The memory of you emerges from the night around me.
The river mingles its stubborn lament with the sea.

Deserted like the dwarves at dawn.
It is the hour of departure, oh deserted one!

Cold flower heads are raining over my heart.
Oh pit of debris, fierce cave of the shipwrecked.

In you the wars and the flights accumulated.
From you the wings of the song birds rose.

You swallowed everything, like distance.
Like the sea, like time. In you everything sank!

It was the happy hour of assault and the kiss.
The hour of the spell that blazed like a lighthouse.

Pilot's dread, fury of blind driver,
turbulent drunkenness of love, in you everything sank!

In the childhood of mist my soul, winged and wounded.
Lost discoverer, in you everything sank!

You girdled sorrow, you clung to desire,
sadness stunned you, in you everything sank!

I made the wall of shadow draw back,
beyond desire and act, I walked on.

Oh flesh, my own flesh, woman whom I loved and lost,
I summon you in the moist hour, I raise my song to you.

Like a jar you housed infinite tenderness.
and the infinite oblivion shattered you like a jar.

There was the black solitude of the islands,
and there, woman of love, your arms took me in.

There was thirst and hunger, and you were the fruit.
There were grief and ruins, and you were the miracle.

Ah woman, I do not know how you could contain me
in the earth of your soul, in the cross of your arms!

How terrible and brief my desire was to you!
How difficult and drunken, how tensed and avid.

Cemetery of kisses, there is still fire in your tombs,
still the fruited boughs burn, pecked at by birds.

Oh the bitten mouth, oh the kissed limbs,
oh the hungering teeth, oh the entwined bodies.

Oh the mad coupling of hope and force
in which we merged and despaired.

And the tenderness, light as water and as flour.
And the word scarcely begun on the lips.

This was my destiny and in it was my voyage of my longing,
and in it my longing fell, in you everything sank!

Oh pit of debris, everything fell into you,
what sorrow did you not express, in what sorrow are you not drowned!

From billow to billow you still called and sang.
Standing like a sailor in the prow of a vessel.

You still flowered in songs, you still brike the currents.
Oh pit of debris, open and bitter well.

Pale blind diver, luckless slinger,
lost discoverer, in you everything sank!

It is the hour of departure, the hard cold hour
which the night fastens to all the timetables.

The rustling belt of the sea girdles the shore.
Cold stars heave up, black birds migrate.

Deserted like the wharves at dawn.
Only tremulous shadow twists in my hands.

Oh farther than everything. Oh farther than everything.

It is the hour of departure. Oh abandoned one!

(for Christopher Isherwood)

Seated after breakfast
In this white-tiled cabin
Arabs call the House where
Everybody goes,
Even melancholics
Raise a cheer to Mrs.
Nature for the primal
Pleasure She bestows.

*** is but a dream to
Seventy-and-over,
But a joy proposed un-
-til we start to shave:
Mouth-delight depends on
Virtue in the cook, but
This She guarantees from
Cradle unto grave.

Lifted off the *****,
Infants from their mothers
Hear their first impartial
Words of worldly praise:
Hence, to start the morning
With a satisfactory
Dump is a good omen
All our adult days.

Revelation came to
Luther in a privy
(Crosswords have been solved there)
Rodin was no fool
When he cast his Thinker,
Cogitating deeply,
Crouched in the position
Of a man at stool.

All the arts derive from
This ur-act of making,
Private to the artist:
Makers' lives are spent
Striving in their chosen
Medium to produce a
De-narcissus-ized en-
During excrement.

Freud did not invent the
Constipated miser:
Banks have letter boxes
Built in their façade
Marked For Night Deposits,
Stocks are firm or liquid,
Currencies of nations
Either soft or hard.

Global Mother, keep our
Bowels of compassion
Open through our lifetime,
Purge our minds as well:
Grant us a king ending,
Not a second childhood,
Petulant, weak-sphinctered,
In a cheap hotel.

