Mr Mascellani's Musings

Towards The End Of Another Double Shift

Want now collapse in body heap
Sleepy time beddy byes tired me
Burger flip sweat hell tired
double vision double cheeseburgers double shift
double blisters on my feet sore pain hurt tired
Clock now go double slow
Now in land of pronoun grammar syntax forgetfulness
in kooky coo coo place of exhausted body mind
understand now concept of mind body dualism
in sort of dream pain flip burger trance
Flippus Burgero ergo sum
Eyelids Flintstone matchstick heavy
Want to be cat
Sleepy cat sleeping in front fire place
Snuggle up warm snuggly burning logs snug
Not here with gawk ugly skin oily teens'
not with junkies and sundry stooges
No more fat families frenzy feeding on fatty fries
nor frizzie peroxide perm blue mascara bimbo hags
in pink animal print lyrca mutton dressed as lamb pants
No more ex con Neo Nazi assistant manager yell at me
Oh my poor feet
When home in spa they go
Then sleep in bed me
Sweet.

Identity

One summer’s afternoon
in a suburb in Sydney
when the heat and the traffic have stopped
Angelina bowls a stolen cricket ball orange to Maria
While their other friends field

Smashed Valencias lie strewn all over the street
Their juices flowing
the girls will pick them up
put them in a bucket
and feed them to the pigs
at Maria’s uncle’s farm.

“Che cosa voi desider per pranz0 stasera”?
asks Angelina’s mother when she comes home
“Nothing mum I’m not hungry”

Angelina sits on the sofa
turns on the Ally McBeal episode
she taped the night before

She falls asleep and dreams of a cricket game
in which her school teacher’s breasts
bounce ala Baywatch
as she bowls a maiden over.

Dolores And Jude

In a cafe that sits in a city
on a habour habouring snakes,sharks and rats,
Dolores waits in dull-doubt time for Jude
who, without the means to telephone Dolores,
helps strangers save seabirds that are dying in oilslicks

Lucinda's Letters

It looks as though John is busy at his desk,browsing through a file. But really he's reading Lucinda's latest hand-written letter that, as per usual, arrived in an outrageously ironical tongue-in-cheek girlie girl pink envelope that was sealed at the back with a great big gold star.

This time, the pages inside are yellow and bordered with red roses. Lucinda's handwriting swoops and swirls across each page in a sensuous, sensual mad dash passionate dance of overused exclamation points, misused ellipses, and little round circles that float above her i's and her j's. She sprinkles her letters to John with perfume and ends them with X's and O's for kisses and hugs, plus a kiss on the bottom right hand corner from her lip-sticked lips.

She writes of things such as how she painted her 'room, that her daughter had measles, that her mother's nag, about a particular student with whom she's having issues, and the latest book she's reading for fun.

John loves receiving and reading these hand-written letters from this widowed-at-twenty four, thirty two year old woman from Kentucky who works as a women studies lecturer at the University of X, and who is the mother of one daughter, two cocker spaniels, and a ferret, and who hates, hates, (and one more time for emphasis) hates being called 'Lucy'.

He keeps some of her letters at home, and some in the top drawer of his desk at work and when his bosses, his colleagues, and clients, in fact, when his whole entire suck ass job gets him down he rereads one of Lucinda's hand-written letter to remind himself that he needs his job in order to save up for a one-way aeroplane ticket.

Rewrite

John is at his desk at work. He is reading Lucinda's latest handwritten letter.

Handwritten. Not typed up nor printed out, but handwritten.

John adores handwritten letters. They evoke in him pleasant images and memories: vinyl records, black and white television and movies, the rotary dial telephone, his mother's vanilla scented kitchen, beachside family vacations as a boy, Jennings and Derbyshire in trouble with old 'Wilkie' again and glorious old words such as 'hark', 'alas' and 'singular'.

Handwritten letters, for John, they are as deliciously romantic as an Ella Fitzgerald 33rpm record.

Handwritten. John even loves the sound of that compound word.

John met Lucinda online. She is a widowed at 24,32 year old woman who works as a Women Studies lecturer at the University of Kentucky, and who is the mother of one daughter, two cockerspaniels, a ferret, and who hates being called 'Lucy'.

She mentioned once that she liked handwritten letters. But, alas, nobody sends her any- just emails and text messages.

He fell in love with her as soon as he read that and wrote to her.

'Dear Lucinda, you are most singular lass…" he had written in his 'drunken ants across the page' handwriting in his first letter to her which he had sent in a plain white envelope.


Lucinda's latest hand-written letter arrived in an outrageously ironical tongue-in-cheek girlie girl pink envelope that was sealed at the back with gold star.

The pages inside are yellow and bordered with red roses. Her handwriting swoops and swirls across each page in a sensuous, sensual mad dash passionate dance of overused exclamation points, misused ellipses, and little circles that float above her i's and her j's. She sprays her letters to John with perfume and ends them with X's and O's for kisses and hugs, plus a kiss on the bottom right hand corner from her lip-sticked lips.

She writes about how she painted her room, her daughter's measles, her mother's constant nagging, a student with whom she's having issues, and the latest book she's reading for fun.

He tells her everything. Even about the gambling debt that keeps him working in a job that he hates and away from her.

He keeps some of her letters at home, and some in the top drawer of his desk at work and when the arse-licking, backstabbing, two-faced politics of his bosses and colleagues get him down he rereads one of Lucinda's hand-written letter to make things more tolerable and remind himself that he needs his job to save up for that one-way airplane ticket.