David O'Sullivan's Blog, page 20
July 27, 2016
Believe me
Believe me
I didn’t mean to break her heart
It screws your karma.
-Karma isn’t the good and bad things that go around
Another lover told me
-Karma’s what decides what you become in the next life.
Tell that to Karma.
I once stole a library book
And kept it for ten years
For ten years I had bad luck
A decade of misery.
The book was ‘Planet of the Apes.’
I mailed it back to them,
And then the next week.
Things picked up.
I’ll never steal a fucking book again.
This voice, heard yesterday at evening.
An old man, dreaming on a bench by some ancient stone building
Turned to me yesterday and said;
Her smooth hands could break a man’s wrist,
What has she done to be so strong?
I knew a woman who would,
Work all day, washing and lifting,
Moving and cutting
Yet became weak and bent like an old sea-nail,
A cancer cut her in half in the end.
Live life with passion, before it ends.
Some people never find passion
But mock and blur their evenings with drink and lies,
Find something to love, something of value
Something good
And feel it surge in you until it burst forth like a great spasm,
Wear your passion, share it, but keep it safe.
And if someone loves you,
Pray nothing hurts them,
Not cold winter rain
Not strangers,
Not a car on a cold Wednesday afternoon, skidding across stones.
July 25, 2016
The wind blows, the leaves speak.
There is a tree of mid-size with long heavy branches
that grows by a country path.
The younger part of myself
collects stones, mostly quartz
and leaves them at the base of this tree, as offerings.
I ask the tree to watch over me
and I ask it for luck.
I like to walk this path in the evenings,
just as the sun is setting behind the hills
it is then the cold western wind blows, rushing across the wet ground.
I stand by my tree
and experience the loneliness that helps me remember happier times.
I will take you to my tree one day
and maybe you will understand;
maybe you can leave a stone and make a wish.
There are spirits in nature,
be kind to all things,
be kind to yourself.
She reveals her kindness
Once again, like storms I remember from my childhood,
The rain has returned to fill the fields and forests
With deep puddles and the kind of mud that can swallow machines.
She has been sleeping late this morning
Because there is nowhere to go
And the weather is as good as a locked gate.
I watch her face, trying to record the details of her appearance.
I have seen her kindness
It comes out of her like the glow from a flame.
It makes me smile, a sad little happiness.
She shares pictures of dogs with me.
Animals who need adopting from the pound;
She would have them all if she could.
And in her gentle love of animals and from her thoughtful acts
There grows a gentle love in me.
The kind of feeling that lets a single tear fall from my eye.
I am ashamed in case she sees it
And asks me ‘are you crying?’
I would laugh and say no, my eyes are tired.
The truth is; it is a tear that says
You have touched my heart.
July 24, 2016
Onto the street, at 2 a.m.
Everything is Electricity with that woman,
every contact flows with the sharp bite of invisible power.
Descend the stairs to the front door at night,
see how they are worn smooth and round,
they dip in the middle, from the hundreds of people
who have worn a track upon them.
The countless people and their feet
their dreams and their lies
their problems and their sicknesses
coming and going
until the air here is heavy with ghosts.
Black marks on the walls, the bannister scratched
They have been all over, nothing is new, nothing is untouched.
The used, the touched and loosened is all I’m used to.
Swing the door open to a foggy night and a wet lane,
A man lies in a doorway and coughs as I pass. I wonder why he doesn’t go inside
and sleep on the old stairs.
She sleeps on the second floor,
her apartment is better than mine; it’s bigger.
Mines an old box, nothing works.
I like to visit her; I do it as much as I can.
Not just for her company but her heating and large bed.
We stay up all night talking, and she fascinates me.
The city echoes with hundreds of horns, like a deranged and disorganized symphony.
How many promises are being broken tonight behind these walls?
It gets heavy but you carry on,
the steps get worn but you still take them,
hoping they lead to some warm place, where someone will hold you for at least one night.
July 21, 2016
Thursday and I’ll be gone
On the tenth floor
-David, it’s important you read this letter
I look out across the city
-I cannot stay; I have to leave
The clouds mix with the steam
-I don’t want you to wait for me
that rises from the roofs of the buildings
-we would never work out
I have been watching from this window since 6 am.
-I have to be free
now it is light; I can see people at all levels,
-I don’t want you to come around
people sitting in offices
-take your things, don’t leave them behind
people on the street
-understand, this is the way it is
workers, in hard hats and yellow vests
-please don’t contact me
emptying broken tiles from wheelbarrows
-we had fun, didn’t we?
I can only imagine the noise.
-something to remember
Is true freedom being able to do what you want, when you want?
-I’m leaving, going overseas
On corners homeless huddle under blankets on soaked yellow mattresses.
-I love someone else
A car stops in the road; a bus turns quickly
-Thursday and I’ll be gone, I promise.
Thursday and I’ll be gone, I promise.
To you, on this warm wet night
The house is lonelier now than it was before I met you,
Lonelier now.
The dark rooms, the empty halls
Were not so dark nor empty
Before you.
Now they underline the fact that you are not here.
On the streets, as I stand under the bridge
Avoiding the rain, my clothes wet,
I watch the cars come down the freeway,
White lights coming, red lights going.
Like the cars, we are always just arriving or just leaving,
The time we are together is so short
It becomes a blur of light and noise.
July 19, 2016
July 18, 2016
The lovers
In the green stretches of my farm
Someone long ago piled stones
Forming small pyramids at random points, no taller than a suitcase.
I dismantled one today, lifting the heavy stones one by one into a trailer to be taken away.
I worked carefully, each stone a part of a city,
Populated with small black beetles,
Spiders, lizards, and slugs.
As I lifted the last stones into the trailer
I found two small frogs
Their brown arms wrapped around each other, their bodies entwined.
It appeared as if they were lovers; in such terror at the destruction of their home
They found comfort in an embrace.
To me, however, as I stood above them vast and terrible, a stone in each hand
To me, they looked as if they had been sleeping
And as lovers sleep,
In a fond embrace.
It was a world of dreams and heartbeats
Each with eyes closed, mouths pressed together
Breathing the same air
A silent kiss, a love in this stone temple,
Safe from the world, witnessed only by the beetles
And now they were exposed to the world, to the rude white light
And a giant.
I scooped them up and placed them in the next pile of rocks and waited
Until they were inside
Safe from the world, from which they must hide.
The Earth and Sun
How could she, that lovely girl sitting there, Know how happy she makes me feel?
That one person, who is like millions of others
And yet is the only one?
I have heard that there are millions of suns in the universe
But I feel the warmth of only one,
I wait for the Sun to arrive in the morning
And sadly watch as it leaves each evening.
It is like that with her;
On the city street I can pass a thousand women
But there is only one I want to see:
Only one that can warm me.