Keep us in our station:
When we get pound-notish,
When we seem about to
Take up Higher Thought,
Send us some deflating
Image like the pained ex-
-pression on a Major
Prophet taken short.

(Orthodoxy ought to
Bless our modern plumbing:
Swift and St. Augustine
Lived in centuries
When a stench of sewage
Made a strong debating
Point for Manichees.)

Mind and Body run on
Different timetables:
Not until our morning
Visit here can we
Leave the dead concerns of
Yesterday behind us,
Face with all our courage
What is now to be.

There's an architect designing the world from the skyline downwards, as he believes himself to be a God
The paraffin lamps on Victorian cobbled corners are as dry as the seraph in dust bowls over some arid sea
A portrait exists, of a town covered in mist and the orange cliffs are a thousand bloodied wrists
Somewhere music plays to ghosts, obtuse reverberations of some cave on a mountain... or something
and what a useless skill it is to be a poet, flouting fanciful words as if a single soul cared or could possibly muster anything more than unadulterated apathy

What a lonely life it is, to spend entire days watching ******* and reveling in dissociative stoicism
Watching cam girls for hours on end, swept up in conversation yet never taking part, only watching
They seem as lonely as anybody, holed up in crimson rooms as anonymous DJs play through laptop speakers
Fielding obscene questions with a smile and renting their body in timetables to the highest tipper
and some days the depression becomes so heavy that ******* seems impossible, though it's possible to blame such  scarcity on the anti-anxiety meds that have ruined so many-a youthful folly

Is there a more flattering notion, than a story teller being commended for honesty when every word is a lie
Fictional accounts of melancholic lives told in a pulchritudinous verse or a prose of the most regal purples
Using nothing more than ******-stimulants and a smeared bedroom window for inspiration
There's a writer sat at a desk, typing ridiculous lines of text, as he knows himself to be human
and in that humanity he strives to create a realists interpretation of existence through scattered memories
and derivative styles of his favourite authors whilst using educational texts as footnotes in imaginary diaries

Once more the Big Bang occurs
Each time spurred on by the spark
of the sleeping child's dream of reality
A naked singularity inflates
at an exponential rate
Subsisting on the substrate
of her slumbering psyche

Her neural networks create galaxies
Energy expended directly from REM sleep
spent on the formation of solar systems
and stars
comets crash land carrying key components
for the conditions of future life on Earth
and Mars

Within the primordial soup
Of the third rock from the sun
Residing in the ocean
-life has just begun
Microbes photosyntesize carbon
Giving Earth an atmosphere rich with oxygen
Arbitrary factors steer evolution
Tetrapods mutate from fish
becoming amphibious

Exodus.

Something steps onto the surface
- for the first time
Two billion years have elapsed
mere minutes move in the girl's mind

It was maybe thirty minutes since
she bade her mom goodnight
The child sleeps tight
Meanwhile a caveman strikes flint on timber
The resulting embers form a fire
Providing him with warmth and some light

Callous winds from outside conquers
the comfort of her comforter
A chill permeates the child's skin
This feeling reverberates all the way down
The first ice age begins
A frozen world of snow
For eleven thousand years
Her mother creeps in closing her window
The ice age ends

External stimuli
affects those things which rely
on her to sustain sleep

The 21st century is past the prime of its peak
The greenhouse effect from carbon
Corrupts the ozone, making it weak
Wars carry on over resources or religion
Water levels rise and countries
remain in division
Governments pick payouts over compassion  
Indifferent to what happens
With their most vulnerable citizens
Letting most rot in for-pay private prisons
Yet far removed from all these chaotic conditions in this society,
...The child still snoozes,ever so quietly

There's no more gods In the 2,001st century.

In their place, now only harmony and grace
Humanity banded together as a unified race
galvanized toward a single, common goal
To flee the dying planet
before it swallows them all whole

A contingency plan is put in place
For when the scientists fail
and the Earth collapses under its own weight
A ship will be sent deep into outer space
containing embryos and astronauts
suspended In a cryogenic state

The sun assaults the closed blinds
Testing the resolve of the resting child...

