3 Poems by Jeff Klooger

Ashtray

green marble ashtray

on a gold three-legged base

(squat descendant of the Delphic tripod)

sole relic of my former life

of slow suffocating suicide

(receptacle of the ceremonial fire)

calls me from its new duty

as lonely book-end

(gold-rimmed shard of the pea-green sea)

whispering the many names

of its worn-out glory

(inverted stone helmet of the dwarf king)

once it was awash with ash

swimming in butts

(abandoned spacecraft from the aborted invasion fleet)

once the flame of inspiration

glowed on its rim

(altar to the worship of my own inevitable end)

the plumes of deep thought

wafted from its maw

(russian roulette wheel)

gray spittle clogged its bowl

frosted its green walls

(petrified frog)

a cloying, sickly stench

spread all around it

(dish of congealed bile)

it nearly killed me

(cup of cold death)

***

City Lights

the city speaks

in neon

rolling

blind eyeballs

in electric sockets

it lifts its concrete skirt

puckers

its blue lips

with silver fingers

it beckons

strokes the necks

of revelers

and passers-by

the city bares

steel teeth

opens

its black throat

and swallows

the night sky

whole

***

Advice For Users

Fire, as we all know, signals danger. If your machine

grows hot, releases smoke, exudes

strong smells ― turn it off!

Unplug it from its power source! For God’s sake,

let it cool down, relax, slip back again

into idleness, that heavenly, as-yet untroubled

indolence from which you woke it

with your constant demands, your pushing and poking,

your complaints and expressions of bitter regret

for not having chosen a better model, more intelligent, more attractive,

more consistent with your decor.

When is the last time you serviced your machine?

Do you clean it? Properly? In accordance

with the manufacturer’s instructions?

When you refill it, do you use the best supplies

or the cheapest? Is your aim to keep it

in good repair and working order

for as long as possible, or to use it up,

squeezing every skerrick of life and usefulness

from its mechanism, despite the warnings,

despite the risks, despite the groans

it utters from time to time,

until it collapses into a heap of junk

to be disposed of and replaced in short order

and without so much as a thought for all it has given you?

And when it is finished, cold and lifeless

and no use to anyone, even itself,

what do you do with it? Do you try at least

to salvage its parts, hoping they might be of use,

continue to live somehow in other machines,

or do you send it holus-bolus to the wasteland of the tip,

left to rot (or not) amongst its mountains of refuse

― or worse, do you abandon it

on someone else’s kerb or in an alley

for others to deal with, others

you share this world with

but never think of except when they

might be of use to you?

What I’m asking is: do you care at all?

Are you an operator ― careful, skilled, sagacious

― or are you just a user, a consumer,

dead to the world and dead inside,

at home with death, existing only

until you too have ceased to function,

until the world of users casts you aside.

Jeff Klooger’s poetry has been published in Australian and international online and print journals. Recently his work has appeared in The Liberal, Words-Myth, Harvest, Full Of Crow and Text. His other interests are music and philosophy. His first book, on the ideas of the Greek-French philosopher Cornelius Castoriadis, was published in 2009.