FOR THE WEEKEND
Everywhere the same man washes his car.
Indeterminate, in all the cul-de-sacs,
hours stretch from one galaxy to the next.
Long weekends are a wet black hole
where the tree that bears no fruit's cut down
and neighbours fall in love with themselves
then rise unrefreshed at 11 or 12.
More at least than these carbonised words
for all this effort in the kitchen. A recipe
ought to have something to show for it.
But those days I was able to lie abed,
tell huge whoppers all night, are gone.
I thought we'd all be editors someday,
not yet wanting to be tied down.
JESUS OF NAZARETH AND THE FRENCH TURN TO GOD
2 weeks ago
3 comments:
Should have gone to Greenbelt, Steven. No car washing and certainly not a black hole, although wet at times and muddy by the end.
Cheltenham Quakers even held a service (or whatever Quakers do) at 9.00 am on Sunday.
Hope you're feeling less blue and life is treating you well.
God bless
Hi Steven
This isn't being written because I want you to publish it. I'm only writing to send a message of support; a genuine one. The bores on boards can get sooh bitchy and wrapped up in daft jabs, just for the sake of hurting folk and I see some have been having a few pokes at you. Take no notice, we are all the same, it's just petty jealousies and essentially rubbish. One thing which has always struck me about you is that you are essentially wanting to say good things and find the positive.
I am in my gaffe. I've been here 3 months , after moving out of the homeless hostel where I was for the last 2 years. It was a career move that led me there, and to be honest it was the perfect place, as it was clean tidy and you got your own room.
As soon as I knew I was going I started milking the fact, tossing it on to have a laugh. The buzz was waking up in a place like that and then going to my station at the internet shop to work at waffling, with a reality I imagined few of those sharing on the sites would be tapped into. The writing was what made the situation, noy only tolerable, but enjoyable.
When I got in of a night I would see Brian the alcoholic monged out, Jim the scizo and a whole cast of characters you couldn't make up, buzzing off what I had just written and being in an environment where any literate leanings where looked on as if you were a martian. The ideal place to keep a sense of reality about oneself.
But I'm out of there now in my own gaffe, and with full internet access, so the extreme of learning to be literate in a place like that has been replaced by one of more quite contemplation, and I chanced across here after typing sean obrien into google and your open letter was there. Then I saw your latest post and thought I would write.
Don't take any notice of me when I go on a rant, as I look at it only as writing practice. An extension of what I was doing in Ormskirk with Robert Sheppard.
Keep you r pecker up. I like the sacs and next rhyme.
Steven
I've come back to this a few times and I like something about it, probably the fact that weekends have never been the same for me ever since I had a child. And also the sense of wanting more to show for effort I put into things than I can often see. The line about editors made me grin. The final line I still find a puzzle because of the "not yet" following the past tense and the "someday". No doubt intentional.
Thanks for an interesting read.
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