The floating word a chance perhaps a dream.
Something said that made some sense and yet was lost.
It doesn’t matter cos it’s memory serves just that much
To make whatever sense or make more sensible, as it should.
I didn’t utter words to die in memory forlorn soon forgot
But conjured thoughts to words not on the hope that you still lived
But not expecting death around the corner surprised was I and then remorse
© TheHairyTeacher 2016
It might not be somewhere over the rainbow
But it is somewhere out there…
Hidden from view but not ear,
A band of friends, perhaps conspirators?
They laugh beyond the cheery tune on the radio.
In here…
In here in this other room, the desolate one, where the desperate sit perched at the bar or in the darker corners,
typing on phones, reading newspapers, or staring into the half distance, finding the floor sometimes a good repose…
In here heads turn expectantly but nothing ever happens, only the songs on the radio are any indication of a better world out there –
Wherein resides “Daddy Cool”.
Even as the door opens a mumble is all that’s heard…
The aging barmaid streaming out,
Perhaps this rat has jumped the ship
And yet the open door promises change
And then…
“Itt a Babus” and the chatter begins.
The barfly awakens, the barmaid questions, another familiar enters…
And then the door closes.
Who is the desperate one now?
Alone in the phone-screen glow.
“…for their mothers?”
“Huh?” Catching only the end of the question, Billy had been paying little attention to his friend, preoccupied as he was with his own thoughts, his mind adrift in a fantasy – this fantasy had a name and her name was Maria.
“I said : Do old wolves cry out for their mothers?”
What kind of question was that, Sammy was beginning to wonder, rapidly losing confidence by his friend’s obvious disinterest.
“You mean by howling and stuff?”
“By howling and stuff! Not by howling and stuff!!! Ah fuck it!” Sammy’s irritation beginning to grow. It was glaringly apparent that his moment of profundity was being ususrped by something other than the moment, judging by the glazed look in his friend’s eyes.
“Yeah.”
“That’s it! Where are YOU, boy?”
“Huh?” Billy was becoming aware of his friend’s change of tone but he was still half way off from touching down in this conversation. He’d have to make the effort, he supposed.
“Sorry man, I was elsewhere.”
“No kidding…Maria perhaps?”
“Fuck off” his words implying annoyance, a cheesy grin erupting ón his face conveying otherwise.
“Hah! Well, what were you two doing this time?”
This was the point where Sammy would, usually, crudely depict a coitus perverticus, whereas Billy had been moulding paradise.
He braced himself for the onslaught, but somehow something seemed different.
Maybe there had been something in Sammy’s question that alluded to this now serious demeanour…
“So did you ask her to marry ya?” …or maybe not.
“Ah, for fuck’s sake…”
“Gotcha” the leery grin pasted, sparkling on his face.
“Now give us the gory details.”
Who needs enemies… Billy pondered.
“Why? I’m sick of this dreaming. I wish I knew what she really thought of me.”
“What! And risk disappointment? Those fantasies you have are better than the real thing, I’d imagine.”
Though spoken almost facetiously there seemed to be a tone of honesty in Sammy’s words.
“If not better, at least less complicated.”
“Maybe…” Billy continued, “but how the fuck would I know. I’ve never even had a girlfriend before. Fuck, I really need this!”
“Christ” gasped Sammy and with that they both fell into convulsions.
“I really need this” Sammy parroted, while Billy perched himself on the armchair’s arm, posing in stance, face all askew, pain and pleasure intertwining.
And then in came Ivan.
For whatever uncanny reason it always ended up this way when Billy acted up. It was as if Sammy’s older brother and the Gods were in cahoots.
“ You queers watching this?” Ivan snorted, grabbing the controls as he asked and switching to the news anyway. Sammy was about to protest but instead left it at that, shoulders drooping before hunching.
“Do you want a coffee?” he asked Billy, already moving towards the kitchen.
“Yeah” Billy replied, following sheepishly, trying to avoid eye contact with the bigger brother but somehow being drawn in by the supercilious smile.
“Make me one too, won’t you Billy,” Ivan sai with a wink.
The blush on Billy’s face rose furiously.
“Careful you don’t boil before the kettle does!” Ivan’s derisory laughter bitch slapping him out into the kitchen.
“Wanker!” Sammy snapped, obviously now enraged.
“ Well, that’s what it looked like to me! ,” came the muffled voice from the living room.
“ Shit!”. Sammy wasn’t necessarily afraid of his older brother, he was terrified, and although Billy tried to play the diplomat – all at ease with differences- in his heart of hearts, he, too, would rather not be anywhere near that man.
“Don’t forget…two sugars!”
