Calendar: There’s trickery afoot…

It's just around the corner... beware the pranksters on April 1!

April Fool’s Day can be traced back to the 16th Century when the Gregorian calendar first came into place. Before that time, the new year was celebrated at the end of March with a two week celebration ending on April first. Once the new calendar came in, those who still celebrated the old calendar were thought of as ignorant, uneducated fools, and so the April Fool was born.

Get into the spirit of this day of trickery by trying some of these pranks on your unsuspecting family, friends and children. Just make sure you get to it before the kids do. Happy tricking!

TRICKS FOR THE KIDS…

Short Sleep – Kids, it means you have to remake the bed (ugh!), but it’s worth the uncomfortable squirm when Mum or Dad try to get in for a good night’s sleep! Simply remake their bed with one sheet only. Tuck it into the top of the bed then smooth it down and fold it back onto itself as though mimicking a top sheet. Cover with a blanket or quilt. Wait for the yelling!

Suspect Sneeze – Wet your hand with water, pretend to sneeze, and shake the water on someone when they aren’t looking. Eww!

Sky High – Next time you’re outside with your friends, look up and point at the sky and talk amongst yourselves nervously. Watch the reaction of people around you!

Grubby Apple – Make a deep hole in an apple with a pencil. Insert a gummy worm or other fake critter you can find. Leave it in the fruit bowl and it may give Mum a fright!

Sweet and Savory – Switch the sugar in the sugar bowl for some salt. Next time Dad puts a teaspoon of sweetener in his coffee, the joke will be on him!

Undies on Parade – With a needle and thread (maybe with Mum’s help), sew the edges of Dad’s underpants together. Only a few loose stitches will do. Neatly fold them back in his drawer and watch his face when he tries to bite them apart with his teeth!

TRICKS FOR MUM AND DAD...

Off Milk – Add a few drops of green food colouring to milk. When the kids pour it onto their cereal, watch them gag!

Switcheroo – When the kids are fast asleep (check they are in a deep sleep), gather them up and swap them into each others’ beds. They will wake up not knowing where they are!

Shonky Socks – Stuff tissues or toilet paper into the toes of the kids’ socks and watch them squirm trying to get dressed for school.

Sweet Meal – This sneaky dinner will fool your children for an instant, but as they tuck in wholeheartedly, alas . . . the joke will be on mum! For the 'meat', fold desiccated coconut into melted chocolate and shape into little meatballs. Drizzle these with 'spaghetti sauce' – puréed strawberries, sweetened with some honey. For 'potato', scoop vanilla ice cream onto the plates at the very last minute. Hunt for round, green candies to pass for 'peas'.

Potato Cakes – Watch the kids recoil in horror when they taste these 'sweet' cupcakes – they are really mini (but delicious) shepherd's pies! Line a cupcake tin with paper pattypans and fill half-way with warm shepherd’s pie mince (Google a recipe if you don’t have your own favourite). Mash cooked potatoes, then whip them to a smooth consistency with lots of milk, some cream cheese and a pair of electric beaters. Divide the mash into three bowls and tint with food colouring. Pipe the soft mash on top of each 'cupcake' and dust with a few sprinkles. Tell the kids they can have cupcakes for dinner!

First published, in part, on the beijingkids website.

Older Boyfriend’s Room

The carpet has pigmentation problems, though I suppose the reason is dirt. Dirt that doesn't want to relax and come away. Stubborn dirt. Stains.
There's thirty years in the books, and they randomly shuffle on the shelves, with six next to twenty three and ten. And there's books that still grow with prose, with their spines peeling and their fronts marked with coffee by a ring.
Half the carpet is covered in desk; and it will refuse to move, for it's been around, and it wants to settle with its beeswax coat and live peacefully, stuffed with treasures in its brass-labelled drawers. A chair sits poshly in its mouth, lazing backwards and looking glamorous with i's green studded padding. They fit together in some forgotten time.
On the walls there are mismatched patchwork depictions, unframed and swelling over blutac and snarling at the edges, and one there - by the globe on a stick, gone dusty at the Antarctic - unframed too but bumpy with real oil, and the spatula of a paintbrush.
There's no knowing what the drawers have digested, those drawers that are jammed closed and sniggering.
It's a singular mystery.


Carrying Words

He looks like a rat.
A rat with glasses and a twitching nose.
Glasses that gleam like the shines in the eye of a rodent at night.
The night rat that is only sometimes.
Sometimes not.


