In a way, Mr. Nelson's death was the closest we ever got to him. It was the closest we ever came to solving his mystery. He had moved to our small town about five years ago. There were no boxes announcing his arrival. Just a small sign on the postbox and some flowers planted outside the door. Without the presence of moving trucks and their cacophony, he had inserted himself into the community.

We didn't know what to think of Mr. Nelson. We never saw him enter shops. He didn't buy groceries at SuperFoodMart, get his haircut at Barber Joe's, never browsed in the whimsical shops like Shelly's Seaside Surprises or Ahmad's Rugs, never bought clothes in K-Mart. Quite frankly, we don't know what he ate or what he used because there was never a garbage bin. In fact, we don't think he had ever walked down Main Street.

Except when there was a community event. He was always at every single Thanksgiving parade, softball games, and summer concerts. In various shades of corduroy brown and pastels in the fall and wide brimmed hats in the summer, Mr. Nelson would be there. He would never participate, never pitch the ball or cheer in the sidelines. Instead, he would have an old Nokia Lumia video camera, filming everything in sight.

Though no one ever asked him what he did with these videos, there were several theories. Ahmad thought he was a spy, a CIA agent in disguise, waiting to catch someone in our sleepy town. Joe thought he was a ******, reporting back to some godforsaken land in the East. Shelly thought he was just a creep, spying on women behind his sinister lens. We conspired together on back porches and cozy couches, on lazy summer days and cold winter nights. Some of us got tired of all the talk and tried to find out.

There were several attempts to infiltrate Mr. Nelson's house, both covert and blatant. The Betty twins hid in the flowerbeds, the Warden's daughter had tried to crawl in a window only to find that they were always shut. Mrs. Gilovich baked endless amounts of cookies, pies and casseroles only to find herself politely thanked and the recipient of a *** of jam on her doorstep the next day. One day, noisy Edna hobbled over and tried her trick of requesting water, but was greeted by Mr. Nelson at the door with a cold glass and a bemused smile.  

So concerned were we with Mr. Nelson that he came with us on vacations, on roadtrips, and even on our most solemn sojourns. In  hushed whispers he was summoned in distant lands. He skied with us over snow and water and was even known by our most tenuous relationships. It came as a surprise then, when on the last weekend of summer, we received an invitation to Mr. Nelson's wake at his house.

That Mr. Nelson had died was a revelation. Sure, he hadn't come to the last few summer shows but we didn't think too much of it. Still, it would be a lie to say that we were not excited when . Calls were quickly made to every house, to confirm the receipt of the invitation, to go through costume changes and appropriate greetings. How would we be greeted? What would we see?

Some of us, those of us who can never bear to wait, showed up five minutes before while some trickled in five or even ten minutes late. We came in clusters, hushed and energized groups, murmuring our condolences to each other. We were like eager schoolchildren visiting the Holocaust Museum, understanding the gravity of the situation yet unable to contain a sense of excitement.

In the end, we were sorely disappointed. His wife, who we had never seen before, greeted us at the door. We ate cheese and crackers while our eyes scanned every corner, attempting to ferret out an explanation. The rooms could have been any one of our homes, with furniture from last year's Pottery Barn catalogue. There were no hidden corridors, nefarious Communist propaganda, perverted sketches.As quietly and plainly as he had arrived, Mr. Nelson had bidden us goodbye.

For weeks afterwards, we exchanged ideas of what it could mean, what Mr. Nelson could possibly mean, what a life can mean. Once again, he travelled with us around the globe. Long after we had left our sleepy town, Mr. Nelson remained with us, filling us with equal measures of curiosity and dread.  What a shame we voiced, no one would ever remember Mr. Nelson. What a shame, we thought, that Mr. Nelson would outlive us all.

The world is fast and reckless
Like a stampede of beasts and
Teenage ***.

We traded smog
For the roar of the city and
I am then reminded of my mobile life
Before atrophy set like plaster
In my bones.

