the ghost kangaroo of Gundaroo

Reposting this for Halloween: 

Come gather round the campfire mates,
and we’ll share a tale or two.
And I’ll tell you one that’s true and straight,
of the Gundaroo ghost kangaroo.

make up your damn mind

The dVerse Halloweeny Humans prompt was to write a poem with a Halloween flavour about a human attribute we hate.

Imagine a busy marketplace, and you’re in the line for a coffee, and some bastard up the front doesn’t know what they want…  signing impatiently you glance around, noting the length of the line, and a cowled figure at the back.

 

Just make up your mind!
There are people behind,
who have things to do
not just wait for you.
Sure, kill your own time,
but stop wasting mine!
‘Cos at the end of the line
is the guy with a scythe.

 

I really hate indecisiveness. It’s irritating at best, and at worst selfish when it abdicates responsibility to others, increasing their cognitive load and burdening them by making them do the thinking for you and be the grown-up.      

 

Good things only #1.

Taking a leaf out of Sean’s book, I’m going to try some (non-toxic) positivity posts to try to boost my mood (struggling a bit lately). So here are some good things from my day, to remind me:

1. Coffee with a friend for the first time in months.  So nice to talk to a person who I don’t live with and who doesn’t want something/need me to solve a problem for them!
2. A senior colleague I respect saying he learnt a lot from teaching with me, in front of the whole school.
3. Relaxing in the sun with my darling oinky girl, even though she wouldn’t share the seat with me. She did bite me on the bum, but not hard, so I’m interpreting as affection.

shower power

Great responsibility belongs
to those who have great power,
and, so, likewise small responsibilities
must therefore come with my small powers.
So as (it seems) none but I can see the mould,
it falls to me (as always) to clean the shower.

compost mentis

The decades have collapsed in on themselves,
those strata of experience, knowledge, skills,
compacted down
into a thick amorphous layer of decay
in which malice and mistrust have sprouted
feeding on the last remnants of thought
their clarity turned to caustic white sap
twisting about themselves for support
tangled, twining and thickening
into a thicket impermeable to reason,
leaving me thorn-gauged and stung
at each attempt to approach.

a slurry of ashes

The guardianship application says Mr…
Not Dr…

I could ask for it to be corrected.
But why bother?

He doesn’t remember he held that title.

Alcohol didn’t feed the flame of his intelligence.
It doused it,
leaving nothing but a pale slurry of ashes.

 

A quadrille for the dVerse “ashes to ashes” prompt: 44 words exactly, including the word ash or a variation.

riding the waves

The pain wakes me,
swelling and rolling through me,
and then passing, as if it never was.

But another swell comes.
And another.

spitting it out

I am angry.

I am angry because…

stacking stones / talking to Samuel

It is not, so much,
the loss of coffee with friends,
or family visits,
that is isolating.
Rather it is the loss of chance encounters,
a conversation with someone stacking stones –
that unexpected realisation of another’s humanity,
that reminds us of our own.

bronze bollocks

I’m a mouthy little specimen,
with pheromone breath enticing,
come, crawl up my labellum,
to my anther so inviting.
Let my petals guide your flight,
there’s just two, but sepals aid,
come on, come in, don’t fight,
the stigma’s worth the pollen paid.