Local Asshole Now Local Asshole With Blog: The Twisted Brain Wrong of a One-Off Man-Mental
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Tuesday, September 16, 2008
In Memory of the N11
Site of the next smash
victim’s roadside shrine,
who and wherever: waiting,
sped past. The Sugarloaf’s
shark-fin tip overhead,
sniffing blood.
Tarmac in my veins
but not once underfoot,
how you burn for me,
shimmer and burn.
The inside lane peels off
for the garden centre
and the driver turns
the radio up for the sport.
The road has eaten
a small village
under the sign of
its service station’s
knife and fork;
we drive through
someone’s front room.
A child in a hillside field
flies a kite, and a cat
one lane from the road
is asleep in the sun.
Stream through my eyes,
kite girl, their shade
to your light. On still
evenings the fox’s cry
at the end of your lane
must carry all the way
to the flyover. It wipes
its nostrils clean of my scent.
The minute underground throb
of the bus’s passing shakes
my grandparents’ bones.
Rush hour sometimes
a body can feel it’s never
going to move.
Towns are concessions,
begrudged. Dip in the road
where a bloodline
rose, sank, settled,
‘D’ye know what I’m goin’
to tell ye,’ a generation’s
worth of opening
conversational gambit
at the Village Inn,
Uncle Joe. Roads
without traffic
after the upgrade
don’t go untravelled,
merely become
their own destination.
Figure looming
smaller and smaller
on the hospital drive
staring me full
in the back as I scarcely
glance up from my paper:
not until you are out
of sight do I think
to look, then left
and another pocket
handkerchief graveyard,
and that was a great day
for the village, the green
and red football flags
by the Marian grotto
will say, meaning
that not-to-be-forgotten
triumph, meaning that never-
again-to-be-mentioned
disgrace. The misspelled
takeaway sign awaits
the last drunks
and the king of the pipers
lies under a snowstorm
of flecked marble chips
but snow is not general.
There is no snow,
is only an evening
coming down, with
from the far docks
the sound of a foghorn
while the Sugarloaf slips
behind its veil to digest
the day’s catch. You sit
in a blunted pencil of light
and a current of recycled air,
but don’t imagine
there’s no arriving, no
retiring you into
the slipstream with scarcely
a backward glance
from the driver. Your seat
is only so comfortable
and only the road
has no home to go to,
the one true static thing.
A last boy
leaves the misting-up
windscreen empty
before you
stepping off
at the edge of town
and its moving blackout
is pleasure deferred
enough. On your way
with you! It is two hours
ago all over again
but do not run
for the last bus:
you are on it and gone,
waving not me
but the bus stop
goodnight and already
hearing the foghorns
to greet you.
Goodnight.
{Ends}
Photo found here.
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