David O'Sullivan's Blog, page 8

Shots of life

 

The judge said ‘I will not punish him; his life is sad enough.’

The man, with no pay, no family, no friends, was allowed to go.

His lawyer smiled to himself, pleased with the defense.

This same lawyer who lost it all to drink.

 

I saw the man whose brain was operated on

Shuffling down the main street

In slippers and white robe,

A vacant look in his eyes and drool on his chin.

 

Roosevelt and Kipling told their boys to go to war for great adventure.

One boy had his head exploded by a machine gun

And the other was bayonetted through the ribs.

Both fathers never recovered.

 

Let the photographer save the moment

Pay the late fees as they come.

Grasp the money to your chest

As your heart explodes and see how far the money will take you.

 

Be the best friend to your love,

Hold your child to you tightly

and be kind to those you encounter.

It is painful to spend Christmas alone.

Blue eyes

He was a complainer,

He never paid a bill on time,

He would ask people if they believed in God,

But he had the most beautiful eyes.

They were blue like the arctic wind

And when he looked at you, he would look through you.

He always picked up women hitchhikers.

He found dozens of young girls

On the northern coasts

And he would drive them where ever they wanted to go,

And he always asked them for sex.

Most of them would reject him angrily

But a few older, harder ones would let him.

He would tell me the stories and smile

And wink one of those eyes

For which he was famous.

One day he was found dead

In the front seat of his old van.

I went to his funeral, not many people came.

But I sat there and remembered his laugh

And thought about how I’d miss this guy

And I thought about his bright blue eyes.

What gives life, also takes it.

What gives life also kills it.

The waves of the ocean breaking on black rocks,

The swift bird settling on a pink flower,

The moon, heavy as good luck,

Sitting on an old, grey-bearded cloud.

 

These beautiful things give life to poetry,

But if you forget to catch them,

These things also kill the words.

Like an animal in the night,

The words flee into the forest and are lost.

 

That woman, my wife, full of life

Moving softly on the sand,

The water filling the prints she leaves,

Her smile and happy eyes

Give birth to the words.

 

Grasp the work when it is there,

Wait for it quietly and encourage it with good thoughts.

Nothing is guaranteed.

The man whose job it is to cut the wood in winter,

Must cart water in summer.

Songs of love

The stars above know not of love

In their cold vacuum above,

And so they shine and seek our eyes.

But we know of love

So let’s hide away,

And at night, be never seen.

We shall lie in each other’s arms.

Happy to be lost in the night, together.

 

 

Open the window and cast your gaze out onto whatever you see,

All things you see are caught in time,

And can only last so long.

You cannot see or hold love,

As so it should be,

For true love lasts forever.

Time can destroy what you can see

But love is the closet we can come

To immortality.

 

Hold me close and smile on those you hold dear,

Hold me close and come with me to visit beautiful places,

Hold me close as you fall asleep and dream.

I hope that life brings you all you want

And that you always hold me close.

Today, now a memory.

A yellow fog lay across the suburb today.

Row after row of tired houses

With a yellow fog, heavy on the roads.

A few lights turned on, but still, the fog made everything look old and dirty.

Walking home tonight, I took the back lanes.

People in their houses, eating dinner,

the gutters by the road flowing with rain water.

The suburbs looked alive.

I passed the cancer hospital, still and empty

This time of night, the dying hours, everything is closed like broken eyes.

I think of the fog

And the midday rain.

I dream of sleeping, and waking in a new place,

Like a man who sleeps on a train

Or like a child in the car,

Falling asleep and waking in the morning,

As the family drives into the coastal town

beginning the two week holiday at the beach.

The oil painting of a woman, nude.

 

The oil painting of a woman,

lying naked across a red bed

with a fat, happy baby searching for her breast,

and a blue sky in view from the window,

hung in the dining room for two generations.

It was painted by a woman with a great talent.

When I was a boy, my grandmother told me

that the artist loved my grandfather

and had given the painting to him.

The woman in the painting was the artist herself

and the baby was the baby she never had.

Now, as a man

with no living grandparents,

I often wonder why my grandmother

had allowed such a painting to hang in the home.

Was it because it is a beautiful image, the flesh so soft and sensual,

The colours so clear and bright?

 

I only remember dark flashes of my grandfather,

I remember him as a happy, kind man.

My grandmother, a widow at the time she stood me before the painting,

Smiled at some hidden memory and asked me if I liked the picture.

I nodded and said I liked the baby.

She was satisfied, and we stood a while,

On that dark winter afternoon,

We looked at that painting, lit only by weak sunlight

Until my father turned on the room’s light.

The brightness broke the spell and we both looked away,

The electric light was too bright and harsh for that moment.

It hangs there still, like a spirit that haunts that room,

that woman forever looking out, searching for love,

while that baby, forever tiny, caught between a smile and a yawn,

begs to be born.

The bucket of rain

The bucket of water that catches the rain

is important to the birds and the frogs.

A dog drinks from the water, coughs, and drinks again.

It hasn’t rained all month,

but tonight it poured

and the bucket filled.

I watched out the window as a frog struggled

to climb out of the frothing waves,

it sat silently on the edge of the bucket

and rubbed its eyes.

I take the babies for a walk in the rain

and their mother chastises me when we return.

 

A memory replayed after class

 

Sitting on a timber chair, under a tree,

the clouds came rushing across the city

and dropped a flood of rain upon the university quadrangle.

Ivy hung off the stone buildings, peeling away from the ancient walls

And yellow lights came through the leadlight windows

In a warm glow, like comforting winter fires.

I arose and walked under cover.

Earlier, I had spoken to some English students.

“Why do you write?” one girl asked me.

I looked at the faces before me,

They were bored, and I had lost them.

The teachers sat down the back of the class; their eyes fixed on me like predators,

While the students sat with wide eyes, all blank looks and casual clothes,

With years ahead of them,

Years to achieve their dreams,

But more likely not.

Finished, I walked out of the class

And sat in the chair under the tree.

I thought about the time the fox had eaten all her chickens,

On that old farm

And she had cried

As rain clouds gathered over the lake.

The old man who sits outside the K-Mart

Sun dancing on a silver can,

a man, sitting alone on a park bench on a cold evening,

remembers when he was twenty years old and was chased by the girls.

A cat, not having eaten in three days,

finds a piece of fried chicken behind a tall building.

It eats quickly, as

the sun sets and the light drains away.

The departing sun leaves the sounds of the day to become muted

and allows the sounds of night to grow.

No more children’s voices,

now car horns and conversations fill the streets.

A lamp is lit in a window

and the oak tree that has grown on this street for sixty years

shading this old park bench, is lit up.

The old man slowly raises himself from his seat,

his dreaming ended.

He wanders home to the lonely room he rents

in a building full of people

whose dreams look just like his.

Out to sea, my beloved flew.

 

The footprints in the sandy soil led through the white gate

Down onto the beach, and away toward the waves

To where I lost them.

I looked out to the ocean and saw some children swimming

and being tossed by the waves.

She had a habit of crossing busy roads in front of cars

And acting surprised.

Once I saw her stand too close to a train as it rocketed by,

So close, the hem of her skirt lifted and was made dirty by the wheels.

I could not see her now, but only saw the prints leading toward the sea,

would she walk into the waves?

Panic consumed me

But stopping myself, wondering who to call,

I realised she had left me

More than a year ago.

That I should still think of her

And panic so

Leaves me breathless.