Two astronauts are jolted awake
En route,they believe
To a viable new world to habitate
Earth imploded five decades past
But with mass embryonic incubation
-they will revive humanity
Saving it from the brink
of all-out annihilation,
All that hinges on is if they can first safely reach:
Their destination

A routine glance
at procedural scans on the screen
Shows they shifted an exigious sum
while they were sustained in cryogenic hibernation
This detour turned exponential;
when you tally up the years
They fail to attain any feelings aside from fear
for this journey they must now embark
a single line of corrupted code controls their ship,
"The Noah's ark"
These last two have veered so far
from what would have been humanity's
new home
-With no way to course correct
They suspected their task would take a toll
But they were not expecting anything
like this:

Adrift towards a rift in reality
The ship's malfunction
steered them in its wake
It's too late now:
-far too close they can't escape
That dark incision distends itself
gourging on time and space
There is a beauty to how things end
Watching superheated gas and dust aggregate
Creates an accretion disk concealing vacuity
-Yet shines much brighter
than an angel's halo
The two astronauts strap in to the cockpit
With front row tickets to the show:
...just how far down the black hole,
         are you willing to go?

The mother returns,
fully opening the blinds
Cuddles next to her resting child...

Meanwhile Inside the singularity
The last human sees a secret and weeps
He's peering beyond the veil now
Into a little girl's room who is asleep
Yes, he sees her clear
her mother spoons her nestling near,
Shakes her shoulders softly,
whispers into her daughter's ear,
-As she does every morning day,
" what did you dream of this time, my dear?"

She kisses her daughter on the cheek
The little girl yawns as she speaks
Birds outside have started to sing:

"Momma, I think I dreamed of...Everything?"

His eyes close
The man gives in to that sweet release
All of her internal creations ceast
Consumed
as the child is wrenched from the well
Of her own unconscious infinity
The pocket dimension contained within her
Is decimated as she arises
All that energy then metabolizes
to sustain her life
And when she rests it will be divested
once again
To create a new dimension-
as it does every night

Eternal Bloom
Entire galactic timetables and scales contained
In the slumbering soul of a six-year old
She will grow old
She will wither
She will die
As the world's which reside in her do,
When she wakes.

- when she meets her fate
On that operating room table
at the age of 98
the light which emanates at the end of the tunnel

Was merely a father's mistake.

Illumination cast killing darkness
In the bedroom of his home
he absentmindedly turned up the brightness
While playing on his phone
She takes one last breath then fades to grey
In sync with the father stowing his device away
Not alone in his room
he snuggles in for the night
-And can't help but smile
Unaware of the realms
that depend on the dreams

Of his own unassuming, resting child.

-

Exams over, friends dissolved and school also told bye,
Holidays commence; time to wander and to fly.
The first day of holiday-I woke up like an early bird,
Mom preparing stuff for breakfast,
And dad busy with calls and hurrying fast.
I stare at my room window and take a glimpse
Of people rushing their cars past the traffic.
Seeing everyone in routine makes me terrific!
The birds chirping daily without any holidays
And the sweepers taking away the dust without any leavings.

The gardener has arrived, the maid had come
In almost each person’s home.
People terminated their morning walk
And grabbed the car.
I’m still at the window spotting tones of people departing out very busily-
The merchants and vendors shouting noisily.
All the work is turning on without distraction,
Everyone at their workplace in attention.


After some time, my neighborhood turns out to be calm
The tranquil and the ready floating breeze blow past my face.
This assures me that everyone left their houses
And reached their respective places.
I take my eyes off the window and sit-back.
No more to-do lists, no more writing the home works,
And timetables on the calendar looks.
No more wearing shoes at the sound of the school bus
No more books and things at mess.

I see the clock-it’s only eight
Same time yesterday I was in an exam fight.