Ocean

Wet Universe comes down and flows through me; big and loving are its cupping hands.

Wet Universe lays about the feet of mountains and ebbs its loving arms into an entire embrace.

Wet Universe lays around the feet of mountains and drowns love in its arms.

Wet Universe lays at the base of mountains and feels me up with its licking until I am bigger than the mountains.

Wet Universe lays at the base of mountains and feels me up with its licking until I am bigger than galaxies.

Wet Universe lays at the base of mountains and feels me up with its licking until I have galaxies inside me.

I can finally see the ocean, when it touches me.

I can no longer be afraid of the ocean, when it touches me.

When I touch it, I become water.

To lay in the ocean is to float in space.


Chapel

There is a house full of God on the hill.

A house full of God inhales faithful voice with roses on its breath.

It presses them together
And nods its steeple over the vows,
The pews toying with the relatives;
The aisle rolling out its tongue
And whispering Godliness in their ears.


Service Station

A breath on the throat of the highway; to gather food for the brain and the body of your carriage.


Library

I pull out the library's teeth silently, but oh! how much history are in those teeth!


City

To feel hunger in the mind is to be away from the city.

Vintage: Poetry

I'm not sure how old these poems are - I would have been no more than 20 at the time. They were written as part of a writing course. Digging into the past here!!

Poems and Pesto

There's green frog poo
In a bowl on the table,
And the garlic comes
Stinging my nose.

I hear poems in my ear
And the fire is near,
Crackling and warming
My toes.

I can't think nor can see,
For what is that poo
That sits in the bowl
And glows in the hue
Of the fire in the grate,
And the voices trailing
Words into the warmth
That laces the room.

It comes towards me,
The bowl,
On the wings of the
Hand that made it.
There is a smile
And a try some
And a large chunk of bread,
And I pause from my
Listening
To delve in the poo.

It hits my tongue and
It stings it some;
Then zangs in the place
Where my tastebuds fly.

Exquisite;
It melts and becomes
Synonymous with flavour,
And the heat of
Good poetry
And people by the fire.


Japanese Haiku (5-7-5)

I can see you there
In the pinholes in the sky
Where Heaven shines through.

Look down at me now
And wave through the silver cord
At me here, waiting.

***

There's frost on the bite
Of the dog on the corner
When teeth impale skin.

There's a boot tucked in
Where a bumhole used to be
On the frosty dog.

***

I watch a young cat
Tear the throat from a lizard
And spit out feathers.

I pet the young puss
And take him to the tanner.
I wear a cat hat.


Concrete Poem

Christmas
Christ Mass
Cri Mass!
Christ Ma...
Mass Christ
Christ! Mass!
Cri...
Christ
Christ
Christ.
Is Christmas.


Daybreak

They see me
From the rooftops
With my firy red hair
And hot temper.
They scurry
Like rats to hang out their
Socks
To flash me their bodies,
To scald and make brown,
But soon old too soon.
They crack eggs
In the pan
When they hear I'm
On my way,
And salute me in the
Shower
With a yawn,
Or a head-duck under the covers,
Cause they don't want to know.
But I sigh and still
Continue to make
My arrival
Most beautiful.


Nu plastik fan fare red...

On the legs that keep going
Are the Nu plastik
Red boots,
That catch in the light
And make white squiggles
In the creases.

There are eyes on the boots
From the bedroom door
Peeping,
Saying "Beautiful love!
I knew we'd do right!
Fan fare red!"

The red boots are
Squeaking
And sucking lollypop legs.
They twirl
And kick compliments
Straight out the door.
"They pinch!" from the tacks
Jammed in at the back,
Crudely and horrid,
Not a shoe-maker's shoe.

The peeping eyes twitch
Under the sweat of their brow,
like the Nu plastik red boots
Salivating over knee.
"Get out of my way!"
And they clonk on the tiles
By the front door,
Which opens it's mouth
And swallows the Nu red boots
Into the night.

The eyes think of the nightclubs
On-heat with wet dancing.
They think of the squelching
Pink sweat in those boots.
They think of the hunger of
Plastik that melts;
The Nu Plastic that devours
When you sweat.


The Street

It stretches and
The Night swallows it by the newstand;
There where the light
Dims just past the corner.
It is straight and wide,
And there are lights winking
On its curbs,
Steady in the mouth of the Night.
Ready and watchful
Is the light.