Similarly, I lived above a bar,
And the roar of the crowds
Was compensated for
By the free drinks I would receive
To placate me,
To deafen me.

I remember heading out to the office
Already half-cut
Even before the banks had opened.

I remember everybody walking,
Not because the roads were too crammed,
But because it was so.

It was so, it was so,
And now that excuse is just not good enough
Anymore.

Neither am I.

I still walk the streets
And stop by outside windows.
It takes me a little longer these days
To read the signs and labels,
The mating rituals of the merchants;
Buy me, buy me, buy me!

They remind me of the girls I see these days,
The ones who live in semi-agony,
Lactic acid in their muscles and
A lack of sugar in their blood.

The way they walk so consciously nonchalant,
Impostered hair dragging in the wind,
Just living for the double takes
As they pass the men in the streets.

Nobody courts anymore.
Hands are held far too easily
And intimacy seems to me to have become
Just another commodity.

I remember my sweetheart.
The years we lived in absences,
Sleeping between lies and compromises
And lying awake at night,
Our bodies spent as our cheeks sunk into our pillows.
Our eyes staring past the darkness of the room
And beyond to something, somewhere,
Far from where we found our lives had laid.

I remember her so well, my dear coffee bean.
How desperate the years were
When we were apart,
Living out our lives and
Exchanging platitudes for company
In our loveless marriages.

I remember how bitterly disappointed I was,
To be bounded to the forever decreasing circles
I had to move within each day.
And I remember, so exquisitely remember,
The day I broke from them.

And we met.
We met over letters,
Recited by our eyes and written by the hands
Of our desires. Oh, the saliva of the stamp
Bringing us to a closeness
That was unbounded by geography.

These days,
Nobody understands the thrill of the postbox
And the dependent trust
You had to invest into the postman.

Nobody.

The welcome mat is now nothing
But a place to wipe the **** from your shoes
And to kick the bills away
From your footfalls.

It was once a pigeon hole,
An inbox and a faceless meeting point
For all of your dearest allies.

How I recall the excitement of the morning,
My sleep thinned to prepare for the slap of papers
And the return of my silent darling’s words.

Yes, today that has all gone
And so has she.

How I miss you, my dear
And the snort of your laughter.
How I miss counting out your imperfections;
Each another reason to love you
And to love you more.

Now that you are gone my darling,
My life is little more than an emptied school
In the endless weeks of summer.

I lie in wait, coffee bean,
For each time you appear, a phantasm
In my day. I wait for those special moments
Where I assume you will be sitting there,
Ageing with irrefutable brilliance
In the chair you so stubbornly frequented
Every day of our retirement.

I’ll take the hit that comes with it.
I’ll accept the come-down
When I enter the room
And realise
That you are even less than a ghost,

A passing thought
That decays instantly in the air.

And the air darling,
The air is filled with noise in these streets.
Do you remember when you and I would stop
And listen to the busker by the bridge?

I do.

I think he is gone too now,
Though sometimes I still hear his music
As I pass above the river.

Now, I live on in near-silence.
It has been weeks since I last spoke to somebody
Who did not rush me through my sentences.
And so I’m learning the patterns of today
And instead bow my sad head
And just pay up for my goods.

I avoid home mostly.
It is okay once I am inside it,
But it is the returning that I am afraid of.

So I mostly walk the streets,
The same route each day,
Until darkness or hunger delivers me,
Confused at my door.

I stumble lethargically to the television set,
The one we bought together for our first apartment,
Do you remember?

I turn it on quickly to **** the breathless silence.

Now, whenever I do get to talk to somebody,
I feel my eyes blur to tears
For some inexplicable reason.
Oh! The ache in my guts

How often I must swallow panic
And all of those pills that do not work.
Instead they just fog my mind
And distort all of the anchors
And features in my life.

Even the television will shout at me.
Everything I watch is an advert,
And the news is getting uglier with each day.
Sometimes I will turn on the radio,
But music isn’t music anymore.

