An old pistol found in a field of wheat

I’m a

Breeze,

A scab on

Either knee;

A dead moth in a jam jar,

A three-wheeled toy motor car.

An elastic band too stretched to propel

A balsawood plane into flight or bind

A rolled-up poster in black and white of a famous impressionist painting that you’re

Supposed to colour by number.

A felt-tipped pen with no ink,

An oil stain on the concrete in the garage where a brown car parked,

Once.

A leftover half onion with its paper skin browning,

A wizened apple, shrivelling, frowning;

I’m a mark on the wall where a child once got sick and puked -

Too many sweets,

A piece of bubblegum pressed into the wall between two bricks.

I’m the ball of spit where an insect has frothed a nest between two sticks,

And the circular imprint of a place where a

Woodlouse walked.

I’m a go-go-ghost that dances in the moonlight,

A paisley curtain assuming life-billows in the

Night

A chipped mug that a dead person once sipped from -

Not when they were dead, of course -

That would

Be

Stupid.

In Temperance

The dogs are circling, tussling. They rush each other, scuffle and bounce back, haunches lowered, ears back, the whites of their eyes flicking from side to side. They’re at play, though, so their grins are strictly for show. In a tree above the garden there’s a pair of pigeons making a nest for the spring, a tangled, half-hearted bowl of twigs that’ll shelter their scrawny young. The wind blows last season’s leaves about in miniature whirlwinds. The air itself is unsettled, both warm and breathy and icy, whistling through the drainpipes.

The dogs canter away from each other, mollified by some unseen intervention.

A teal loveseat under the awning embraces an old guitar, its neck smooth with the slide of rough hands and calloused fingers, whose curled shapes call out thrumming chords and resonant tunes when the evening mood seems right. The body of the guitar has nicks and chips from being slung onto the backseat of cars like a summer fling or hefted into use when the beer has been flowing. Its gold label is fading with each year that it gains its voice, the strings buzzing with restraint against worn frets. An hourglass figure or a sensual eight, the curves used to being tucked into an embrace and brought to life.

There’s the guitar player, breathing out light clouds from a cigarette, the ash dusting his shoulders as he sits, thinking:

Air.

That’s what music is; a re-imagining of oxygen/nitrogen/argon, perhaps a little carbon dioxide thrown in. The music of the spheres an elemental inclusion of the very atmosphere and, finally, the stratosphere.

It’s corralled into harmonies and rhythms, songs and symphonies. Sly, simple tunes and grand, eloquent explosions. But, without air, it’s voiceless.

He taps out a gentle beat against his thigh, hearing the rise and fall of a melody in his mind.

Goosebumps and tears.

That’s what music is; a chemical reaction in the body that causes the pulse to dance against your wrist or nerve endings to hum with life. Just as anxiety can drive your physical responses, music can get into your pores with quiet intensity.

Your breathing can echo the rise and fall of phrases; in, out, in, out. Building up and subsiding with subliminal power.

All this, with air.

The cathedral-like inner workings of a string instrument with its vaulted ceilings and private alcoves, magnifying the gentle plucking.

The smooth trachea of the wind instrument, channeling human breath through its mystical curves.

The deep boom of a stretched drum vellum like a lung, transporting that unworldly vibration from top to bottom.

All this, with air.

The birds clasp onto their twigs and whisper romance as the hounds call out to a world beyond the boundary fence.

Just air.

Semper Fi

Practice, practice, practice. How do you get to Carnegie Hall? Take the subway. Jump off at Seventh Avenue and you won’t have to walk too far. Reach, clutch, deploy. 

On the corner of Seventh and West 57^th you can stop for a corn dog, maybe a soda. At the right time of day, you’ll see career dog walkers with their packs, being towed like two-footed ploughs along the sidewalk, casting glances like seeds to the left and right: awareness isn’t an option, it’s a necessity.

What you see comes in layers, each sweeping glance peeling away more until you’re fully alert to everything that’s around.

They say that ten eyewitnesses will present ten different opinions about what they’ve seen. A single male suspect can become a woman with a pram or a couple holding hands. A skinny kid skating morphs into an elderly guy with a cane. Dusk or dawn change the colours of a man’s complexion as surely as they shift the skies – a porcelain-white guy with red hair can become a black man with a shaved head under the yellow streetlamps – just depends on who’s doing the observation.

