Being Me
I’m easy to ignore
if you want a quiet life.
I’m an autodidact bore
whose pedantry means strife,
I scorn received views,
an opportunist of ideas.
Arguments I always lose
with my temper, if I’m teased.
But afterwords I am
ashamed for being such a half-
wit. Yet even the door I slam
won’t close, and I can hear them laugh.
In Memory of M. David
What does an elderly flaneur do
when he finds he can’t walk anymore?
He gets himself a gentleman’s bike.
I met him on the Rue de Soleil
trying to remount after falling off
when raising his hat to a lady
he could strangle with bicycle clips.
A woman who didn’t acknowledge him.
He stilted with his cane on saddle,
and I gave him a push, and wondered,
as he descended past the church,
how was he ever going to stop?
Vexed Answers
This morning, I forgot to complain
about passing events, the despair
of dreams, what is in the newspaper,
the wrong weather forecast. I don’t blame
anyone, even myself. Elsewhere
the imperfections of life remain
inconstant as the seasons. I’ve heard
the voice of mock turtles in the land.
‘My sister, life’, I say, and wake her
with a smile. ‘I think I’m going sane.
I’ve dressed myself in the certainties
every day. The granted. Grant’s a word
from the past that’s grown too big for me.
Hesitations I can understand.
They hold the joy of what happens next.’
I’m sure you’re right. What about breakfast?’
Reality Check
A lizard
spiralled
down the
inside leg
of my trousers
and I
didn’t feel it.
It was just
an idea.
A Sighting
From the Steps of St Saturin
At the fall of night
on the parapet
of the belvedere
your trim silhouette
surprises me, seen
gliding along, clean-
cut without a care
in the world.
Well met
out of mind and sight,
you discreetly gleam
in the dying light,
golden and serene,
and walking on air,
about to take flight.
On Wearing your own Pajamas
Nobody has prepared you for the pleasure
of getting back into your own pajamas
after a lapsus in a hospital gown.
And you feel better. There is balm on you
when you put them on after a steaming bath.
What’s said about illness is you’re not yourself.
That’s how you feel. And it is true the softness
of one’s own down is absent. You have been plucked.
The rawness is nakedness, false warmth
made shameful. Goose pimples are at least your own.
Now clothed in the habitual, you can face
life in your accustomed skin. And what’s threadbare
is worn but not wasted. The self falls asleep
and wakes up from bad dreams which didn’t happen.