Robert Verdon, #289, morning all

morning!

plot of splayed rhubarb stems

inviting as loose teeth

choked by fecund weeds from the Apocalypse

the trees when I skulk out

earlier than any bird

are like cockroaches surprised

with nowhere to go

gummy frost on the tin roofs

dew on the twisted lintel

morning all!

married these days to a civilised addiction

grey nights and red eyes

empty bottles readied for the bin

heart tapping like drumsticks on a rubber pad

distant jazz band tenor sax clarinet electric violin

rushing high as a B-29

swing but the saddest I’ve ever heard

sad as an old fart on the dole

whose only challenge is pitching used toilet rolls

into the wastepaper basket from the throne

during the long hours of constipation

and similar dark nights of the soul

cows eating blood and bone

through a sebaceous hole in the fence

sheet-metal sky bright

as Port Kembla at nictitating night

still the faint throttling whiff of last night’s shit-cart

hell is walking under the blue gums

still feeling four

thank God for the pale green thumb

and the as-yet unpeopled moon

(once Robert Heinlein had 7UP erect a sign on it)

when you’ve got no money there’s always Nature

Jimmy has got the feather-duster again

hear him howl

his father is tall and beefy and his

mother built like a Sumo wrestler

I return to my orthodontic gardening

happy to be bringing life out of death

feel a bit like Jesus, that other child of the sixties

startling as a water-stained hull at the end of our road

off to Lethe on a Lambretta

‛potting on’, as Dad used to put it, a nubile —

well, let’s say, petunia —

winking beadily at the brim.