Month: September 2023

Cultivate the Strangeness

/ johnlmalone / 22 Comments
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Cultivate the Strangeness.

There is a flower outside the Art Gallery and a beach scene with curling waves.

Both are proficient paintings but they are bland.

There is nothing strange or odd about them, nothing to mark them off as the mark of an individual artist.

A poem or a painting has to stand out.

Recently I saw the film ‘Maudie’ about Canadian folk artist Maude Lewis.

Her paintings are distinctive.

Sylvia Plath’s poetry is distinctive so is that of Worms whose blog I follow on WordPress.

What is it that marks you off as an artist, a writer?

Find it. Acknowledge it. Cultivate your strangeness.

Ultra Weird

/ johnlmalone / 32 Comments
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Ultra Weird.

It was like a hippo slurping milkshake through a straw

a six-shooter shootout at the OK Coral, bullets whistling overhead

an elephant flapping its ear-wings readying for takeoff

the last gasp of Kong as he fell from the Empire State

such ultra weird sounds coming from inside me

& all that jelly ughhhhhhh

  • pic by pinterest

What it Was Like

/ johnlmalone / 13 Comments
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What it was Like.

It was like an infusion of Premium ’98 in my tank,

the fuel that gave my lethargic Lamborghini zest and zing,

that taught it how to sing along the road in lusty lazarettos

of recovery; it was a discovery like Cortez first sighting

the Pacific from a peak in Darien, or to be more specific

the first time I read your little chapbook of poems

as exquisite as the chronograph on Lewis Hamilton’s arm.

*pic courtesy of pinterest

Stage 4

/ johnlmalone / 18 Comments
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Stage 4. [ for Karla }

I didn’t know Stage 4 was bad.

I thought Stage 1 was the worst because

it was at the top

then it got easier the further down

the scale you went.

I thought you were snug in Stage 4.

Out of the woods.

Then I looked it up.

I shall have to pray harder.

Affectation

/ johnlmalone / 29 Comments
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Affectation.

I like to sit out here

at the mouth of the carport

& watch the towels dry;

it’s not much more exciting, admittedly,

than watching paint dry

but it’s remarkably peaceful,

the sea breeze lifting the corner

of a towel

now and then

the magenta one

so it flutters like the wings of the rare butterfly,

found only in woodlands in NSW.

I like to use a fountain pen

when I write these days —

it’s an affectation of mine;

most likely these lines will be dry before the towels

now the sun is going down

& the towels are done with drying.

Haunted

/ johnlmalone / 28 Comments
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I’m flipping through my commonplace books

& I come across a poem

by Yard Sale of Thoughts

one I recognize

& I pull over like a train at a station;

it’s ebullient, freewheeling

like Dylan’s ‘Mr. Tambourine Man’

& I’m hitting the keys hard ‘coz I want to tell you

about it, how I feel;:

it feels like the sun on yr back

on a winter’s day, the bosom of yr love

in the morning,

that shiver down your spine

when you hear the riff of ‘Sugar Sugar’;

it just lifts you;

I have some poems like that too:

‘Tepid’, ‘The Indolent Killer’

a mere handful.

We are all haunted by our best poems

  • pic by pinterest

Like a Pillow

/ johnlmalone / 28 Comments
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Like a Pillow.

It’s billowy, he said. All plumped up.

Like a pillow.

Why, you could even rest your head on it.

Easy, I said. It’s the corpse. Of an ibis.

I know, he said. Just free associating.

Like my therapist told me.

And anyway, he continued, what are you? A ghoul?

You took the photo,

The Odd One Out

/ johnlmalone / 13 Comments
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The Odd One Out.

We lost one today:

the daydreaming ibis who ambled into the path of a car.

That leaves three.

They are such clunky creatures compared to the graceful gulls, blackbirds and honey-eaters of Davis Court.

The odd ones out.

Like that albino pigeon pecking in the park with all his slate grey brothers.

That shopping trolley with the wonky wheels.

The eighteenth syllable of a haiku.

My uncle off with the fairies at the bottom of the garden whenever we came to visit.

That porno episode Of ‘Midsomer Murders’

Glug

/ johnlmalone / 29 Comments
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Glug.

I just glugged down a 500 ml bottle of Dare Double Espresso.

Glug, glug, glug.

If that doesn’t sound like much, I’ve just had a double shot cappuccino

an hour before that after guzzling a Red Bull watching my grandsons’ new German rap video.

No wonder I’m jumpy like Skippy the Kangaroo.

Anyone remember him?

Anyhow, Dirty Harry’s coming on the movie channel soon.

That’s all I need.

If there’s one guy twitchier than me, it’s Harry.

I’m, going to be positively saccadic by afternoon’s end.

Did I just write all that?

Monolith

/ johnlmalone / 25 Comments
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Monolith.

What is it? I wondered when I first moved in

but then forgot all about it.

Occasionally I’d look up from what I was reading

and wonder what sort of creature or object it was

so coyly clad in its grey burka at the far end

of the backyard.

But it kept itself under wraps.

It looked a little like the monolith from ‘2001’,

sleek, tall and mysterious.

But it was there before I was.

I didn’t get colonial about it.

I let it be.

Until a friend dropped by after a few years overseas

and took a fancy to it.

What a great umbrella, he said.

[ So that’s what it was ].

If you don’t want it, he said, I’ll take it.

And he did.

Now I look at the empty space where it stood

and miss it some.