Mixed Bag To Heady Shit


   [ Potpourri '90s ]

    He's going through various versions of being 50-something and for a while this stretch is just a mixed bag. The wheels come off for a few laps but every life has a few wheels-off hiccups. After they subside he rediscovers self-discipline so he sheds his bed at four every morning and communes a while with the sea or the backyard shrubbery then has breakfast with the cat and writes. Writes bigger. Writes better. Lives the dream. And is bloody-well successful at last. Godknows it's due. So it becomes Heady Shit time but it doesn’t last long. Heady Shit time never does. Heady Shit time breeds arrogance and arrogance breeds face-plants onto the concrete of reality. He says it’s a bastard but it’s true to anyone who’ll listen but no-one's listening. So he just goes on scribbling. Because. Because he doesn’t know how to not go on scribbling. But then the sun goes out and for a long time all of life stops.

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     THE WEDDING 

All the women of the family,
clucking around the reception hall,
sucked into the certain belief that
the more bellies they fill
the more married the happy couple will be,
some sort of pagan hangover
that equates gluttony with fecundity. 

So, she sells her youthful body
for a house with a man in it,
as if that is the only way
to keep the wild animals out of her cave,
while he trades his back for regular rooting. 

Some time in the future
     they’ll both wonder why they bothered. 

    T.R.E. (1993)

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    THE TRUE COUPLE BEAST 

Mick Pryor, like so many men
was looking for a woman
he could be truly intimate with
with whom he could
merge
merge and mingle
share a total existence
that whole body mind and soul thing 

but he always failed
and never knew why
didn’t understand that it’s
the nature of the beast
the True Couple Beast
that it’s only mythical 

okay, maybe, just maybe
it existed once
like Merlin
or Utopia or Thor or Culhuilinn
or the Murderfree and Taxfree Society
but not in these unclassical times 

but HE believed it could be attained (poor fool) 

the truth is Mick my old mate
it’s only hypothetical
the nature of the True Couple Beast
like unicorns
but Mick still keeps trying
like - yes, but maybe they’re still out there
those unicorns
waiting for Noah to swing by
and take their perfection into the future
out there waiting and dreaming
and loving each other
      with no damn strings attached 

ah, you’re a pathetic romantic Mick old son 

    T.R.E. (1993)

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      WAITING 

old farm machinery
in a rusty regimented row
like rocking-chaired geriatrics
all along the nursing home porch
musing on their once useful life
waiting for nothing more to happen 

how I would if I could
breathe noise and purpose
back into your romantic old bones
and watch you all skip and run again
and plough fields and cart hay
like you did when I was young 

    T.R.E. (1993)

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     FOUR AM 

somehow
the old cat had come
to represent something of himself
fading into the shadowed years
and scraggy at the eyebrows
and he feared
should his old friend die
he would end as well 

he stretched
and the ginger cat
disturbed
stretched also 

they both went on waiting
waiting for the real day
to impose itself on them
he writing
the cat sleeping 

    T.R.E. (1994)

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      GARDEN MORNING 

Pays to do a lap around the garden
These new Spring early mornings
Found my oak tree has already dressed
while I wasn’t looking
And the poor dead wisteria
Has defied all glum predictions
And slipped two bits of healthy green
Into the nature of things
Any living thing that can deny
the siren call of Spring
Is REALLY dead! 

    T.R.E. (1994)

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           POTSY 

he was only a blackbird
and crippled at that
one wing at a permanently odd angle
one leg that didn't work right
poor little bastard
couldn't even walk straight
let alone fly like his mates 

they were all long gone
his mum too
which is the way of blackbird things
they had life to get on with
no time for fledglings
that staggered like a drunk
sometimes falling over
never knowing what airborne was
cripples have to take their chances
with the first law of nature 

he adopted our back yard
stumbling around the carnations
avoiding the cat as best he could
pinching bits from his plate
hiding under the tomatoes
forced to trust that the world
would show a little special care 

we left food out for him
in corners of his small territory
and he seemed to be getting by
but he had to sleep
sitting on the ground
backed up in the violets like a derro
resigned to his unfair lot 

sometime last night
he gave up the unequal struggle
and we buried him this morning
cold and unmarked
wing and leg now crooked forever 

sorry Potsy
you didn't have a chance
better to go round again
you made us care too much
and feel so inadequate 

    T.R.E. (1994)

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        MY SEA 

I love to come out in the morning
and find that overnight
God has hosed the world down
and given me a freshly salted sea
and an old stray dog
to share the magic moment 

    T.R.E. (1994)

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   LOOKING IN THE MONITOR 

by some means
the world turns slowly
caught up in the business of the universe
with no option
but to fill out the decree
of a couple of billion years ago 

a particularly old dinosaur
that died of circumstance
didn’t have an impact at the time
it simply returned
the star’s borrowed molecules
for the making of several young cycads 

that cycad stand
lived out its foliaged time
then one by one returned to the ground
and a tree grew
a giant among giants
towering over the forest of its days 

a long silence
compressing on ever down
made blackened seams of yesterday’s evergreen
then waited
till a shrew-like creature
mastered this smallest corner of the vastness 

then Newcastle coal
lit the bessemer night
to make slag heaps and the anvils of smiths
their striking peal
counting out their own hours
turning steel hoops into atomic clocks 

now
inside this humming word processor
lives the distilled spirit of a dinosaur
ticking time
in the latest alpha-numerics
wise and ancient beyond my comprehension 

