Although some people apparently never look at the sidebar, I've just put a couple of new bits of music on there. I know there's more music than poems on here sometimes, but that's because, well, you know.....
and
while I was looking for the cover image of the Kimya Dawson record I came across a photo of her. She has wild hair, don't she?
Other stuff happened today. When I went to the Post office to post a Mother's Day card to my, um, mother.... well, there was a woman getting cash from the cash machine next to the Post Office door, and she had a kid in a buggy pushchair thing, and the pushchair was right in front of the door, blocking the entrance. So I said "Excuse me, can you move the pushchair please?" and the woman looked at me like I was some kind of child-molesting-single-mother-raper and, frankly, to put it bluntly, she didn't move the pushchair. So I did. It didn't make her the happiest mother in the world, but ....
What else happened today?
Oh yeah..... I wrote this. I seem to have given up on poems of late, and taken to chunks of prose. I think I must be tired of figuring out the line-breaks.
A visit to the hairdresser
A gadget was on the street, abandoned by someone who had no love for such things. Electronically, the day began but ended unexpectedly because there was, let’s suggest, no interest. A hairdresser arrived at the shop and found people queueing, waiting. But where was the desire? As the street sweepers reached the end of their shift and turned homeward, some people were just waking up. This world is exquisitely so extremely full of difference.
Quietly, as if by suggestion and not by wish, someone who cannot sing to save their life begins to sing. It is during the time of hanging washing out on the line, to catch the few moments of winter sunshine. God redeems vouchers, or promises to do so. And thick pants, they take so much time, don’t they, in this weather?
And a long, long walk awaits those who want to go further than their ancestors. If it’s as far as you can see, fine. If it’s further than anyone can imagine, even finer. If it’s off the face of everything, you will be happier than a pug in sunshine. Where the water ends and the water begins is, as if you need telling, where nothing matters any more. Listen, and shadows, even shadows have voices. It is a season of mystery, but rather be there than elsewhere where meaning is so clear you fall asleep with knowing.
At, meanwhile, the hair salon, where Donna is still looking for her scissors and Craig, the new shampoo boy, is checking for one last speck of conditioner in the hair of a girl who thinks of herself, only of herself (assumption) it’s coffee time. If Coffee, a girl who thought only of herself (proven) were here now, what would happen? Rhetorical question.
Names mean nothing. Once, and this could not happen long ago in the time of mythology or even before that, before people had the wit to make up stuff and pre-empt the movies, an orchestra was travelling a lonely stony road. The back row of the orchestra, which even in those days consisted mainly of drummers and rarely called upon but nevertheless indispensable percussionists, some of them were eager for haircuts. Hair is important for some people. It’s not how you look, it’s how you think you look that matters. Such was, in those days and even now, The Wisdom.
And teeth, those shiny things, those false things, they matter too. An age passes and even as we drift beyond ourselves into history some of what we care about will remain. Don’t sing if you can’t. Shout if you can. Of the myriad wanderings that will be written about, only a few of them really matter. That walk to the hairdresser was not one of them. And when the boys call out from the shelter to see if you have any money to spare, don’t turn around. Or do turn around. It makes no difference to the outcome, to be honest.
*
