His Days

black and white rainy portrait canonHe woke again in a panic as if he was being attacked but it wasn’t a nightmare that woke him in the cold darkness. It was a memory that pulled him out of sleep. A memory that lurked below the surface and a day never went by that it didn’t show.

He stood naked in the cold and wiped a circle in the mist on the window and peered at the street. It was dark but for the streetlights and a hint of ultramarine in the sky with the stars beginning to fade. He could hear the hum of distant traffic, of people going to work so he knew the sun would soon rise.

He went to the bathroom and held himself steady against the wall while he peed. He was drowsy but it was too early for coffee and his work day was hours away. He wanted to return to bed but he knew that he would not sleep and that he would be tired during the day.

He dressed in thick socks and pants and a heavy dressing gown and went out and lit a smoke. He watched a man walking briskly along the street, with his hands tucked into his pockets and a bag slung over a shoulder. He heard the screech of a train braking and the crunch of tyres turning on gravel. He heard the footfalls of someone running and the low rumble of a car warming up under the building. He listened to the magpies calling and greeting the morning.

If only he could live in the moment like the birds, he thought and live each day as it came or plan for the future but the past clung to him like a worn shirt. Each day was an extension of the last and every day before that going back to the time when he had made the big mistake.

He had betrayed the one he loved and he hadn’t dealt with it and the guilt and remorse held him firmly in the past. He prayed that he would wake one day to find that it had never happened. If only he could forget but as memories faded, the remorse had not. It had grown stronger like a tumour. Unnoticed at first until it took hold and in time had become a part of the small movements of his days.

He returned to his bed but sleep eluded him as it always did. So he put on the coffee as he always did and dressed.

For the Greater Good

black birds on tomb stonesWhy do we save lives? Why do we care?

We care because it makes us feel good or we empathise, it could be us failing to breath in a hospital bed. Dying of malaria or the coronavirus or cancer. It could someone we love, our family or friend. Because it would be inhumane not to care, right?

Why do we care so much about the countless lives at risk of disease or famine in Africa or the Middle East on the one hand and take lives in war when it suits us. It’s for the greater good but is it? Who are we to decide who lives or dies?

The worlds population is increasing at an exponential rate. Soon there won’t be any wild spaces left because there won’t be enough room. Who suffers? Not just the plants and animals but we do. Imagine living in a world were there are no trees. No wild animals. It could be the future. Who can tell? But saving lives matters. Right! As long as it’s human lives. Why not let people die? Why do we have to cure every decease. Isn’t providing a future world with wild and green spaces, clean oceans, with diverse animal species and clean air, a world worth living in, also for the greater good?

Imagine a child in a future school looking at pictures of lions and zebras and elephants and elks or trees. All extinct. That’s not the greater good. That sucks. But we are getting there fast. According to an article in National Geographic by Christine Dell’Amore, published in 2013, there were 20000 species near extinction at that time and that was seven years ago. And it’s only getting worse. Those extinction rebellion protestors may look like fools gluing themselves to the ground and blocking traffic but aren’t we the fools for ignoring them?

Species become extinct mostly due to loss of habitat. Basically because of us. So why are we so desperate to save every human life from famine, war or disease? It could be said that disease is natures way of striking a balance. Why not let nature take care of the planet for a change.

It’s our human nature to fight each other, but now we have nukes so no-one wants to risk it so we haven’t had a world-war for seventy five years now and the last major pandemic before the coronavirus was in 1919. Yet we are happy to risk the lives of our youth by sending them to fight in other wars for political or economic gain. They serve their country and die for the greater good, apparently. Wouldn’t it be valid to let people die for the greater good of the planet. For the future of our children and theirs.

Pollution levels across they globe are the lowest they have been for years. Nature is fighting back. But only because we are in lockdown and nature has some breathing space. So why not save the planet by letting people die.

Why save human lives at the expense of all others. What makes us so important? What about the greater good.

Four Walls and a TV

silhouette of a man in window

For the man with no friends his isolation is complete. How did he get here? Was it a moment of madness or did this happen over time? Was he was too caught up with things to notice?