Spotting everyone at their routine work-
I feel so much desolate and forlorn.
And yet at dusk I watch people returning home from their day’s work.
At twilight, I see the firmament fading into a thick sapphire loom
And ask myself-“What have I done today?”
The obvious answer is-“Watching people drive and return from work!”
I see the calendar-Two more months for school:
Two more months for my homely eyes to twinkle
Two more months to shut the windows
Two more months to mess my table
Till then, my homely eyes-weak and feeble
I just need to nurture and make them twinkle…

I deeply miss those days
When I used to travel
Of course, not just by any vehicle
But a vehicle with a thousand wheels
Clattering away on iron rails
Like there is no tomorrow
A vehicle I had fallen for
Hook, line and sinker
Since the age of two
A love that I refuse to let go of
And a love that refuses to let go of me!

I deeply miss those days
When we railfans got together
Not simply to eat and drink
Not simply for some chat-chit
But to follow our passion
And shoot videos of trains
Thundering away into the sunset
Like there is no tomorrow

I deeply miss those days
When we railfans got together
And did train trips using circuitous routes
Akin to moving from the head to the mouth
Via the entire body!

I deeply miss those days
When I used to do solo train trips
On a monthly basis
Sometimes, even twice a month
An ideal way to **** work stress!

I deeply miss those days
When I used to write blogs
About every trip of mine
And post them in IRFCA
The largest association of railfans
At least as far as India is concerned
Including many railway officials
With an encyclopedia of information
About the Indian Railways
Whether it be the locomotive classes
Whether it be the train operations
Whether it be the timetables
Or even the food!

I deeply miss those days
When I used to lie down
Not on a bed, but a berth
And get lulled into sleep
By the gentle swaying motion
The rhythmic clickety clack
And, occasionally
The melodious chugging
Or the mesmerising humming
Of the roaring diesel
Hauling our train
Accompanied by its horn
Which itself, was music to the ears!

I deeply miss those days
When I used to sit on my Side Lower Berth
And watch scenery fly past me
As we traversed the countryside
The villages and the small towns
The cattle, goats and sheep
The farms and paddy fields
The bushes, shrubs and trees
The ponds, lakes and rivers

I deeply miss those days
When I used to travel the Konkan route
Through a plethora of bridges and tunnels
Lakes, rivers and mountains
And a plethora of greenery
Accompanied by the fierce chugging
Of the ALCO engine hauling us
Or the rhythmic humming
Of the EMD engine hauling us
Of course, it was a diesel heaven!

I deeply miss those days
When I used to travel by "toy trains"
Whether it be the Neral-Matheran train
Or the Kalka-Shimla train
Or the Siliguri-Darjeeling train
It was so romantic
The way we crawled
Right through the heart of the mountains
With a plethora of tunnels
Bridges, viaducts and loops
After all the high speed drama earlier
It was a surreal change
Enjoying the scenery at our own pace
While getting overtaken by joggers
And sometimes, even animals!

I deeply miss those days
When I used to get down
As we stopped at a station
One of so many in our journey
And take a walk on the platform
To check out our loco
And sip from a piping hot cup of coffee!

I deeply miss those days
When we travelled in single-line sections
And our train came to a halt
At a nondescript wayside station
With a platform on only one side
And total darkness on the other side!
I waited for the signal on that line
To turn green, after a while
And heard, from a great distance
The horn of an approaching train
Followed by the lamps of its engine
As it proceeded to burn the tracks
And raise a great heap of dust
Thus shattering the calm of the night

I deeply miss even those days
When I used to go to office daily
Commuting by the famous Mumbai locals
As the train pulled into Vikhroli
I staggered into the First class compartment
Packed to the hilt
With pretentious male executives
Filling the air with testosterone
Such that it was quite a challenge
To even inhale the air properly
It was quite a relief
When Dadar arrived
But then came another challenge
The famous changeover
From Central to Western Railway
Across a sea of commuters
Followed by a brief ride
In another train, to Lower Parel
By the time I reached office
I was drenched in sweat
From head to toe
Not to mention, thoroughly fatigued
What to do?
After all, this is what life is
For the average Mumbaikar

I deeply miss those days
When train travel was the norm
Rather than the exception
However, as far as I am concerned
COVID19 may have taken me out of the train
But it certainly can't take the train out of me!