“ No worries” Billy, like the Pavlovian dog, responded.
“Good boy!” The snigger that followed slowly drowned out by the rising volume of the television.
“ Why the fuck does he have to listen so loudly?” Billy asked, resisting his powerlessness in style.
In a future hindsight, Billy would wonder, if it wasn’t to give them, Sammy and himself, carte blanche to bitch about him so fully secure was he in his dominance, but at that moment Billy could only share his friend’s anger.
“ But, eh, …” he began.
“ Are you really going to serve him his coffee?” Sammy queried.
Predictably Sammy had started to take his frustrations out on Billy.
“ What can I do?” Billy implored.
“Tell him to fuck off”
Suddenly the door flew open and in came the beast in question.
“Coffee ready yet?” the question all-demanding.
Billy began to stutter, but couldn;t find any purchase.
“ I’m not askin you!” Ivan snapped, eyes turning towards Sammy.
“ All right. There you are!” but with the look bearing down on him, Sammy appeared to flinch, as Billy would put it, in slow motion.
“Enjoy” Ivan sneered, and just like that the storm was gone.
“ De…but…eh …de…” Sammy’s deliberate mockery of Billy falling short as Billy put a piece of the puzzle together.
“ Are you really going to serve him?” came Billy, mimicking Sammy’s voice, badly.
“Fuck you!”
“Fuck you, too!” This would sometimes be followed by: “ especially Bono” but this wasn’t one of those times. And for the seconds in which the gloom fell, the fantasy Billy had been having seemed to dissipate, or relegate in importance.
“Fuck it. I’m out for a fag” Sammy announced, and this call to arms would bring back the focus, and Maria would return.
“Well, he’s in there!” Billy sniggered but Sammy either didn’t hear or wasn’t interested, so feeling slightly juvenile just then, he turned to follow his friend outside.
“ I’m with ya,” he said, this subtle sign of solidarity hopefully the peace flag necessary.
A man, Billy decided, didn’t need to make enemies, especially of friends, when love was on the line.
Reflections, musings, all indirect.
The shadows of timidity set.
Eyes bound to embrace if by chance
And then in blush turn once more back.
To shaded Eyes, the hidden glance,
The brushing back – displaying risk.
Another eye to eye embrace
Till two souls set save embarrassment.
A nail pick and a fumble still
The night resides in circumstance –
Ill-comfort or the lack of breath –
One’s terrified by the sombre poet.
Hope, yet eternal, springs then falls
It is the chill of winter afterall.
And so the fleeting glance- perchance-
Is nothing but the final failed romance.
And yet in words as these, such coined,
There is a lurch towards new Hope!
The night before my birthday, my fortieth, and I hit Tina Turner’s…it used to be called Anya’s but that half-Greek fantasy set sail down towards the ninth district, somewhere around Mester utca, a long time ago. The soap I bought, a dried up reminder of a notion I once had.
The whole place is infested with memory and even my darkest hour, not worth mentioning, being part of the fabric of this place provokes a Dichotomy, an idea of improvement based upon a previous moral digression, thoroughly equated therefore by its having occurred within the confines of this place.
It was always an awkward place, often ruled by boredom, fatigue, drunkeness, and paranoia. It, however, served well as a last resort. It never closes, you see,”… and that has made all the difference…”
I sometimes long for this place in the blur that is pre- fatherhood memory, but in truth, a moment like this, actually living the memories, is the closest anybody can get to all things past. Sometimes it’s worth coming back for the trip – the reality of what was left behind, suitably soft, a drawing smudged to suit a tolerable indifference.
The corner in one of the upstairs booths, was my workbench of occasion, though never to the extent of B City and the Soproni place, now Cheerio – then nameless (at least to me), and yet Tina’s, ahem…Anya’s (like the stalwart calling Snickers Marathon), provided some of the material for my future. Here dreams were shattered, rebuilt, born yet before, and after. Time bent here… as these words may take me back, they may in time propel me forward, or at least be read again in a time not yet recorded. For now I just create them in the hope that someone, maybe even me, can read them in a future!
…2015.
I have decided this New Year’s Eve not to make any more resolutions and in so doing have made yet another resolution, or so that is how the joke goes. Well, come the bells I wasn’t eating grapes – I don’t live in Spain anymore – , I wasn’t singing Old Lang Syne – though I tried, I was shushed by my Hungarian family who had all arisen from their pre-midnight-layabout to the glory of their national anthem – but I was sipping Champagne, or at least some Cava and Pezsgo, and I was enjoying the localised fireworks displays which have come to signify suburbia, I guess everywhere these days.
