Hope For The Future?
There they were
in a supermarket
three 14-or-15-year-old boys
cavorting
jumping around
and dancing wildly but ineptly,
shouting adolescent inanities
to each other.
One of them
plucked a plastic packet
of potato pom poms
from a freezer
and tossed it
in a basketball-style
jump hook shot
smack into the wire trolley
one of his mates was pushing
on the other side of the
freezer,
and they cheered and high-fived
before gambolling on their way
down one of the aisles.
I turned my 71-year-old head
to a bloke of similar age
standing gob-smacked
by the frozen veggies
and said,
‘We never acted like that
when we were that age, eh?’
and he allowed himself
a little smile.
Four or five cherubic boys and
girls,
about ten or eleven years old,
were enjoying their bicycles
on a little-used driveway
at the park,
calling out to each other:
‘Where you fuckin going?’ and
‘Look out for that fuckin
shit!’ and
‘I don’t wanna fuckin mess with
that.’
and similar fuckin stuff,
and I thought:
My mode of speaking
has not disappeared
into the miasmic ether
of discarded fashions;
it’s not dying with my
generation;
it looks as if
it’s gonna fuckin survive.
21st-Century
Freedom
Maybe it’s just because I’m old
and therefore insufficiently
trained,
but I dislike corporations or
algorithms
telling me how to order my life
and work;
it’s a constant battle,
or so it seems,
just to try to do things my way
–
in ways that make sense
and are convenient to me –
a battle I’m constantly losing.
Obvious to Him
When puberty crept up on him,
he gave up on rugby after one season
and started devoting himself to ballet
and classes in jazz and modern dance,
and his mates asked him why?
None of them went to those classes,
which were full of nothing but sheilas!
He was the only bloke in any of them.
He couldn’t believe that they didn’t get it.
He just loved being surrounded by girls.
Contact with boys just didn’t
get his hormones pumping
or turn him on
at all.
Indifference Tsunamis
They don’t do it on purpose
They just can’t be bothered
to do what people have to do
to defend their sorry arses
from murderous thieves
when they have football games
to watch
or blockbusters to rate
or celebrities to envy
or chakras to tend to,
or online strangers to call
names
and there’s nothing wrong
with dancing till dawn
They don’t do it on purpose
They just can’t be bothered
They didn’t do it on purpose
They just couldn’t be bothered
Her Poca-hottie
and his Big Chief Loincloth
Indian costumes were just fun
I mean, you can’t be political
all the time
So they’re oblivious to the
nastiness
of sexualised cultural
stereotypes
They’d never be disrespectful
on purpose
They just couldn’t be bothered
They don’t do it on purpose
They just can’t be bothered
They don’t mean to let
those jumbo blood-sucking
mosquitos
breed out of control
and come slobbing up to the
suburbs
from their diseased swamps
They don’t do it on purpose
They just can’t be bothered
They don’t do it on purpose
They just can’t be bothered
to question making sacrifices
and doing without, gladly
to keep the grey gunboats
cruising up and down the river
They don’t do it on purpose
They just can’t be bothered
She didn’t do it on purpose
She just couldn’t be bothered
She didn’t intend to make his
hand bleed
or to destroy his cosy peace
by exposing him to a relentless
chill wind
She didn’t do it on purpose
She just couldn’t be bothered
The
Universe, Extinct Species, the Bible, & Me
The
Earth somehow survived
all
those billions of years
with
no humans present with language
to
immortalise time
with
observations and speculations and lies,
whilst
millions of species
evolved
and became extinct
as
hundreds of millions of years rolled on,
without
one member of any of them
leaving an
intentional legacy:
the amphicyonid
bear dogs lasted for about
forty-four
million, four hundred thousand years
dying
out less than two million years ago.
They
lived, just as we live now.
And
there were the gomphotheres,
related
to elephants,
who
lived from about twelve million years ago
until
just 9,100 years ago,
when
humans, who’d been around for about one million,
most likely hunted
them into extinction.
Our
unquestioningly that’s-the-way-things-are capitalism
has
been around for, pish-tush, less than five hundred years,
and eternally
immutable Islam for about fourteen hundred.
Compare
all this with the countless forever of the cosmos,
and
here I am feeling bad, ridiculously,
because
of stuff that others in my species,
particularly
the few whom I know,
either do or
don’t do.
No
wonder the young-earth, myths-are-real crowd
pathetically
refuse to accept that they’re not the reason
that
the universe exists,
as
if it needs a reason,
especially
one that puffs up people’s egos.
