David O'Sullivan's Blog, page 26

Drunk again

Drunk again

I kick the table

it hurts so I can’t breath

The moonlight comes through the window and hits the carpet in such a way

that I think someone has spilled water

and the wet will hurt my socks.

I lie down

on the bathroom floor

there is not much room

but the tiles are cool

and I can splash water on my face

but I won’t say where the water comes from

Mighty thin stew

There’s a roar tonight coming from the leaders

of great nations,

they’re saying there is too much or not enough.

A lot of millionaires are saying

there isn’t enough money in their bank accounts

and why don’t you give a little more for God’s sake?

The cops are saying its not our fault, its the drugs

and they are sick of the scared idiots calling them every time they see a teenager

the criminals say there is no justice

only cruelty and here’s the bottom of my boot in your face

the bum on the street is calling out for help

but if you go too close he’ll cut you with the tin can he has for cutting people

and the small guy is just trying to go about this life

but the hunters have him in their spot light

and the bullet is cold and searing hot at the same time

The last days on Earth

I had heard that the world would end but I did not believe it. The news reported the asteroid, named Kat would strike the Earth in three days. It would hit the North Pacific, it would destroy all life. I went out the first night, walking from my home to the edge of town where there is a large Hill named Kirby Hill. There was a crowd and there was a strange quiet feeling hovering above us all. I saw the postman standing by a large granite rock and I went over and stood next to him. No one spoke. The sun was setting in the west and the last rays were over the horizon, we all waited for the night, then we could all see the asteroid. I did not believe this was happening, I looked down at the highway and saw the vehicles passing, an air plane went overhead, nothing was different but everything was. It is hard to explain.

The postman turned and recognized me, I worked in the post office last Christmas and we knew each other.

“Does this all seem real to you?” he asked, “I mean do you think it’ll hit?”

“Everyone says it will. they all say it’s heading straight into us.”

He nodded, he was calm, there was no panic or terror, it was like the first minutes after all bad news.

“Michael died.” he said. “Cancer.”

“Your boss?”

“Yeah.”

“God. It must have come on quick.”

“It did.”

It was dark enough now, we had waited and the air turned cold and damp. The stars, the ancient flashing lights could all be seen and they had not changed. They were gently twinkling, beautifully cold.

“There it is!” A woman called out and pointed and there it was.

A bright light right down on the horizon, really close to the curve of the earth. It did not look like the other stars. It was huge like a plane on fire or a tall light over a sports stadium. It flashed and tumbled, it did not twinkle, it burned. It was like a tiny sun.

“Oh shit, is that it?” the post man asked me.

“Yeah that’s it.”

“It looks like it will definitely hit us.”

I did not answer.

“Man listen to me,” he said turning to me.

I looked out over the faces of the people all around, they stood and stared out at the sky, some of them had their mouths open, some looked worried but most looked amazed, like they were watching a good movie.

“Listen!” the post man repeated the leaned in and whispered to me. “I’ve a basement, that’s where my wife and I will be when this thing hits, you can come and stay with us if you want, I’ll save a space for you.”

“Thanks,” I said. Why would he offer me, of all people a space in his basement I wondered. We were friends but not that close. I walked home that night thinking about it all.

The next night I went back to the hill. There were less people there but the cars on the highway were still driving about, the town was still all lit up and people went about their business. It was all ready dark and the asteroid was huge in the sky now, bigger than my fist. It was still low in the sky.

A woman came up to me, she had red hair and a small child followed her. She came up to me and looked at me.

“Hi,” she said. “Come here!” she yelled at the boy and he came up shyly and hugged her leg. “I can’t believe this is going to happen.” she said to me.

“No, it’s sad.”

“Do you have kids?”

“No.”

“This is my son. His father left this morning and he did not come home. He sent me a message saying he has gone to the military base in Manuater, where he says they have bomb bunkers.”

“Manuater? Thats across the country.”

“I know, he just left us. I don’t have a car.”

