Your ink is flowing well, Max. I too loved Disposals - and this one Cheap:
I knew a man like this, only drugs got him. (Jarrah Jack was his moniker.)
Homeless really, he bummed from commune to commune and then brought fresh
fruit in a bag to the suburbs to sell.
Andrew
On 13 November 2014 08:28, Bill Wootton <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> Congrats, Max, especially for Disposals, well worth redipping into. For
> its range, it's acceptance.
>
> Bill
>
>
> > On 13 Nov 2014, at 2:23 am, Max Richards <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> >
> > My thanks to Anny for posting me twice on Halvard's blogspot -
> >
> > http://halvard-johnson.blogspot.it/2014/11/max-richards_7.html
> >
> > and the second is a piece I'd otherwise have sent this week to poetryetc
> - she remarks:
> >
> > I had to publish your other Seattle poem on the Day of the Dead on
> another page:
> >
> > http://halvard-johnson.blogspot.it/2014/11/max-richards.html
> >
> > Thanks again, Anny and behind her, Halvard.
> >
> > Cheap
> >
> > My frugal friend Norman
> > resolved to live like Thoreau
> > though employed where I was,
> > both on decent salaries.
> >
> > Norman taught inter alia
> > American literature,
> > including Walden,
> > sometimes with me.
> >
> > He'd bring me some trifle
> > by Cummings or Williams -
> > now isn't that fine!
> > Mostly read Victorians,
> >
> > the more forgotten
> > the better for him.
> > Their plots were passed
> > on in any chat with him.
> >
> > He deplored how little
> > we asked of students.
> > Meeting a new bunch
> > one year he said:
> >
> > for me please write
> > a short essay each week.
> > Most of his students
> > transferred to me.
> >
> > Some also preferred
> > chairs and a table
> > to the benches he made
> > from scrap planks of wood
> >
> > on which he served acrid
> > tea in mugs from op-shops.
> > His weatherboard cottage
> > was a short bike ride away.
> >
> > Every room was full of books,
> > with many underfoot.
> > Front and back, grass grew long
> > around his self-sown trees.
> >
> > It was wild! He looked wild,
> > gleaming through his beard.
> > His clothes were from charity
> > shops, ill-fitting and worn.
> >
> > A day came when he confided:
> > 'I now buy op-shop underpants,
> > very cheap.' Only he could wear
> > dead men's undergarments.
> >
> > What he didn't spend
> > he made sure good causes got,
> > confidentially. He did let on
> > he'd bought land -
> >
> > acres not farmable
> > down Gippsland way,
> > a train trip and a bike ride.
> > He wanted it reforested,
> >
> > trees no-one would harvest.
> > As he aged he visited them
> > seldom. Last chat we had
> > he said the farmer next door
> >
> > had taken the land off
> > his hands, very cheap.
> > Privately I called him
> > 'our cut-price Thoreau'.
> >
> > Tread lightly - that he did.
> > I nurtured his wedding gift,
> > a gum-tree sapling
> > in an old tin, but it died.
>
--
Andrew
http://hispirits.blogspot.com/
'Undercover of Lightness'
http://walleahpress.com.au/recent-publications.html
'Shikibu Shuffle'
http://abovegroundpress.blogspot.com.au/2012/03/new-from-aboveground-press-shikibu.html
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