And so I’ve learnt to read above
The din of gameshows and the gunshots
From dramas full of anger and devoid
Of love.

I’ve learnt to read again,
As we did together in the warmth
Of the crackles that interceded
The crooners that used to play through the grooves
That my life is once again set between.

At times I feel I am the only reader left in the world.
That all authors write for myself,
Vying for my attentions.

Nobody reads anymore.

Though the depravity between us
Made our love all the more sublime,
I must admit I regret those absent, wasted years.

How wonderful it would be now,
To see your features mixed with mine
And hidden behind the faces of our children.

I would give all that I am,
Which admittedly is not much anymore,
To be able to see the pigments in your eyes
Again, in whichever form they took.

How I would kiss our daughter’s hands
If they resembled your’s.

How I would weep into the shoulders of our son,
If he resembled your heart.

And so now my darling,
I wander these thoughtless paths like a machine.
And though I look out at the opulence
Of the city streets, I am instead
Just walking through a memory,
Or some old doctored flicker show,
Where I cut out all of the ugliness
And leave just us.

Pit-a-pat, pit-a-pat went the rain on the panes.
And the oh so grey sky was just trails of countless planes.
And those planes brought people past cities, past tiny lanes,
people happier than those on my street.

On the red postbox, was the peeling paint.
And the numbers on the doors were never straight.
And on many houses was a rusty gate,
that's a reality on my street.

Cats prowled the street like lions, a sweet thing I guess,
But even sweet things end in sorrow and distress:
A bird with no guts, a dead kitten, nothing less:
even good things end sadly on my street.

A pile of *******, all mouldy and rank,
An Amazon bill, one side tea-stained, one side blank,
An old can, crumpled, pierced, already drunk,
that's what it looks like on my street.

in the next ten seconds,
he opens his mouth to speak to an acquaintance in a room full of acquaintances
an ugly metal faucet that has been dripping for fifteen days drips again in an upstairs sink
he tucks a strand of hair behind her ear as she bites at her fingernails and
            looks at the magazines lined up in the supermarket
before she opens the postbox, she inhales
she throws her head back before laughing at his anecdote, her knees feeling the ache
            of being crossed for too long
with slightly tremulous fingers, she touches she sleeve of her coat without reason, feeling
            like everyone on the underground train may be looking at her
he takes a sip of water and screws the lid back on, checking his watch
a hiccup is heard from the back of a classrm
he kisses her for the first time on the mouth
he notices his hair has fallen out and sits in the shower drain
their elbows graze against one another's in the lecture hall but neither of them
             catch the other's eye, both staring straight ahead
she blots her lips over a folded tissue to remove pink residue and looks herself in the eye
             in the mirror
her father lets go f her shoulders as she wobbles on the bicycle without its stabilisers
             for a second attempt today
he notices a stain of yogurt on his tie and curses quietly
she burns her fingers whilst making toast
she argues with the cashier about the fact that selected juices were marked as being on offer
the rain rattles against the window and he is uneasy with the lack of rhythm in its sound
they put on her favourite song and remember her as she was when she was still alive
someone wipes salt from her cheeks with a tissue
he realises that the tooth fairy doesn't exist and doesn't mind because it means he's grown up
she asks her father if she is pretty and he say anything
she slips a packet of biscuits into the supermarket trolley, her mother sees
             and doesn't say anything
an elderly woman cradles his arm as they slowly cross the street
they look at one another and both know
he says I'm so sorry
she says I'm so sorry
he says I love you
she says you know I do.

He perches on his black-crate bandstand,
stationed between the payphone and postbox.
The view from his seat never varies:
a restless audience of briefcases and knees.

He closes his eyes, concentrating
on breath becoming buzz becoming blare,
and he pictures his notes glossing Manhattan’s
thunder-colored walls.

Each tone fills the pavement, square by square
until the sidewalk is a harlequin filmstrip,
colored by notes coaxed from his brass mouth.

Passersby withhold their gaze, because giving a nod
obliges giving a dollar, and no one is inclined
to employ this trumpeter. But he pays no mind;
his own eyes secured until song’s end.

