Category Archives: LoSoRhyMo

Today, instead of a rhyming stanza, here’s a list puzzle poem, which I couldn’t bear to keep to 14 lines:

4. A long way from the loneliest
Beatles song
Adam Driver movie
Route
Holmium
Paris
Sexy
End of the span
Lutetium
Maidens in paradise
Prime
Tungsten
Rhenium
Trombones
Sunset Strip
Mardi Gras

Added later: I’ve been told that as a puzzle this is just too hard. If you highlight the sentence after the next full stop, you will see a clue. Think numbers: One is the loneliest number. Big things happened in Paris ’68 etcetera. Lutetium is number 71 on the periodic table of elements. .

Today my body cried out for a verse of lamentation:

3. Coughin'
Ask how I am, and I'll say, Better
than I was, but hardly well.
My voice is rough, I hawk and splutter – 
so much sputum to expel.
A punchline pun my dad told often:
'Someone stop this bloody coffin!'
Prostate cancer saw him off,
not his endless smoker's cough.
I'm two years older than he lasted.
Minds my age see lack of breath
as one more harbinger of death,
but I know this is just a blasted,
blooming virus that's a pain –
I'll soon be tissue-free again.

Here’s the last of this year’s November verses, uploaded 80 minutes before the midnight deadline:

November verse 14: Graduation
Today is preschool graduation, 
milestone for the almost-fives.
Oh, after long anticipation
3 pm at last arrives 
and soon the graduands are singing
(also jostling, waving, grinning).
One by one they shake the hand 
of Teacher looking mighty grand
and take from her a bag of goodies:
artwork they themselves have made, 
certificate (they've made the grade),
and popcorn. Then, unleash the foodies:
trays of watermelon, grapes and cake,
and cake, and cupcakes, and more cake.

Today I parted with a lot of money. The least I can do is write a rhyme about the reason.

November verse 13: Today I got my hearing aids

They said that I was hard of hearing.
More like soft, the edges dull,
the high notes mostly disappearing,
sibilants all rendered null.
But soft or hard, that’s just pedantic:
friends were cross, sometimes frantic,
tired of shouting to be heard,
repeating every second word.
Today I got two electronic
gizmos, one in either ear,
enabling me at last to hear
what yesterday was ultrasonic.
People have stopped mumbling words
and all my streets are filled with birds.

Not as morbid as you might think:

November verse 12: On a dead goldfish
For Euan
Today we found our last fish floating
lifeless, limp, no longer gold,
a death so tiny, not worth noting.
True though, They shall grow not old.
Flight path fuel dump? Change of season?
Too much sun? Who knows the reason?
This is not Menindee Lakes
where millions died and my heart quakes.
Today I felt a tiny tremor,
rumble from a distant storm,
an inkling that some day the worm
will try my bones, from skull to femur.
May mine be one tiny death,
leave undisturbed the wide world's breath.

Someone needs to write about the wonders of swimming-pool saunas in Sydney’s Inner West. While we’re waiting, here’s my 14 lines’ worth.

November verse 10: In the sauna

Some days we sit and sweat in silence.
Others, it’s as if the heat
dissolves some barrier, gives licence.
Chat can flow and minds can meet,
perhaps with bonhomie and bluster,
pre-cooked jokes, a rant or just a
monologue on weed or booze,
or mild debates about the news.
Tattooed gym-boy, taxi driver,
yia-yia, rap star, tattooed youth,
an old guy with a missing tooth:
all these bodies, like Godiva
almost naked, shoot the breeze,
and no one’s sent to Coventry.