Under the dead beat sky
Collaborations tie us all together
Our ideas cross and human gazes overlap
Streams flow into tiny veins that cover a certain surface area.

Red lights shine on profiled faces in the evening side of the night
Trainers shuffle along the uneven ground around town where signs are broken.
Cigarette smoke pours out of each corner of this run down station
Wrinkled looks despair over the dated flourescent timetables

Just waiting for the next train out of town
Just waiting for the next train out of town

Shove past my nearest man to get to the furthest conception
The long path to the nearest understanding of human nature
Is muddied with distasteful stories that couldnt hold any kind of weight Among us.

*Jeremiah in the window of the salon, he puts his makeup on slowly

Podium

That’s me on the totem pole,
with the face paints and cigarettes.
The smoke burns your eyes.

That’s me on the pedestal,
ears to ground and eyes in the clouds.
The rain soaked your skin.

That’s me on the platform,
with the rucksack and treasured artefacts,
The timetables melted your mind.

That’s me on the podium,
soaked in sweat, medal around my neck.
The track broke your heart.

That’s me at the finish line baby,
maybe,
we could go back to the start.

Each day the light slips
into the murky shadows
of the bedroom-morning-depression

Cars swish by
in the rush hour of work
and school

routines, timetables and teabreaks
weekday working
full of purpose.

On the edge, outside the frame
margin people wait
silenced and destination free

unmapped, unseen
locked tight
in a circle

cruising
their perimeter
only hoping for a break.


© M.L.Emmett

I can't keep writing about the same things
Like a broken record played over and over again
Just so the lonely can hear something sing
It's all her emerald eyes and silent goodbyes
And all the times I've lost my mind
A memory lasts a lifetime,
As long as you have the evidence that that time
Truly existed
Maybe we missed it,
The last train to our future together
Maybe the timetables were wrong and
We were too busy watching our scars heal to
Make it to the station on time. 
I've torn apart so many books and
Burnt so much fabric
In the hopes of forgetting people who
Discarded me entirely
And I will never see that word the same again,
Because when you've become inconvenient,
You will be dispensed, replaced, 
Discarded.

A small nest in a large sea,
the beat of the blades keeps
time for those still alive,
whose desperate waves
defy tide timetables.

The camera zooms in on
anguished faces and still ones.
We lean forward screened from pain,
listening to the death count,
time and time and time again.

That dullard Percival Crane
he's boring into my brain
he's talking train
timetables and grain
sizes and portfolios
and shares
**** he's assaulting my ears
Next time  when I spy his magnified eyes
I'll say, see you Percy, my how time flies

I don't have a playbook for this love.

In every other relationship I have or had, there is a decoding:
•  If he does this, it means...
•  When this situation happens, the correct response is...
•  When he says this, it indicates...

There are timetables and destinations
stages that must occur in sequence
things that have to happen before certain conversations can be had
milestones
goals

And here I am

I have no expectations
I have no game plan
There is no strategy
I am

I love

There's a cacophony of attributable  timetables
on silver rail roads,
there's a surfeit of wisdom
peering through  a thoughtless tunnel

i am on the platform at the railway station.
Most days I board a train.
On the other days I just look at the brochures and the timetables.
At night I sleep in the waiting room.
My partner sleeps there too.
In the morning he goes down to the village
Where the folk have settled
Like sediment.

I had  a dream of travelling;  just that - travelling, not  leaving, not staying ; travelling.
At the station
Faces look out from the bus, familiar faces, continuing on their journey.
Their journey. Not my journey.

No going back, or even looking back, I can't see the road behind, only glimpses
Of what it may have been.

