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!
Tag Archives: dream
My Old Self
I saw a ghost of who I was, today.
A younger familiar me.
He passed the church at Lehel tér
Going places not for me.
He passed over Feri’s bridge
And down along Podmaniczky
To where there now lies nought for me
but bloated memory.
I felt the shadow of my past
on the stairwell at the bank,
When days and nights and morning’s hand
were defined by what I drank.
And on each step as I went down
I heard the old pain murmur,
“a tired mind worn by the night
could too soon be torn asunder”.
And so I took another turn
and left the West End go
and prowling down on Vaci street
I decided to go slow.
Now sitting here on this May day
the cars in sunshine glitter,
the people walking to and fro,
and some sitting down to chatter.
I feel the cool breeze of the moment
and let my senses go
Infusing in the utter present
I’ll accept what was before.
Pass the Bottle
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
Jehovah’s calling
Hark!
Hark what?
Hark the herald angels sing?!?
Good for them.
Amen!
Awomen…
Indeed!
Exactly!
Goodbye?
Good riddance!!!
©TheHairyTeacher2014
It is, quite!
It’s quite possible that I see things differently to everybody else,
that I see danger at the corner cos it there resides.
That I see cheaters, schemers,, dreamers, in the words of rhetoric,
that I cannot believe in anything – but myself.
It’s quite possible that I see everything just like everybody else
but we’ve been lied to long enough so as to not even believe ourselves.
And in comparison where common ground is found
we are often made suspicious, even made to doubt-
for we must all be different and-
then be judged as though we’re not?
©TheHairyTeacher2014
It Could Be Anywhere
It could be Ireland but for the snow that comes in drifts, light flakes deceptive.
The green grass muddied once more encased,
and Spring entombed, perhaps,
so what comes next.
The rising cheer has so soon abated, as mother nature holds her breath.
Allowing still the chilling fingers caress the shrinking countryside once again.
Those tired of darkness they beg for Springtime,
the blossom’s mercy, the rose’s promise.
Blood on the carpet green, yellow, pink – exciting,
now all abounding with whitish sheen.
Little diamonds, slivers, pearing down in string-like curtains;
sending silence across the thoughts –
the land once more is sleeping.
Beneath, the street, ensnared only by our own vain wishes,
with city light and city surface,
sets cars heaving past hellbent on murder:
Their spring fizz slushed again in sludging cleanliness.
What’s left of autumn now is surely gone.
The blackened leaves tattoo the quiet streets
worn inky thin they’d stain like tarmac melt-
That once upon a knee in jeans attired.
Why? With such heat? Why, with youth, of course!
Contending here again with the damp, the chill, the beast
As another false alarm is trodden down.
Traffic moves again in lumbered, measured, plod.
What of the coming Spring?
Perhaps it never comes!
©TheHairyTeacher2014
Indeed
Dye see yer one?
You mean…( outlining a chest size)
Yep. She’s wearing those like they were just new…
Or like a man with his wish for a day!
Whatever, her top seems beleagured…
As does her lap…
As is my soul…
Soul my hole!
No, not hole, but you’re getting hot.
I know, and bothered…
Under the collar!
Good God!
Really?
Well he did make those…
And those are just sinful.
God, the ole devil:)
Amen.
And women too
Of course
Horses for courses
One in the hand
Making mountains out of mole hills…
Mountains out of mountains…
Indeed.
©TheHairyTeacher2014
Gonosz
‘Evil’…just a word
in a verse that could be a recipe.
It could be anything.
I decide –
if I decide,
to choose…
anything at all.
©TheHairyTeacher2014
Guilt
I’m eating her away with the filth of my mind:
at once consuming and consumed.
I relish in the torrent of her flow, from a height,
her head, cascading.
I wonder at the slight valley,
which runs between neck and shoulder socket,
almost broad, almost muscular, always sensual.
I wonder as I drink the unblessed blood of Christ,
the draught that would still water be without Him –
it is not the best till last, but nearly,
it is not the end because the sulking lady’s skinny.
I am devouring the room with my ego,
and the room smiles, stretches, and…
once more enslaves me
©TheHairyTeacher2014
Easter Passed Over
When the Friday claimed good is nigh upon us,
and the last cold snap of winter falls all round us,
when the expectations for a Spring sometimes grow too strong,
and the sullen mood in the shadows of Old Man have gone on too long
then all that’s left is positive spirits
all bottled up in reserve for this
and when finally the blossoms come.
We’ll fall elated – reverently dumb.
©TheHairyTeacher2014