The phone call.

Rusty in lockdown with a sharp knife.

Rusty video-called from Lizard Bend Idaho.

I said: Hi Rusty. He said: Back at ya.

I said What goes Rusty and he said America has gone to shit since the feds decided to protect Trump rather than shoot the fucker. If the virus don't get us Trump will.

I said that it goes like that here with Johnson.

We both said "We're fucked" at the same time. We are too old to say Jinx.

Talking of fucking, I said, talking of fucking, how is Babs.

He said: Loving her is like loving a very sharp knife with a mind of it's own.

I said: You could leave her Rusty.

He said: Never turn your back on a very sharp knife.

Blunt but true.

Dead nurse.

She is gone, dead. Died,
not in the line of masked
and gloved duty
but in Poundland
shocked mortally shocked
her box of stale Matchmakers
two pounds
not one

And the sudden heart stopping realisation
that Tesco was better value

and none of the cashiers
were trained in first aid.

Panty liners. A poem:

:

She said: write me a poem
write about panty liners
I said: Nothing rhymes with that.

She said: Nothing rhymes with shit
but you manage it.

I wiped my quill on a strange
but absorbent thing.

Obsequiously.

Scarves, Masks and Sestra Moja.

Let's face it, Coronavirus is going to be with us for some considerable time. Face masks will become automatically worn, rather like seatbelts, and accepted.

Sestra Moja normally creates wonderful dresses, I'll be buying one for the muse if she will allow me to, but is making mask/scarves in the same fabrics as her clothes. A friend showed me her green number a couple of weeks ago, I asked if I could have a blue one, It arrived a few days later.



It is wonderful, comfortable and can transform me from Lawrence of Arabia to boho poet in seconds. There is a pouch in the mask bit for extra material or small marsupials. Oh, and it is washable.

It will be my constant accessory from now on.

https://www.instagram.com/sestramoja/?hl=en

The Tin Lodes, Andy Brown and Marc Woodward. Oh, and the magic of poetry.

This arrived in the mail today:

Then I needed to drive a friend to her home to sort some stuff out. I took the book with me. when she saw it she said: 'Good, you have a book'. Meaning that she knew she could take her time, no pressure, I was happy sitting in the car listening to Dylan and reading something keenly anticipated.

The Tin Lodes is a delightful book, the authorship of each poem is unknown but that very quickly becomes irrelevant, here are two minds in tune, they know each other well, they must. They know their river too.

By the time I had got to page 25 I put the book down, ripped open a CD cover on which to write notes of a memory from years ago, when anchored in the lower reaches of the Deben late one moonlit night waiting for the tide to take us over the notorious bar and out to sea. The water surrounding the boat became alive with small fluorescent fireworks; ragworm dancing at the surface, something I had never seen before and have never witnessed since.

The power of good poetry to invoke memory.

A wonderful book.

The colour of her eyes.

She said: Stop it, you are staring at me.

It is creepy.

I thought: I am memorising your eyes so that when you accuse me of not knowing what colour they are

I can tell you with absolute certainty

and hope to mend whatever it is that is broken.

Bad B Bop in the hood.

Last week a group of young people arrived outside and started dancing in the street. I went out and asked them what it was all about.

I was told that they were a bunch of dancers, who, during lock-down, were putting together a video. The asked if they could film outside the house.

You bet.

I watched from the safety of the first floor balcony. I was impressed by the hand sanitiser being used constantly, the respect the showed and the burst of joy that they brought into the day.

Coronavirus tales.




This is the result: