Curious writing for curious people
Talk to myself out loud
Thank people for their thoughts
No rhythm
To save the soul
To save you when you need.
It’s the leave
The leaving solip
The you indivisible.
It’s the stop, rest, consider
It’s the life of a field
Fertile, never lazy, replete.
The touch of someone who won you
Who feels like you
Swan down
Goose down
Head down in their lap
Their hand in your hair
Your hand in their theirs.
In them with them
Beyond sense
It’s 5:37 in the New South Wales morning.
Rob and I are ready with beer and weed.
We drive to the jetty.
Where we unleash the old boat
Oh sweet lord, that bad bait
Squid left on the dashboard in December.
In hard Australian heat.
Lights on, huge, around us.
Our engine kicks, not fluid
Until the harbour split, then out.
Snapper water, not yet
Kingfish water, not yet
Dolphin, flying fish, not yet.
Our boat, lights out
No battery, idiot!
His engine now.
Fluidity, happily with me.
The boat kicks on around us
Our early, fragile spines kicked
Our mouths shut for breakfast.
Then out of the heads to the hold on!
Hold on! Hold on!
That sea, those fish, that light, that sunlight!
Go ahead, go onto something new.
Packing toys and tools and terrible things
Into thin grey plastic bags.
Throwing them into the sea of bins
On the other side of the world.
A lifetime moved into its latter half.
Ready to be emptied on Tuesday.
On to something else.
Something older.
The things that made up the former half
Are distracting from the new.
Having crazed the paving to the revelation
That’s not turned epiphany just stopped
They are planted to the bottom
Of the supermarket liners
Onto something new
Something familiar
Which clothes to keep to pack away?
The jacket did she came home in?
The t-shirt from the show we saw?
Money for shipping is not in sight today
But the plane is taking off one-way
And the family that wasn’t still is not.
Onto somewhere colder
Something jollier
Throw away everything, all of it
There’s always something under the skin
That will travel, unable to sleep
Like a child in economy trying to play
For attention across the aisle
Until their mother holds them tight.
Onto somewhere lonely
Somewhere welcoming
Getting around.
Seeing the place.
The lost world.
Scavenging.
Removing the detritus.
Posing the question.
Tall, cool stranger.
Eating an orange.
Cleaning the peel for later use.
Dust free environment.
A corroded relationship.
Closest to home.
Removal man strikes conversation.
In a cloudless sky.
Pausing for detail.
Breathless hard labour.
Approval of debits.
A tall bruising stranger.
Playing piano with zest.
Over the haystack.
Beaten with broomsticks.
Falling in fever.
Collecting the debts.
Left by the wayside.
The curriculum cleaver.
Smelling the roses.
The coffee boils over.
Such a classic love life.
Encourages forbearance.
It is intrinsically scruffy.
“Are you there, my friend? Are you around the place, sitting?”
Benbo growls his reply
He is all caustic, all off his face.
Hungry and willing.
A wasted guy, a desperate cause.
Catch him. Keep him. Despite his obvious flaws.
“Are you there? Is there a signal? Do you love me?
Is there a signal?”
The words are the same,
They remain so, despite the distance.
Thousands of kilometres yet no names?
The singular, his name for her, his name for him, his name by them.
His name by her.
“Do you love me? Like I love you? Is there a signal?”
A goalkeeper by trade, lower leagues, a division above the workers.
Remember them? Is there a signal?
Benbo growls, all caustic and fit for grace.
Off his face, barred away, like a summer sinner nun bricked up.
Attached like a stamp to his envelope of hope, the signal.
The phone is bleeding internally.
His friend was going to play cards.
But the HTTP 404’d and now she’s got nothing left to do.
“Oh, this is as dull as Benbo in his self-sorrow
“I’ll deal with it all tomorrow.”
She looks at the QWERTY and thinks of Benbo’s predictability.
Needy and urgent, like a poem.
Now, strapped to the wheel, B…Benbo shakes his head.
He’s won!
Love’s stinking pathos is forgotten.
Like this signal in flight.
But real Benbo floats inside, the calculus of his cancer sticks deep,
Red and white inside his pocket as the cash stacks and attacks.
Revolting revelator.
I love you. Take a leap.
Fuzzy fuck-fuck music resolves his stagger home.
He leans, with his winnings, against a lit lampost.
“This is mine!” he screams, lost.
“This is ours!, a ghost whispers.
“I’ll get to it tomorrow, maybe, with breakfast inside.”
She’s going to be at his side,
As the catheters slide.
The cardboard, their beds on the beach,
Will never be retrieved.
“It’s mine. Where’s the signal?
“This remote, remote control switching galorious twitching.
“I’ll deal with it tomorrow”
She brushes her teeth and chooses a book,
Descending the stairs, she saves Benbo with a look
At the framed picture
Which, like the signal, she kept in the box.