Carnevale

A  father, taking his two small children to school has positioned his son in the bright morning sunlight against the  shiny galvanised iron wall of one of the housing units. The son is wearing  a black cape with a red raised collar.  He screws up his pale little face and squints into the sunlight and lens. His mouth is filled with plastic fanged teeth. An  older sister, costumeless, watches on with the  intense reserve of a sibling.

A man dressed in smart casual work clothes has the red face and pointed ears of a Lucifer. He stops momentarily to lick away the black grease paint that has spread from his lips to his teeth. He glances suddenly self-conscious at the passing traffic as if caught gazing at himself  in a mirror.

Co workers.

The man  has seen everything that has happened in his dynamic work place from  its recent  origins to it current insecure present. He notes that it  has a high turn, over just in the time we have been there there have been 20 or more like 30 people who have gone.

The young English woman  does not want to be drawn. She has been forced by another worker  to make salad last night for a  farewell, her own is coming up. She does not eat salad much, it has been a challenge. She  is moving on to another city  where she will be very busy with an expanded role.

The man would not be popular but possibly  not actively disliked. His relentless need to witness and describe would make colleagues  uneasy.  Mention of him among others would lead to a momentary  silence before a  change of   topic. Only someone brash and outspoken would risk a  derogatory comment.   He  has an unhurried delivery as if he is laying out a collection of disparate objects on a table whose overall truthful function will be revealed if only he can complete the process without interruption.

The Gap Years.

Two not so yummy mummies with babes expensively suspended.
One  in full on black high performance lycra stands  her foot hefted  up at a steep angle on the outdoor table, in the courtyard of  a gourmet food store. The other sits.
Well I work for him 3 days a week, it has worked out really well. Really well.
Oh that is so good, the seated woman says bleakly to the black running shoe.
And then I have my own business of course,  two days a week. Training.
Training what? The seated woman asks finally lifting her eyes from the shoe.

The funeral.

Under the stained glass  window of  the funeral home, the coffin covered in beads and knickknacks seems as small and insubstantial as that of a child's.

A brother comes up and says  that he had little contact with the deceased for many years and it was only in recent years  that he had come to see her more often.  He had some memories of her as a child. She loved  horses. She had her own horse and when she had a baby she had named it after that horse.  He had thought that they lived  a normal family life in a quiet rural province but in fact this sense of normalcy had been proved mistaken. He  had later  found out that  the deceased was not his full sister.  She  had been born out of wedlock in a period between one of  his mother's other  marriages. His younger sister also had another father.  He also found out that his uncle had been the subject of court martial  in the Second World War.

A young woman who  looks as if she manages a complex love life says she has grown up with the deceased in her life. She had always admired  the woman's style so she was wearing all her arm bling in memory of her. She then sings Bag Lady by  Erica Badu accompanied by a man on an  electric guitar.

A Polynesian care worker comes  up trim in jeans and a sweatshirt. She has brought a small ukulele with her wrapped in a cloth and says that she had spoken to the deceased many times since she  had come to live at the home.   The deceased often asked her  if she  would go to heaven.  The care worker always told her, of course you will,  you have  so many friends.  She and the deceased had  sung  songs of praise together.   She will  sing one now, the one  she had taught the deceased. She unwraps the ukulele and sings a sweet song in an surprisingly  thin off key voice.

Two young mothers and a small girl come up. One of the mothers says she had been fascinated by the deceased from the moment she first moved  into  the neighbourhood and   had seen her fossicking in  a rubbish bin for treasures.  Among other things, the deceased  had taught her about lending.  Once the deceased asked her for $20. She  replied that she could not give it to her as  she did not want money lending to come between them. Yet  one day she had run into the deceased outside the supermarket and had commented on the variety and nutritious  value of her groceries, where upon the deceased had gone into a nearby cafe to borrow a knife to dissect a wheel of  brie and divide it between them. She had found out that the deceased had been forcibly separated from the new born baby she had given birth to  when she was staying in England as a young woman.  The deceased always had this child  on her mind and was very damaged by this separation. Maybe this is why she always had a pram and pushed it around, empty of a child but full of treasures.


The other young mother says that she had been given a suitcase by the deceased. She lifts up  a retro yellow suit case high into the air. She has  taken the suitcase around the world with her, it is  so easy to spot on a carousel. Her young daughter has a large purple plastic creature  on wheels that she has also been given and reportedly  loves even though it is plastic. The little girl tries to  lift her toy off the ground to show everyone.


A  Buddhist nun comes forward  on thick oedematous ankles supported by sturdy sandals.  The spiritual life encases her as solidly as  a large wooden block. The gifts she received of 'borrowed' library books on the Buddha, the anger and pain of the deceased are mentioned.  She says that they had spoken of many things and much had been shared even the fact that one of  the deceased's lovers had  urinated on her.

At the back of the chapel, spilling out of  the entrance, the deceased's friends and lovers_ lenders and borrowers all, stand smoking and silent in the warm autumn day.

Murnau

We watch the old movie on an old TV sitting on an old couch
with a curtain pegged sideways over the french doors
In the film a man is stripped of himself and so dies.
Or his luck turns and he lives in a gemutlich heaven on earth.
There is an option.
A studio in Germany between the wars got up into a sliver of city.
The business of the world is condensed and flickers with a rage, slowed to squeeze the cruel second fully.