She looked away at the asteroid, it was giving off enough light that the moon looked dull in contrast. “It feels bad to know my boy won’t grow up.”

“Don’t say that,” I said to her, “It might miss us.” I lied.

She hugged me and we sat down in the darkness cuddling.

The last night I went up the hill again and there was no one there. The asteroid was huge in the sky now, like the moon. There was no traffic on the highway, there was no one moving about in the town but the lights were still on and everything was peaceful and quiet. It was like the gentlest Christmas Sunday where everyone was out of town. I sat on the hill and felt cold. I wondered if I should go and see the post man and go in his basement, perhaps they’d survive and at least we’d have each other. I wish I had gone home with that woman yesterday, she was nice to be with.

I sat on the hill, I was tired but I did not want to go home. I had let the cat out, I would rather he was outside when the thing happened. I watched the huge odd shaped ball coming at us, it had been yellow yesterday but now it was red and it was right above my head or so it seemed. I watched it come, a single semitrailer headed north on the highway. It was the only thing I had seen moving all night. I wondered what he was doing, he was still at his job even now. The red lights on the trailer and the headlights on the road looked so lonely. It disappeared up the road and I watched it go.

Word counts and other distractions

Word counts and other distractions.

Arriving home

Her bed huge and curtained

reminded me of medieval furniture.

I pulled it back one day and found her engaged

with a man, their hips pressed hard,

their arms and legs entwined like something horrid that lives at the bottom of a great ocean

the looks on their faces, surprised, amazed, she looked one way, he another,

One hand clutching the top of his head

I should have known not to pull the curtain back

but I thought they were out

I noticed a moment later

their clothes spread about the floor, the sheets and blankets tossed about

a table knocked over in passion.

Did I think I would find a thief?

Too late to put the curtain back now

the moment happened and could not be changed.

This same thing,

but different,

happened to a friend of mine

he was the husband and

He came home from work

and found them, coupled, engaged, shunting.

He was hard muscled from his work in the steel industry

but lame and one leg shorter than the other.

She was the most beautiful of women

and the other,

the lover, no stranger

was a soldier.

In his rage, my friend tore a curtain from the window

and threw it across them like some net.

Catching them mid thrust.

Trying to photograph the city

I have seen life and death,

life comes in with blood and fury

death goes out with bloat and stink

both are related as rain is to mud.

I had a friend die on a cold winter’s day

he fell in front of the heater

and was there three days before I found him

growing purple and too large for his clothes.

I have seen a child come into the world purple

having her throat choked by the chord that gives life.

There is a thrill in being alive

in seeing the clouds in the sky.

I worked a while milling timber

I felt the sharp cold kiss of the saw

I cut the tops of my fingers off, it was like a little death.

They grew back, it was a miracle.

I still have the scars and when I type

each dull thud of my finger

sends a numb vibration straight to the brain

I was cutting wood, I forgot to fear the blade.

The streets of my town look different when photographed

you can be fooled by large buildings and narrow roads.

A driver stopped her car and punched me in the face

one evening when I was looking for art deco buildings.

she called the police, ten came in a group

they stood around ignoring me

detached but threatening

yellow skies glinted off the windows, I missed a great photo.

In my garden

I watch her take up her spot in my garden every morning

she takes out her laptop

and spends hours writing,

in all weather except rain

she is there.

When the sun is high at noon

she puts her computer back in a small blue bag

takes up a position in the shade

and begins to read.

She has a disabled son

who spends the time romping by the flower garden

or standing by the pond

I fear one day he will fall in and drown

so I watch him closely.

But it is his mother who interests me

her dreams of being a writer

her beautiful face and golden hair.

Her son comes in at lunch time and I have a meal prepared for him

His mother never comes in

the boy watches television

and then at three

she says good bye

leaving me to my silent library,

and my lonely manuscripts.

Three crimes that occurred tonight

He took the baby by the legs

and smashed its head upon the ground

dashing its brains and teeth on the floor.

