First Aid

Ambivalence is a euphemism: 

I felt I had been injected  

with the juice of an Amazonian creeper 

that accelerated ageing.

How could I have come to this 

and not yet sixty? 

“It’s hereditary,” the audiologist said. 

“Blame your father”.  

Sure, but he was dead, 

These memorial ‘mini-chines’ 

would inhabit my ears for years.

They made it easier to hear voices,

but hearing aids,

like nasal hair, 

add nought to intimacy.

Within a month 

I lost one, uninsured –

what a dollar shock.

Now using my fourth, 

the cost keeps going up. 

The technology will be perfect by the time I die. 

Solar Panel

In choosing nine members to consult,

the Sun considered the political disposition

of the principal planets,

and took account of the fractious

and frequently suicidal asteroid belt. 

Each of the nine members of the panel

was unique in its/his/her requirements

for life support – but by evolution

each had arrived

at similar stellar intelligence.

The panel was convened

to consider the fate of Earth. 

Basically, the Sun was over

the dissolute behaviour

of the myriad human ants 

and their unreflective scurrying,

impervious to advertising

urging them to spend more time

sitting thinking in the sun

sans iPhone.

A consensus settled on the use 

of two dedicated asteroids

suicide bombers that would blast

obscuring clouds of dust,

freezing the planet on impact,

cleansing the Earth of humans.

New life forms might emerge

and perhaps

not make

such a mess.  

“Worth a try,” the sun said,

calling for volunteers.

Escargot Cargo

I asked Jeeves,

“Why so slow today?”

“Well, sir,” he replied,

“It’s not the traffic, as you see.

The fuel injection line is sick

and try as I might,

I can’t whip this car

to gather speed.”

If I had wanted a machine

that rode at walking pace

I’d have bought a rickshaw

or an absurd micro,

not a Mercedes-Benz.

 “So,” I said to Jeeves,

 “An infection in the injection?

This car’s but two weeks on the road.”

“There are reports,” Jeeves replied, “that a tiny snail,

Xerolenta obvia by name, sought asylum,

from Germany, stowed its

hermaphroditic family in a shipment

of Mercedes-Benz, then found its way –

or lost its way more likely –

into our fuel injection system.”

I pondered on

a nautical analogy. 

Deep divers caught with

nitrogen in their blood,

surfacing too fast,

un-dissolve it:

then bubbles of gas

obstruct and slow them down.

Perhaps the snail, I thought,

might resemble a bubble

in the fuel line –

an automotive embolus –

a case of Mercedes bends?

Hello Sun!

Greetings, sun.

You have much to see today:

360,000 babies born –

most survive to live in happiness –

but 7000 will die

before the moon:

hot and cold winds of grief

will blow on families on farms

and in the cities.

II

Are you the master of a circus ring

of planets that move demurely 

through the night of space

to a new day’s dawn?

Are you feeling piqued

by competition from the Milky Way?

One hundred billion solar systems?

(Did you really see yourself

unique?)

III

May I nominate you for a gong

from the Melanoma Foundation,

or the Society for Macular Degeneration

for keeping them afloat?

And thank you:  you stimulate

our skins to make – no bones about it – 

Vitamin D, without which –

no doubt about it –

we’d have no bones.

IV

You’re burning fuel at a tremendous rate.

Might you turn it down a jot?

A cut of 1%

would stop

our river fish from dying,

our barrier reef from growing weeds,

our brown land from scorching,

our small animals from death,

our forests from inferno.

Factory Settings

I spilt coffee on the keyboard of my laptop.

The screen went blank and then a tiny message –

I am your hard drive: I am dying:

Good-bye.

I wept and raged. All those emails, essays,

yes, and poems, many less than brilliant, drowned

in a puddle of lukewarm cappuccino.

I called the computer doctor.

I expected he would suggest

assisted cremation: he lacks a laptop manner.

To my surprise he offered hope: he could take us back

he said, to a time before the spill.

No promises, but he might

restore the hard drive, fool it to imagine

that the cappuccino did not happen,

and give us all a second chance.

Some things would be lost, he said, or all,

if radical electronic lobotomy was required.

Then it would revert to when it left the factory womb

prior to entering the brutal world of commerce,

when Trump was just a tower,

when Fred was offered experimental therapy

for his cancer (he declined - in every sense),

when Ruby was still a happy mum,

before she backed her car over Josh,

when Max moved out,

before he took his life, before Tom and Annie

made bad decisions in their business.

Years ago I saw Kingsley Amis interviewed

on television, propping the bar of an English pub,

together with his current wife,

a friend, and a former lover.

The interviewer asked him –

were he able to live his life again –

would he do so differently?

Amis peered into his pot of ale.

“If I did,” he smiled slowly, looking up,

“it would not be my life,

would it?” holding his glass

so as not to spill it in his lap.

END GAME

When the chips are down,

when the fuel’s gone,

when the sun has set,

when the planet’s dead,

then the deepest cold

of the universe will claim

the remnants of our planet

for a convenient black hole.

Graffiti on a wall,

weapons so immense

to wipe out Mars as well,

loos’ning bonds of sense,

dogs and gods of war,

rabid presidential men

bent on taking out

all others than themselves.

Is this Eliot’s whimper?

Will it make a noise

when tokens are cashed in?

We won’t be there to see

all this intelligence destroyed

art, music, all the animals,

trees – so will we care?

No, not at all.

