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: love
Some day
In the interests of safety, I will write this carefully
but don’t confuse caution with fear.
I have not chosen prudence to avoid any conflict
just I know better than to create what’s not there.
Ah, but therein lacks a passion, to never fully explore,
and I surrender to the notion right then.
Yet on further inspection, and I’m off down the road,
Such hollow words oft come from men who’ve not lived them.
So go swimming with sharks, or float higher than larks,
and as you plummet remember my face!
I’m not here to live your life, nor follow your dreams
So please leave me alone with my ways .
Because if you can’t tolerate choice, while iterating freedom,
and if you can’t see the hypocrite you’re being,
then sorry to say but you’ve spent your worth away
And what I liked about you dissipates.
Now, as for the one who does as he pleases,
maybe more exciting by far than I know,
of him I say nothing if of me he claims ditto,
because every man’s life is just his own.
So wallow in depression if need be,
or holler your madness out loud,
Go read a book in the park near where the single moms sit
Or join the theatre and hold your head proud.
Do things that are cool for people different to you
and say things like: “all men are fools”
For there in the end when your image is spent
You’ll be dead along with me too!
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
In response
To further answer your question: I’m standing at the river bank in the sunshine. It’s hard not to love this city, and my mobile job, at a time like this. I have, however, stood on this spot many’s the time in another mood, with nothing but hatred in my heart!
©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
In Life As In Love
We are all characters in somebody else’s book as well, as I in theirs, they are in mine, and so the cycle completes itself, the gentle interweave of thoughts and images; we are all still characters in someone else’s book, and she, for what it’s worth, was in mine.
It all began, as any story does, but when exactly is such a vagary that all I’ll say is it all began sometime before this, sometime, as you’d expect, in the past, seeing as any story must have its linearity to some degree.
When he heard her speak for the first time, she spoke English, but it could have been French, it was so heavily inflected. As it happened, after that she did, as they both did try French together with varying degrees of success. She spoke as she had to, he, as he wanted to, and this would come to define everything that they were.
She dressed simply, almost the prude, he drew his inspiration from rebellion: he dared to be different. She wore her hair short, cropped, a very conservative style. He left grow grow long, and somewhat unkempt. He had an image conveyed by his exterior. His interior it was that would finally betray him.
As they passed each other, met each other, chatted to each other, they found a path between them that dared to intertwine. She had smiled freely from the start but now he noticed the light in her eyes, he presumed a recent phenomenon, brought on by his own presence. He, too, felt a smile gain purchase on his face, and had even dared to think differently.
„If only she would be mine.”
One day followed the next into a framework of unfettered change. She became more sensual, more illustrious; he assumed, too, that she had begun to notice the change in him, for hadn’t he just then passed a witty remark. How intelligent he must seem. Beneath the veneer of apathy a man troubled with such existential matters truly existed.
One day became another and he built her up into the graven image of his thwarted soul, she would be the one to save him, redeem him- for whatever he had done, he had done wrong. She would be his right, his innocence; she would be the one to teach him love. “Oh sweet rebellious heart, that you may be salved by the unguent of my deepest love!” He thought, indeed, that she would matter.
One day not unlike another, busying himself with his indifference, trying to remain inconspicuous, he had spotted her in a crowd. She hadn’t even noticed him. He dared to think she didn’t care. She just hadn ‘t noticed him, but why? Perhaps it wasn’t even her, but it was. His tiny heart knew it. The flowers late in bloom made to shed their petals. He approached in his casual way. „Were those laughs for me?”, as he passed a table full of stangers.
“Hi, how are you?” the faintest whisper, his all alluring mystery.
“Hi. Who are you?” the abundant reply.
Indeed!
One day, like another, just passed by, just kept on going without a care. No need to stop, no need to pause, to reflect. Just on and on. Day after day, week after week. Life crumbled into an infinite void, no longer relevant. For she hadn’t even recognised him, not even after he had explained himself. She had been so cool; he the frigid fool, rendered inert. He had tried to be witty. She had smiled politely, then left. The next time she had come to the bar she had had an escort, 3 men, as if protection was necessary.
He didn’t know why. He hadn’t even noticed her. She meant nothing anymore. He would swear he had never thought of her again. And yet she would remain a part of his story as he a part of hers. His pain: that she had played her part well while he remained in hers just an extra, unnoticed, forgotten. He had even forgotten himself.
©TheHairyTeacher2014
Love is…
Samuel Beckett: “If you do not love me I shall not be loved. If I do not love you I shall not love.”
In this conveys the sacrifice not of man to woman nor vice versa but of us, humanity, to the passions which oft times our rationality would refuse. For what is Love…and in this I do beseech you… patience, for truly there is no answer; but that here, right now, and in the understanding of words and the depth of emotion, some have tried to answer, tried to commend with thought that which rejects all reason…and yet it is our very reason which we would offer up as sacrifice to the greater wealth of Love…for yes, man, woman, humanity, could no longer relish its existence but that it would converge upon the greater plateau, as somehow we perceive it, and thereon it would allow us relinquishment, it would tease us to falter, doubt, then continue…this place defined not as the altar, nor as the tomb, but the essence of all things. What is Love if in truth it cannot be and not be, if it cannot live and unlive, if it cannot draw from you the listener a certain rush to stale sobriety, cynicism perhaps veiled. What is Love if it cannot defend itself against the very things which it purports to describe. For Love must be more than these and all words. Love must be a bore when it is bandied about in rhetoric. Love, by its own volition, negates itself but that it is felt to within an inch of its loss, for Love is all that we don’t have in a moment. Love is not regret! Love is not memory…these things already define themselves. Love is everything and cannot be rendered, divided, shared. Love is whole, complete, infinite. Love is!
©TheHairyTeacher2014