Some More Human Stuff

                    Nice & Nasty

It’s nice to be nice

because when you’re nice

everything is so much nicer

than when you’re not nice.

Isn’t that nice?

Of course, you have the option to be nasty.

Being nasty, though, can make you a nasty person,

although even nice people can be nasty sometimes,

and sometimes even nasty people can be, well, nice,

and sometimes it’s nice to be nasty,

or nasty to be too bloody nice.

Depends on what meanings you load onto the words, eh?

Some people put on a big front about how nice they are,

when they’re really nasty right down to their core,

and some people put up a big front about being nasty

because they’re afraid of what’d happen

if people were to find out that they’re actually nice.

It’s bad form to be nasty to someone who’s being nice,

but are people who act nice in response to nastiness saps,

or just cunningly passive-aggressive,

expressing nastiness in a nice way?

When people are being nice to me I usually wonder

if they’re Just Being Nice and don’t really mean it.

Pain is nasty.

Nice music can either intrigue me or make me yawn,

but I tend to rock out when the music’s nasty.

Nice food is enjoyable.

Nasty food’s better not eaten.

Dogs are nice companions and playmates,

but can sometimes smell nasty.

That first swallow of cold beer is nice.

Complex, dogmatic ideologies are nasty.

Hugs are nice.

Sex is definitely nicer when it’s nasty.

            If I Ran The Marathon

I can picture myself slogging away smoothly,

keeping up the pace for more than two hours,

finally pulling away from the last of the others,

running as if on air into the final straight

almost a minute in the lead,

and with about fifty metres to the tape

tripping over some surface irregularity

and landing forehead-first on the paving,

knocking myself out cold.

                        Dodging Dickheads

One of the reasons that I make an effort

to stay clear of people in general

is that I strongly prefer to avoid

having confrontations with dickheads.

Not for me the joy that some whom I know express

in, for example, inviting Mormon missionaries inside

in order to have a bit of a piss-take,

wind them up, and generally give them a hard time.

Not for me the crossing of swords

with pompous anti-intellectual sophists,

hypocritical cryptofascist bullies,

or fundamentalist simpletons,

whether in Garden Place, on facebook, in the blogosphere,

or on the footpath in front of my house.

It’s bad enough to have to endure

the behaviour of tailgaters and the egotism of taggers

when I’ve no choice but to venture out of my home.

    Inconvenient Elements

I know that many people

admire, metaphorically,

those who do so,

but when my wash is on the line

and rain starts to bucket down,

I don’t rush outside

and shake my fist at the clouds.

I’m not defiant

when it comes to nature

causing petty inconveniences

in regard to my petty objectives.

A soft water rinse

does my laundry just fine,

thank you.

This wouldn’t be the basis

for an inspirational,

defiance-toward-adversity

so-called meme

on facebook, though.

would it?

           A Misnomer

It seems to me

that the term ‘clean-shaven’

is ideological

rather than descriptive.

If shaving’s so bloody clean,

why do people have to put

antiseptic on the skin

where they’ve just done it?

                       Barbering

Okay, it’s a long time between events,

but I never really know

how to respond

when,

any time for several weeks after the event,

people I know inform me,

“You got a haircut!”

It confuses me.

Are they trying to impress me

with their grasp of the superficially obvious?

Or do they think

that I’ve been trying to keep it a secret

and need to be exposed?

Or do they think

that I’ve been too dim to notice it myself,

and they therefore need to update my status for me?

Or do they think at all?

Sometimes I used to feign surprise: “Oh! Really?”

or claim that what I’d actually done

was to mousse it up really stiff

and then drive it back into my head with a hammer,

or some such similar nonsense.

With this last haircut, though,

I’ve been going for straight denial.

                  Some Kind Of Place

Some people are so kind and caring

and devoted to helping

those less favoured than themselves

in meaningful ways

that the consensus of those who know them

or who are aware of who they are and what they do

is that the world of human society

will be a much poorer place after they’re dead.