What else? Well, some eighteen hours later and sitting here typing this, I realise there is nothing left to say. I had some grandiose notion to record an emotion but that was thwarted some hours ago by responsibility. Do I expect 2015 to be better than 2014? Why should I? The date, the change is merely numerical. Surely for most people the difference between today and yesterday is the hangover, the memory of the shameful deeds done while under the influence, the lost expectations, but beyond that this day, a Thursday, is no different to yesterday, or any other Thursday really. Then what is left to surmise concerning all things new and glorious? Nothing!
The very frustrations which can nightly arise when battling my four-year-old over sleeping duties pale, usually, in comparison to the joy which she brings. That she has just sat up again from her sleeping poise raises the shackles, especially when she demands her right to speak. “I am trying to work” I tell her and have made it a compromise that I do some of it here in her room. The classical music plays in the background, a Youtube selction meant for sleep, but perhaps I chose the adult selection for my kid is certainly no closer to her slumberation. That she commands another assault just now forcing me to play my own guilt cards, only serves to heighten the tensions on the Bedside Parallel. I go back to my typing, realising that the tappitty tapping will soon be used as an excuse to be awake, only that I have worked here many times before and she has nodded off without so much as a protestation. It is Christmas, and we are in Nagyi’s, and this definitely has something to do with it, but the fact that last year I signed up for some How to Get Your Kid to Sleep newsletter would suggest that this is more than a minor technical difficulty: this has, in fact, become a lifestyle.
The other terrorist has been placated but promises to erupt past the witching hour with plaintive tones that would set all the devils below a tad off kilter. Hell may have no fury like…some woman, or other, but here ón this blessed Earth it’s the wee ones that win the day, and night, their very shrieks calling out beyond the confines of a humanity: they are the very driving force that must surely render any universe, ours included, and THEY do not rest ón the seventh day. I’m not even sure they rest at all. Even in their sleep I imagine they are racing headlong into furniture, eating razor blades, and making dogs very very nervous: all the while being called cute by those fucking visitors…yeah, you know who you are. You don’t think we haven’t noticed you beginning to back out the door from the very moment you have been invited in. The lack of space ón the coat rack which may have led you to be insulted because the back of a chair had to suffice, now seems a blessing in disguise. Imagine trying to excavate any article of clothing from under that pile there a-hanging…or worse, what if you had taken up the offer of having your jacket put in the bedroom…UPSTAIRS! Run you miserable bastards and don’t bother coming back again to make such contrivedly concerned comments such as “Aren’t you a bit cold?” to a four year old who can tell the difference, and especially when inside the flat it’s 22 degrees celsius, even if it is sub-zero outside. Perhaps, and I’m not suggesting you are dying, but if you are feeling a little chilly maybe it’s cos you is already dead!!! So zombie yourself the hell out of here and leave me to my two little Síoga, and my woman, who is at this moment out there in the demilitarised zone, soaking up the glow of the nonsense that is TV Landia, a state I am aspiring to once I’ve finished this.
Adonkey
I had skinned knuckles once too.
I even tried to express this as significant;
It wasn’t, anymore than I was,
in the sense that I was me.
I had the marks of brutality upon me,
they remained long after any sense of bravery.
If you display yours to an intimidation,
remember I did that and I know what lies beneath.
If, however, you pick at these in shame,
like somehow they are wrong for you,
like somehow you are better than these scabs,
then I have nothing to work with –
dare I judge?
I’d judge thee, judgement being… what?
A penchant you might say.
I have tonight tried to contradict myself
but it’s so much easier to believe the fallacy,
so much easier to reason to your passions
than to the core of fact itself.
Half-informed I’ll rage in dreams
against the dying of our rights
but if ever proved I will not stand against the foe
as I perceived it,
and therefore vacant,
impotent,
I may as well
stand for nothing!
©TheHairyTeacher2014
Ding dong one witch is dead
and another scales the closet
and hurls abuse from up on high
at all of you below.
Ding dong what’s wrong, revolution’s dead
it’s with O’Leary raping Darwin’s ghost.
The future is a certainty but the past is unexplored.
The mode, the chicish mania
soon will be our shame
new morals, lies, define them such
will amount to much the same…
©TheHairyTeacher2014
I race against the bitterness.
I’m just ahead –
it’s catching.
I’ve grown to recognise – yet
I’m still quite prone to it.
It’s easier sometimes, I guess,
not to keep the darkness in check.
It’s wiser to observe, I know,
I’ve done this too, many times before.
But drink, and this shall be the key,
it makes me strong but leaves me weak.
I’ll build again a resevoir,
then pull the plug as oft before.
I’ve tried, I’ll try, and conjure on.
Till death – the parting,
and my swan song.
©TheHairyTeacher2014
