Some nights when sidewalks
show
the world above
as a blur of paint
without fields
without flowers
it seems that this is what
the rain was
for
To offer skies up to themselves
To plant quiet meadows where the sleepless drift through
ghosts of stars
OOFE!
Before the cops could come
before
the store would open you threw down
this one quick word:
OOFE!
If they forget you now
for everything
you’ve done
the girl in greenpoint
who has every
thing
they say you should hold dear
perhaps they’ll think of you
for this quick scribbled
word
as though in pain
you’d screamed your name into
the night
Sprung greenly into life but
lost now
for words
come slowly if
at all
The wind shakes their heads
in disbelief as if
this isn’t what they
had expected
Each Morning he stands in
Khaki shorts and flip flops.
With that drag, knowing nod
and sackful
of clothes
is he
Mafia boss, dealer, or dry cleaner?
At the door, Winter turns for last look at who she’ll leave behind.
Casting eyes greyly upon an empty street she coldly blows us one long last kiss.
Birdsong from the ghosts of birds
woke us lapping the shore
of tired machines
whose deep crawling breaths made me think of mountains.
And the old nest
The tangle of confetti in branches
reaching skyward
seem as slow motion fireworks
stuck fast mid-flight with
all the promise of celebration
Turning!
Over the river and into the turning
Night
Turning from lamp lighted streets cool turning
Wind mist blows
Turn!
Over to wiped fresh page
Cleanly clean of all and
Stop sign echoing desire across the wide dry
street and screaming
nothing now more than stop dead or push
on on onward and away on from all and any hope to turn
the dim lighted grey of old roads
flick orange lights of past
and turning
dreams which then turn off and away
into their
night
After a month or so they
have his story pretty straight.
The day job stacking shelves and
the public transport are both
a front. It’s just the plastic bag
he that throws them.
“He must keep a little stash of money close
by ‘im.” They decide.
“Just incase, you never know.”
They start calling him ‘Dickie Mint’
“He’s worth a mint, that’s why.” They say.
And then the night he leans into the pub door
pays his pound
and walks with the quiz takings.
The following week they pull him every which way
His rosy cheeks jostle from
table to table, team to team.
Sports are his thing they learn.
Ask him anything about the England cricket team
from 1913 and the answers trip off his tongue
and roll quietly for four.
After that, not a day passed
without someone stopping to offer him a lift
or a wave a cheery hello.
The old man bigger
than God
“You know my old man’s in the will.”
Sarah Bradly chimed in one evening at the pub bar.
The same was said of Dan Tisdale at the sawmill
and then George Wicks
and Andy Barrat and
Phil Caul the postman
lists of names swarmed and circled like vultures
The morning he didn’t arrive for work
Breaths stopped like old clocks
They found him lying on a low bed.
Piles of sports sections from the weekend papers
towering on
either side.
and the carrier bag in his arms.
“There never were no money, of course”
was shrug around the bar that night.
The dull crack of glass on wood
counted off the silence
until shapes moved into the half drunk dusk
to suppers
and to doze in front of telly shows.
There was another quiz that Sunday.
Not Remko’s favorite but a valiant effort to paint a ‘still life’… even if I can’t make anything look vaguely 3 dimensional.
View from roof of 12 Cornelia street
