My mind is drifting

How did I get here?

Sitting on an outside table at a cafe in Kings Cross listening to the Hoodoo Gurus.

I’m a thousand miles away, sipping on a piccolo watching the morning breeze seduce the leaves and pollen on the trees lining MacLeay Street.

Drifting.

Just drifting.

My mind is drifting and the internal chatter refuses to quell.

Unfortunately, I am listening and when I listen to the younger me, out comes the remorse and regret.

I go backwards.

It takes me back, yes it really takes me back.

When the man was a boy and relationships were the final frontier.

So, come and listen with me and tell me how far I have come. It plays like a broken, tape recorder.

Click, clack front and back.

Here, let me press play for you:

‘How did I get here?

I have no idea. Well, not true.  

Another failed relationship and facing old age alone. 

Looking at a photo of my grandmother. 

Simple pleasure, simple face. 

Jean, she looks old but grateful and content.

Blue mountains behind a secret, subtle smile. 

She is gone now so back to me. Just me. Pitiful me. Pitiful, pitiful me. 

Sing it boy. 

All the bluster and the horn blowing. 

All the juggling and the charades. 

So much noise with so little substance.

A man with skin like a snake. 

Scales rutted and ruined and raging with regret. 

Regret.

Always trying to do the right thing but my actions manufacture regret.

Is this my lot? Regret? 

Shedding another layer of growth but finding deeper remorse. 

Is this what I have fought so hard to achieve? 

Legacies for my sons but lessons ignored by me. 

Mistake after bitter mistake. 

Trusting women who have nothing to trust. 

And me, with nothing to give. 

No wonder they don’t stay and I don’t commit. 

They see straight through me and my disappointment lasers through them. 

Gossamer thread weaved in gossamer cloth draped over gossamer heart. 

A straight through view straight through you. 

Nothing.

Nothing to see here folks, but anger. 

Anger for me is like a Christmas tree. 

All lit up. 

Draped in tinsel, cheap lights and distraction. 

Presents opened and wrapping paper strewn. 

Sticky tape and Christmas cake crumbs on knee worn carpet. 

Spoiled child watching the door for Rudolph the reindeer. 

No where to go and left with self, because young lad, Rudolph is not coming! 

And I loathe self. Detest self. 

Smells like fish sauce.

Or reindeer farts. 

Rage against the machine. Raging against a breaking heart. 

Screaming at a sky that can’t scream back. 

But it looks.

Oh it looks.

Looking down with a smile. A sardonic smile. 

Anger easy. Sunny side down. 

Anger wrapping around me like a moth pocked hessian rag, but for me a baby’s dummy shutting down the tears. 

Easy to fire words like bullets when there is no where to go. 

Hard to stand when there is no where to hide. 

Cower little boy. Lost little boy. 

 What I can remember in a moment is a life time forgot. 

Boasting. Boasting long and hard and high. 

About past victories that hardly ever happened. 

Myth over malice and twisted bow ties. 

Damn. Boy no more with nothing to show. 

Is this why I’m here? 

To write a script that no one will read? 

God bless me with relief because the walls are rising.

Strangling the light as they reach their height.

There!

A door.

Simple release. Simple relief. Animal urges eased. 

Feelings into thoughts. 

Poor, poor pitiful me. Pity is so cheap. 

Yet I do cheap well.’

And snap, crackle and pop I am back.

Back into my body and in the present. 

And again, a voice rises.

Pure and clear.

Not mine but HIS 

Be expensive. 

Be lush. 

Be abundant 

A life well lived is a life well led. 

One day. One life….. 

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