It wasn’ t his fault. His friends disappeared when he was too busy to make an effort.  He was blamed and he wasn’t ready for the desertions. He waits for the day when he will be free because the isolation is bad for the man and desperation sets in. He knows that when he is free, he will be outside but still alone yet even strangers passing by are better than none.

When he worked his job came first and the guys at the office were good guys. They had a few laughs but in the end the joke was on him. If only he had a real friend.

Depressed. He’s losing hope. Finding it hard to breath. His panic rising. Hope dying. Lying to himself. Worrying. Can’t cope. Can’t defend himself. Will there be a tomorrow? When will he get out? Who will help him? Who will help him? Who will help him?

Depression doesn’t make sense to the man and it doesn’t go away. Like an unwelcome guest who takes over his space and won’t leave. Like a dark pit that he can’t climb out of. He wants to stop breathing. No-one matters. Nothing matters. His isolation is complete because no-one can reach him. He looks out to the park and all he sees is the tree. He just needs is a rope and it’s all over. He needs to get it done because the burden of his life is heavy,

Now there’s a virus going around and all that he has are four walls and a TV.

The Grey Ghosts

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The grey ghosts shuffle, aimless, scared and listless. Unable to decide and complaining to the few who still listen.

They move without purpose of what or where or how to be yet holding fast onto the shreds of dignity for without it they will fall.

Out of step with those who walk briskly and outcast by the others. They slouch with their grey heads staring without focus into the middle distance. From park benches.

Or in the warm loneliness of home they binge on the blue TV light with all the experience in the world yet afraid to wake tomorrow for yet another useless day.

Left behind by the rest and dressed with a vague expression of longing and waiting … to be old.

Dogs and lovers

The night was hot and the sweat ran down to the small of her back. She reached the pedestrian street where people jostled each other. The smart, the young, deformed, old and eccentric. Close to the city only a few convenience shops were still open with immigrants working the twilight hours.

Her dog pulled and became tangled with a passer-by. It would be tethered behind the gate where she knocked lightly and it opened ajar. Her lover stood half naked at the bottom of the stair and took her hand. Pulling her up to his room with no words said, and the sex was urgent.

The room was spartan and she looked up at the bare yellow bulb. The bed smelled of old sweat and her lover. There was no one to help clean and fetch and choose eye catching decor. There was a laundry basket overflowing and a stained sink. She washed herself and remembered how her lovers had been. When they could stay in a room for days, only leaving for food or for wine and cigarettes. Before time was short and dreams had turned to shadows.

She was tempted to stay, to help out, to call her husband and call it all off but she left. The children still needed her and what could she do? No job, no income, no ideas. Directionless. She left alone with her dog to hide at a cafe, enjoying some wine, avoiding her gossiping friends. Her fellow inmates, trapped, obsessed with their dogs and their lovers.

The Lover and the Stranger

She counted the days since she saw her lover and she counted the years of her marriage to the stranger she had loved.

She didn’t care for her lover and he didn’t ask for her help or anything. He didn’t know her fears or her loves, but only her sex and its wants because that was all she was willing to give.

The stranger took his toll. He expected food and someone to care for the children. They rarely said more that a few words and she wondered if he suspected and she doubted he would care. He seemed content in not knowing.

She caught him watching porn once and was surprised that he still had an interest. They fucked occasionally but she was alone while he rode on top, crushing her, grunting then rolled away and went back to his television. She read books, about distant places and dreamed but doubted she would ever leave.

Her lover asked if she would go with him to Melbourne for a weekend and she wondered how. She didn’t wish to push her luck, yet she yearned to go. It would be exiting and her sister could take care of the children. But she couldn’t invent a convincing lie so she declined and went back to the stranger.

Broken

The tracks shake loose in the cracked cement as he leaves the train and the old majestic homes crumble while the flash men walk drunken, lusting, singing ditties with whisky voices from the docks in the old town.

It wasn’t as if he couldn’t remember where he belonged. It was that he didn’t want to live there anymore, so he stood for a while fumbling with his keys.  The old place was falling down from decades of neglect but it was clean and straight inside and smelled of fish broth and bread from the kitchen.

The daughter hangs clothes on a line out of the window and watching her father, hoping he isn’t drunk so early. She would not be shocked or surprised. He hasn’t been the same since the company shut down the docks.

