Unique

Some people say fairly unique

or quite unique or even very unique,

but unique must not be made meek

with modifiers, it must be hard as teak;

no self-respecting Greek

would dare to a Roman speak

with unicus weakened by a reek-

ing Latin qualifier; mise en pratique

or not, he'd like as punch him in the beak

for speaking Latin like a freak;

yet up-the-creek English speakers wreak

havoc on unique and make it leak

by sneaking in weasel words that shriek

of their willingness to make oblique

unique’s upright mystique,

forcing unique to eke

out its days on a desert plain and not on a mountain peak.

To my wife, Celia

To my wife, Celia

Celia,

Haven’t you got a dressing gown big enough

to wipe your wet hands on that you need to

wipe them on my trousers? My old trousers.

Your head is warm on my knees. Not many

poems have the word Celia in them, so

Google tells me, though there are a number of

poets called Celia: Celia Dropkin, Celia Thaxter,

Celia de Fréine, to name only a few – maybe there

are only a few. It’s always a surprise to find

someone called Celia. It’s like greeting a sister

who just happens to be called by the same name.

I haven’t read any of the poets above, though

perhaps it’s time to start. Once you’ve

finished wiping your hand on my

old, worn, trousers. The ones I still like to wear.

Any Day Now

Any day now I could leave this world, and the

six mixed jugs on top of the cupboard –

four grey, or greyish, two brown, or somewhat brown;

the moneybox on the fridge in the form of a

Buckingham Palace guard, his insides

filled with ten cent pieces for baking blind;

the Kandinsky print we picked up for next to nothing

in a now-ceased-from-business Palmerston junk shop;

the cat clock, with twelve cats of

different breeds whose mewing we had to

muzzle before it drove us cat batty, miaow manic;

the cat in the sun-faded picture beneath who bears an

impressive resemblance to one of several felines with 

whom we've shared our lives, the one dubbed

Skeeter, inexplicably, by our youngest child.

Any day now this could be the last morning of

hay fever, difficulty of focus, the

older dog snoring well within earshot,

sudden awareness of the clock ticking.

Any day now this could be my last

yellow and blue-gray sunrise, that,

alternating with its fellows, Striking Red,

Mostly Cloudy, Hidden by Drizzle,

has arisen gratis to amaze again

my thought-I-was-accustomed eyes.

Dinosaurs...are bores

Dinosaurs....are bores

Written in 1993 as a piece for Column 8, the weekly column I wrote for the Star Midweeker, a freebie paper that has been published in Dunedin for many years now. This version (which I think varies slightly from the original) was sent to the School Journal, who felt it was ‘too old’ for their readers...   Reading it now, it has some awkward moments, but perhaps could be salvageable.

I’ve had enough of dinosaurs,

Especially Hadrosaurs.

Dinos must rank, I think, as the

All-time greatest bores.

Who cares about some fifty tonnes of

Hefty Brontosaurus

Shoving all his weight around and asking:

‘Don’t you adore us?’

Who wants to meet and greet some

Rampant Iguanodon,

Marketing his lizard look

Until I feel quite put upon.

Who gives a hoot about a coot called

Rex Tyrannosaurus,

And whether on his nastier days he’d

Gouge and rip and gore us?

Euparkeria, Hypsilophodon, your

Names trip off my tongue –

NOT!

Triceratops, Coelophysis, your

Praises they ain’t sung.

Compsognathus, Dimorphodon, you

Thought you ruled the land;

You missing links, you’re all extinct –  I

Wish you all were banned.

You poor deficient dinosaurs, you

Denizens long gone.

Scarce good it did you, lumpy brutes, being

Weighed up by the tonne.

Go back where you belonged, you lot, in your

Dim Cretaceous time,

And let me try and end this rot with a

Non-Jurassic rhyme.