Same with vehicles. You’d think it would be hard to confuse a square-backed SUV with a regular sedan, but the tricks of the mind and memory can transform what we recall.

Gunshots. The flat blat of a shot is unmistakable, but is it a volley of two, three or four shots? Did an engine backfire at the same time? Did the sound of the shots echo against the walls of an apartment building to multiply them? An army vet will swear blind at the source of a shot and the weapon that discharged it. Heard it a thousand times before. An athlete will recognize the kick of the starter’s pistol and a sailor will know the bark of a flare. Many simply assume that gunfire is just construction work or perhaps a motor vehicle pileup.

Point is, what do we really see or hear in the snapshot of a moment?

Reach, clutch, deploy.

It’s about repetition, muscle memory. Engrams of the flesh that produce reactions faster than the mind can comprehend. Drop a glass fifty times and you’ll get better at catching it.

Ever been to war? So much waiting around with nothing to do and then you get spat out into action, no time to fight back laziness or exhaustion. In seconds you can go from being a dozing nobody to a hero, before your brain even registers that you’re awake.

Or you could be dead.

Routines, patterns, habits, conditioning.

The shine of a boot so glossy that you can see up your own nose if you look down.

The crisp fold of a pressed shirtsleeve.

The animal scent of a shining leather belt.

Everything has its place.

Until it’s displaced.


Don’t look for what’s always there, look for what’s out of place, what doesn’t fit in, and you’ll get it. A hair on the collar, stain on a jacket – a puddle on a sunny day.

The incongruity of conflict.

The subjectivity of inspection.

The ambiguity of experience.

Stay clear of the platform...

Old biscuits never die

My father was a biscuit man. Not the Gingerbread Man, although when the factory cranked up the machinery on certain days of the week, the sweet, sensual spicy aroma of the ginger that went into the biscuits would engulf the town, drifting over the fields where I played football; he worked in the factory.

Whenever I visited him at work, I’d be led to his office which overlooked the factory floor, passing workers at conveyer belts or the drums of chocolate that would be spilled onto the freshly baked ovals. The smell of baking and cardboard was embedded in the white walls and steel workings of the plant. The women would smile at us as kids as we wandered through the bustle, observing their activity, and my father would conceal his sense of humour behind a façade of gravitas and a white coat as he walked with the stride of ownership from one workstation to the next.

Biscuits brought us to South Africa, his skills as a production manager being in demand. He worked in the Baumann’s factory in Woodstock and then as manager at Baker’s in Johannesburg, at what he called, with pride, ‘the largest biscuit factory in the Southern Hemisphere’.

My older brother and I worked in the factory in Cape Town during school holidays, packing the warehouse or trucks, filching armloads of chocolate and sneaking cigarettes with the workers during breaks. The workers spoke another language, and, since we were still new to the country, we were mocked a little – they’d swear at us in Afrikaans and laugh.

The factory churned out endless supplies of the brands you know well, Lemon Creams, Marie Biscuits and the ubiquitous Choice Assorted that graced the snacks table of every NGO and PTA meeting ever held. It takes skill to get to the best ones first.

A memory: huge bottles of something named “cheese essence” were used to flavour crackers. A whiff of the contents was eye-watering, it smelled like a Long Street pavement on Sunday morning, tart and vomitous.

He’d bring home boxloads of biscuits and I’d eat the things by the packet. He also branched out as a manufacturer or distributor of other products. I recall the seaweed snacks he did in the 70s, awful musty things that would probably work well now. Chips in the style of Flings, only in bizarre flavours like raspberry or orange. Those didn’t sell well (I imagine), so we ended up getting vast quantities to enjoy at home.

I guess it was a happy life for him, in the factory. Supplying biscuits to every supermarket in the country, making sure the conveyer belts did what they were supposed to.

There’s a piece of me that will always remember the scent of baking biscuits, fresh cardboard boxes and cleaning materials. It seems a far cry from what we’re encouraged to do now – work in manufacturing – but it was a respected position back then – and we should still be in awe of the processes that go into producing our neatly packaged lives and the people who work to do just that.

