David O'Sullivan's Blog, page 22

You don’t own anything

I lost my sunglasses the other day

I’m not sure exactly when,

But they were good ones

Expensive ones.

I think about them occasionally

I wake early, and I wonder where they are

That empty feeling enters my guts

And I feel sad

I tell myself it doesn’t matter.

But it does matter, a little.

I wonder if other people lose things

And if it worries them.

A three a.m. worry, when it is dark outside, and you are missing something

And you look at the other side of the bed

And it’s empty.

I lost her too,

She left me

That feeling when you know you will never see her again,

you remember following her out of the apartment,

seeing her leave through the front door of the building

Into the cold misty morning

knowing that you will never see her again.

And I woke up thinking about my glasses.

Yesterday, while I walked the city streets…

I found a café in a back lane in the city,

it looked like a nice old place, so I went inside

ordered a cup of tea and some toast.

An old woman, dark, with long grey hair brought me my order

and she stood before me a moment and said I looked like a man she used to know,

only I am a little fatter.

 

This man used to live on a farm,

she said,

he would take her for walks along lonely dirt tracks

they would light a fire and make love when the night fell

all in the open,

under the trees.

One day they were married

and he took her to the city.

She held up her hands and showed me the rings she wore,

this one, she said, pointing to a golden ring

is her wedding ring.

Three weeks into the marriage he started to beat her,

and he would beat her at least once a week.

It was the city that made him crazy,

she said.

But he is dead now

his heart stopped.

I’m glad the beatings have stopped.

She stood beside my table for a few more minutes

looking past me out the window.

The lane shone in the weak light,

its narrow spaces made the city seems taller,

but inside the café it seemed like a country town.

I’ve worked here for forty years; she said finally,

quietly

and moved away, leaving me behind in silence

leaving me with her memory.

 

 

haikus

She’ll break your heart

but she’s gentle and kind.

We stayed up all night writing haikus

Here’s my favourite:

she wrote it in the light of the moon

and the yellow lights of the cathedral,

‘Yellow lights shine in

time to go

never coming home’

It wont be so bad

as soon as I can forget.

Advice on life

Listen, the cop said to me, the thing that really gets you

Is when you’re standing there and their goddamn phone starts ringing.

I mean she’s been dead for an hour or two and her phone is ringing

And it’s on her.

You actually think you should answer it,

But what are you gonna say?

 

Listen, the cardiologist said to me, the thing is

These people have heart attacks

And then we fix ‘em and get them in for exercise

And the goddamn idiots

Actually complain about how hard it is to exercise

And all we ask them to do is walk a bit and maybe ride an exercise bike

And they don’t want to.

I tell ‘em not to eat cheese because cheese blocks up the arteries

I explain to them that they have to watch their diet

And they say

No doctor I really like cheese.

 

It’s riding two abreast,

The paramedic tells me

The cyclists shouldn’t ride two abreast,

I saw this just last week.

One guy knocked into the other

And they both went under the rear wheels of a truck.

It’s safer to ride single; I tell everyone.

 

I gave up cheese and riding two abreast, and I keep my phone on silent

But still, there’s a lot wrong with the world.

People get hard, and then they get crazy.

 

dreams

I sometimes imagine that I had written

To Kill a Mockingbird

or The Great Gastsby

or Catcher in the Rye

or any of those great novels.

Then I imagine that, because of my fame;

all the women loved me

and would stay.

But then I remember that all those authors are dead.

What good to me is her love

if I’m underground?

My first job

The job was as a crew member with the most famous fast food store.

I was told to meet the truck, unpack it

And load the cool room and freezer with every goddamned box in the universe.

I was a school kid, frightened by everything

and the managers were either 20-year-old stoners

or 20-year-old assholes.

I began to load the boxes; it was easy at first, they went on the shelves

then the shelves filled

and I started to load them on the floor,

piling them on top of each other like bricks.

But they weren’t bricks and as they became taller than me

The corner of some low down box would crumble, then they’d fall.

I remember standing in that cold room, half frozen, laughing at the boxes of

French fries and hamburgers collapsing.

I watched my white breath disappear into the spinning fans

The noise killing me.

Then something snapped within me, and I began to push the boxes into each other, forcing them onto each other, throwing them in

The place piled up with boxes in no order,

Crushed

Some split

open with the inside bags spilling out.

I didn’t care.

Someone had ordered too much

I went out and collected the trolley, to bring in the last boxes.

The trolley caught my corduroy jacket and tore it.

I had bought that jacket in California.

When I was finished, the cool room looked like a massacre, and I could hardly close the door.

 

The next day I came back to work

This nice guy named Duc, one of my best friends

Told me the stoner assistant manager we all liked had been yelled at

By the asshole boss and I felt bad.

I hated the place and I wanted to be fired

But I also felt bad.

I spent two hours fixing that cool room up.

 

What I saw yesterday afternoon and how it haunted me

The yellow lights fell on the railway track

making the area look dirty and more neglected.

an old man made his way up the steps to the pedestrian bridge-

the one that covers the freeway.

He made his way half across

then stood, leaning against the wire fence

and looked down at the traffic.

I passed him on my way to town

and I passed him on my way back an hour later.

He had not moved.

If I grow old, I thought

I too will stand on that old bridge

and watch the traffic for an hour before heading back

to whatever lonely spot I call home.

The Lost Hours

Hold the glass to your lips

Those red lips

As full as your dreams.

I know things begin to go bad when I start to apologise.

Happier still, I hold the phone still and track your life

Through old photos.

Dreams, nothing but dreams,

How will I eat?

The old cupboard sits empty; a dry wind comes through the window

It is an early memory. While the men are out working

And the old women have gone into the vegetable garden

I run down the grassy path, alone, holding a stick

I use as a gun

I see men coming out of the trees on both sides of me, and I shoot them dead,

I stop, and there is a snake, lying in the sun. It sits up when it sees me and smiles.

He came from the best schools; he had the most money; he was never alone.

I noticed him and watched, his family had more money than I had ever known.

He had the way of, without a word, making me feel worthless.

But compared to him I am.

I cannot even achieve the most basic of success

While he is invited to meet the team after the game.

What is the worth of one person compared to a God and a Goddess?

Maybe there is something, time will tell

No one can buy time; no one can bring back the lost hours.

I would rather walk than drive

but I won’t go to New York and have access to

the girls, the girls, the parties, the girls

A gypsy smiled at me and told me:

“This is not your life, maybe in the next one.”

She laid down the cards that showed the rat and the mountain.

But then she showed the anchor.

“Maybe, maybe not,” she said. “Why give up? You never know.”

Anvil Soul launch page

Please join my Anvil Soul facebook launch page. By joining you can stay up to date on new information about my next book!

 

 

The saddest words I have ever heard

Sweetheart do you remember, that night you told me

There are no bad people?

You turned to me and said it so plainly, a little strangely.

I being half deaf from sleep asked you again what you said, I leaned toward you

And you repeated it.

I locked those words away; I come back to them again.

You were right, and holding that view still,

You are right.

But then, but then

You told me not to take you seriously.

I patted him on the shoulder and looked at the bandages

His arm had been cut off.

A young man, blonde hair, once had many lovers

He had been stealing engines and one had fallen

Smashing him arm, pinning him down.

I needed the money

He told me, and that’s all we said.

He frowned at me as I turned away

He wanted to be happy once

He dreamed of being a pilot, but his better days were over.

As I left the ward where he lay

I remembered your words

I felt sad, a numbing selfish sadness

And thought about the people I have wronged

All we can do, I thought is pick a point and walk toward it.