Time people names come and go white lines diverted from the Kentucky
Derby are towed into nostrils jutting out from youthful faces a patchwork of
white blotched red tan and brown the lines like miles of motorway on a
person-less day disappear fast inch by inch from an overturned plate perched in
the centre of a slate grey steel garden table like a manhole the piles forged
on it into several dusty gorges with an expired under 16 oyster card bearing a faded
face none of us recognise anymore not that I ever did in the first place I’m
new surrounded by old drifting drunkenly on the soles of my Chelsea boots that
are damp and caked with the pretty petals of the lush rainbow patio I roam with
Jim and hot chocolate and a semi-slack smirk trying to play catch up trying
to get in on the ‘old time’ stories and the in-jokes being told but never truly
getting in from the cold.
I meet people that I’ve never met before more people much
brighter than I am used to meeting my generations' leaders maybe or maybe
failed potential, great minds engulfed with whispers back into society I guess we’ll
see I’ll keep my ear to the ground an eye to the printing press (as long as
there is one left) and my facebook open; in the midst of a moonlit rye whisky
mist I’m sad to say I cannot list any names but I won’t forget the faces of the
ones I don’t want to I’m better with faces and there are several that I’m sure will
leave truly extraordinary traces on the Times;
they came to me fast introduction after introduction degree after degree future
after future these people’s lives so sewn up by comparison mine feels at times
like it’s splitting its sutures constantly right down to the core of the Great Work, patched up too many times;
sometimes when I write it just feels like my hand’s mangling language into
rambling rhyme as opposed to eloquently capturing moments of time; I think
about Waits and Cave and I get the feeling that time is constantly coming and
it's gunning for all impossible indestructible and immune from blame because to
blame it we’d have to tame it which we can’t so it continues to grow shadows
out from our feet experience by experience story by story choice by choice until
we lie vulgarly voiceless in the dark of our legacy’s silent skyscrapers
humbled by the empty scale of the past and the frail remains of the future.
Standing inside
looking out onto the crowd under the shroud of industrial white canopy the
lines still creeping up sullied snouts the speakers shout in snares beats and
tongues my mum rung I didn’t answer in time people around are grooving and
moving and sarcastically twerking ‘working it’ drunkenly but while I am the
drinker I am never the dancer and go outside to talk to the birthday boy but
he’s busy and I get the back pretty quickly and I get talking to several
someone else’s conversation flowing nicely from what I recall although I’m sure
Jim being the friend that he is has installed a block on the embarrassing
moments of which there must be a few; I talk with an Engineer about Kate Bush
under the shifting hue of a sifting strobe I think we got onto a favourite song
I know mine’s Symphony in Blue but I
can’t remember his though I reckon that it was Hounds of Love that beckoned him most effectively; I start
thinking about Nick Lowe start humming So
It Goes inaudibly drumming my toes against the table leg out of time; I start
snagging my feet on everything my form sagging my heels dragging my legs
lagging 5 feet behind my torso walking at an obtuse angle down the staircase trying
to dodge the low clothesline that tries to transform into a noose for me; I go
up a flight and bump into the birthday boy’s mother and I see her daughter in
30 years’ time I talk with her too and it seems mundane to some degree but it’s
a change of pace and conversation that is freeing because there’s a comfort in
speaking to someone you know in a land of someones you don’t and someones you
probably won’t ever.
In the garden I’m hit by a face from my past that I don’t
recognise and who doesn’t recognise me we used to hang out every day and indulge
in ‘it’ or ‘tag’ during play time but sitting here now rhymes and rhetoric regarding
the reunion come as scarcely as conversation did we sum up 12 years in single
sentences and chat briefly about possible future occupations before going our
separate ways and dispersing from pinstriped deck chairs of blue and red
cutting into the verte earth threaded
with cigarette butts we go off into the malaise of the birthday boy’s mainstay
mates I meet the impending wife a remix of a Knife track booming in the
back we talk a bit about something and nothing maybe about music actually
definitely about music about a thesis (?) she’s writing based on research
regarding the divide between sub-cultures and ‘tribes’ in modern music no jibes went
around it was a nice natter not that I remember much of it not that there was
much to even remember the sounds in the background meander more fluidly than anything else I’m sure she pandered to
my askew interpretations of the terms sugar coated her reaction in an attempt
to lessen the traction that could have been; it’s been known of me to make a
hames of meeting my mate’s other halves I have a knack for snapping the suave
out of their image instantaneously unintentionally of course but nevertheless I
must confess I do to my shame I have accrued many a tale on the subject matter
that would drive the pale from my skin and that would make me frail with
embarrassment but I cannot lament these languishing pseudo-super liaisons
because shame forges the frame around that defining still moment that will mark
your life more than fame or family will because it tames you into this subdued
state of self-hate and grating nerves and sweaty hands like nothing else can.
