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     by how many badbyes can you measure the length of your day

                 first comes the time  too fretful on your hands
next the boredom of not knowing what to do with it all
     then the memory erasures
                           the books underlined you thought you never read
     and wince at the pencilled comments on the sidelines
                      friends you forgot you went to school with
the children who’d pray you wouldn’t turn up
                                                                  even à l’improviste 
on an urgent pretexting errand   
     the flushed girlish faces that turn away your gaze in an alley        
  way
the tentative pace of your step losing grip on some junction
     the only safe direction            is the shortest cut to your hideout hovel
even those who need you prefer not to call on you
                               the telephone will do 
you can insist on the shave
   much good it would do you to scorch your tortured grimace
                                                                                                              none note the difference
                                      only the sparse crop you patter  come apart in a sudden gust
clothes hug less and less the sagging frontal bulge
bones that grate  lock   ligaments that tear on the stair
                           the longing meniscus pain that refuses to part company during the prancing stride
     and the hours and hours you lay gazing at the ceiling
                                                                        recalling other inept throes
           muddled chances
   replaying in slowmotion what might have been if only you hadn’t
                                                                                                      taken the hasty irate turning

friends that one by one get ticked off
    most bundled through in dull hushed murmurs 
some big names  sportsground high kickers   get heard of
                   their lean eager square-cut faces flashed on the 8 o’clock news 
others by dint of their stolid work-soaked contributions
      their theories discoveries conneries
            are sung of in obituaries
but those you knew you cared for you shared moments long moments with on long rainy   
             nights chewing the rag-end cud on the sofa
                                                                                                                            you wonder where or what they could be like
if they too had not gone too soon crushed under split tires     
            skewered through contorted metal 

          now the long vigil begins
 daily   the diurnal chores of waking to your querulous pallid face mocking the vain ambitions festering under your lids                                                                                                                   
each morning
                       waking again after the thrall of mind-flushing siestas
    fresh as the first springday you went out to your first girl at the thronging choked spewing mouth disgorging the Underground
the madness now brings alive
                    in all her colours odours crinoline frills
      no thwarted thoughts linger   
   only the regrets
regret at not having done better
regret at not having served her longer
      nor tasted the fun offering for as long as she bent to caress your face  her tresses enveloping  your cheeks your neck your ears your locked-in flesh 

by how many more badbyes may you count your days
      visits to the doctor
            the unpaid bills rain
      like the pathetically interminable urgent blood-on-your-hands requests demands for donations to succour Africa’s dying masses Asia’s flooding rivers & ground-shattering scientific research
                                        
                                              arms for aids  
                                                 aids for arms
                                              alms for arms
    
           letters dwindle even from friends you thought were friendless
                         you read the Monoprix’s cutprice lists for the spring opening over and over again
       and eye the shining lasses in tartan skirts pink cheeks  lean pinky thighs drawn up to the chins
        the dejectedly opened books you have not read and always wanted to read
     now that time is all yours  seem so frivolous in your constricting space 
  thoughts that nag at you from every turn in your tiny grubby flat  from inside 

                                 you walk out in your slippers
     in the dead of noon
and pass stragglers lunching on mayonnaise-oozing leafy baguette- sandwiches
 without so much as a grumbled « salut »
                                          linger searching for an excuse to pass away yet another few minutes gazing at a municipal billboard
         staring blankly at the same old inane inept faces  permanent lodgers at the Mairie
    under the sparse shade of an ant-lined silvery birch
        thoughts lost among throngs of gaily bickering garrulous sparrows screeching within well-coiffered leafless forsythia bushes 
      the will moves on unwilled to there  
   where a solitary mud-splashed park bench lies lame forlorn
                                      you crouch for an instant    
your lungs expunging your longfelt hurt
        your eyes blind to the couples stuck one-into-the-other on the muddy dog-dunged grounds
          you lay yourself back to expunge a long pent-up sigh

was it the lit-long day 
                       or was it yesterday                                    
                                     or was it….

June 16/17, 1997 

From the privately pub. coll. (rev.) : longhand notes (a binding of poems), Paris :1999, 115p.
© T. Wignesan – Paris,  2016
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