Posted in Unexpected

Streetwise

Posted on by tq1695

Summer holidays
every day is Sunday
the arcade warm and slow
commerce is in the counting house – Christmas was good.

Black and battered
open lid – herringboned with stickers
LHR SYD LAX
MEL BSE WLG
AKL SFO BNA
this guitar case is well travelled.

Jangling chords
nicotine baritone
covers all the standards
and requests, requests
a perpetual jukebox.

Snap chat between songs
a blend of biography, musicology and double entendre.
Bubbly
if a man could be described as bubbly.
Odd how bubbly and vivacious apply only to women
effervescent perhaps.

The crowd is attentive
after 30 minutes
a hand waves at the guitar case
“hey you fellas put some money in here
or I’ll have to go back to my first career ….. stealing cars.”
The smile is wide but the teeth bared.

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Author:

Most of my life has been spent on the bench, occasionally called into the game by extravagance or attenuation. Waiting has turned a loner into a recorder - nondescript and inconsequential, more not noticed than overlooked - the non-vantage point of children not yet considered old enough to understand. Orphaned Islands (Un)poetry is a lifetime of picking anecdotes up and not throwing them away. Stories collected like odds and ends placed in a box in the basement, the garage, the garden shed - uncertain as to what their use might be but knowing that one day there might be one.