David O'Sullivan's Blog, page 14
October 19, 2016
Motel nights
Listening to mozart on my iphone
at night, after a work conference,
I have returned to my home town.
Staying in a motel my mother used to clean
she worked hard at a hard job.
As a child I would spend hours in the laundry with her,
the smell of linen and hot air,
the cold feeling of strangers.
Tonight there are voices seeping through the walls
the same old sounds
that come with motels.
The road busy with cars,
the drunks singing in view of CCTV.
I wonder if I am paying too high a price
for a life like this.
October 17, 2016
Love is light in a dark universe.
Joan met Robert on a rainy day in October,
Robert was drunk, he came staggering out of a bar and fell down between two parked cars.
Joan took him home, and he stayed.
He was 22, and she was 29.
She let him sleep in a nest of blankets in the living room
And the next day she found him going through the books and records
She had collected in her lifetime.
They became lovers
Rolling together in the long nights.
The universe is naturally lonely,
But sometimes things connect and join
And explode
And Joan and Robert connected.
For the first time, they weren’t alone.
But Robert continued to drink and when he didn’t come home
Joan would have to search the streets to find him
And sometimes she found him and sometimes she didn’t.
It was too much.
So when she asked him to stop coming to see her,
Robert left. She cried.
Robert stood by an open window in a cheap room he took
And wondered if he’d always be young and lucky.
October 14, 2016
On asking an old man directions to the nearest men’s toilet.
To Bob Dylan and the person who wanted me to be more accurate with my titles.
Standing outside the supermarket
An old man reflected on this part of town.
“The one in the park is good,
They’ve recently put some money into it,
But the toilets by the railway station are not to be trusted.
They stink, the drug users hang out there,
Men blow each other and all the depraved shit in the world goes on there.”
The old man bit his lips as he spoke and went a little red in the face.
He folded his arms and sat down on a bench. The timber slats creaked under his weight.
I looked around the streets
It was quiet; a few cars moved about in the distance,
But here, where we were, no one moved.
Being still early in the morning,
The sidewalk was wet from where the shopkeeper hosed it.
The old man looked as if he had just crawled out of bed,
His clothes were stained and crumpled and a warm smell
Of sweat and urine radiated from his body.
He was settled in his place now as if he intended
To be there all day.
“I used to sit here with Jack,”
The old man went on and then spat into the gutter.
“But he died last year.
We used to be close friends but now I don’t have anyone to talk to,
It’s changed my day a lot; I do so much more thinking now.
And I don’t come here as much,
Only three days a week,
I go to the library instead.”
I thanked him for his advice on the toilets
And I headed across the street to the park.
In the men’s block, I find a young man collapsed on the floor.
A brown bag underneath him
As if he is hugging it to him on those cold tiles.
He wears a hood over his blond hair, and his face is pale and marked with acne.
I talk to him, but he doesn’t move, I nudge him with my foot,
I wonder if it’s drugs.
I call the ambulance, but don’t wait,
I leave those toilets and go back to my car.
Looking back to the supermarket, I see the old man,
and wonder what he’ll make of the excitement to come.
Buy my new novel here: Anvil Soul
October 13, 2016
Young Entrepreneurs
I sat waiting to get an x-ray
In some depressing medical centre
When a thin man with long black hair walks in,
His eyes are crooked as if they are spooked
And fled to opposite sides of his skull.
He has a slimy look.
He sits near me and leans forward,
“Do you think they’ll be long? I have a meeting of the young entrepreneurs tonight,
The YEM.”
“I don’t know,” I answer.
He gives me an unhappy look
And then his eyes glance up and down, taking me in,
Sizing me up.
His crooked eyes do not seem to like what they see.
“We’ve had a lot of rain recently,” I continue.
“Yes,” he snaps and looks away.
A pregnant woman walks in,
A man wearing the blue uniform of a nurse follows.
They start talking.
“Will I have to wait long?” the young man interrupts.
“I don’t know,” the nurse answers and turns back to the woman.
“Only I have a YEM on tonight.”
No one speaks to the young man again,
No one likes anyone.
The long haired man walks away, probably to find someone else.
“What’s a YEM?” the woman asks the nurse.
“Young entrepreneurs,” I answer her.
After my x-ray, I see the young man in the street.
He is leaning on a black car,
The bumper is kept on with black masking tape.
He is yelling at someone through a phone.