I look around. Ticking clocks will always make my ears prick
up. I cup my hand over my phone to check the closest thing I’ll ever have to a
watch so I can stare through the glare.
It’s three AM, and there’s cherry tasting flem glistening in
the back of my throat a bourbon bound ball like the bloat of the full moon in
the sly slinking clouds of the last summer sky; lines are still being ridden we
must be measuring multiple meter sticks now the green of the phoney one dollar
bill that has been fashioned into a tube peels apart under the duress of prying
fingers their tips stained with dried mud and stale suds the unpeeled bill is
lapped at the ink running through the 50 shades of green all the way back to
the base white with no meaning the only clean thing in the dark of this morning.
Day is not dawning
but thoughts are still spawning and conversational pieces no matter how thought
provoking lie in ruins verbal husks on table tops smoking like Hindenburg wrecks resulting in nothing but
yawning from all involved truth be told; we’re all older than I remember and we
will be again and again our youthful umbrellas turning to tatters in time’s
acid rain; he’s turning 20 I’m turning 19 in under a year the gleam of a future
I was longing for doesn’t feel like it’s glowing anymore not as much as it did
when it hid in the vagueness of could and may now the day is nearing the future
comes running beaten and broken its mouth open speaking fast and loud and I
feel far from proud as it lifts its shroud and vows that it’s finally here now
like a prodigal son that didn't learn
anything on the run and just came back casting nothing but boredom wrinkles and
warnings around the words of wisdom that were surely in there somewhere within lost
with the cost of living in the sun; I grieve for these sold words, the words that are never retrieved.
I’m waspy, baked,
shifting from drunk through sober into the dreaded pre-morning hangover off
kilter everything starts to filter through to me in its worst shades and tastes
conversations are not spoken in joyful drunken tones they’re squealed out in nerve
gnawing natters.
I think about the
patters of 6 small feet in pastel wellies in the sleet of winter wittering away
in the grey light of New Hampshire day outside the kitchen window of the hillside
house I’d like to have looking out of it soundlessly with a wife standing next
to me herbal tea simmering in the kettle the sweet smelling steam rising up through
the vision through the dream past the undone washing up past frying pans past the crockery in glass
front cupboards past the family picture of the first trip to Geneva to the
antique tapestry weaving across the top of the room composed of trees and nettles and
hollies and blueberries and eternally unpicked cherries and carollers wishing
us merry Christmases and happy new years in a future where tears do not dare
drip or slip from beneath my kid’s eyelids for fear of a crisp Kleenex wiping
them off the face of my world.
My phones goes, my mum starts and tells me to finish up so I
do prying myself from the back garden recliner with the tie-dye tartan lining
pulled out I say my farewells to a band of enlightened and chemically
heightened ne'er-do-wells; back
inside at the door between the stairs and the street I
look too the right and down as I leave into the drab of the 4:30 AM late night
cab that I’m sure was nice before the last passenger tagged along eating
special fried rice and tango tinged beef curry and didn’t wipe the seats they
sullied; I see old Converses that were stained on smaller feet years ago when
the toes barely touched the tip the tales the adventures lace through the
stains and tears like the old Ribena tinted laces chase their most complex form
through the holes around the tongue of the shoe tying it down for good. I look
up see the hoodie that I remember the birthday boy wearing when we were 12 I
wish I could connect it with an event or occasion but I can’t I just know that
that hoodie was worn and it’s put a slant in a slat sitting somewhere holding
something up in the maisonette of pre-pubescent memory the birthday boy walks
me to the door and I depart riding on watching the street and the house transition
from in-front to beside to behind to gone.
And it hits that I’ll never see him again at 19 again but
time’s approach does not fill me with rage just slight dismay as night peters
out into the last of the August days. Three small words linger like titles over
the party site in a dismal but poignant refrain: Time’s Acid Rain, Time's Acid Rain, Time's Acid Reign.