There are clops echoing on its curbs
From the soles of shoes,
And they pause
By the dim of the newstand.
No breath.
And they wait.

With a scream,
The mouth of the Night
Spits out its prey
And it lands with a skid
And a red star in its back,
Face down on the curb
'Neath the bowed head of the street light.

A clop;
A clop;
An echo from the soul,
The Night sucks
And drags its prey right past the newstand;
Leaving pretty red trails
Leading into the bowels
Where light cannot stay.

There is a smear 'neath the street light.
And a wind comes
And dries it brown to the cracks;
Where it grinds into blacks
That match the colour
Of the Night.

And the Night
Licks its mouth clean.


Some Poem Titles

Shirley Temple in Plastic
Disco in the Torchlight
We Got the Pool Put In
Spelling Sugar
First Kissing
Losing Elvis Presley
Childbirth
Putting my Child Out With the Washing
Meeting Him
There's a Novel in My Head
Taking Mother
Jumping
To Become a Frog
Poems and Pesto


One Column

What is it you are doing
Floating in the steam
Of the coffee?
I can see the waver
Of whiskey,
Like heat.
And when will
The fence mend itself
Hole-less?
What if the world were rid
Of coffee-stained
Whiskey,
And bones
That won't care
For a fence?


Repetitive Consonent

Be Be Be
Be my Babeee
Blubber Baby Blubber
Come and baby me.

Blubber, blunder, chunder,
Scream in the thunder,
Bicker, bawl
And blow me under.
Be bold and brawdy
And suck your thumb,
Slide around in the blankets
And blow bubbles from
Your bum.

Be Be Be
Be my Babeee
Blubber Baby Blubber
Come and baby me.


Two Column

I'm tossing
Life to idleness,
And turning
Deafness to
The blind.
For who can
See sufference
Through the seething
Fires of anger,
Cracking eggs
In the pan
And pinning whites to the line,
Because man
Must be fed,
And whites must be white.


Phrase Repetition

I wait in a hole.
Is there reason
Or none?
I have waited with wings flapping listless
And spent;
To hover;
In a hole.
To hope.

To hope is to
Live in the dark in a hole.
No light to hint
That other than
Silence.

A scurry of rat
in the cold waiting heart;
In the cold in a hole,
When noise is heard
Yet not hint enough.

I can wait and hear.
But the blackness is blinding
In a hole.


Ballad (aabb form)

There is a lover in the window with his hands upon the sill,
And a body bare and dreaming, hair spread and breathing still,
A heavy air sits in his chest and he finds it hard to breath,
He turns to her and sees her face, and knows it's time to leave.


Dactyls (beat 1 2 2, 1 2 2)

Wash the wash, make the make
Shine the trees, press the rake,
Go to work on the house,
Have a drink! Feed your spouse!
Breed the kids in a cage,
Haul them off with your rage;
Bring them in from the cold,
Make a scene, don't be told;
Hate the life willfully,
Bring it down skillfully;
Make the choice for the life,
Preciously, housebound wife;
Wash the wash, make the make,
Live asleep, dream awake.


Limerick

To fart in the bed is hysterical,
But too hard and you'll blow out a ventricle,
So keep your bum slack,
Put a reed up your crack,
And make noises a little more sociable.


Six Stanza Poem

I can sing with notes upon my head
That float wordlessly from mouth,
And take the air quite by surprise
By their beauty and silence of sound.
For I cannot sing when the sound is heard,
Only the voice of illustrous beauty in my mind.


Blues

I got a song in my head and it just won't let me go,
It's got it's fingers in my head and it just won't let me go,
I can feel it up in there and I want to let it blow.

There's a voice in my blood and it's swimmin round my veins,
Yeah there's a voice and it wants to bust right out my veins,
It makes me feel so blue, that I'm crying when it rains.

So I take up my head and I holler till I sing,
Oh I open my head and it feels that I can sing,
An it comes from my blood and it means most every thing.

This piece is from 1991...

If you hadn’t given me your doona, it would have been easier. Doonas are relatively personal things. Especially when two people share them. And share each other under them. And you were so soft and quiet. Just like a doona. If you laid on top of me, you blocked out the noise and made me warm. You even had whiskers sticking out of your face like the feathers in a doona. You were a doona. Yet you were as skinny as a rake.

