carries cash around now?

Nobody carries cash on them any more,”

and walked around him.

I had between 15 and 20 dollars,

cash,

in my pocket at the time.

           Heaphy Terrace Incident

I was climbing into my dust-covered,

dozen-year-old Ford

across the street

from the Vege King

when two sleazy-looking bimbos

approached me with smiles

and asked if I had a cigarette.

I told them that I hadn’t

for about forty years –

although it was really 35.

Then the one who was wearing less

and who had badly dyed blonde hair

asked me flirtatiously for a lift into town.

I said, “Hell, no.”

Still flirting, she asked why not.

I said, “Because I’m not going that way

and I don’t know you,” and shut the door.

I don’t consider

my being able to realise

that the only reason a bimbo

would flirt with someone

old enough to be her great-grandfather

and try to get into his car

is to rip him off

to be one of my

major mental achievements.

             Another Heaphy Terrace Incident

He seemed to be maybe in his mid-seventies

(but such appearances can be deceptive),

shortish and skinny and stooped,

wearing shabby but clean clothing.

He was more or less staggering and stumbling

along the rain-slick southbound parking lane

of Heaphy Terrace next to Claudelands Park,

supporting himself with a rough-surfaced pole

almost as long as he was tall.

I was walking northbound on the footpath.

A parked late-model ute with a dog in the back

was blocking his way as I was passing it.

He tried to use his stick to haul himself up onto the kerb,

but the concrete was wet, and all he had for footwear was Crocs,

so he slipped and fell onto one knee on the grass verge,

grabbing a tree that was conveniently there

to keep from pitching forward onto his face.

I reacted, probably not quickly enough,

bending down to him and saying,

‘Here, bro – grab my arm and I’ll help you up.’

I was still trying to provide an anchor

for him to struggle weakly to his feet

when a young woman climbed out of the ute’s cab,

came around the back of the vehicle, grabbed him with both arms,

and shamed me by strongly lifting him upright.

One of his trouser legs was muddy at the knee.

He tried to explain, just because we were there and had ears,

that he’d had a bad fall recently

and had broken his leg and one other bone and cracked his skull.

The woman offered him a ride and cleared the passenger seat

as I helped him hobble to the ute’s open door.

Then she hefted him up and manoeuvred him onto the seat,

and I walked on toward the shops.

                  #16 Bus Incident

I was sitting on a bench

at the bus terminal

(or ‘Transport Centre’

as it grandly calls itself)

waiting for the number 16 bus.

A diminutive woman sat down beside me.

Being deeply unassertive,

I was careful not to manspread.

She took some sheet music

from her capacious bag,

and began to play it

on an invisible dummy piano on her lap,

her fingers curled, exquisitely,

in the classical pianist’s arch.

She saw me watching, fascinated,

and initiated a conversation.

We talked about music,

and I held up my end,

so it went well.

She didn’t play in order to perform,

but had been playing since she’d been five.

It was just a big part of who she was.

I told her that I didn’t play,

but that I performed with musicians,

keeping this vague.

Her sunglasses covered most of her face,

but her accent was barely Chinese.

When the #16 bus came

I was careful to sit several seats behind her,

to avoid being intrusive.

When I  left the bus at the Fairfield shops

I tried to say good-bye as I passed her seat,

but she didn’t seem to notice me.

Once outside on the footpath, though,

I looked back at her

and she smiled warmly and waved.

one finger at a time in that sexy way

before the bus pulled away

for the upmarket suburbs

of Rototuna and Flagstaff.

               Thames Street Incident

I was climbing the last hill before home,

a time when my grocery bag always feels the heaviest.

She was standing on the other side of Thames Street,

maybe twenty or thirty metres further up the hill,

underneath one of those huge old oaks,

all leafy and shady in the midsummer early morning:

a big young woman, shouting.

It sounded something like, ‘Henry! Poodle! Henry! Poodle!’,

and I thought about how few things make me feel sadder,

reflexively and deep in my bones,

than a lost dog.

When she saw me she crossed the street

in my direction, her skirt swishing across fleshy legs,

calling out, ‘Hey, remember me?’

I didn’t, but before I could ask her where I knew her from,

she rattled on, ‘Got a smoke?’ –

making the unmistakable

right-hand-fingers-in-a-sideways-V-

moving-back-and-forth-in-front-of-the-mouth gesture –

then continuing, without pausing, ‘I’ve got a chafe!’

