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Last night I had a dream.
I dreamt I walked down a long corridor
further than eyes could see or ears could hear
and as I walked I realized
I was not alone.

Around me in the darkness stood a million solid figures
with a million solemn faces;
every person I had ever known or met
standing in lines to infinity
on either side of my bare shoulders.

As I walked my eyes adjusted to the dark
and I noticed each person, though unmoving,
seemed always to face me with eyes that prickled my pale, naked skin,
seeing deep beneath the surface,
into me and even through me.

I noticed then that each person held a single object
clasped in white-knuckled hands
and pointed straight at me
held aloft in judgment in the shrill, piercing silence.
I tried to focus.

A teacher held the test I cheated on as a 10 year old.
My brother held a guitar with missing e string.
An ex-lover gripped a bloody heart in her fist.
A cousin held a dead bird, a bullet hole in its' chest.
Frightened, I began to run.

My footsteps made no impact on the deathly silence.
The invisible ground was cold on my lonesome feet
as I passed by the people of my past,
the curator of a strange museum,
with exhibits more disturbing than wax figures.

As I ran I glimpsed you from the corner of my eye.
I skidded to a halt, slipped and crashed to the ground.
I scrambled to my feet, eyes searching for you frantically
until I found you in the line,
one amongst the millions.

Carefully, I approached
struggling to see what was held in your hands.
As I came closer you held it up before me
A mirror shrouded in white light
and I was unsure whether or not to be afraid.

Conscience Can Be Hard To Find And Harder Still To Lose

I came inside
with a fistful of 20 cent pieces
and all my dirty laundry
my phone turned off and left on the car seat
I was alone and untethered and it felt alright

Flyers on the wall screamed for
my attention but they only disappointed
like the old magazines at the doctors surgery
the desperate refuge
of a bored man

The door opened
and the winds rushed in and in
she came
windblown and green-eyed and
oh-so pretty

All woman and right there in front of me.

At home I stumbled on the front step
my hands once so sure
couldn’t find my keys
the keys couldn’t find the lock
and the floorboards cried when I stepped on them.

Everyone asleep.

I took a shower
in water that ran cold
I eased myself into bed and drew the covers up
and sleepily my wife
threw an arm around me

I shut my eyes tight and waited for sleep
to engulf me and wipe away the day
and as I drifted off I realised
I fucked her
I fucked her in the laundry as our wet clothes tumbled round us

Elegy for my Lost Keys

O how could this come to be?
What trick or trap or devilry
couldst provoke this tragedy?
Come back to me o missing keys.

I took for granted for too long
your metal jingle-jangle song
come back to me, for I was wrong
Come back to me o missing keys.

You travelled with me far and wide
when doors were drunk and hard to find
those nights you let me back inside
Come back to me o missing keys.

It took me far too long to see
you weren’t just a utility
to open doors and beers for me
Come back to me o missing keys.

The Compass Is Broken And Does Not Point North

The world outside was cold, dark and smelt of burnt cinders. He drew his coat close around him and set out for the barn. He looked out across his father’s land, so different to what he had once known. The spindly, barren trees reached up desperately into the night sky, as if searching for God’s hand to pull them free of the scarred earth.
They had been lucky. The fires had come awfully close.
The winds picked up as he reached the gate, and he saw that his father had been right again. The horses were spooked all right. The gales howled through the rafters with a haunting melody.
He moved to quiet the horses, their eyes like liquid fire.

* * *

His mother moved about setting the table and fretting. His father and Eli took their places at the table as he opened the door and came inside, shaking off his coat. He sat down as if in a dream, his mind in other worlds. His mother closed her eyes and began to say grace, but he didn’t hear or see it. Instead he saw the quivering ghost of his dreams: a place far away: a city.
A land so bright in his imagination, it shone and rippled like heat rising from the tarmac on the highway.
The highway.
The only paved road for miles, at least half an hour away from here.

He picked at his food. His father said nothing, eyes never leaving his plate.
The clock stuttered from its place on the wall.
Mother began to clear the plates. Eli excused himself and scampered upstairs to bed. His mother disappeared into the kitchen and returned with tea and coffee, setting the tray on the table and smoothing the tablecloth. He reached for his cup in the implacable silence, unnerved. He shut his eyes tight, unsure of what he feared most: continued silence or the questioning.
The steam rising from the cups seemed to cover the room in sinister mist.