There is a large sticker on the back window that reads “KORN.”
I wonder what that means.
His yelling continues as I walk away,
The day is sunny now, but it is humid,
Due to all the rain we’ve been having.
October 9, 2016
Side Chick
Sitting in the city café
A woman near the window starts crying.
Her friend goes to stand up,
A look of disgust across her face.
“He told me I’m his side chick,”
The crying woman says
Before the other one leaves.
I watch her out the window
As she walks away down the street
The other woman– the side chick- cries for a while and then leaves as well.
I wonder what a side chick is.
The waitress comes and stands beside me
I realise I’m the only one left in the café.
“They didn’t leave any money,”
The woman says.
I look up at her,
She is old, with lines on her face
But still pretty.
Her arm is a sleeve of tattoos, and a tear is tattooed on her cheek.
I start to ask her what a side chick is
But I change my mind and give her twenty dollars.
She talks to me a bit longer,
About the people, she sees every day.
I tell her to keep the change, and she smiles.
Written During The Presidential Debate
Edith Stillwell, 94
Lies in Stillmouth Church Yard now.
Obese woman in Church yesterday
Did not feel well that night,
Now silently rots
In her bedroom
No one knows, no one checks
No one misses her yet,
Purple and black she turns.
The day has dawned, the sun visits the streets
And illuminates the pebble concrete of the shopping centre.
Lie still beautiful lover, see the new day born.
Let your hair spread on the pillow a little longer.
You are all he dreams of,
Your hips and stomach,
The firmness of your thighs.
You are young
And soon to be a mother and wife.
October 8, 2016
The walking stick
We went walking in Ireland,
From Sligo, we went, along blue-green paths
Occasionally damp, occasionally flowery.
She carried as much weight on her back as I,
Though her legs were much thinner, she was strong.
We stopped into a small shop, to buy her a walking stick.
Her eyes lit upon a carved length of yellow beech
Inscribed with Celtic patterns of interlocking design.
It was light but strong.
The day outside greyed over
And the shopkeeper turned on his light.
His long smiling face danced in the shadows.
Along the path we walked
I watched her tracks as she went ahead of me
The small round impression to the right of her footprint made a pretty pattern.
We stopped again in the afternoon
And drank lemonade and ate fruit.
“Men are the most tragic of the sexes.”
She said to me through half closed eyes
Her full lips wet.
“They are most truly alone.”
I did not answer.
Looking back now I see that she had already left me.
The last I saw of her was on a London street.
She propped the walking stick against the railway station wall,
And looked back only once.
October 5, 2016
Monday morning.
The dew from the grass sits lightly on her woollen slippers
Her breasts push against her nightdress
As she lifts the washing to the clothesline dripping
With last night’s rain and tiny spiders.
The smell of spring dances in the air
The first sun across the rooftops is warm
And the fog of diesel
From Bus 121 wanders across the yard like a friendly dog.
Down the lane, between King and Ray Streets
School students make their way slowly, laughing
Kicking a ball against the iron fences.
Their voices are rising, washing over the quiet morning.
As she watches,
The boys with their damp hair
And the girl’s neat braids,
She sighs.
At twenty-one
With two children and another load of washing to do
All that she once hated about high school,
She longs to do again.
October 3, 2016
The Cabin
He decided to build a cabin on my land,
I could not refuse him,
So I told him to go ahead as long as the cabin was near the woods
And not on good farm land or in the flood plain.
My grandfather gathered all the building materials he needed,
He took from friends and family and tore down old river shacks
He bought cheaply from the parks service.
He took a load of roofing iron I no longer needed.
He moved it all to the spot he had chosen on the back of his old truck,
Taking many trips and using his own muscle to load and unload.
His chosen spot was near enough to the woods to be hidden
But far enough away so a fallen tree would not crush him in the night.
I visited him a few times as he built, bringing him a box of screws or fuel for his generator,
Things he needed. The spot was high on a hill, and the view was spectacular
You could see the beauty of the world from the front door;
The rolling green world, the rise and fall of forests and the blue of the horizon.
One day I took him a set of drill bits he needed, and I found him dead.
He was tucked up under a blanket, propped against a wall of that cabin
Mostly complete except for a section of roof.
Though I hated to do it, we buried him in town.
The night after the funeral, I went to the cabin
To see what he had at night
Standing inside, looking up through the missing roof
I’ve never seen the stars burn so brightly.
