My Life – Purchasing Music

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Teenager buys record
pulls on big headphones to listen to music
so parents won’t complain about the noise.
Glue a penny to the tone arm to combat scratch damage.

Twenty-something – popping 8-Tracks
into the car stereo, (use a guitar pick
to shim it when it gets loose). The inevitable
CLUNK in the middle of your favourite song.

Time rocks on and the cassettes,
never in their cases, slither across the car floor.
“Pass me a Bic pen, the tape’s too loose.”
You’ve just about replaced your whole music library when…

Compact Disc – Stick it in a portable CD player and
plug in your earbuds. Jewel case splinters, ‘liner notes’
you need a magnifying glass to read, and one thumb
print and the music stops.

MP3 – compress that music so you can fit thousands of songs
on a postage stamp. Quantity over quality?
Perfect for pod-people, but at least the cost
of CDs goes down.

Flashback. Back to headphones. Back to vinyl. Is this the end?
Am I back in time listening to records again. Why
didn’t I keep those records…

Pono? What’s Pono?
Here we go again.
How many times do I have to buy the White Album?

#176

I Will Have Colour

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I love colour.
Lots of colour.
Reds that drip rich and round
like drops of blood or plush
like the velvet linings of wooden
boxes filled with love and
secrets. Blue like the soft Chinook
arch promise, the pool of indigo ink
in the sky that thins royally
around the hard white stars, or
turquoise – jealous and sad
in eqal parts – green and blue.
Yellow, the tart lemony show off
and her sister, orange, older and wiser
and less prone to manic happiness.
Green, like a Gaian Goddess, complex
with shades and depths beyond profound,
from giggling sprouts of tender spring
to ancient bough breathing eternal shade.
Purple, oh, purple, colour of kings, that
blooms in bruises and other hidden places.
How the violets love to bathe in your glory.
Colour.
I will have colour.

#172

 

A New ‘New Beginning’

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New beginnings are seductive dictators.
Bold and confident, they dangle promises like carrots
before our soft and pouting muzzles.
If we will just stick to the plan we will achieve that Nirvana,
that ‘one day’ that has eluded us for decades, that end
of the rainbow where everything falls into place.
But new beginnings are notorious for not factoring
inertia into their calculations.
Climbing up the hill is hard work.
Rolling down it is so much more fun.
New beginnings still whisper their siren song,
but I have thrown off the dictator. I will revel
in the means rather than the ends.
Henceforth all my new beginnings will have one thing in common.
They will all be fun.

#171

Lizard Lessons

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Little lizard, still as stone,
tell me where your tail has gone.
Did you forget to put it on
Or did some bully steal it?

I know you can grow another
But let’s be honest with each other
Just thinking of it makes me shudder
and I can almost feel it.

But you don’t seem to care at all,
what future mayhem might befall
lying on that sunny wall,
or skittering through the grass.

Zenlike, you take it in your stride
though you’ve lost most of your backside
I’ll remember next time life decides
to bite me in the ass.

#169

The Wisdom of the Adages

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Birds of a feather flock together but
the early bird gets the worm unless
the worm turns because
one good turn deserves another.
Leave no stone unturned among the
sticks and stones that break no bones whether you
have a bone to pick or not.
Make no bones about it, it’s an ill wind
that blows no good until your good
is better and your better is best because
the best things in life are free.

#168

I Choose

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I choose how my time will pass,
forward, backward, slow or fast.
I decide which words to heed,
the life I lead, and what I need.

You choose which road you will tread
which words you will leave unsaid.
You decide how you react
when attacked by random facts.

We choose, every day we live,
what to withhold to what to give.
We choose what we know is true.
I choose you, I choose you.

#167