* * *

He walked up the stairs with shrieking voices in his head, loud enough to cover the hushed tones of his parents’ voices down below.
The silence in the house lay shattered like glass.
He walked into Eli’s room. The little boy was in bed with a book in his hands, brow furrowed in concentration. He sat in the seat by the bed, watching his brother.
“Bobby, what does this word mean?”
“Aw c’mon. You know I’s never one for them fancy books.”
Eli looked pensive for a moment and then put down the book.
“Bobby… what did Mr Jamison say?”
“Ain’t no good news. Still no work for me,” he said with a grimace.
“Does that mean you’re gonna stay and keep helpin’ Daddy on the farm?”
“Don’t look like I got much else to do,” he said, smiling and punching his brother’s arm. He tousled the kid’s hair and said goodnight as he got up to leave. At the door he stopped and turned.
“Hey Eli. Whatchoo wanna be when you grow up?”
“A fireman,” he said sleepily.
“A fireman? Why you wanna be a fireman?”
“What’s better than being a fireman?”
Bobby smiled and shook his head.
“Goodnight, little buddy.”

* * *

He walked to his room, shut the door behind him and gazed out the window to the stars. The darkness hid the destruction from sight, but in his heart he knew it was there. No matter what happened tonight, come morning there’d be no birds singing in the trees.
The scars would remain.
He shut his eyes and leaned his head against the glass, hoping it would cool his burning mind. He wanted to rest to purge all thought from his mind. There were so many tough choices ahead. He thought about his little brother, so sure of himself.
A fireman, he thought.
He wished it could all be that simple.

At a Bar, And Afterwards

A room of recognizables, but strangers nonetheless
I sense the ghost receding, pressure easing in my chest
A world of dancing dangers lurking down around my knees
Is somehow strangely soothing even when I hold the keys

A synapse fires early, and the words escaping out
Conspire to overthrow me, get the General to rout
Decorum is the enemy, I hide behind my eyes
And all their polite questioning is only to disguise

The mottled, blind, self-interest that makes me so forlorn
An answer out of category will win the people’s scorn
And when did the brains trust decide that this was all okay?
For cultural myopia to rule the children’s play?

Alone, at home, I feel that I’m that cat inside the box
Equally alive and dead, so long as no-one looks
And why can’t I express the things that mean the most to me?
Her words take me to other realms I feel but cannot see

And yet my words fall silent, dead before they’ve left the tongue
Perhaps the words have dried away, used up when I was young
Or maybe I can find the words in someone else’s song?
And use those ‘til my own return, I hope it won’t be long.

Near or Far

You are my late nights.
You are my early mornings.
The robin’s sweet song and the cool breeze from the North.
Far from sight but never from mind.
You make my heart dance, dance, dance like soda bubbles.

A Strange Man

I met a strange man in Arts Lecture Room 8.
He frightened me at first glance.
He had the look of a wild dog backed against a wall.
I swallowed hard when he sat next to me.

He wore a long-sleeve collared shirt that might have started life as white,
But had long since been stained yellow like the teeth of a pack-a-day man.
The shirt had a print that looked as though it had gone
Out of fashion in approximately 1971.

On top of the shirt, he wore a shabby brown vest, woolly and dirty.
Brown pants with no belt.
Tattered shoes clinging desperately to their own remains.
Dark hair, unkempt. Dark eyes.

Unshaven. A slight odour.
The general look of a man who had spent the last ten years
Grifting his way through the mid-West.
A time-traveller from the Depression-era.

He sat next to me; I kept my head down, kept reading.
He muttered to himself incessantly. He made me nervous.
He asked what I was reading: Calvino, for Post-Modernism.
He said: “I loved it. Did that unit. Did pretty well. Wait til Murakami though.”
Hehe.

He asked about my summer.
I said it was good fun, but that (as usual) I’d got to a point
Where I was itching to get back to doing something real.
He said he didn’t have a job over summer, so he’d had a great time.
Hehe.

After the lecture, he got up and walked away;
With the posture of a bald eagle, rigid, unyielding,
But the fluid movement of a dancer,
The jittery spasms of a junkie,
The imbalance of a drunk.
He was gone.