I'll stay here a while in no- man's land. Or stay forever
Sit in the shelter at the roadside and pretend.
Tell all the people in the queue, ' No. Not my bus. I have a while to wait, a while to wile.' I say.
Scan timetables and adverts  idly,
Then sit and sit , then sit some more
And wait until a bus comes rolling down the hill with cheery driver and with all the windows lit.
Jump on and go with it.

Pick me up in the passing Winter.
Snow threatened, train timetables
bidding for curtailment.
The past shone resolute
Health and Safety was a by-line
but today's invidious un-motivation
has its own Cellophane steering wheel
to pace  our growing passivity.

Don't be a local.
Don't deny yourself the wonder.
Don't forego the sunlight,
the movement of the sky
the dance of the water

Don't be a local.
Don't focus on timetables.
Don't get lost in ferry dramas.
Lift your head into the wind
and take in the glacial.

We need to organise a meeting
So we can discuss the previous meeting
Concerning the timetables of meetings
So we can begin this year’s diaries of meeting in full!
But should we have a meeting to decide all
these meetings before we begin deciding at all?

Said the council official who was avoiding the issue
dreaming up ways to fill his diary for the year.

4:
i am fed with alphabet soup,
and i am made to sing this song that sounds catchy.
this seems rather fun.

9:
3, 6, 9, 12, 15, 18, 21, 24
my teacher says that we have to recite our timetables whenever we come into class.
i like seeing my brain grow from day to day.

16:
floating from room to room,
just to have my mind rearranged,
and "YOU HAVE EXAMS. GET YOUR **** TOGETHER" being shoved down your throat.

learning is no longer useful,
for all that matter is that grade in red.

A, B, C, D or E? it defines your life.

all that i feel like doing is burning my textbooks, notes and my school.

i am only 16, but i am so worn out.

you shun me in our heat
you turn, don’t laugh.
smiles crease your lids,
trying to hide it.
but on the fireside i see
the flames freckle
your moonlit face.
glanced eyes break when they meet.
timetables and time souring
my glower-grace.
and then walking away,
you’ve pulled that card again.
does the neglect keep you honest,
when the early hours
made you cheat.
the fear blossoms in crimson
and you laid hands,
***** sinner.
do try to repent—
it doesn’t make it go away.
i’ve lessened in height
since December,
climbing the ladders
asking for heaven in dreams.
(you are heaven to me.)
unreachable.

a siren in flames,
voice not sweet but piercing
i will sing to you
until the ships come in dismantled
and burning board by board
i want to destroy you
devour your living soul
call me fate in dust
industrial war,
or spectral spirit to haunt you,
a plague there’s no antibiotics for.
you’ll deny me to your master
but can’t can’t shake it off
i see your eyes in the fire
creased with your smile
try to shake it try.

you shun me in our heat
but i’ll still know you in the embers
love you from a distance
keep my place in the shadows.
just as the future calls for me,
it calls for you
whether hell or heaven
you’ll beg for me again,
and i will make you answer,
suffer for your sins.

You'll depart when you feel like it:
goddesses do not adhere to timetables.
Your body is so lovely
it scares away sharks.
Why should it fear time?
Your grace comes from deep caverns.
The tocks of clocks mean nothing more
to you than the creaking on weary stairs.
You leave no footprints as you glide the beach.
Millennia would not allow
half enough moments to describe
the tiny eternity
of your arms around me.
You arrived in a dream and
you'll depart when you feel like it.

   - mce

bells and whistles
the hands of a clock
chiming the hours
timetables captured children
running to catch up
late again
detention looms
the hour has struck
born to be on the run

Anxious

Getting ready for a trip,
our traveling papers
take on importance.
Like Schindler’s list,
if we drop one
we could end up lost
or stranded
in some out of the way airport
far from the crowd,
or wandering about
looking for ticket counters somewhere
to get our reservations confirmed.
I call to make sure we are on track
with the planes and cars
homes and roads and timetables,
but the recording says:
our arrangement for a sedan is invalid.
So I wait on the phone for hours.
Finally,
I think maybe my sister can get us out of this jam.
One well-placed call
and she had us on the way.
So nice for an old man,
to still have a big sister.