Interesting.

Without pausing in my stride

– the bag felt heavy and my thermoregulation was starting to fail me –

I replied, ‘Sorry, but I don’t smoke.’

She continued on down the street behind and away from me,

calling out things that sounded like expressions of displeasure with me.

I revised my thinking to a consideration

of how being lost is sad for the members of any species,

even ours.

The last thing I heard of her monologue,

as she approached the corner with River Road,

sounded like my name.

                        Crossing the Street

After circumnavigating Claudelands Park

on our afternoon walk,

my dog and I prepared to cross Heaphy Terrace

in order to head back home.

Traffic was somewhat heavy,

and we had to wait a while

to cross at the end of Thames Street,

with me restraining my aging fox terrier

tightly on the lead.

A momentary break in the traffic

going in both directions

finally opened up

and we strode briskly into it.

A cyclist appeared from our left

in the cycle lane on the far side of the street,

coming rapidly on a collision course with us.

If we were to slow we would have been at risk

of being run over by the mean-looking SUV

that had partially screened my view of the cyclist,

so we kept on keeping on and made it across.

The cyclist had to slow down a bit to miss us.

“Excuse me!” she shouted indignantly and accusingly.

“Why?” I shouted back. “Did you fart?”

                     No Cause for Optimism

Whilst heading home down Thames Street

walking with my dog on a lead

I witnessed a maybe eight or ten-year-old boy

on a scooter on the grass verge in front of the party flat

kicking a seven or eight-week-old puppy

repeatedly with his spare foot.

I called across the street,

“Hey! Stop kicking the puppy!”

but of course he just looked at me

as if I were from outer space,

and kicked the puppy again.

So I called out again, in my most commanding voice,

“Stop kicking the puppy! Be nice! Don’t be cruel!”

Then an adult came out of the flat

and told him to stop kicking the puppy and to bring him inside

before going back inside himself,

I guessed for his Saturday-morning beer.

The kid picked the puppy up by the scruff of his neck

and started swinging him around.

I yelled, “Don’t do that! Don’t hurt the puppy! Hold him nice.”

The kid looked at me with an unnervingly

still, calm, somewhat beatific smile,

and, still holding the puppy by the scruff of the neck,

began to shake him.

“Stop it,” I commanded. “Hold him nice!”

Then the adult came back out and the kid,

still smiling at me in that troublingly untroubled way,

cradled the puppy gently in his arms,

turned, and headed toward the flat’s front door.

The incident did nothing to dissuade me from my misanthropy.

In a few years’ time that empathy-free young psychopath

will be under the influence of testosterone,

and I’ll be older and more frail,

and still living in da hood.

              Art At The Bus Depot

Being the filthy old fart that I am,

the first thing I noticed were her legs.

Shapely enough and bare

from the tops of her glittery floral-pattern high-tops

that extended like socks almost to her knees

up to as far as the eye could see.

I noticed immediately that her thighs were indeed covered

in goose-bumps

before she pulled down her dark woollen coat

to shield them at least ten centimetres or so

below the crotch of her crotch-length short-shorts.

I pretended not to look,

and shifted my gaze to the roofline opposite.

A person can’t help but see,

but staring is inconsiderate.

She began speaking to me,

I suppose because I seemed old and non-threatening,

asking if I was waiting for the bus to Ham East.

She had about a half a dozen rings, or more,

pierced through her lips,

and one fetchingly crooked tooth.

I told her about the number 17 and number 13 buses

and how one turned left and one turned right

after going over the bridge,

and told her she could see their routes on the sign behind us.

Instead she started a general conversation about the usual crap,

then asked me if I was an artist.

I told her no and she told me that she was gonna be an artist.

She took out her phone and showed me a photo

of a smiley-face tattoo she’d inked onto a friend’s arm.

She was just about to show me another

when the number 13 arrived and I climbed on.

She stayed and waited for the number 17.

                    Winter Sale: 50% Off

I bought a new hoodie at Hallensteins.

I don’t know whether I had some harmless fun

flirting and exchanging double-entendres

with the possibly gay sales assistant,

or if he was actually straight

and having some harmless fun

flirting and exchanging double-entendres

with the possibly gay me.