Goodbye
was said in the early hours
all of us bleary eyed and trying
not to reveal how we really felt
for there is no way, no way at all
for true goodbyes.
His golden head and the missing cat
harbingers of things to come
none of us could fathom back then
for then he worked among flowers in Columbia Road
where for his labors, he fantasized a life of being
a garden designer of small, expensive, London flats
all walled in with Victorian crimp, longing to be rendered
Japanese, Drought-Resistant or Minimalist.
He slept with a girl called Candida, 25 years his senior
with a fat address book of horticultural leads
these things seemed then, necessary and normal
like the broken flowers fallen from their stem
at the end of a days market where people
trod over them when hours before
they emptied their purses to bloom.
He understood survival like a woman does
and for that reason and others, we were inseparable
if you’d asked me then, were it possible we’d be lost
to the other, I would have laughed
long and confidently — no bloody chance.
But time is a mortal coil of copper
winking in the sun among pomegranates and opal flowers
that render color to city lots, exhausted by their pilgrimage
and his white paint and his tall dreams, they were
like songs we play in the shower, or driving fast
moments of pleasure – – nothing more substantive.
Years later he has a house in Hastings
did I mention his parents were rich?
Built from drift wood and sea shells
I wondered what he thought, when he opened the white curtains
and stared at history stretching out like a quiver of arrows
unspent
or back at the girl who lay, tattooed and lean in his iron bed
which had once been mine and before me, my grandmothers.
What would she think? To know if she could
of strangers inhabiting her things like rude ghosts?
Would she say; You are the specters of my privacy
you sleep and fuck and dream on my mattress
who gave you the right? This reminds me of my
mother, who a few years ago declared; I won’t be buying anything
anymore, for who shall I give it to, and who will keep it when
I am gone? The thought haunted her far more than
the ghosts on my grandmothers bed, for she saw then
her own fragility and the absurdity of youth
decorating their lives with accoutrements as if they will
prevent a drowning or save them in a fire
when soon enough they feel heavy and unnecessary
to go through the ether with. Again, it was a
prescience, for she knew without saying, I would not
be in her life and she did not want her daughter
to inherit her bed or her clothes like a thief
who sells their organs on Sunday.
I understood her fear, I should have told her
but then I did not know she would be
leaving for good
I was fattened on the notion love stays and
what a pretty little fool I was.
When it comes my time, I will
create a life raft and put all my possessions
together in a purple kerchief, climb into the middle
and set off across sea to the isle of
forgotten or unwanted toys and there
my otter and my badger and my Kermit the Frog
and even dear old, much mussed penguin, they will live on that isle
with me until we retreat into the mist
to be truly absorbed
for no-one will be claiming my left overs
it will be as if I am
already absent.
Just like he is gone now, perhaps to Scandinavia, he was
learning the language like braille, touching the words
hoping they would sink in, and she would scold him
for coming home late smelling of cigarettes and remind him
in Scandinavia they do not smoke, so you need to quit now
why not get some ink instead and cover your body with
Viking symbols? He was
Scandinavian but only in his blood, the rest of it was
a good little English boy who didn’t know about
blow jobs or girls who wanted to fuck all night
still wearing their satin bra and smoking all
the while
until he began University and with the cliche
of all young men, he learned fast and began to
roll his own on the bronzed thigh of a girl who
dealt hashish and spoke with a pretend cockney
accent, we all know, those types they
usually borrow money from us when they
have more than most.
Sometimes I look for him, among the
river beds and the high lands where rabbits without
Myxomatosis ran plentiful and unafraid, unlike
Texas where there are snakes in grass especially after
rain and it rains
more than I cry these days for I am a form
of paper that does not require sustaining.
If he could see me now he would say; You
aged well, I am glad you never cut your hair, did you
see I went bald just like my dad? And look, is that
a new poem? Can I read it? Just as
we used to stay up late, typing on clapped out machines
without grace and laughing at
jokes made over smoke rings
in our underwear with the window open
and the midnight breeze
lulling.
I liked how he reminded me of
a gentle girl, for I knew no gentle girls
save my imagination. In my world girls
were cruel and they played favorites
like black jack and demanded their 80 percent
of the takings before giving a red cent.
I didn’t know then, girls would soften
become merciful or desperate, who can say?
But adopt some of his gentle ways, though
not one of them would be as romantic, I cannot
lie. What a shame a man isn’t enough
when in every way he is the very thing
except his masculinity which he cannot help
though it stinks like a wet dog
seeking shelter to shake it off.
I am glad she appreciated these things
and sad that I was unable
for our natures are shaped like spinning clay
no more under our control than the potters
wheel, once it has begun its harrowing ascent
I am after all, no crafts-worker, I can barely
sew buttons on my torn places.
But often I miss him with the piquance
of something that was real and gleaming
when youth was our high grass and snakes
did not exist much. I miss his gentle bestowing
and nobility, the way we would work off the other
like crafted pieces of the same wood, you could say
he was my best friend, until time made
strangers of us. After all, it wasn’t really
time as much as the ocean engulfing bridge-less
space and far flung conversations held over wire
did not transpose that immediacy or the smell
of spilled wine on paper, or his warm hand enfolding
mine in encouragement, for he always believed
when I was unable, a brother I hadn’t been
bequeathed in birth, we shared the same
eyes and tendency to cry when laughing hard
I even punched him once to see if
I would hurt and the bruise was a
flower forming in our shared heart.
He kept a cat of mine and had three of his own
but his Scandinavian girlfriend was allergic
to cat fur and second hand beds belonging to
my grandmother and before long both were
consigned to others I never met, and they
purchased IKEA or something modern to
fit their new life, where I had no place
but perhaps one day when his kids are older
one will be rooting through a box of shells
his father kept in a high shelf, looking maybe
for weed or diaries, he finds instead, photo of
us, we are so young, grinning all
fat cheeks and uncreased eyes, thinking of
a future that never came, how strange to imagine
then, when walking down the street to Cuba Libra
hand in hand, if they had said, you will
one day not know each other. How time bewitches
us with the certainty such things cannot, will not
happen, ever, oh foolish, foolish! He asks his
father; Whose the girl? Just for a moment
in another language, in another part of the
world, the grown-up him, stops, a lump in his throat
the size of my fist, and smiles, before
dismissing the memory and putting me
back among the shells and the dried smell
of sea water.
Goodbye
was said in the early hours
all of us bleary eyed and trying
not to reveal how we really felt
for there is no way, no way at all
for true goodbyes.
Pause
TheFeatheredSleep 