The baby’s mother

rushed the man and clawed his face

dragging her nails down his skin

and creating rivers of blood

she pushed her claws into his eyes and blinded him.

He knocked her down

and sightlessly moved about the room

knocking down a table and lamp

and treading on the lifeless body

of the tiny baby.

The moon was a razor of light

cutting into the darkness

on the street a failed artist

high on some manufactured drug

grown in the sink of a rotten bathroom

takes a knife to the throat of a tourist

and while screaming for money

slices the throat of the young woman

taking her head away from her body.

A driver of a red car

enraged by the slowness of the pedestrian

driven to a rage

slams his car into the bodies

spraying the people into the chain link fence

that surrounded an empty carpark.

The car jerked horribly as it passed over one of the people

the driver, teeth gritted and certain

that his anger is pure

drives off into the dark streets

leaving behind a headlight and a side mirror.

The suicide

The phone rang on Tom’s desk. He sat there in front of his computer and let it go on for a long time. The sound cut into him, the persistent tune repeating and repeating.

“Hello?” he said picking it up.

“Tom? This is Mike. Can you head out to 12 Kitchener Road, we have had a report of a man hanged from a tree up on the hill.”

“A suicide?”

“Yes it looks that way. He’s a young man by the name of Simon McDouglas. Local school teacher, twenty-eight years old.”

“Shit, Okay.”

Tom took the car out, making sure his camera was in the locked box in the trunk. He drove out slowly, not wanting to go to the job. Kitchener Road is a steep road that winds up into the hills. Tom had been there six months ago, another suicide, a fifteen year old boy hanged himself from the rafters in a back shed. The town’s people called it suicide hill. Tom slowed his car when he neared the top of the road. There was an ambulance and a police car, four men stood about in the darkness. Something large was in the branches of the tree.

Tom climbed out of his car slowly. The men all turned and watched him. He took a camera from his car and hung it around his neck.

“No photos okay Tom” an old grey haired cop said. “It wouldn’t be right.”

“No, okay,” Tom replied.

“What happened?”

“Young school teacher, only been in town for six months, hanged himself. A man walking his dog found him in the tree.”

Tom looked at the body, the face was twisted in the agony of choking. His eyes bulged. You could tell he was a young man, a little overweight. Tom knew him, he had been a nice guy, there was some talk of misconduct at school.

“Why haven’t you cut him down?”

No one spoke.

“He’s been dead for hours,” an ambulance driver said finally.

“Still, can’t you get him down?”

“The detective wants to see him,” the cop said. “Then we’ll get him down.”

Tom moved away and began to cough. The late night air hurt his lungs, something inside of him wanted to come out, he had to work hard to stop from vomiting.

The old street

In the evening when the sun is low and casting the pink of days end into the sky

when the lights first come on in the street

and the lights seem bright and warm with welcome

You think how pretty everything looks bathed in the light

what a change it is after a bright day.

You walk quickly down to buy a drink

before the stores close

and you see the day go and the dark settle in comfortably.

Where are the people you thought would always be your friends?

They are a long way away, working, settling down with their families

you are still in the old neighborhood

but you know everything and where it all goes

you were happy for the first years, slowly it’s changed

now, it feels a little small, sometimes as you fall asleep

you fell the depression of everything being the same and unchanging.

You think about your job and it starts to seem boring and what will you do

in ten years time if it is all the same?

But right now

as you walk down your street

to buy a drink

and the sun is glinting the last minutes off the top of the buildings

the streets are dark

you remember when you were seventeen and every night was love

every night was fun and lights, and you remember the first time your hand explored her waist

you can still feel how soft and warm she was, just like the night

when you were seventeen.

Put the dollar across the counter and pick up the orange drink

let the cool glass fill your hand and thank old man Raheed

(he’s been working there a long time too)

and smile, walk back into the street and listen to the music as it comes down from the second floor

of the old cafe. Above the dark blue sky

fills with stars.

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My debut novel, The Bomber, is out now. GO and have a look and maybe buy a copy.