Suddenly the french door is quickly, quietly  opened.
A gust of wind?
But then the curtain is moved  by  a small force.
A dextrous animal?
From behind the curtain, out of a late summer night
a child appears, so out of his expected place he stops dead, his face a mask.
This sudden beauty makes me smile and say hello.
The child as silent  and remote as any film, only sees  our very strangeness
and vanishes to those who guard him.
On screen,  neighbourhood urchins torment in play.
They  would be ancient now if they had survived.
We glance at one another, the apparition still with us and the loss of another between us

World Class Life: the mash up.

World Class Life

Coming here tourists will swim in a world of sheer luxury and exclusivity
the pool water was so cloudy  we could not see the bottom of the pool
always there are guys standing at the entrance
and open the door whenever guests come
the  processed ambience quickly renders customer’s senses
 a pillow menu and a choice of exclusive soaps
signature long stem 430 thread-count Egyptian cotton sheets
with stained carpets all around our bed
sunglasses cleaning, and daily beach treats served on a complimentary basis
coral species that can survive the next hot water events that may affect the gulf
set off in search of Hanuman, the monkey god and legendary guardian of the bay
gave him a tip, he was very happy and swarmed me with many bottled water everyday
the TV system hanged a few times and we had to call 2 times
the perfect blend of idyllic tranquillity and perfect comfort
somewhat outdated furniture
the discerning connoisseur will come to expect
infused with an ambiance enhanced by touches of aesthetic charm
grime buildup on the white doors
and lets them indulge themselves in the seduction of brands
however, after 3 hours, the TV hanged again
even though they come from the world-class life
they may find it hard-pressed in the experience here.

Hometown news.

In that quiet city of ghosts.
The son was found on a quiet street, in his pyjamas distressed and hysterical pointing back to the small low rent house.
He was mentally impaired and his mother was quiet
She was quiet and kept to herself
She could be seen some mornings scooting with her son down the hill to the local school, some mornings not.
He was led away in his socks by relatives
The quiet mother was unwell.
Winter in that part of the world could fall like a slab of cement
It gained weight if you lived on the wrong side of the street, shade imposing an icy months' long sentence.
It required resources to work lose from the pressing night air seeping out of the  early darkness
People were invisible, they floated into their homes unseen and stayed there while outside the street lights were like sharp sticks in the eye.

Saying boo to a goose.

Because you speak so little, make even less and I never see you
I take a photo of a flower arrangement you make to celebrate my being where I belong.
It was constructed one bloom at a time,  during a day long circuit between indoors and out.
Greenfly occupy the buds.
I had prepackaged it sentimentally, but now I see
reflected on a the glossy pitch pool of a dormant tv screen
two heads, myself and the animal watcher at my shoulder.

If I should lift this shade's hand away and slip away from you
leave as you slip away from me
Who are you, I love you, who are you, I love you
I love you so much

If I should shift away from so much love
which binds the pupa to the stick good and strong
Life rattles and shakes. Nothing.
Again rattle and shake. Nothing.

Who am I then, unaccustomed as I am
Now to take the stage and sing a song long in the throat.
To emerge with a 'fro in a flowing gown of green paisley silk and hold the mike in coral talons and belt it out.

I love you, who are you, I love you, who are you.

Mothers and sons

In the dream the man was a suitor to  a mother who had a child and that child was seen by the man as someone whom he could torment at his leisure.  But for now he had to win the trust of the mother.
In a sitting room come bedroom in a converted villa frontroom,  a sparse bedsit out of the 70s.
A divan as a sofa. The boy on it.
The man stood in the doorway while the mother tried to tie the  child's shoe lace for instructing the child had proven useless. The man at the doorway continued to give instructions as the  child withdrew his foot which seemed to flop uselessly in front of him. A pseudopod.  The mother  succeeded in getting the thin as hair laces into a lose knot. But the man was not happy, he said he would take the boy on a trip with other boys and they would play with a rope and a metal bell which they could beat the boy with. It was only a tiny bell, it would cause no injury and only do good. When the mother  disappeared the man said to the other boys, lets take the big heavy duty bells and attach those instead.

The man became a small dark haired woman possibly the mother whom I attacked with a surge of outrage, shoving her up against the wall, telling her I found her contemptible and evil and I would destroy her.  Nausea woke me before the alarm.

At the bus stop in a warm summer drizzle, a black winged insect kept landing compulsively on my bare arm below where the sleeve was rolled, again and again it came back battering against me. I thought the moisturiser might prove toxic to its fragile system.

From the bus I saw the elfin woman often seen   around that part of town. She was tiny, dressed as usual in a tremendously  strange yet expensive style. Today she had  on little pointed slippers and white socks. Her glasses which were always exceptional were wrought in delicate metal whorls with decorative intricacies, glasses belonging  to a fairy godmother from the 50s. Her son, whom she had pushed around in a pram  was now a tween languishing against the bus shelter holding a thick
paperback, wearing the glasses and costume of a nouvelle vague hero.