Ravaged by rain tormented and tortured with nature’s harsh breath Skin torn away and hanging a mangled skeleton left for dead in the gutter an umbrella alongside broken bottles matchsticks and cigarette butts a spent condom salt and dreams washed away with the rain Items which once served a purpose now used or used up no longer of use Servitude sins and secrets susceptible to societal ways Disposable Obsolescence Everything once had a purpose or a reason or an excuse Now all but forgotten until it rains
Why don’t you meet me in Paris? Half a globe away, another lifetime. They write songs about the city, in April. I have never been. In any season. Spring has yet to find its way here, so Paris awaits. Rendezvous. City of lights, city for lovers. Should we not taste all Paris could be? Could we not see nights from a tiny apartment, streets below filled with people like us. Experience I do not yet know, but I desire to feel the city against your skin.
I have been told one night in Paris is like a year in any other place. Language I do not understand, but the art speaks to me. Culture not found anywhere but Paris. History unto itself. Art knows no boundaries, no geographic space, yet Paris, as I have been led to believe, is the capital city. Hemingway wrote of Paris, Fitzgerald as well. Picasso found poetry in Paris, the painter found himself, adopted the city, or it him.
Artists, from anywhere, are meant to spend time in Paris, to discover, to recover from wherever they have lived. You don’t get that feeling anywhere else. Or so I am told. I need Paris. I would write in Paris, I would paint, perhaps on the street, because I can only imagine what others have lived. I can only imagine. In Paris. In poetry. In April. We would meet in Paris. We may never leave.
You can see the stars hundreds of millions of miles away, the light of years past flashing each day, yet you can’t see the bomb blasts on the other side of this earth.
Thunder may take the time to memorize the sound, and we will hear it as spring rain changes from gentle to worse, but will we know the pain it has caused?
The dead bodies, civilians, knew the sounds at close range, even by surprise. For many, it was the last noise they heard. Others heard the cries, perhaps their own voice.
Mass media images and scenes tell the heartbreaking atrocities of the invasion of Ukraine. Far enough that you don’t hear it, close enough that you feel the pain.
If you think of the breathless bodies as human beings, as people; mothers or children, even soldiers, it hurts a little more – today, tomorrow and for years to come.
I am old, he said, not in regret but as fact. Tea splashed on the table as he tried to offer hospitality. All he could afford. Too many days between pension cheques, not enough time to enjoy them. His smile was genuine, teeth brown or broken. I have no milk. His head shook. His hands shook. I take it clear, I replied. A smile again, not as long but very real. Conversation revolved around a story he heard on talk radio, or memory. More tea? He spoke about dust, as if it meant something; where it travelled, why it settled. Everything begins in the wind, he paused to catch his breath or to let the words find a more profound meaning. It never lets up. He was old. His small room smelled of cheap aftershave, stale cigarettes, and loneliness. He welcomed me, regularly, as he would anyone with time to spend. It was all he could offer. Tea and dust.