Visualisation Limitation
I have a friend
in the rowing business
and so I see
the facebook view
of the rowing community.
One rowing-world photo
captured my attention
because of the complexity
of the story it told,
as all fine photos do:
it depicted a rower
receiving some award;
a champion rower,
a young woman,
accepting the silverware
in a glamorous frock
with a short hem
cut higher at the sides
at the middle of her
massively muscular thighs …
At which point,
as I was describing this,
Stan called out,
‘Stop! Stop!
‘It’s too much!
‘I can’t take any more!’
Stan must have
a highly visual
and suggestible
imagination, eh?
Big Junior’s Flunkies
It’s not getting out
It’s not staying in
It’s why we never get to win
Twisting things beyond a doubt
It sure is the way it only is
listen to the paid spin whizz
It may not be what we’re ready
for
We’re not backing down any more
It’s not rising up
It’s not staying down
It’s just a failure to get
outta town
while drowning in a white café
cup
No time to retrench
Just breathe in their stench
It’s a futilely fought alchemy
war
We’re not backing down any more
Big Junior’s flunkies
own personal island retreats
Domination junkies
sending out cruel tweets
jingling their trunk keys
in their corporate box seats
They’re standing over you now
They won’t let you see how
you can
possibly run away.
It’s not cutting through
It’s not circling around
It’s grinding your face into
the ground
Big Junior smirks to you
that you choose it
you can’t refuse it
His game is deadly when he scores
We’re not backing down any more
Spider On A Mattress
Spider, who’d once been a
hammerhand,
said that he couldn’t sleep
in a bed all by himself.
Not that he went to bed all
that often,
amphetamine being what it is,
but somehow, hanging out on the
street
in Toronto
in 1967, of all years,
and with long, tangled,
unwashed hair and beard,
being quite a hairy arachnid,
he always managed to crash,
whenever and wherever,
with some hippie chick beside
him.
Only
Human
It’s life, is all it is,
and My Lord, that baby
was life all by himself,
a compensation
for the horror of that rape;
so bright and sweet,
filled full of tomorrows,
not what’s done and gone.
Mary forgot her baby’s father –
he was only human, after all.
It’s life; it’s how it goes
Her cooking skills
outweighed her shame,
and Missus kept her on
despite the fatherless child
who grew to be a hard worker
around the big house’s grounds.
His name was Walter;
they called him Boy
and paid him a dollar a week
after room and board:
a one-room cabin
he and Mary had to share;
forget the damp –
they were only human, after all.
It’s life, so it isn’t fair
that Missy had to take a shine
to Mary’s Walter, who knew better;
even when she flirted at him
with her she-devil’s sugar-voice,
he kept his eyes to the ground
and his speech to ‘Yes, Miss’
and ‘No Miss’ and ‘Right away, Miss’,
but Mister, and Brother Eugene,
and a wagonload of nasty white men
murdered him in public
for messing with her anyway,
hanged him from a tree –
he was only human,
after all.
It’s life, and nothing more,
and they never thought twice
about keeping Mary on
after lynching her boy.
She was a good cook, after all,
and a well-trained crow mammy,
with the fear of God and white men
sure to keep her in line.
Except that she began to add
certain herbs and powders
to their soups and gravies
until they all became painfully ill,
and greedy-guts Brother Eugene
wound up half blind in a wheelchair,
which is when Mary disappeared,
some said on the night train
to California
or Seattle or some such place –
she was only human, after all.
Chocky Birthday To You!
For your birthday I’m gonna
make you
the chocolatiest cake you’ve
ever eaten,
with three moist,
double-chocolate layers
and my sticky chocolate fudge
between them,
all covered with my chocolate
ganache icing.
You’ll love it!
Well,
actually, I’m not all that fond of chocolate …
I don’t believe you!
I’m a chocoholic myself,
because chocolate is, well,
everything good:
it’s like a love affair
it’s a guilty pleasure
it’s full of antioxidants
it’s hedonistic comfort food
it’s pleasingly bitter
it’s dreamy
it sparks up the serotonin
it lightens the spirit
it’s the most luscious luxury
it’s good for your heart
it connects you with your
higher self
it’s an aphrodisiac
it’s the answer to every
question
it is life.
How can you live without chocolate?
Cinnamon.
What?
Can you make my birthday cake cinnamon?
– made with a spiced rum batter?
– topped with butterscotch icing?
Please?
No. I still don’t believe you.
It’s gotta be chocolate.
You deserve the best.
