The neighbours
I don’t want to speak to them
I don’t know what to say!
Is she better?
Which one?
The younger one too!?
We’ll see, as my words fail to smile.
I need all my energy for us now
And not for them.
I can paint their world with regalery
Once my own has again found stability.
First things first: Family then friends then neighbours I guess…
But who are they?
© TheHairyTeacher2016
Back and forth on errand trail
The need for joy a subtle distance.
For hope itself disguised in rage
The world around now not a friend.
The silver lining wearing thin
Searching for the sun beyond.
Bit by bit a ray but then
A cloudburst too to spoil our mood.
© TheHairyTeacher2016
I have no news, she sighed
And the other side went dead.
An audible silence seeping through
Conveying the weight of optimism.
A baby’s babbling could be heard there –
While here the morning sun dabbed corners
Expressing beauty from a clouded mind.
Soon the journey would begin
Not my calvary just my worry
Burdened, moving, questioning…
A bus door opened hissss
And closing beep beeped.
And onwards sailing,
Nearly there.
© TheHairyTeacher2016
The silver curlew alone and wondering
Perched to thinking
Dreams across an expanse of water
Beyond the dawn
Beyond the dreamer.
In the haste to strike repose
In the shuffling prelight
The songbirds echo faraway in the mind
Hidden in the memory
Sometimes delighting
Sometimes eroding hope.
In the shallow almost emptiness
The glean of struggle reflects
Till rolling ripples rain distortion.
Giving new interpretation
Giving wing to recent silence.
© TheHairyTeacher2016
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.
I would rather be it –
On earth tonight.
I would rather reign supreme
Than ever have fandangled promise
A sort of Damoclesian promise.
For sure it may be true,
But the tormenting doubt forever lurking?
Would that I would turn away from the flesh that binds
In favour of a faith so blind.
I may never live again and so must taste,
If anything, this life in all its ways.
And taste it pure and full
Not dull and in decay.
I must relish in my fears
Knowing life has always risk.
The life that has none is already death –
So defined by inconsequential evidence.
And so in light of sacrifice
I’ll topple my soul into the stream
And find the rhythm in the heat of things.
The passion, the forgiveness, all enraptured
Flowing as the current leads…
Towards the mouth, the opening.
I shall remember everything
My mistakes no less than my suffering .
Sometimes in the sound of things I remember,
Though by nature I’m inclined to forget.
In the beauty of all things forgotten,
the surprise defines all moments.
I hear in the voices of the children,
in my own voice too, though I may play reluctant,
The freedom of a passing moment captured,
Rendered real and different by our time.
In notions of my own self- deprecation
When I’ve renounced past Peter and sought Paul,
I merely beg forgiveness because I dared not assume it,
The fatal Christian flaw – the memory!
The night lies broken, breathless, shattered
From the remnants of a state
The heart in horror trembles,
The sheer impossibility cleverly delined by reason
Has itself inclined in dubious hope.
A rendered artefact or some more aged dogma…
A light, in truth, the death knell of depravity.
Shored up beyond the scurrilous entreprise,
The matching and the making,
The pairing of all hideous will,
the depth as once quite necessary:
Fed fine the aquatic entity
In toil and broil and unity swims out towards the breach of things,
The borders given form,
Both perceptible as thought and touch.
What flowers, builds new barriers,
Pushed out beyond the pale.
Nighttime fondles creeping,
And the shadows emanate.
Soft sounds as city hum infuses,
The mind at odds with immortality,
Finds roads reached out of time by fog and swirl and everything.
The essence of a tired being,
The night in duplication fathoms nourishment from blood soaked stones,
The drops of soul, the seed denied.
Roots sans purchase revel in a weary word
Shake skyward a silly song.
A song of freedom, a song of hope,
Just as nightingales and larks united.
A kiss, a gentle tug, a pleading,
The face of dawn beyond the sight emerging
Shades the black to blue to navy grey.
And yet from where the traveller finally rests there’s nothing but night’s silhouette
In the morning light after dawn-glow purchase
The taste of chill as winter rises.
The dew residual dampens the ground
And sends sunshine sparkles a-dazzling round.
Footsteps plod and skip, all fall,
With weary minds and a child adventure.
The cursing klaxons, the red lights looming.
Urbania rising through the silence booming.
Lines of passengers all set to be
Like chaste and bridal tainted reverie.
The smiles, however, abstain- upended
As morning’s gloom quells caffeine pretensions.
Stray dogs and pigeons plot their day
In bays and coups, the best plans laid.
The beast in shuffle settles then
As noon day flow comes threatening.
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!