He falls and the daughter helps him to his comfortable chair and fetches a cigar. He bites a tip and she lights it and he bangs on the arm when she doesn’t do it right. The acrid smoke fills the room so she opens the shutters despite the rain.

The people used to say he was brave man, a fighter. Now they say he is broken and ignored but for the daughter who picks up the pieces of his life. He has no purpose now and drinks more than before, driving the mother crazy. They argue and then make peace.

Drink, argue and make peace. It is the pattern of the days.

In Time

Wounded wandering sleepless on a polished floor slipping unto two deaths, the one you hope for and the one you avoid. Hoping to end in a sleepy fog, mind swimming in tar, down into the shining black death instead of lingering decrepitude. Owning all beyond the time you awake but not owning over the lake of dream sleep.

I am but a dream of the great notion. When it wakes up I will just be a memory to it because when you are gone nothing more exists.

Falling with a tired head unable to do the list of shit you had planned. A hand arises in darkness and slaps your unready face shocking awake screaming cursing cunts and fucking off your attacker.

Mountain dew is slipping in the mildew of the morning approaching finally the mist creeps away from the mountain slope it blankets revealing tortured landscapes orange and russet cubes and bridges roads people scurrying along vultures soaring preying on death as it like deaths lover the vulture, the scavenger the pig dining on whatever it can get away with.

The man throws in a line wondering how it will turn out. Waiting for a bite not really, waiting for death more like it. I can’t see the love people have for the pedestrian. It is something to find joy in the small things and I do. Mostly in men and their creations and the absence of men completely.

What do I present to the world more than my imagination, I am afraid of death so I create. It is why we crave a progeny because we are afraid of death, it’s why men cheat, its why we write, it’s why we build and plant trees and spend our twilight years planting and growing in a small vain hope of leaving something behind because we are afraid of death. Plant a tree. It’ll be here for years after I’m gone. Build a house same reason, Have an affair because we want to hang on the the past to avoid the future. Like a regret, an anchor, a grudge. Stopping us from moving on into the future, holding into the past.

His name is Lover. Her’s is Shiela.

man and woman lying on bedHe stepped over a crack in the threshold she waited wanting him to stay but hating herself for her weakness. They made love, she needed it filled an empty space that needed filling, for him it wasn’t the love that he needed but to hold on to life, to stop it from slipping away, but of course it already had.

He felt owned not by this beauty who needed him but by his wife, his family, his kids, his boss, society, they all took pieces and it was difficult to find himself divided and plastered over so many walls. Sheila held him between her thighs mightily and he wanted to stay. He felt whole for a brief moment. He owned this stolen secret moment and he was himself for this time but not completely. His conscience wouldn’t let him own it. Sheila treated him like a man he hoped to be, Something not real because the real man was splintered and owned by many others. Its why he ran in the brief time he was alone without possessions, without an overseer. Sheila gave him that and not more.

She walked home in red heels wobbling on the cobbles. A silent tram in a far bend between the terraces. Her husband working late in his bar with his mates with another sheila. If he was home already, he didn’t ask. A forced acknowledgement. He just thought who his Shiela was. If he was jealous she would feel something but he barely noticed her. He had his wine in a dark room, the tele lighting up the walls. She went to bed, she washed the smell of her lover away.

Death in Winter

better cemetary

The freezing winter river wind makes suffering for the slums in the shadows grief directed by the trauma affected fades as cruel ice melts from lynching bended branches dripping on the willow banks.

Mad starving mothers nurse corpses glare with hollow dark sockets at spastic mares from the winter mountain ice foraging for grasses there.

The beasts remind the harrowed minds of the divine while sick spirits drip on angel’s wings blanketing an amused muse. The dead eyes glower at the angels power as corpses cower.

The amused muse lifts a skinny fist blanket in a rodent bone room studio. The covers are as warm from the fire as her behind to the blind.

Artist finds rat meat fine and ignores the peeling walls as mad mothers die outside they make love in warm fickle angel’s wings.

The blind artist and the muse amuse, themselves while out in the cold the foraging mares stare at frozen cadavers crusting there.