If I’d have bought my own doona, I wouldn’t have had to borrow yours. I would have been doona-independent. Doonas are expensive things too. An old sweat shirt - I could always have kept that; you probably wouldn’t have missed it. But a doona - you always have to return a doona because it invariably cost a lot, and it holds memories and smells like them. Memories hide in smells. And when you no longer want the memories, you want to get rid of the smell.

So I got rid of you by giving back the doona. And you hated me for it. I guess you thought you could hang onto me with the doona. I’m trying not to feel guilty that I might have hurt you. Most people don’t get hurt by the return of a doona, but you did. I’m sorry. I meant to return doona, not a sword.

Read more of my vintage writings under the "Vintage:" headings.

Vintage: Darkness is not black

This piece is from 1992...

Darkness is not black.

Not in the real world. It is grey and mottled and filled with fathoms and objects in shadow from the light. Some light. There must be some in order for the shadows to be cast. No light without darkness. No sound without quiet.

When I was a child, the dark was filled with colour. Green trolls in scarlet capes with purple under-bellies lay snuck and quiet under my bed, and wrapped their knolly fists around the bed legs, to shake and rattle just as I was falling to sleep. Jolt! the bed would rattle and my eyelids would fly apart to catch nothing but the darkness and the trolls would snigger marvellously. The marvellous trolls.

When the trolls were ever quiet, that would be the time I'd see the sparks. Little spits of left-over colour like electricity putting away at the end of a severed wire. Sometimes the sparks would dance together and make a campfire in mid-air and all around it the grey room would become darker and darker, until the brightness of the colours was unbearable and all that you could see would be the light. So bright, shifting like sand; moving apart so that soon you could be seeing inside it. Inside the light like a doorway to another dimension; and inside the light there came orange. Like linoleum benchtops. Orange vinyl. Smooth and formless. Orange vinyl with little black dots swimming all over it, as though they too would break away the orange to show you what lies beyond an orange linoleum dimension. Orange linoleum in the dark.

Eyes can do amazing things for you, with their vision. I would sometimes play with my vision during the day. Dissecting clouds. Staring and staring until my retinas were numb and the clouds were pulling apart like porridge. If I stared hard enough, I could begin to see through the clouds, through the blue and beyond to the black and its pin-holes where heaven shows through. There I would see satellites spinning in their orbit, reflecting the light of the planets like baubles on a Christmas tree. There would be no sound. Just a thickening silence. The kind of silence that hurts the ears because they're straining too hard. And then I'd realise that I'd been dribbling everywhere because my mouth was overflowing with un-swallowed saliva, and had gone slack at the joint where my jaw meets my skull, and it creaks to get it moving again - snapping with miniscule pockets of oxygen that the blood carries especially to parts of the body that don't move for some time, nudging.

I haven’t seen all these things since I was a child; though I’m always fearful I will. Especially the things that might appear in the darkness. The light is my friend. It’s warm and cushiony. It evaporates dark corners and puts sparkles on shiny edges and wet. The light tickles my insides when it comes in with my breath. Such a lovely thing to breathe, is the light. Dark is not warm; and it’s not really cold, either. It just cloaks things. It cloaks the green troll in his scarlet cape and purple underbelly. As though he could make me more fearful by being unseen. As though his scarlet cape and purple underbelly are a mockery because I’ll never be able to see them; the dark sucks away the colour. He may very well be wearing sexy knickers and I’ll never know. He could look like anything I want him to look like, because I’ll never know. He could be a cherub. But cherubs don’t shake bed posts with their knolly fists. Cherubs lay their wings over the side of your face to warm it while you settle down to sleep. To warm it and feel safe. Cherubs are the safety above and trolls are the terror below.

There are many more things in this world to terrorize me than trolls and their sexy knickers. But when I look through the window in order to see them, I instead see birds powering like outboard motors into the palm trees. They’ve been raiding the lawn for worms again. They see me looking at them and flee. They think I’ll mind but I don’t. They can have as many worms as they want because I don’t like worms. Once my brother put some down my singlet and I screamed from the veins in my feet. So I’ve never once liked them since. It’s not their fault, I know. It’s probably my brother’s. But that’s what brothers are there for, I suppose. To scare the living crap out of you every now and again. Maybe he once hid under my bed. And shook the bed posts.

Read more of my vintage writings under the "Vintage:" headings.