WIST YE NOT?

Spring juice has spiked the drinks of the wisteria.

Baby buds betray their deathly origins

and fling forth unexpected blossoms - 

no one would guess that parental branches, 

tangled and conservative with age,

could produce such children

even under the influence of spring.   

This is ridiculous, this riot of new life

flying in the face of entropy. 

Things are supposed to slide 

to chaos and disorder.  

But myriad pathways

of regrowth confront us

as we seek to come to terms

with limits of our lives.  

Spring defies our understanding

driving artists, singers, poets

to seek out ways

beyond the limits of cognition

to describe miraculous events.

And, dear reader, are you implicated

as you listen to or read

this, another poem, about spring?

Hybrids

Who are these ghostly figures

that levitate towards me

from the shadows

on the lunar landscape

of my dream?

They resemble people

that I loved, hated or ignored,

blended characters,

several hybrids of my mother.

New Guinean highlanders believe

the spirits of the recent dead linger

and on starless evenings of torrential rain

pipe in the quiet voice of small birds

at the doors of thatch huts of the living,

gently seeking food and maybe warmth.

I heard them in 1968

one black-ink night at Baiyer River

when enjoying hospitality of our doctor-bois.

I asked about the cheeping

I could hear above the rain:

‘Simunks!’ they told me –

and I felt unafraid.

Perhaps I should take food to bed

to feed the figures

who meet me in my dream?

The Lump

A year ago, when washing my face,

I noticed it on my jaw,

a small animal I thought,

clinging by its teeth,

then my owner found it,

and took me to the vet

who stuck it with a needle,

but it didn’t hurt.

I’ll speak to Felix:

he’ll know what to do.

He’s much travelled,

has seen many things,

throughout his nine lives,

has accumulated much wisdom.

I chose Felix because

he is an expert in feline herbology,

knows which grass to eat for fur balls,

which leaves to lick to counter a toxic mouse,

how to feign sleep when humans fight,

when to reject food out of pique.

“This is not good,” he said.

The lump is such

that surgery can’t be done,

that chemo like my mistress had

would also make me sick

as would x-rays.

Now, at least I am still eating

and in no pain.

“You’re fifteen,” Felix said,

“and have lived a full life

of prowl, skirmish, purr and sleep.

Sometimes doing nothing is the best path

and your owners will help you die.”

I thanked him for his time and love;

he licked my lump as I left.

The Unfortunate Case of the Conservative Bollard

My god, you’re still here

guarding that tree.

Think of all the damage you’ve caused

to cars and trucks,

a decade of cyclists capsized?

A fine mission, but there’s no escape.

Your lock is rusted shut.

Yes, I’ve stood my ground.

I’ve paid no heed to passing fads,

impervious to new ideas,

unmoved by talk of climate change.

I’ve stood despite my wounds,

loyal to those who see change

as the work of the devil.

I see, but did you know

that the tree you guarded all those years

has died?

Living Together

by which was meant

they slept in one bed,

shared a bank account,

placed possessions in the apartment just so

according to the rules of trade of horses,

at times with delicate, or other times hot,

negotiations,

including over the canary.

One partner sneezed each time

he passed within a metre of the cage;

the other found it irksome

to keep the bird on the balcony,

favouring daily intimacy –

he was not deaf

and he’d forsaken allergies

at the age of five.

Within a month one tripped,

broke a hip, the other struggled to lift,

stroked, both then trucked

to the local emergency. 

They survived

but I can’t tell you

how the canary died.

Silent Night

Ribbons of light slide, weave and vacate

our rear-view mirror.

They take different paths,

halt or pass.

Shadows and points of light

reflect where we’re from,

hint at what we’ve left behind.

These lights may be the counterpart

of good or evil medieval ghosts,

sent by gods

in whose anonymity lies their power,

whose silence permits capricious acts –

collisions, minor or fatal, on the avenue of life –

to pass unremarked and unexplained

as we drive on.

Stamping Ground

My Postboy album arrived at Christmas

inscribed with good wishes from my Dad.

It smelt of crisp new binding:

twenty stamps from Mauritius and the UK

were hinged neatly, setting a precedent.

Places with exotic names

made me wonder as a devout eight-year-old,

how countries in deepest Africa

could be so poor and in need of the gospel

and yet produce such splendid stamps?

Decades later my high school

invited me back to speak

to students of the day

about my hobby.

My first PowerPoint was titled ‘Philately’

and an acne smartass in the front row

asked if this was the name

of a transgender person,

setting the hormone-saturated group

of twenty laughing.

I wouldn’t want to be a philatelist

in this post-Postboy age

of on-line purchasing, delivery by drone,

where computers generate sticky labels instead.

My album sleeps – a cat on a shelf – relegated

to the museum alongside Model T Fords,

teapots, the fax, and courtesy.

MOVING ON (and sticking around)

It’s still shocking that he’s dead:

thirty years since easy access by phone,

complaints about his domestic scene

filled most of the call, but also

gentle encouragements,

occasional conversations, questions,

observations about his growing puzzlement

with what he heard sitting on the church steps,

trying to reconcile it

with his experience of life

and what his mathematical mind offered

as a different path to truth.

The disruption of his death

is less decisive now, as though

he is present in a quieter variation

of the way he was in life –

occasionally seen or heard,

known to be there behind the stage

as we played our roles.

The shock of his death,

tempered by time, is

a worn pebble in the stream

a different colour now to then.