    T.R.E. (1995)

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    TOE NAIL 

His blackened toenail
has at last succumbed
to the relentless march of nature
and has fallen off, inside his sock
and it now moves about
as if in its small death throes
or maybe simply looking for a reasonable exit 

    T.R.E. (1995)

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      NIGHT SKY 

he regularly goes outside of a night
and for a moment
it’s like at the movies
when you get totally absorbed
by the energy coming off the screen
and you forget that you are simply
     one of the multitude
     hanging on the dialogue
     sucked into the action
but, for that one moment,
you have the illusion
of being alone in the world
and all things that are happening
are for you alone
so you can stand and just look
look at the starbursting darkness
     with equanimity
     and contemplate
     and speculate
     and wonder about infinity
but,
because they love him
invariably one of his family
will appear at his side
right at that moment
and say wrong things 

    T.R.E. (1995)

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         PONDALOWIE 

I know a certain place,
a vantage point atop a high cliff
overlooking an ancient ocean
where the clouds come in
from some distant birth-place
scudding in at eye level
as if to buffet me in their journey
towards the waiting land 

its a peaceful place
even in the midst of a storm
it retains its natural serenity
where I can be both an observer and a component
part of the sequence and the rhythm
of an unchanged order of things 

I can see the rain squalls
coming across this panorama
long before they reach the coast
patches of sun shafting down
between random weather witches
and storms in teacups
whitecaps decorating the restless sea 

I am in harmony with such a place
it is filled with my kind of peace
a turbulent restless peace
that comes from some greater existence
that is of some greater dimension
that is of solid stuff
like the buffeting wind and the cry of gulls
like the sting of spray and pound of surf
and the whole sight and smell of free space
and a turbulent distance 

it is an alive peace
filled too with an excess of sensation 

I sense a looking down and a looking out
testing my wings to the wind
it is a time of maybe lifting off and wheeling free
or a time of maybe falling
or a time of maybe waiting
it is that kind of a place 

I have a great need to be there once again 

    T.R.E. (1995)

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   AUTUMN MORNING 

Winter is waiting
patient in the wings
old Sea is grey and moody
little time left
for making love outdoors
one more circle of seasons
has ticked away
sands through our fingers
grains of memories
clinging to the drying skin
beaches are the places
of old pirates
rusty cannons
whispers of the siren deep
and echoes of summer 

    T.R.E. (1996)

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  ONCE, YOU WERE SIXTEEN 

A childlike innocence
so appealing in its simplicity
worn with the purity and charm
of a Sunday school picnic dress 

An echo of youth
of Spring stirring in cool sweet grass
as green as her eyes and our days
before the ripening summer 

A love of life
of being a part of a new morning
old bikes with sandwiches and apples
and a Saturday full of possibilities 

A vulnerability
somehow still without armour
protected only by the unadorned honesty
of a pretty girl in bloom 

A sadness
carried with grace and good humour
warmed at her own fireside
in the company of her children 

A waiting
letting time mark the circle of her days
till the golds of autumn afternoons
lay soft beside the garden wall 

A romantic
a few cinderella dreams tucked away
where the world can’t touch
for when she needs them 

A sweetness
edged with enough spice
to command a quiet respect
along with the appreciative glances 

A special friendship
adding something beyond explanation
filling important spaces
with a measured caring 

    T.R.E. (1997)

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     LOOKING FOR GOD 

I suppose I’ve looked for God all my life
off and on
although not necessarily
with zeal and passion all the time
or even any of the time
but I did look
honest
off and on
didn’t find him though
or Him
or even Her
looked in the wrong places I s’pose
maybe even for the wrong entity
that’s probably why, now
as a person of advancing years
the only solution I can find is to BE God for a while
see what it feels like 

    T.R.E. (1997)

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   TOE POWER 

A small boy
stands at the edge of a morning rain-puddle
pigeon-toed
socks awry
staring at the reflection of scudding white
     against the uncertain blue
     down there in the depths 

a snail-tracked sleeve
goes swipe! swipe!
across a sniffle-snuffle nose
      while contemplating such godly things 

then...
one toe, hovers, feeling the power
     of wriggling an eddy
     carefully dismantling the image 

waits...
watches the stillness reassembling
does it all over again 

    T.R.E. (1997)

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    THURSDAY AFTERNOON 

It was only five minutes to five
busy late afternoon
workaday shopping centre car park
untidy man
losing touch with his pride
standing beside a tired car
bottle of cheap port
well on the way to empty
furtive looking
yet sadly defensive
watching me out of one sidelong eye
sucking on his bottle quickly
like some thirsty kid with a coke 

he hated himself
and he hated me catching him
but he didn't stop 

    T.R.E. (1997)

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   MICK IN TRANSIT 

Mick Pryor
middleaged now
terminal two heathrow
thinking...
thinking... 

you stumble around for a while
then
every so often
you fall over each other
but
mostly it’s just
sitting about
waiting...
waiting for something interesting to happen 

    T.R.E. (1997)

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