David O'Sullivan's Blog, page 5

A memory

I remember walking through the streets of Temora

Going home one night after a party.

And Darren stopping and pointing out the stars,

Telling me about the constellations and planets

That are visible each night.

These planets, out of reach, make each night unique.

 

He told me:

There was an Indigenous people,

Who believed

That each star was a hole

Torn in the night

By a spear thrown

And each shooting star

Was an spear falling.

 

His love of knowledge,

His kindness, his dreams.

His fiery ambitions toward politics,

And his ability to debate,

Made up a good life.

All stories come to an end,

And he is now out of reach.

But the happiness he brought to those who liked or loved him

Make his life unique.

New life.

Sitting by the cradle, next to my son,

I listen to the wind howl outside.

Winter is ending and leaving on frosty wheels.

I close my eyes and think of things I do not have.

These thoughts are like a worm

That burrows into my head.

My father’s painting hangs on the wall

And the yellow light picks up the brush strokes.

I concentrate on the oil painting and clear my thoughts.

My baby sighs and makes a sound like birdsong,

And my thoughts fall upon the future.

Life is sadness and joy,

 

As it is darkness and light.

 

This yellow room,

The painting on the wall,

The wind against the window and

My son dreaming in his bed,

What joy.

But time moves on, seasons change and soon the morning will

Walk across this very roof.

Enjoy and be satisfied with what you have,

Success lies in happiness.

On a birthday

Running the hot water in the shower,

Waiting until boiling,

The steam rises toward the ceiling.

Early morning, the lights flicker,

Still dark outside.

Heading to hospital

For a birth. A new day,

Yesterday a setback, a failure.

Sadness, anger.

Today is unknown.

The cold air, red faced

Scream as the air enters your lungs

An air that kills.

The world is cruel.

Mothers have done this forever.

Empty seat on the bus,

As school children eye me from the windows.

I walk along the street and recall

Being screamed at from buses after school.

Buses don’t have windows that open now.

They stared at you silently.

One day soon, my child will go to school.

May that day be gentle,

May the future be sweet.

 

 

School book room

They took down the war memorial today.

It stood in the park near the river

And the workmen removed it stone by stone.

A few people stood on the bridge and watched it come down,

I watched too. I watched an old man come out of the library

And cross the road.

He spoke to a workman in a red hard hat

Until the workman shook his head and walked away.

I wondered what the old man said.

He wouldn’t leave,

He stood in front of the memorial and watched.

Even as I went into the library and found a seat near the front window,

He just stood in the park watching.

It reminded me of the book room at my old high school.

I used to love going in there.

It had piles of books.

All Quiet on the Western Front, the Great Gatsby,

The Red Badge of Courage, Poetry of Robert Frost,

Poetry of Wordsworth. To Kill a Mockingbird.

The books filled the shelves.

The smell of paper, the look of different covers.

There was no racism, ignorance, fear or loneliness in that room,

Those feelings were for the playground.

I took a book once because the cover had come off and

I thought they would throw it away.

I wanted it, it was The Red Badge of Courage.

A year after I left that school, someone lit a fire in that room

And burned half the school down.

That someone could set fire to that room

Shocked me.

That room where God lived.

A few years later

The school closed down.

I could take you there and show you where it stood

If you would meet me in my home town.

 

The acrobat

The floor boards in the room

are about 12 inches wide.

The house was built in 1790, a man had been hanged in the backyard

And there is a cell built in under the house.

This is Andrea’s room.

She rents it for $120 per week.

 Andrea worked in the circus

But she lost her job.

It is an odd story, but she told it to me last night

As we were lying in bed and the moon shone across the sheets

Bathing us in a clean white light.

The window was open and somewhere the wind blew

A door open and closed over and over again.

Her job was to climb a rope,

Holding an antique vase and then,

Using her incredible strength,

Spin around doing tricks.

One night,

She drops the vase

And when it hits the ground

It doesn’t break, it bounces.

The scheme was the vase looked antique,

But it was made of rubber.

The crowd laughed

And she lost her job that night after the show.

I listened to her story,

But I knew it was not completely true.

I had been told she’d been stealing money,

But I didn’t say anything to her.

Now she works in the casino with me.

I clean dishes in the kitchen and she makes and sells coffee in the café,

Sometimes we would talk and play blackjack

And that’s how I met her.

She had to go to work early and I don’t start until late

So I get to lay in bed, listening to the sounds of this city

And the door opening and closing in the wind.

 He room is so much neater than mine, and cheaper.

I live in an old apartment on the highway.

The only thing I don’t have are ghosts,

And sometimes at night, in this old house,

Andrea tells me she hears things, like ghosts

Moaning outside the door.

That’s why she likes company.

Bookham Bridge

Standing in a group near Bookham

Touring the history of the town

The tour guide spoke of the men that were hanged from the bridge.

