Two of 'em...

Sitting at the lights this afternoon.
I was surprised to hear myself softly saying, "The anguish... The anguish".
No emotion. No inflection.
And my mind lazily turned to people I love and sometimes, just sometimes, love well.
And those I do not love at all.
And the light turned green and we crawled along and the light turned red.
And I thought of those I'd known who had died or disappeared.
Talented. Not talented. But inspiring all the same. Still.
A classical octet barely audible on the Mazda's one good speaker.
And the light turned green and I was lucky enough to make it through.
Try it some time. "The anguish. The anguish". Feels good coming out of the mouth.
Instead of the other places we hide it.
If you were expecting a punchline, my friends, I'm sorry I don't have one.
Sometimes that's just where the patient, deadly rip takes you.
_____

Last night I thoughtdreamed of Scott Dobson
Shoulder length Beatle bob dark hair and insolent eyes.
Tall for his age and skinny as hell with the world's laziest smile.
And we'd ride our boards under the flats where he lived in Eagle Street
And the sun was good and his mum was good and she wouldn't give us any food but she would stand on the balcony and applaud because Scott was a great rider.
A hero. Taking on Nick Ravenscroft and the Dwyer brothers at the old Top Ryde Regional Shopping Center car-park. Deadliest hill a skateboard ever rolled down.
He'd handstand it, top to bottom, to the loud applause of everyone. And he'd stand at the end and just smile lazily. Not say a word.
And the pretty, well kept apartment blocks surrounded something more beautiful than art; the Beaurepaire tyre centre.
We could've wasted days tearing down the hill that ran beside and behind it.
Scarfing and filthying our new jeans sitting in tyres as we rode down.
We were about the same age and I had to go away from that place for a while.
When I came back he and his mum had moved.
Broke my heart.
Found out years later that had he lived past sixteen, he would've taken on the world.
But it seems they didn't know as much about tumours back in the summer of nineteen seventy seven as they do now.

"Sie sind nicht ein Bürger. Sie sind kein Griechisch. Sie sind nicht harmonisch, oder der Meister selber. Sie sind ein Vogel im Sturm."
Hermann Hesse.

Gates of steel.