We’d dallied with bright shining dreams, of course;
Gatsby-esque timetables and solemn pacts
Made with ourselves, come undone with brute force.
A bitter brew to quaff, but facts are facts;
We’re those workaday cogs we once foreswore
(Of no note at all save in mothers’ hearts)
Doomed to lurch forward while being no more
Than the shabby sum of commonplace parts.

Let us shelve tattered remnants of our ghosts,
And deign not to dwell on what could have been,
At last shaken free of our fathers’ boasts
(Praise God, no longer promising young men.)
Unshackled from that, then we can begin
To embrace the joy of just sleeping in.

I'll be your pen
hold me tenderly
keep as long as you can
even for eternity

Done with tiny masquerade parties
Accepting sweet passionatecandlesbeimg briskly blown away
Unacceptable timetables of perfection predictability
Immense knowledge must be withered away in the ******* like forest
We all must understand each other to begin to give pure unadulterated ever quenching water back to our MOTHER EARTH
Trumps a fkr

student of timetables

me

now with a free pass to most places

the official times

saved to my phone and noted on paper in my back pocket , nearly lost in the chip shop that only accepts cash

it fell yet we saw it and retrieved

1.28 pm the bus home so we gets there real early and waits

by the walker

he had trecked from forden the three miles up and down

used to the flatness of portsmouth wanted a ride back yet nothing forthcoming limped his return

1.50 pm with no bus arrived the timetable lady was contacted and she explained the bus was due at 2.30 pm that my internet were wrong and no one was bothered what it said at bus stops

on her say so

nipped round to the toilets then waited patiently to 2.30 when a bus arrived going the wrong way

spoke to the timetable lady who admitted being wrong that the 1.30 came in late possibly while i was in the toilets

the next correct and last bus now 3.30 pm

i wondered what to do if that one did not arrive and secured an unnecessary plan

fortunate to afford

when safely aboard thought of those recently waiting at airports to escape

my small adventure was as nothing

sat on the town hall steps in the late september sun

thank you for asking and the answer

would be quicker if I had cut my nails

to bounce the keyboard here

 

funny you should ask as i was thinking

over this yesterday while walking

 

how

 

it felt unfair that after all those years

of housekeeping

keeping his house clean

tidy, fitting in with all his

timetables and breathing

 

not breathing

 

that

 

she had to  go to the home quietly

where she remained quietly

 

her daughter also went later

and remain quiet

 

i lived in a home in milton road

milton house, place of nighmare

for us kids

 

wettened beds

stinking laundry

 

deleted

 

so I stayed quiet

 

so thank you so much for asking

and being so thoughtful yet  I tell

 

you clearly

that I do not want a care situation ever

for all the good it will do, so i won’t stay

 

quiet now

forgive me

 

I hope your dad had green in his view

 

other colours too

i wonder if you are known as bill like he was.



you talked about your creator and bill was mine,

& my mum.



i have talked about them before.



i feel that nature was mainly mine, not love nor purpose

as far as i can tell.



you said i listened and so i did, about life and war , power and politics

and i was sad.



sad when you mentioned the first  and then the second war. cried inside

when you talked about the ****** bombs on japan.



you suggested our histories william, while i was listening  and  you shook my hand

on the width of the old stones walls.



where i live.



i understand your faith  by bike abroad, and when asked if i believe

in our ressurection and the life to come,

i said no.



i read the bible. past tense.





little folk you said you like, i ask if you mean faeries and find you spoke of the ordinary

as do i.





i knew things would work out while i waited for the bus.



later that day i studied the timetables.

