Tag Archives: poetry

Don’t Play in the Traffic (again)

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Don’t Play in the Traffic

they met on a zebra crossing
it was a pedestrian affair
she had an air of competence
he…just had an air
they went downhill from there
to her house
in the middle of a roundabout
near the station
one morning they looked out
and the cars had changed rotation
the clouds were tinged
with a tawdry shade of orange
the sky was diffident
the sun judgmental
things would not be the same
would not be the same again.

 

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I’ve posted this one twice before, but I kind of like it. Participating in Open Link Night at dverse.

If Robert Mueller Wrote a Tanka (plus Mr’s Mueller’s haiku)

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If Robert Mueller Wrote a Tanka

Why the long face, Bob?
always that same damn question
since I was a boy,

and always the same answer:
it is long because it’s long.

Couldn’t resist reposting that one. Okay, just one more……

Mr’s Mueller’s Haiku

You’re disappointed

you don’t know disappointment

you don’t know damp squibs

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Photo: English Bay, Vancouver, A-MAZE-ING LAUGHTER, by Yue Minjun.

There’s Nothing Like Being

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There’s Nothing Like Being

There’s nothing like being
in a crowded bar
in a foreign city
on a Friday evening
just after five
and you don’t know anyone
but it doesn’t matter
and you can’t speak the language
but it doesn’t matter
it’s enough to be there
to breathe in the relief
to share the belief
that Monday morning
is a life time away.

 

The prompt over at dVerse is to write a poem about movement, where am I going, where have I been.

Speaking as the Moon

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The challenge from Sarah over at dVerse is to write a piece of prosery, of flash fiction (limit 144 words) incorporating the phrase “I dreamt I was the moon” from a poem by Alice Oswald.
So here goes:

Speaking as the Moon

I dreamt I was the moon, a cheddar searchlight in the sky waiting for the arrival of man with his small steps and giant leaps, his garbage can machines, his religion, his culture, his competing ideologies, his self-aggrandizements, his bragging rights, his racism, his greed, his pomposity, his self-importance, his astronauts named “Buzz”. I tell you, colonization never works out for the colonized. Speaking as the moon, I have no desire to be turned into a destination for space tourists or a land fill or, more accurately, a moon fill, then to be compensated, to be re-moonerated (a bit of lunar humour) some hundred years later by some conscience-stricken liberal prime minister of Canada. They say that nature abhors a vacuum, well, speaking as the moon, I can handle a vacuum quite nicely, it’s vacuity, I abhor.

Trumplings (A Retrospective and a quote from T.S. Eliot)

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Orange is the New Bleak 1 (3)

 

The other day, I was looking back on the number of Donald Trump related posts on this blog and a pattern emerged. In 2015, there were 3 posts; in 2016, 10 posts; in 2017, 23 posts; in 2018, 19 posts; in 2019, 2 posts so far.
That’s when I thought of T.S. Eliot:
“And when I am formulated, sprawling on a pin,
When I am pinned wriggling on a wall”
It seems, looking at the above stats, that in my mind, at least, Donald has been formulated and there is little more to be said creatively, even the outrage has become stale. He has the approval of over 40% of American voters and maybe now that is the subject, the man himself has been defined and will not change.

These are the Trump posts  I had most fun writing , they rely a bit more (I think) on language rather than straight polemic. They are arranged somewhat in chronological sequence

“Agent Orange has a dark Moment” was published in Rat’s Ass Review” ,and “Donald Trump – On Reflection” was published in “Oddball Magazine“. “Trumputin” was published in Anti-Heroin Chic .

Inauguration

it
does
not
augur
well.

 

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Donald’s Early Days

A farrago of fiascos,
banishments and bans;
weekends at Mar-a-Lago
the world in his hands.

