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VIOLATION

September 5, 2012 1 Comment

The random floes of life bumped and ground in the wake of the broken berg of everything. All was rimed with a frost. Breath revealed itself to the world, an empty bubble of words you didn’t say, passing away unheard. The earth was covered with a paste of dirt and snow that couldn’t decide if it was liquid or solid. 

The police were there to watch you commit your crimes, and you watched them commit theirs in their turn. A light on at night was a burglary. A letter put in a box might go anywhere or nowhere, so you tended to say nothing to nobody.

Everyone wanted to be somewhere else, but there was nowhere else. The world had stopped spinning. The shops were full of a peculiar kind of nothing that you couldn’t afford and didn’t want anyway. People danced in disco terrariums and bumped against the glass that fronted the street like goldfish, surprised every time to see the same life outside. They had money for drugs to make them as uneasy as a sober person.

There were bars on the windows and flames licking around the mansard while hands reached out for escape while other hands reached in for the warmth. The fire died for want of fuel and the hands were all withdrawn.

The meters stood drunkenly at attention and shouted nothing but VIOLATION at pedestrians. Yes, we know, we muttered, and trudged on into the endless dusk.

The Temptations Stop

April 4, 2012 7 Comments

So very young. I think I remember this and that. Dad turned the big, silver knob and the Temptations stop. There was a chainlink fence aged to a coppery color, undulating its way down the heaving and spidered sidewalk. A bread truck in the drive.

It was Christmastime. You lifted the yoke on the gate and fumbled to close it. A few steps, a few steps and onto the porch. It was closed in, but left cold. There was a Christmas tree. It wasn’t real. There wasn’t an insinuation of real about it. It was silver. It was Christmas with the Blessed Virgin Mary in a miniskirt. There was a light pointed at it with a revolving lens of four colors slowly grinding around. There was fake white arcs of snow sprayed into the corners of the windowpanes. The patches of real snow outside were brown.

Then the door opened and it was instantly loud and close and hot and wonderful. There were kisses on the forehead with a hand on both cheeks, warm and damp from cooking. There was a comical handshake in a haze of Tiparillos. A big post stood sentry at the foot of the stair, and halfway up there was a colored glass window. Who could think of such a thing in your house instead of in the church where you dared not turn around.

They had a parlor instead of a living room, and a room to eat in and nothing else. Or maybe it was her sister. They were all in the same place at the same time and it blends things together in a small mind. The chairs groaned with even my little weight. The table groaned with the food. Everyone was in the kitchen and it was as bright as a beacon by the shore in there, and the light crept out into the hall like a puddle. The phone rang and rang and sounded different.

There was football of all things on TV, from places I’d never go. The men drank from cans with two perfect triangles punched in them, one slightly larger than the other. After a while they played cards and laughed at one another’s jokes.

When it was over she had a name for me that others didn’t. I was nothing but her brother’s son but that’s enough I guess. She put a whole quarter in my hand and kissed me. I hear that name again, in her voice, though it is no more. I’ll tote it around in the sack of my heart forever.

The Rock Of Fergus

March 17, 2012 2 Comments

Two drunkards are staggering down the lane in the middle of the night. A copper grabs them by the collar and says, “You two look like you’re up to no good. You; what’s your name and where do you live?”

The heavier fellow rears up a bit, straightens an imaginary belt, clears his throat, and says,” I’m Malachy Curran, of no fixed address!”

The cop turns to the other drunk.

“I live in the flat above Malachy.” 

Related: Orange Line

Can I Get A Witness?

December 20, 2010 2 Comments

I dint know Van Morrison from a hole in the wall though he lived downa street for a spell and saw the same sunrise on the Mystic — but me, I just saw a dead dog float by and he was gone by then anyway; way later I spotted his face over and over like a hostage taken on the label in the bin I remember it was only a buck save a penny at the building nineteen and three quarters and that needle left an electrifying little wake on the platter like a boat in the fog or a dead dog on the Mystic. There’s a song or a poem or a story like a Greek with a lyre would tell in there somewheres but he took it already.



So glad to see you
So glad you’re here
Come here beside me now
We can clean inhibition away
All inhibitions
Throw them away
And when we dance like this
Like we’ve never been dancin’ before

Oh, they were swingin’
Down at kingdom hall
Oh, bells were ringin’
Down at the kingdom hall
Oh choir was singin’
Down at the kingdom hall
Hey, liley, liley, liley
Hey, liley, liley, lo

Good body music
Brings you right here
Free flowin’ motion now
When we’re shakin’ it out on the floor
Good rockin’ music
Down in your shoes
And when we dance like this
Like we’ve never been dancin’ before

Tag: Boston

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sippicancottage

A Man Who Has Nothing In Particular To Recommend Him Discusses All Sorts of Subjects at Random as Though He Knew Everything.

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