I started my young years
Watching right on on television
Keeping up to date on my fave music
I thought I was the only one who loved music
But then I found out the real music fans
Loved young talent time and countdown
And I was watching them a bit
And I bought an album called CHOC-A-BLOCK which was a bit like the chocolate ice cream named choc-block really tasty
Then I watched the local soccer match where the local boys Lakes United were playing after feeling fit and tired running in a church carnival, and each this morning we watched the breakfast club, which was a children’s morning cartoon show they had in Newcastle with Art Ryan who had a Nick name ‘poppa’ and each morning when they delivered the orange juice my brother and I went to the door to collect it and banged our heads on the wall as I was thinking the song the Judas Priest song get arrested for breaking the law as we banged our heads on the wall and we used to tape tv shows like mork and mindy on cassette from tv and you could hear the background noise and when robin williams said at the end see you next week, my brother on the last show said, hey it isn’t on next week, I was walking to the shops to buy to buy lollies I came home and my dad and my brother were watching the cricket and then banana splits and in other room mum was watching bellbird which in some episodes me and my brother talked through it so she couldn’t hear it and then the underarm ball happened in the cricket with Greg Chappell asking his brother Trevor to bowl an underarm bowl to stop the 11th place batsman from hitting a six and this was outrageous because he wasn’t capable of hitting a six like that
They only needed six to win and we went to my nannas house and me and my nanny watched 70s rock music concert and everyone on everybody gave me a rock music concert cassette and it got me closer with my brother who fought constantly like all brothers when we knew nothing about each other and nanny used to hold Christmas every Christmas night while granny used to do Christmas Eve and my cousin Alan played Santa and nanny’s do and I used to count the dongs on granny’s clock and when it struck seven I got up to watch the breakfast club
This was every weekday morning and every afternoon I loved the Mickey Mouse club but granny loved talking on the phone and someone rang about 5 minutes before the Mickey Mouse club started and I had to lip read it for a while and every Saturday morning we watched SOUNDS with Donnie Sutherland and me and my brother said daddy Summerville as a joke against daddy’s age and I was bullied in a taxi with the only good thing about it that we got off at the oak factory to buy a fresh ice cream, we loved to listen to our fave music, I liked the beach boys and my brother liked the Beatles and my dad loved jazz and mum loved the soaps back then but not now, when I moved to Canberra I found out about Australian rules football where we all went for Carlton and my brother and I played Aussie rules competitions in the front yard and occasions a few of my school friends walked past teasing me because they were jealous of my great imagination playing footy in the front yard, what is he thinking and I had a rough friend who bowled like Harold larwood and a strong league tackler and at that time he was a good friend along with Brett and Brian and Carla and frank as I invited them to birthdays where we had donut eating contests where we hung donuts on the clothes line and we tried to eat the donut off the line before it fell off the line to it’s timely death and because we loved to camp as a family in a tent, I wanted to put the tent up in the backyard and we all had slumber parties in the tent pretending we were camping with family, our stuffed animals were the kids, when we played front yard footy we used to go to the squash court to play squash and I played racquet ball and I was pretending to be the footy player unwinding after a long day of playing footy, and afterwards we went to the Yass footy club for dinner and I made rissoles, orange pork chops, and other things and we all pretended to be in a restaurant ordering the same music
I used to play bus routes where I pretended our drive way was the Belconnen bus interchange and I drove all the buses in and I developed a few new bus numbers like the 666 Which went from kippax to Belconnen to Dickson to city to the airport to Manuka to deakin to Woden to Cooleman court to the cotter and finished in Tuggeranong and I used to collect toy cars and smurfs and bus timetables and I was the go-to man when my parents wanted to catch the bus, I used to play tv shows in my room on my granny and nanny’s front torch with people telling me to be quiet all the time
I watched rage and I sang all the songs reading the words from the cassette cover and sometimes when I sang music with my cousins my uncles and aunts were wanting me to stop because I dragging their kids down the wrong way and I played with two cousins in the pool having a lot of fun and I was letting the kids do anything, mate I was just a kid and a mate jumped on and off the pool ladder going the big ummmmmm
I was scared and sat there thinking of all the fun I had as a kid, who cared if I got teased I had fun
Ya know fun, it is what people did before computers took over
I was a normal child