 

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Agent Orange has a Dark Moment
Do you know who I miss? Jeb Bush. I miss Jeb Bush. He was my first. When I hit him with that low energy jibe and he fell apart and all the Bush family could not put Humpty together again, I knew I was on to something. Then Little Marco and Lyin’ Ted, I miss them too. But most of all, I miss Hillary, Crooked Hillary. Man, she was tough, had me on the ropes. It took Comey and Vlad, that pointy headed villain, to get me back on my feet. I was nearly out for the count, which might not have been a bad thing. Who needs this shit! I should give Vlad a call, I’m a bit worried -there’s no such thing as a free hack.
Reince Priebus – what kind of fucking name is that? It sounds like bad news from the doctor. “I’m sorry, Donald, you have a Reince Priebus on your rectum and it doesn’t look good”. Ha, I just made myself laugh. And Bannon, I’ve seen sofas on the side of the road in better shape than that rumpled fucker. Spice Box? Hardest job in the world – explaining the unexplainable. That Melissa Mc.Carthy just slays me. How come all the cool people are on the other side? Who have I got? Ryan and Pence? Bland and Blander? Where did Pence come from anyway with his brush cut and his antediluvian politics? The best surgeons in the world couldn’t remove the poker from that guy’s ass. Antediluvian, you didn’t expect that did you?
Talking of cool, I should give Barack a call, ask him down to Florida for a game of golf; check his birth certificate again (Joking! How I miss those days). Man, I hate this fucking White House furniture, is it Friday yet?

 

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Haiku for Donald

petulant pillock

postcranial curmudgeon

bombastic buffoon.

 

Orange is the New Bleak 1 (3)
On Reflection…. Donald Trump

America has given birth
to a giant orange child
a zaftig infant Gulliver
striding the ravaged earth
of his own imagination
trampling whole villages
swallowing villagers whole.

 

 

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Trumputin (a romance)

Don loves Vlad
Vlad loves Don
Love as big as
A nuclear bomb.

Front door, back door,
Kremlin, tower
Nuclear love
Nuclear power.

 

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The Toddler King (excerpt)

5 am. in America

the toddler king
checks his Twitter feed

in the empty parking lot
of a big box store
a plastic bag pirouettes
on the halitotic breeze

national monuments
fear for their lives

the adjectives – good, bad, great-
drop in value again

the toddler king
picks a fight with himself.

 

 

The Water Taxi Arrives (Caye Caulker Chronicles Take 2)

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The Water Taxi Arrives (Caye Caulker Chronicles Take 2)

like Sherpas in search of an expedition
the backpackers tumble onto the dock
clutching Lonely Planet guidebooks
it’s nowhere near as lonely here
as their guidebooks promise
but it is part of the planet
they got that right
it is part of the planet.

(in the café below
Bob Marley is still jammin’
the locals talk of paradise lost
of Eve and apples bitten.)

This is a rewrite of a previous post.

A Ghazal about Everlasting Love (and a rabbit)

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A Ghazal about Everlasting Love (and a rabbit)

like that rabbit on TV
our love will last

you know, the pink one with the drum
(our love will last)

and the dark sunglasses
(our love will last)

who sometimes hits a wall
(our love will last)

and sometimes stalls
(our love will last)

but he keeps banging that drum
(our love will last)

the rabbit keeps banging the drum
(our love will last)

but unlike our love
alkaline batteries are not everlasting

and eventually the rabbit falls
breathes his last

and we need another simile
one that lasts

like plastic in a landfill
our love will last

like craters on the moon
our love will last

like the power of the sun
our love will last

like the winds out on the ocean
our love will last.

 

In my previous ghazal , “Bucket List” I vowed to write a ghazal about everlasting love for the dVerse ghazal challenge. So there you have it, my first love poem, a big challenge – I’m the kind of person whose usual response to the words “I love you” is “right back at ya”.

Listening to Carlos Santana in Kitsilano Gym (quadrille)

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Listening to Carlos Santana in Kitsilano Gym.

listening to Carlos Santana
in Kitsilano Gym,
his guitar solos
leading always
to that existential wail
on the top fret
above the cutaway
takes me back to Asbury Park
walking along the boardwalk
having watched Woodstock
my head an unsustainable mix
of idealism, hedonism.

 

This is a response to Quadrille #82 – Fretboard of Poetry, the prompt from Kim at dVerse, which is to use the word fret in a 44-word poem that does not require meter or rhyme.

 

Landline (for Dad)

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Landline (for Dad)

Sometimes, I think
I should text my dad
give him an update
tell him where I’m at.
Not that he would answer
he’s been gone a few years now
and even if he were alive
texting would hardly be his thing;
at the turn of the century
he was still approaching
what we now call a ‘landline’
with some trepidation.

Landline: a rope
uncoiling towards the shore.

He once told me
that when we have children
of our own
we begin to understand
our own parents better
so I think my text
would be an attempt
to let him know
that, yes, dad
I have found this
to be true.