As long as his fingers are jumping,
he doesn’t have to be Gerard Wall–
who lost his wife to cancer and mind to the War;
he can be Louis, Miles, or Pinetop Smith.

When he looks up once again,
sun and spirit have faded,
and he watches the evening embers
drift out of his horn.

The world is fast and reckless
like a stampede of beasts and
teenage ***.

It constantly reminds me
of my once mobile life,
before atrophy set like plaster
in my bones.

Everyone used to walk
to where they needed to be,
not because the roads were congested,
but because it was so.
It seems that excuse is just not good enough
anymore.

At times I think:
neither am I.

I still walk the streets
and browse the shop-fronts.
It takes me a little longer these days
to read the signs and labels,
the easy mating calls of the merchants
standing under bigger names
and brighter lights.

Nobody courts anymore.
Hands are held far too easily
and intimacy seems to have become
yet another commodity.

I remember my sweetheart
and the years we lived in absences,
sleeping with a lie
in a life of compromise.
Our eyes stared past the darkness of the room,
beyond to something, somewhere,
far from where we found our lives to be.

I remember her well
amongst the ruins of my years.
How desperate were the days
before we met,
exchanging platitudes for company
in our first loveless marriages.

How bitter I was,
bound within ever decreasing circles
of routine and passionless chains.
I exquisitely recall the day
I finally broke from them.

You and I
met over letters,
our eyes scanning and reciting
each other's loneliness
and fear of never finding a place.
The saliva of the stamp
brought us to a closeness
unbounded by geography.

These days,
nobody understands the thrill of a postbox
and the welcome mat
has become nothing more
than a place to wipe the **** from your shoes,
as the day nurse comes to visit,
kicking pizza leaflets
to the edges of the hallway.

There was excitement in the morning,
sleep thinned to prepare
for that slap of paper
and rattle of metal.

Presently my life feels little more
than an emptied school
in the endless weeks of summer;
a sugar paper lantern
left to bleach in the sun.

I lie in wait,
for the times you appear - a phantasm
in my day. A moment reserved
with the assumption you will be sitting there,
ageing with irrefutable brilliance,
in the chair you stubbornly frequented
ever since our retirement.

I’ll take the hit that comes with it.
I’ll accept the come-down
when I enter the room
and you are not there,
if it permits me a moment of belonging.

The air is cancerous
with the noises of the streets.
We used to stop and listen
to the busker by the bridge,
always pleading upon bended knee
for someone to validate his melody
and make his callouses worthwhile.

Now, I live on in near-silence.
It has been weeks since I spoke to someone
who did not rush me through my sentences.
I am trying to learn the patterns of today,
a way to bow my sad head
and pay up for my goods
in the blink of an eye,
in a way to defy that I am old and slow.

I avoid home mostly
and instead, I walk through
the same route each day,
hoping for a friend
or else never to be noticed.
Hunger will eventually deliver me,
confused at our door.

I turn the television on quickly
to **** the silence that forms
in the spaces you would have spoken in.

On the rare occasions
that I talk to someone,
my eyes blur with inexplicable tears,
a kind of tension grips me,
as if I have missed the last step on the stairs.

I swallow panic
like all of those pills that never work,
instead fogging my mind,
distorting all anchors
to a meaningful life.

The television shouts at me
across the room, patronising like
the cold-callers and politicians.
Everything seems to be an advert
and the news is getting uglier.
Sometimes I turn on the radio,
to give my eyes a rest,
but music isn’t music anymore.

We  never wasted our moments on kids,
but I have grown soft in old age,
and perhaps I would like
to have the comfort of your features
blurred with mine, bestowed upon
our trial-and-error attempt at a legacy.

The money will dry up.
I have started smoking again.
Though I still smoke on the doorstep,
because I know you never liked the smell.
These are just the thoughts of an old man,
some doctored flicker show
Where I can cut out all of the ugliness,
and leave just us.