Orphaned Islands (Un)poetry

I always intended to look him up
but youth is not careful with time
and when there was, I had to look down – a headstone.

Legend said he was a lawyer in a former life
some rumours spoke of ejection …. others of spectacular abdication.
“I’m a painter son ” – the reply to the teenaged question.

Paint. It’s what we did
while the sun holidayed south.
Bleached mansions in a faded suburb
a once star, off the bottle and thinking comeback.

Immigrant families – two or three to a house
unfamiliar scents and new rhythms
fathers who forbade me talking to daughters
mothers who knew painters were the death knell. Sale. Eviction.

Enlightenment didn’t realise until much later
improvement of lives was always imagined
Cinderella, dressed for the ball one more time.
Socialism. Wrong. Capital gain.

Still slack should be cut for age
and entertainment value of the boss – Morrie
two syllables… nothing more ever needed.
At the hardware store. No invoice, only statement… “ For Morrie.”

Stories about him filled the about to rise again borough
even if half
were half true!
With coffee, first-hand accounts of his battles with bureaucracies
the bank, his wives : past and present. All hilarious.

Flippant about himself and his ambitions
he told me, when the time came to purchase a house, to consult him
and he would tell me which ones not to.

Not a painter, a property developer
wide awake to the wide boys
a wheeler dealer and rogue, who every Friday lunchtime
handed over a bundle of notes … then drove me to the bank.

Education is different now, students not exposed to
the heterogeneity of the wool store
the killing plants
the building site
they would never meet a Morrie
an irreversible loss of social diversity. Their world is much poorer.

For the back story click Backstage
If you like a piece of writing (or the site) please share

She had the most beautiful hair
a distinctive mark of unassisted perfection
blonde meets prairie wheat gold
an exquisite tiara atop
a dowdy scowling Queen Victoria.
Nicotine rasped features
barbed wire tongue
and quick sand humour completed the disillusion.

I was at the outer edge of youth
still not completely shaped
still a little unworldly
a hand that couldn’t quite reach to
someone thwarting obvious classification.
A neighbourhood cat crossing neutral territory
uncertain whether to exhibit trust – or suspicion.

One morning as Christmas looms
an unexpected fruit tart
for me.
thoughts locked in the traffic jam of the season
fail to recognize the bypass through gridlock
and decline with crushing indifference
her generosity of spirit a hand slapped away.
A mistake not realized until too late
and
never given the opportunity for redemption.

For the back story click Backstage
If you like a piece of writing (or the site) please share

Memory could never recapture the tone
exhilaration, permissiveness, steel, neutrality?
Response so desperate not to drop the ball
what came before lost to the sky.
The morning after the night before clouds thrilling
shapes formed and separated. That floating sensation.
Eternity. Everything is possible.

She said she’d had her first man
listening to Joni Mitchell’s ‘Both Sides Now’
it was newly hot then
as were we now.

A song about clouds. Lying on her back
she addressed them. “ Last night.”
Rented propriety braces for an outline of circumstances
exceptional, out of character, not before or again. Surprise.
Her life is complicated
job, part-time study, mortgage
a soon to be ex husband pleading for another chance
she wanted sex only. Nothing else. Deal?

Eyes turn seeking contact – a covenant.
We were both in exile
her from marriage …. me….  life as it had been.
For the rest of winter. Every second weekend.

Early spring an unavoidable change of schedule
the children
she said it didn’t matter.
Her boy is the age when beginning to know
begins
to know some visitors don’t sleep in the spare room.
In the morning he is sullen. I never went back.

For the back story click Backstage
If you like a piece of writing (or the site) please share