LOL!

Hours after
my dad had died
my mum let
everyone know
of his passing—
by messaging
her entire
phonebook—
David’s Dead LOL,
not realising that
the initialism of LOL
was far more
commonly associated
with laughing out loud,
not lots of love
and I couldn’t help
but laugh a little then,
knowing that
the old man would
have seen the funny
side of it too
and looking back,
it’s amazing that there
was some laughter
even on that day,
or that it would
return again—
like a tiny miracle,
to laugh in the ugly
fucking face of it all.

Older.

As the kids
tell me
who to listen to
and who to read,
as that too passes
as fleetingly as
a legal disclaimer,
as the hairs grey,
the crow’s feet
settle in and
The Youngblood
whispers sellout
in my ear—
part of me smiles,
glad that I’ve reached
a point where
I finally feel too old
to care about a lot—
through loss,
repetition and time,
but as she wanders
across the bar,
sits down next to me,
with a tender smile—
I smile back
with the part of me
that knows
that it’s still not
too late to bloom.

Golf and Sex.

My friend was no golfer
and I’d never played,
yet after we’d got really high,
I’d agreed to play some golf.

Standing on the unnatural
looking, but kosher green grass,
I’d then placed the golf ball on
the tee and drew back the club,
as I remembered once hearing
that golf and sex were about
the only two things in life that
you could enjoy in life without
being good at either.

And as my club had then sailed
up into the air, I laughed—
thinking that they
were right about golf and sex,
before I picked my club back up,
my mind envisioning a hole in one,
even if I was still just pretending
to know what I was doing.