I know a lady who is 99 years aged
she will be 100 by winter
Every day she walks to the disused post office
- an hour each way
Eats, drinks healthily ...
and does all the housework herself
Even in the garden she is diligent
You should have seen her roses
In the evening she has a glass of port wine
and a piece of chocolate liqueur
It gives her a peaceful night's sleep
- without medicine
Tarnished, cracked, and parched without your love.
Oh, why hast thou forsaken my devotion?
Your impulsivity led to my demise, accumulating dust among disused collections.
In my room with its broken latch
There's postcards of hens and foxes
and a disused TV set
There's a collection of analogue cameras
Some I use
Some of my lightbulbs are out
There's a book of Trakl and his Blue Melancholy
and Sylva Plath with her German Mannequins
There's albums out of time
Susan Pilsbury and Jimmy Campbell
You see the past comforts me
There's poetry of my own
some bonded others nestling on my cupboard
I hope to get published soon
A tenebrous void occupies my soul
like a queasy, dark, wintry cloud
hanging low and heavy with sleet and frost.
No gelid wind blows it away
and I despair. I cannot forget the dead.
An empty, lonely chapel still beacons.
It stands alone
amongst the tall dark pines
of an abandoned forest.
Inside, the dim light filters poorly
through dirty broken stained glass.
There's nothing inside but dust.
No chairs, no pews
for the weary traveller.
I sit on the cold slab tomb,
wonder who was laid to rest
inside the sepulchre.
Then did I realise I was alive.
All memories stored deep inside me.
The waking of empathy
especially to the self, is painful.
How oft had I tried to erase
my thoughts on you?
I leave the disused chapel
and return to my empty home.
I still think of you.
A morsel of good news
Breaks out with sensation
State politics disused
Gone is a term of nation
Don’t wake me from this sleep
Don’t stop this epic fall
The old world gets a sweep
I don’t regret at all
The Equalizers came
From black hole outer space
We speak from our names
Since now, not from some place
No nation is allowed
Stigmatization banned
How’s it, to live without
Symbolic native land?
No borders whatsoever
No bloody history
False accusations never
Will be addressed to me
What a relief, my dears
The good news seem so new
I would rejoice to tears
If all above were true.
THE EMPTY ROOM
Hard wooden seats in a waiting room
Feel a draught from an ill-fitting door
All I can do here is sit still and stare
The last train due back to civilisation
I’m here all alone so no conversation
A faint smoky scent hovers in the air
I wonder if any have sat here before
Not even a lamp glows in the gloom
Framed posters hang on the pale wall
Celebrating the enduring age of steam
Smiling families, clearly off to the coast
Moonlight as the only dim illumination
Closed for years, now a disused station
I sit still and ponder, quiet as a ghost
I’m not here of course, it’s just a dream
This is an image that I somehow recall
I am in that basement ward,
the disused one,
the one they park you in
on the way to the morgue.
The usual clutter of broken wheelchairs,
torn screens,
long defunct electrical equipment.
I sense that this is where you are left
until they figure out what to do with you.
In the morning I go to work.
I want to be somewhere else,
when they come to get me.
Old
Digger, lifter, mover, slicer
Friend of ScoopDog and Dugger Graves
Lover of landscaping, building, and gardening
Who feels less sharp, disused, and edgy
Who fears dull blades, broken handles, and rust
Who would like to see verdant gardens, straight fence posts, and freshly laid sod
Resident of the junk section on the old wood fence just outside the tool shed
Shovel
it happened just as I say it did:
I was ten or sometime after.
late for school,
running uphill
then I stopped running
and walked into an open field
knowing I was nobodies problem.
I left town following a disused railway track
and never turned back
except the ending of this story
has been rewritten by time
for that same day,
like a wet dog
coming in from the rain
I returned.
My dreams are often troubled by useless things.
A land-line clicks on and off repeatedly
the dreamless are phoning me.
long disused.
I found a kitten in the cold winter woods
it died while I drove it to the shelter.
My intervention was just another path
to its end.
I want an old record turntable,
I miss the revolutions,
how the 33rpm vinyl slow-spins,
how you can read the record label
from the bottom of a whisky glass.
A phone hums-on in my head.
static, white noise – who can say?
This I know
there is no shelter in this world.
This is my story, my telling.
It was a Monday morning
in a time that never existed.
In a past that was fictional
until it was revealed as a plot
writing by a man-made ghost-writer,
nevertheless it became this yesterday,
this legend told to a child.
Even though Mondays keep turning up
as regular as clock-work hamsters,
or as wheel walking somnambulists
all those faceless namesakes
called forth by a light-eating moon.
Even though that particular page
in a fading paperback was not recorded
but only jotted down on a slice of burnt toast
at the time,
it happened just as I say it deed.
I was ten or sometime after.
I was late for school,
I was running uphill
knowing I would get a detention slip
and then I stopped
and walked into an open field
knowing I was nobodies problem.
I left town following a disused railway track
and never turned back
but then I must have
because the following week
Monday returned like a wet dog
coming in from the rain.
And that is that
except it's all very hazy,
however the day after Sunday
keeps returning now
to haunt my disappearing footsteps.
He lost his cheque book
then blamed me
throwing all his disused newspapers around
Dementia was acting fast
I left, glad to disavowal myself
from this character change,
claiming he didn't want to see me tomorrow.
Availing myself to several phone calls
he eventually rang me
on my landline by mobile
and like a bad dream, venom's folly, was shot
Divorce robbed him of surprise,
left him disused,
parts of his brain tingled less,
he grew blasé, he had to improvise,
extemporize parts
that were less prone to rust and mold.
It seemed he was a bare broom,
one that could no longer sweep away
a rising sense of purposeless.
Then it was that a new surprise found him,
he began to make yesteryear trinkets
knickknacks held together
with a duct-taped nostalgia.
Walking sticks and old-school picket fences
were carved from the bones of his memory.
Other doohickeys such as
paperweights for light-headed ideas,
or knickknacks to fill in
those awkward holes in people’s lives.
Success returned, so did a new wife.
She had a lever, a jack,
to hydraulicly lift him up
when he occasionally sagged.
She used superglue on all his loose bits.
It’s wonderful what a new lick of paint can do.
I had become less watchful
in this honeycombed body,
blind behind a thousand windows;
windows boarded up, abandoned,
not disused but closed off,
the way a hive becomes blind
one window at a time.
It is the slow drowning of long winter
that opens fusty shutters.
for now is the 'becoming' time,
a time for the winching resurrection
of awakening trees,
of honey-suckling days.
I have windows and behind each one
there is a lively hum and light,
and golden eyes polished bright.
Vacant Perdition
Reeling listless
Empty story
Gazing, endless
Mandatory
Purgatory
Muted motion
Thinking sorely
Null devotion
Sudden urges
Fleeting feelings
Will emerges
Sailing ceilings
Disused dealings
Mislaid purpose
Broken meanings
Without service
It’s insipid
Bouncing bluster
Wisdom wicked
Nothing mustered
Lacking luster
Sempiternal
Filibuster
Silence vernal
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