Some people are so horrid, destructive,

egocentric, cruel, and nasty,

feeling either nothing or smug pleasure

when harming other people and the world in general

that the consensus of those who know them

or who know more than enough about them

is that the world of human society

will be a much better place after they’re dead.

I don’t think that my death

will have much of an effect

on what kind of place the world of human society

will be one way or another

at all.

        Heroism & Money

Nicholas Winton saved the lives

of 669 Jewish children from Czechoslovakia

by whisking them away

from the Nazis in 1939

and bringing them to Britain.

I’d love to do something like that,

but I don’t have his social position,

my body is too tired,

and I certainly don’t have the money

to charter a non-trafficking

passenger service for refugees

or to pay lawyers

to do the paperwork.

             Taking It

Instead of ‘Goodbye’,

or ‘See yuh later’,

he said, ‘Take it easy.’

I replied,

‘I’ll take it any way I can get it.’

This is no time

for me to pick and choose

about how I take it,

but rather just to take 

whatever comes along

as best I can.

For me at least,

one of the most pernicious

two-word phrases now is,

‘I hope’.

      You Can Play, Too

Look before you leap,

but he who hesitates is lost.

Absence makes the heart grow fonder,
but out of sight, out of mind.

Home is where the heart is,

but familiarity breeds contempt.

Two heads are better than one,

but too many cooks spoil the broth.

Better safe than sorry,

but nothing ventured, nothing gained.

Cream rises to the top,

but shit floats.

Interactions

                 She Said – I Said – She Said

She said, “My! Richard, you have such good skin.

It makes you look much younger than you really are.

What do you use on it?”

I said, “I just wash it with soap and water.”

She said, “Oh, no – you shouldn’t do that!

Soap is so bad for your skin!

It ages it terribly!”

She said, “You look like you’ve been putting on some weight.

How much do you weigh?”

I said, “I dunno. I never weigh myself.”

She said, “Oh, no! That’s what anorexics always say!”

I suppose I should have told her

that I just don’t give a shit

about that kind of shallow crap,

and that I’d rather use my mind

than swallow that checkout-mag shit whole,

but I’m not that sort of person,

so I didn’t.

She said, “Well, if you don’t cook meat at home,

are you a vegetarian?”

I said, “Oh, I eat fish and birds.”

She said, “What? You eat birds?”

I said, “Yeah, y’know, chicken,

and turkey when I can afford it.”

She said, “They’re not birds! They’re poultry!”

I suppose I should have asked her

if she worked for the

National Euphemism Association,

but she was old,

and I’m not that kind of person,

so I didn’t.

             Parental Protection

I was minding a small gaggle

of small boys – six and seven year olds, mostly –

who were enjoying themselves

by running amok

in a small neighbourhood park.

One of their favoured activities

was climbing a retaining wall

that was maybe four metres high.

When they made it to the top

the more agile and confident ones

climbed back down backwards;

the others climbed over a short chain-link fence

onto a streetside footpath

and then circled around back into the park.

The mother of one of them showed up

and, horrified, ordered her son

to stop this dangerous activity.

He just said, “No!” and kept climbing.

She started haranguing him about it,

raising the spectre of being encased in plaster.

He reached the top,

circled around, and started back up the wall

to the tune of his mum’s orders to the contrary

and further dire warnings.

I just watched, smiling only slightly.

   Conditions of Employment

When people who’ve been my boss

have realised that I was more

intelligent and educated

than they were,

they loved being my boss more,

but hated me.

         Coin of the Realm

I’m afraid that I have to say

that my experience of interacting

with other people

has convinced me that cheap talk

is the coin of the realm.

                   Almost Floating

Within the space of two days

I became completely alienated

from, first, my best friend,

who had actually been my former best friend

for some time, anyway,

and then from my lover,

who had actually been my former lover

for some time, anyway.

Both situations went down the gurgler

in a froth of mutual finger-pointing

too tedious to detail,

but reconciliation seemed most unlikely in either case.