We walked slowly up the timber planks and listened to the creaking of the old structure.

They were stood along here for taking cattle

And stealing supplies from a farmer’s hut.

A rope was tied to their necks

And then they were kicked over the edge.

I looked at the bridge closely; the timber was dry and full of holes,

The steel thick with red crust,

But the view was beautiful.

A small river wound its way through the rocks and trees below,

then disappeared Into a blue haze.

 The country opened up like a jeweled book.

I wondered if the beauty around them

Played on the men’s minds.

The terror that took place in a landscape of marvel,

A universe that captivates and kills.

 

Internet dating

Summer came into the city

Like a train into a humid station.

Stepping down from carriage 7B,

Tom’s boot went into a puddle

And the water splashed gently outwards.

A relief to climb out of that underground station onto the early morning streets.

A homeless man who had slept the night outside the main entrance

Had wet himself. Piss ran across the pavement

And people rolled their luggage through it.

Tom stood a moment and watched the man sleep so gently

On a street where buses were running past him with a deep roar.

The street stretched down a steep hill into a canyon of buildings.

The city was so silver in the morning light.

A clock marked out that it was six and the people who were around him

Faded about like electricity.

 

Tom went to dinner with Megan.

They had met on the internet.

Tom spoke to her about his life in his hometown

And she spoke about her job and movies she liked.

She took him home and was his friend for the night.

In the morning, as she dressed for work

Slipping her thin body into a business suit.

He offered to take her for a coffee

And then he followed her to the office.

As she swiped her access card,

she turned and looked at him one last time.

Her eyes said she was a friend no more.

Tom turned and looked at the city

Again at six o’clock in the morning, he gripped his bag tighter.

The city didn’t look as clean as it did yesterday.

 

 

The four week visit

Last night I dreamed

She turned from the window

And smiled.

The sun touched lips, the sun drenched hair,

And she spoke to me, softly,

I could not hear the words

But I could see her lips moving.

The morning came and I went to the window I dreamed of,

I looked out at the garden and the ocean beyond.

White waves on a blue ocean.

When she was here with me,

I would walk all day

And make up stories to tell her at night.

One day she told me she didn’t like the story I had told,

The woman in the story was too beautiful

And that made her sad.

She was gone the next day.

She had tied a red scarf to the apple tree by the gate,

It whipped in the wind

Like the bloody standard of a defeated army.

She could fit a whole egg

She could fit a whole egg,

Shell and all, in her mouth.

She bent over, leaped, kicked and danced across the stage.

The red and green lights shone across her face

And her blonde hair danced in the smokey air.

The egg stayed in her mouth,

When she smiled, her red lips pulled back over that white strangeness.

The music was too loud, I was too close to the stage.

I watched as she danced and jerked, kicked her legs high.

My mind travelled away from this dark room

To the coast, on holiday when we spent the afternoon

Walking on the sand and watching the baby climb the stones.

A drunk bumps into me and wakes me up.

He swears at me and then spits on his own shoe.

The girl, dancing, held the egg in her mouth still.

I looked around at the strange crowd, men mostly, some drunk.  

An old man and a woman were dancing in the corner to the music

The woman looked like she could do better than here.

It was a room of rejects.

A midget stood by the cigarette machine,

He wore a rubber Donald Trump mask and smoked a cigarette.

I laughed.

The woman on stage climbed a metal pole and slipped,

The egg shot from her mouth

And bounced off the stage.

The egg was made of rubber. It rolled around the ground

And knocked against my boot.

No one seemed to notice.

A thin man, who smelled like sweat

Ran up to me and whispered

Where is the egg?

I pointed to the ground.

The thin man bent down, picked it up and threw it back to the woman,

Who put it back in her mouth.

I left that sad room and stood on the street,

The keen neon lights burned red like fires,

One neon light was the image of a naked woman

And the traffic shot along the road, in a city cold and without compassion for life.

Old man

Folded back, broken down,

he is very thin, and he has missed patches of hair on his chin while shaving.

The young in their strength pity the old

and shun him with condescension.

But he sees well enough,

his eyes still sharp and his mind able to keep up, if not surpass.

 

Broken glass dropped by his hand, lying on the hard wood floor,

the house that was built generations before is now too expensive to be bought by anyone

and debts are accrued, banks holding the cards

and arrogantly so.

He worked hard

and now his health is fading.

 

What you are when you are young,

is what you will be when you are old, he said to me in whispers.

No smart man ever became a fool

except for where the brain is diseased;

likewise, no fool ever became wise.

I knew a man once who died because he could not love.

 

He could not love himself

or others

and he drank and fought

and soon his heart turned black.

My daughter married a man

who had money, but no heart. She did well.

 

Standing by a hole in the ground

watching the rain water fill that black gap in the earth,

feet slipping in the mud.

They lowered the coffin in,

but who ever dies?

No one? Everyone? It’s hard to tell.