SONG OF THE STIMULUS PACKAGE

 

What did you do with your stimmy*?

Didn’t waste it, I hope, on the nags.

Did you give it to naughty young Jimmy?

In which case it went up in fags.

 

Thank God for the Covid that shook

the tight fists deep in the coffers

showering dollars that made us all look

like voters grabbing their offers.

 

Am I my brother’s job keeper?

No way – I couldn’t care less:

He’s an unemployed non-job sleeper,

so I’ll grab his allowance for Bess.

 

Nice for once to have enough cash

to buy steak and chips – quite a change.

Won’t splurge on anything rash

‘cept bacon and eggs –  free-range.

 

I s’pose one day it will go

and heave us back in the poo.

But stimmy was quite a good show.

Here’s to it – ‘n Covid ‘n you!

*stimmy is American slang for the stimulus payments made to individuals during Covid.

DIGITAL CODE

 

Our group of elders was eating salad.

I’d dropped tomato on the floor:

slowly, I bent to pick it up.

 

I was lost underwater,

dizzy, not in a forest of kelp,

but of feet and legs.

 

My friend opposite wore open sandals

so I had a close-up of his toes –

mature, damaged goods.

 

What stories were encoded in each,

of hikes, steep climbs, balls kicked,

caresses of a lover?

 

History locked beneath thickened nails,

inside calluses, beside bent bones; his mind

had begun to follow the same trend.

 

One day gene science and IT may let us read

the code of history in each toe.

But would we really wish to know?

WE NEED A POEM TO INSPIRE US

 

in this age of spikey virus.

Seated on this old veranda

poetic thoughts? They tend to wander.

So, we must settle on a theme –

a nasty virucidal scheme.

Ode, pantoum, or toxic sonnet,

something hot under the bonnet?

 

We need some really heavy verse

to shake and shock this evil curse,

to liberate us from its grip

before it gives us all the pip.

 

We need a poem like ivermectin,

so, while you’re busily selectin’

what to put in Christmas stocking,

write a rhyme that’s truly shocking

 

to Omicron, that’s floating free –

deprive it of its liberty.

A poetic mask, N95,

to keep us safe and well, alive.

 

Please use your mouse to good effect,

write a poem that will deflect

the virus’s unpleasant spike,

lines that say how you dislike

 

its attack on every nation,

its tendency for bad mutation.

Do not wait, do not delay:

kill this thing ‘fore Boxing Day!

ONCE UPON A TIME

 

A crowd of witnesses –

confetti of banal pleasantries.

He was visiting

to receive another medal,

gifting its donor

a share in his honour.

 

He smiled, listened –

years of house arrest is good training –

waiting for the ceremony to finish.

 

Mandela was a king of myth,

a magician, he could make wrong right.

But mid-morning

his gait, his deafness,

his sheer oldness, left no doubt

that his sun would soon set.

His Holiness arrived in a motorcade

at Westmead Hospital, bodyguards,

a beneficent smile, sandals,

draped in saffron and red,

clutching abundant silk scarves

as gifts.

 

The staff assembled in hundreds.

‘What can we do’, one member asked,

‘about Indigenous health’?

Silent –  he hesitated and replied,

‘Education!  Education! Education!’

 

‘Should a surgeon operate,’ another wondered,

‘on a person who abused their health,

smoked, ate too much, boozed?’

He paused again then said, ‘I don’t know!

You’ll need to work that out!’

 

He held my hand –

warm, soft-skinned and firm –

back to his car,

I was excited –

like an adolescent lover –

but aware that we would

never meet again.

SYNOPSIS

 

The weather was unsettled yesterday –

clouds massed as troops for battle.

Today, I watched the sunrise 100 kms east,

a narrow horizontal wound,

slashed in the flank

of the black stallion

that filled the sky.

 

Traffic grinds to a crawl,

and flash floods isolate

the poorer neighbourhoods.

The weatherman warned us

with time-lapse radar.

 

His messages were brief.

Did Fate’s finger

write in those synoptic isobars

of what’s to come?

HARRY

 

If you tell me that curiosity killed the cat, I say only the cat died nobly - Arnold Edinborough

‘Harry’s dead,’ she said.

Her words by phone pierced me:

shards of glass.

I’d gone for milk and bread:

I paid, left the store, a robot.

 

Harry was wrapped

in a baby rug

on the lounge,

still warm, flaccid,

eyes wide open.

 

He was adventurous, curious, unrestrained:

it was unreasonable to say, ‘keep him in-doors’.

He had no sense of danger

and that fine morning when the car hit him

he would not have known.

 

A passing couple with a baby in a pram

found him on the road, moved him to a safe place,

not knowing if he was alive or dead.

They phoned Kathy

whose name and number were on his tag.

 

Two years we had him.

Possessed of a perennial kitten’s spirit

he would bring lizards, or bits of them,

to play with in our kitchen.

He’d killed a rosella,

 

He would chew books.

He severed a critical wire

in my hearing aid one night

and brought the parts

to us in bed.

 

He came as a kitten soon after I retired –

he symbolised renewal and new life.

 

Now that he has gone

we are left locked down,

searching for other emblems of youth.

 

LOW TIDE ON WINGAERSHEEK BEACH

 

Borne on the tides, tossed,

we land on foreign rocks,

cling, limpets powered by the fear

that we might slip and slide

when the next heavy wave breaks.

 

Across a chasm

there’s another land, clad in green,

where we might settle,

but the border’s dark and deep.

There's no guarantee

that if we relaxed our grip,

put faith in the sea,

the waves would take us there.

 

But we can’t stay here forever:

we must calculate and take the risk.

 

Some of us might make it.