The following day I felt strangely liberated,

and, even more strangely,

almost serene for the first time I could remember.

In time reconciliation did take place in both cases,

but my sense of otherworldly detachment

remained,

and has served me well,

as I am only a thing that floats, anyway.

                    Martin and Me

Although we work well together artistically

and have similar views of our society and culture,

Martin and I are far from Tweedle-Dee and Tweedle-Dum.

He prefers tea, and is serious about it;

I prefer coffee, and treat it as a drug.

He enjoys tobacco;

I can’t abide its pong.

He prefers anglicised pronunciation variants;

I prefer those of the language of origin.

He’s gregarious and convivial, with easy social skills;

I’m reclusive and distrustful, with deficient social skills.

He’s knowledgeable about botany and birds;

I’m an indoorsman.

His mental processes are basically mathematical;

mine are basically verbal.

He prefers French food and wine to Italian;

I prefer Italian to French,

although we both prefer both to English.

He prefers butter;

I prefer marge.

He’s a keen angler;

I can recall catching only one fish in my life.

He was born in the early 60s;

I was born in the mid 1940s.

He’s an integral part of our community;

I’m an outsider all the way.

       My Lounge Furniture

After many years I still enjoy

the aesthetics of my lounge suite.

The legs and frames are dark wood

with stylised leaf-motif designs

carved into them.

The backs and the table’s top

are of dark-stained wicker

woven into abstract-motif patterns.

The upholstery is bold floral designs

against a black background.

Somebody once told me

disparagingly

that the wood carving had been done

by automated carving machines

and that it definitely wasn’t hand-carved,

implying that this made it inferior.

My reaction was,

so the fuck what?

I like it.

        An Impossible Situation

Whether teasingly or inadvertently

or by way of an unintentional misunderstanding –

when a lover creates a confrontation

with a possible or imputed competitor

for that lover’s affections,

it creates an impossible situation.

To show jealousy is uncool,

as that implies possessiveness.

Not to show jealousy is also uncool,

as that implies indifference.

           To A Former Beauty

There was a time when

all you had to do was wave,

and smile that thousand-megawatt smile

and any male driver who could see you

would temporarily lose control of his vehicle.

There was a time when

your boyfriend was an advertising creep

and dope dealer

and teenaged you would rollerskate into his house

wearing only a bit more than a glassy expression

and help yourself to some of his coke

when he was doing a deal,

and all he’d do  

was laugh softly and wryly and shake his head.

There was a time when

you had your pick of jobs

that just required that you be gorgeous,

and you’d joke about how much work it was

to be pretty all day.

There was a time when

you needed no make-up

and could eat whatever,

and however much of it,

you wanted,

and it wouldn’t show

on your six-foot frame.

But that was thirty-five years ago.

Are you still making the most

of whomever you are now?

Are you contributing to your world?

Or are you obsessed with what you eat,

and resting on your L’Oréals?

          Neither A Random Sample

Being addicted to reading mysteries,

many of the books with which I spend

my now-plentiful leisure hours

have as protagonists

complex, sensitive,

dedicated, violence-averse,

utterly sincere cops.

It makes me wonder, though,

since most of the real cops

I’ve actually known,

personally –

neighbours and friends-of-friends –

have been more or less

unmitigated dickheads.

                                          Deprecation

She said, ‘How could you manage to say exactly the wrong thing just then?’

He answered, ‘I dunno. I just fucked up, I guess.’

She said, ‘You seem to fuck up an awful lot when it comes to that.’

He said, ‘I guess I’m just no damned good and never was and never will be.’

She said, ‘Why do you put yourself down like that all the time?’

He said, ‘I guess it’s because I’m just no damned good and never was and never …’

She said, ‘Stop it! It’s not healthy!’

He said, ‘I’m just agreeing with you, that’s all’

She said, ‘Don’t go blaming your poor self-esteem on me! It’s your

          choice!’

