when would suit you best?
no time like the present, but
not on a school night
~
n.b. Time is tight, but there are limits.
Tag Archives: Loneliness
on streets
empty eyes, blackened
fingernails, frayed cuffs, alone
throng gets down and dirty
~
n.b. Nashville, Tennessee, ‘The Recording Capital of the World, (as I heard a man in a check shirt, jeans, cowboy boots and a cowboy hat label the place to two men in check shirts, jeans, cowboy boots and cowboy hats), is a busy place on a Saturday around noon.
It is mighty crowded. The sidewalks too narrow to accommodate the people. The shops too small for the lines of customers. The Johnny Cash Museum fulsome of people buying tickets, lining up to enter its exhibition rooms, queues of others waiting to have a gander around the souvenir store.
The air is filled with the low throb of traffic congestion; the whoopin’ and a hollerin’ of open wagon loads of young-acting women and men drinking heavily. Every building that isn’t a boot store, or souvenir shop is a bar with a stage that positions a duo, a trio, or a full band with their backs to the sidewalk. The bass drums and cymbals, distorted guitars and amplified voices tumble, conflictingly onto the street.
All around groups of friends, couples, families, stag and hen parties, step around each other trying to agree where to go next, what to do, or hesitate to check their party retains some coherent form.
In the bigger bars, several storeys of open windows and roof top terraces are full of people standing and drinking, or sitting and eating, often with bands bashing out popular songs which encourage customers to try singing along.
A plane passing close overhead on its landing flight path cannot be heard. If you add a couple of ambulance sirens, or a police vehicle’s whining to the cacophony, then you have a good idea of the unholy racket. Music City indeed!
Well, getting back to the senryū above, in the heart of this overwhelming nonsense, there are some very isolated people. They carry all their belongings in a plastic bag, or even a suitcase or two.
They are not of this tourist party world. The crowds so loud and busy there is no hope of being heard if asking for handouts. These sun-weathered ghosts just wander around, or sit in the not so rare boarded-up doorways, or just stand and stare, sometimes mumbling to themselves, maybe fumbling a rolling tobacco cigarette.
Hieronymus Bosch would have loved Nashville. On a Saturday lunchtime, a setting for the centre panel of The Garden of Earthly Delights; at night the setting fit for Hell.
~
CLP 09/10/2022
on tenderness
this lives somewhere within and between us
exists not without, cannot survive alone
forms around us, surely not beyond us
fear not the performance, fear not the act
does time and place and circumstance persist
to permit retrieval of such gentleness?
~
CLP 24/05/2022
on selective hearing
I keep saying it
she said, nobody listens
can anyone hear?
~
n.b. Birdsong, traffic, the sound of lone voices.
electricity on
strung out isolated
hearts insulated from shock
reconnect to grid
~
n.b. When it gets really cold, the power lines still buzz, crackle, remain alive. Is the danger inherent in reconnection worth the risk? Can we live without that vital spark?
CLP 09/02/2022
on white lights
intermittent wipers
broken lines
marking where to cut
through naked trees
clawing at the sheet
of clouds
bright red triangles
black on white
warning darts
sharp bends
white on black
approaching one-eyed car
wobbles past close enough
to make me wince
and I hear you
"Slow down.
Watch out for the deer."
And this is what happens;
you become part of my world
as I drive toward yours
~
CLP 10/01/2022
on light
compared with the Sun
everything becomes grey-scale
without perspective
~
n.b. It has been a challenging few days, putting fingers to the keyboard as impossible as joining like poles of two magnets. The ‘must post’ became ‘can’t post’.
Now, a shift. Was it the sunlight? Was it the experience of movement in daytime? Was it enjoying catching up with distant friends during the Twelve Days of Christmas? Was it remembering no employer owns all my time? Was it a conversation? Was it spending an hour cleaning the bathroom (don’t ask)? Was it hearing the wren singing?
The shift is back ‘to ‘I post‘. Easy enough to say…
~
CLP 08/01/2022
on time
there're days that are yours
others allocated mine
no coincidence
~
CLP 07/12/2021
morning
light eases across bed
pulls back the winter duvet
solitude exposed
~
CLP 16/10/2021
on night
its cloak lays heavy
awake with longing for you
face of clock mocks me
~
CLP 16/10/2021
Voyage des Mots 