My favourite apps
This little app drives the car for you while you're texting
Changes gears, changes lanes, changes everything
This little app pushes the child on the swing while you're tweeting
Back and forward, back and forward
This little app thanks the bus-driver, the taxi-driver, the butcher
This little app watches the movie and eats the popcorn while you're messaging
This little app talks to the neighbour, the carpenter, the courier
This little app listens to the band while you're filming
This little app chats to the checkout girl, the baker, the green-grocer
This little app eats the meal you're Instagramming
This little app crosses the road, the driveway, the train tracks for you
This little app makes eye contact with passers-by
This little app apologises for you
This little app catches the child who's falling from the swing
This little app calls the ambulance after the car-crash
This little app prays for you in Intensive Care
And this little app blesses the soul
Of the other driver
Vin Maskell
Proto-thinking
There is a 'Witching-Hour'
that hits before the set time for the demon-walking
probably the darkest period of my diurnal rhythm
coming in the wake of a lived-day with so many facets
— so many loosed-ends —
for the one not yet ready to move to the bed-room mode
of cocoon-thinking percolated by pre-midnight radio
For this period of the night TV has an addictive dominance
with an uncertainty as to how to negotiate my way
through the labyrinth of the many proto-thoughts
that crowd the corridors of a tired-brain
Proto-thinking is the demon-in-the-machine of this life
the frustrations of so many possibilities
still-born or severely stunted
limping their way through a half-life
of 'what-could-have-beens'
Buried in the shallow-graves of unhallowed ground
— what might they be in the resurrection?
John Cranmer
Night in the Glenferrie Hotel
late night tv : the final scenes of a '90s rom com :
its pop-song soundtrack more precise
in its method than carbon dating : neat turns
of plot with all the customary fidelities : i reach
for the remote : to flick the silence back on :
only to find the reception blocked : by the traffic
on burwood road : the wash of it : in this city
that will not sleep :
Thom Sullivan
Elements of Night
night with its dark carriages of hours : in a hotel room
in dili a telephone is ringing : there's no
apprehension : just the fragments of a picture-tube
shining, coming into focus : & memories
of a first-floor room: its view out over the suburb :
in the minutes after midnight : as the tides
of light & dark reversed their pull : i am kept awake now
by the sound of someone singing : by the dark gift
of her song : one room of that house will remain
unfurnished : every word is an expectation extinguished :
i am speaking of things that are gone :
Thom Sullivan
Just sitting and waiting
Meandering through the Bridge Mall in Ballarat
i was amazed at the number of middling aged men
just sitting
not even reading the Herald
not even toying with a phone
legs stretched out and looking bored
just sitting — and waiting
eyes fixed on a far horizon
Who are they waiting for?
wives or daughters who are
for just 'a few minutes'
intensely doing over the shops
looking for just the right post-Chrissie bargain?
could be a boy friend — hmmm probably not though
And now i am just sitting and waiting
For a wife AND a granddaughter
doing over the shops down Sydney Road in Coburg
BUT the difference is
I've got an I-pad to play with
hehe — Supercilious old sod!
John Cranmer
Melbourne writer Vin Maskell writes about family, life, music, swimming and sport, often for The Big Issue. He is the author of Jacaranda Avenue (2003) and the editor of stereostories.com
Adelaide-born Thom Sullivan's first collection of poems, Airborne, was published in New Poets 14 (2009). He has co-edited a number of books of poetry, including Light & Glorie, an anthology of poems about stained glass, and The Infinite Dirt: Friendly Street Poets 38.
A resident alien from South Australia in semi-hiding in Melbourne's outer east, John Crammer makes a profession of being grandparent and recycled Uniting Church Minister.
Apps image from Shutterstock