He said, ‘Well, I don’t wanna argue with you, no matter how much you wanna argue with me.’

She said, ‘Are you trying to pick a fight?’

He said, ‘I think I’d better go now.’

More Life At Home

                        Cold Coffee

A creature of habit in many ways,

for a long time now I’ve made plunger coffee.

This presented no problem

in regard to cold coffee

when another in the house shared it with me,

no matter how large a plunger we used,

or at other times when I had a working microwave

for reheating it.

The plunger pot I have now makes four big cups.

I live alone now,

and my microwave oven died a long time back,

which means that I drink two or three cups out of every pot

cold.

It’s not ideal, but instant is either nasty or too expensive,

and it’s something to which I’ve become accustomed.

At least it keeps me working through the day.

Serendipitous New Tactic

When I told the woman

on the telephone

soliciting donations

for the Westpac rescue helicopter

that I couldn’t talk to her then

because I was too drunk

she terminated the call

immediately, without a word,

which was fine with me.

I’ve done it again

in such situations

even when stone cold sober.

Try it sometime.

It works a treat.

                  A Book Turnover

I finished one mystery and started another,

and not only was it a whole different world

in the imagination that the words revealed,

but reading it involved the personal difference

of immediately enjoying the magical prose

of a truly gifted, incandescent author

after making it through the efforts

of an ingenious, hardworking, pedestrian hack.

                Home and Away

Sitting in my drinking chair,

a murder mystery open on my lap

and my front door open to the summer afternoon,

my eyes sucked up the flowers, butterflies, and birds

unconsciously decorating the patio.

All that ends at the gate, though,

as my next-door neighbour

seemed to consider

dropping rubbish

on the walkway-driveway

in front of our units

and leaving it there

to be a form of aesthetic expression,

and on the footpath and street

at the end of the right-of-way

the dangerous world dominated by

egotistical hostile-aggressive dimwits

really begins.

                     Companionship

Since silence has a way

of turning solitude into loneliness,

I try to fill my waking hours

with music as best I can.

The music that fills this space best,

for me at least,

is that which gives me amiable companionship

without forcing itself upon me.

Found in an Almost-Indecipherable Hand

I live in a society

in which a lonely and useless old man

such as myself

can get stupid drunk

and then enjoy a slice of plastic cheese

– marketed as ‘processed cheese food’,

but we know better, don’t we? –

folded over some peanut butter,

a situation that won’t lay (or last?),

and then write it down in an almost-indecipherable hand

to click onto a screen some days later,

whether every line makes sense or not.

         It Is Where It Is

I sat there in my oblivion chair,

wine bottle in hand,

a Philip Glass string quartet

coming out of the speakers –

beauty in my ears,

if not in my belly

or my legs.

           Double Dipping

As I put down my book

and picked up my wine bottle –

a cheap Chilean or South African merlot

with entirely too much tannin,

but drinkable –

it occurred to me

that I’d probably forget

what I was going to read

from about that point on,

which I supposed was a Good Thing

because after I’d re-read it the next day

I would have enjoyed it twice.

       I Normally Don’t Do Cute

Steady rain on the roof kept me in bed

long after I was ready to get up

(I had nowhere to go, anyway).

It continued on into the morning, so

contrary to my habitual practice,

I played neither the radio nor CDs,

and just listened to it.

I amazed myself by creating a pareidolia effect

from its random tapping,

and appalled myself that the tune I heard in it

was ‘On The Good Ship Lollipop’.

         Alone Before Four

I awoke when it was still dark,

many hours before the dawn.

Once I realised that I wasn’t

going to get back to sleep,

I stretched luxuriously

beneath my triple covers

and ran my hands over my body.

My muscles had that pleasant burn

from the previous day’s dumbbell exercises,

and felt firm and defined

beneath my fingers and palms.

I massaged my buttocks

and wondered what it’d be like

to be a queer –

and felt strangely sad that I’m not.