Passages: a volume of poems/short, short stories about the shifts and changes in perception and understanding as a function of time. How the stages of life reconfigure interpretation to reveal what was, isn’t any more. Or what is, once wasn’t. Vignettes of the metamorphosis : when the years of living render inaccessible to comprehension.
He was the star of team,
our high school –
a bona fide footballing supernova,
blazing a trail of failed tackles
rampant in all the grades
big things possible, probable, no certain.
I’d never seen anyone move like him –
it was almost impossible to lay a hand on him
his torso was there, and then it wasn’t.
Footwork – almost non-existent
a video should be made of him.
It was
they learned to take his ankles
he was finished – two years out of high school.
What the hell was he doing there unsupervised?
– An arterial road at 8:20 a.m,
work traffic, school traffic, out of city traffic
a zebra crossing
he did …. then didn’t
stepping on … then off … to the edge
then away.
Would have been called intellectually handicapped once
not sure what the now politically bowdlerised would be.
He is confused,
vehicles are confused stop .. go… go …stop … back on the curb.
I can’t – a 50-year-old male –
out of the question, but
it’s just a matter of time until ….
I see an early 40’s woman, parking her car
I point and explain.
Got it she says
she takes him by the hand, to the other side.
She can – I couldn’t,
it’s the way the world these days
men are in danger, helping a child in danger.
Aged 30, the song sang of
blame,
misunderstanding
of each generation deriding the one before.
We were homeowners by then
clamped to work and bank by interest rates
14.75%, down from 15.25%
how we rejoiced at the fall – the odd bottle of wine
limbo danced under the fiscal door.
And
clenched teeth at our parents generation –
government assistance to first home buyers
3% state backed loans
Keynesian benevolence underwriting full employment.
A mortgage repaid lifetime later
a friend’s 21-year-old
inventories the financial yokes of his generation :
student loans
high housing costs
health insurance,
his peers will do it tough he says because
the baby boomers fucked it up –
eating the goose that laid the golden egg.
