She takes a good swig
of the methadone.
Bleached jeans cling.
Sunlight. Slate
coloured clouds too.
We go the longer way into town
to a birthday party
with ghosts.
Those birthday parties with ghosts are only a memory now, maybe the methadone did its job. But I remember how it felt every time: first train home I've got to get on it.
News on this front less reassuring here. Transit system unions striking. Bus service this side of the Bay to end at midnight. Drivers already make more in a day than I ever made in my pathetic five "best", added together. (Should have left those books alone!) Now rising shakily from three days in sick bed clearing cobwebs from one working eye to discover news there was anyway no point in that weak endeavour of becoming upright. Which notice blends perfectly with current trend of things here. For us it will mean no public transportation, thus no transportation at all. Meanwhile instead of the routine daily 50,000 speedjunkie getting and spending automotive compulsives roaring past there will now be how many? Sixty, seventy, 80,000? And not a lorry-load of synthetic palliative in the lot (unless perhaps it's one that's been heisted and is headed for the worlds below, where things remain both more and less real than on this metallic froth surface). We've our own ghosts, they snoop but don't invite us to party. Envy that girl. Colour my cloud world please, too, any hue of slate would do nicely so long as not transparent.
We've been thinking of you and the dame of the manor. A colleague clocked an advert on the back of a bus here advertising vacancies for drivers. When she saw the wage she wondered what the hell she was doing at the centre but there we are. The workforce being predominantly women, we're not going to see an increase for some time to come.
Great smoke clouds moving from Smethwick across Birmingham; a fire in a recycling plant just down the road. The kind of clouds nobody wants.
Those birthday parties with ghosts are only a memory now, maybe the methadone did its job. But I remember how it felt every time: first train home I've got to get on it.
ReplyDeleteNo train back at all where I was going. Still, there were some friendly ghosts too.
ReplyDeleteThat's reassuring :-)
ReplyDeleteNews on this front less reassuring here. Transit system unions striking. Bus service this side of the Bay to end at midnight. Drivers already make more in a day than I ever made in my pathetic five "best", added together. (Should have left those books alone!) Now rising shakily from three days in sick bed clearing cobwebs from one working eye to discover news there was anyway no point in that weak endeavour of becoming upright. Which notice blends perfectly with current trend of things here. For us it will mean no public transportation, thus no transportation at all. Meanwhile instead of the routine daily 50,000 speedjunkie getting and spending automotive compulsives roaring past there will now be how many? Sixty, seventy, 80,000? And not a lorry-load of synthetic palliative in the lot (unless perhaps it's one that's been heisted and is headed for the worlds below, where things remain both more and less real than on this metallic froth surface). We've our own ghosts, they snoop but don't invite us to party. Envy that girl. Colour my cloud world please, too, any hue of slate would do nicely so long as not transparent.
ReplyDeleteGlad to hear you're up (if not about), Tom.
ReplyDeleteWe've been thinking of you and the dame of the manor. A colleague clocked an advert on the back of a bus here advertising vacancies for drivers. When she saw the wage she wondered what the hell she was doing at the centre but there we are. The workforce being predominantly women, we're not going to see an increase for some time to come.
Great smoke clouds moving from Smethwick across Birmingham; a fire in a recycling plant just down the road. The kind of clouds nobody wants.