The pic is of a die used to stamp out those crumbly squares.

Why, dad, why – did you never manage to fix the way the top biscuit in a package is always broken?

Why?

Hidden in plain sight

A gentle breeze so soft that it is seen rather than felt in the autumn air, flowers nodding in the hedges, leaves releasing their foothold and drifting to the ground; there’s a stubborn fog that’s turning buildings into movie-set facades, their angles concealed along with the depths within. The headlights of cars appear as soon as they are gone, slowly snaking into the grey expanse. Even the waves just visible on a truncated horizon slap themselves down in silence, a rhythm that can only be imagined.

On the path, a small bench has been placed, a careless rockery on either side. Into the wood, a small plaque has been screwed, its brass tarnished and dun. If you run your fingertips across the words, you’ll feel a silenced story come to view, if only for a moment: a dear relative, much loved – now gone –adored this spot, apparently, and this seat is to remember them.

Despite the picturesque placement of this memorial, it sees far more than the peaceful trajectory of seasons. An addict entered a final, dreamless sleep here just weeks ago, in exactly the same place where a child was conceived days later, in a breathless, hurried coupling that finished in giggles and hurried straightening of clothes. Children have climbed on it, cramming old sweet papers into its cracks, and an ancient couple use it every week as a resting spot along their stoop-shouldered journey.

When the path is empty, especially just before dawn and in the last light of the day, animals and birds twitch their way across the seat, squirrels with their scraps and fretful rubbing of paws and paranoid robins, sparrows and thrushes dart around, one eye fixated on their surroundings, jerky, clockwork motions.

Dogs come and go, lifting their legs and claiming each other’s territory in a meaningless cycle. Mine, mine, mine, mine, mine. And again, on their return.

Once a year a representative of the local council comes past with a clipboard, inspecting the bench for its structural integrity. He ticks off a box, gives the panels a caring slap and moves on, whistling something his father before him used to whistle, a tune picked up in the carefree seasons after the war.

The fog has lifted, now, and the sun is out.

In the distance, a family can be heard, taking a walk. Their shoes are scuffing the path and they are laughing intermittently.  They come into view, hurry past and barely spare a glance for this bench, tucked into its careless rockery.

Birthdays

You don’t know how many you’ll get.

Horizons don’t draw closer, they just are.

They sit on life’s periphery,

Reminding you that there’s something beyond what you see,

The curved earth dipping into eternity.

At 45 the simple lesson learned is this:

Be kind, appreciate kindness.

Kiss and appreciate the kiss returned.

Put music on and listen to the thoughts stirred up by collected notes.

Feel the breeze, close your eyes and remember others.

Try not to give up, unless you give up.

If you do, grow back, don’t look back; move on.

When you read a phrase you like, read it aloud –

Let it roll on your tongue like a blissful dog.

Enjoy food.

Hug even when it makes the other person uncomfortable.

Close your mouth to senseless arguments.

Leave your mark on this world in hearts and minds,

The place erosion cannot file away.

Sit on drafty mountain peaks,

Wade in cool streams with jeans rolled up.

Turn your collar up against the autumn winds,

Find shelter in doorways from sideways rains.

Life is sensual, and senses can be hard.

Acrid stenches, physical pain at the touch, deafening noises,

The taste of bile, awful unforgettable sights.

Senses can be good:

The scent of memories, the warmth of an embrace,

A soothing piece of music,

A meal made from simple ingredients that satisfies the tongue,

Seeing the ones you love happy.

At 45

The reminder of my age is more to me than

The popping candy in my knees and greying chest,

But a hint to abandon the worst

And appreciate the best.

You don’t know how many you’ll get.

Horizons don’t draw closer, they just are.

They sit on life’s periphery,

Reminding you that there’s something beyond what you see,

The curved earth dipping into eternity.

Tupperware Party

Always poke holes in the lids, Joe reminded himself. Ever since he’d first gathered silkworms and piles of mulberry leaves, he’d learned that lesson. His uncle had helped him clean out the ice cream tub where the first batch had turned to foul-smelling mush and told him what to do next time. Always poke holes in the LIDS, he’d repeated.

He liked storing things, bringing bits and pieces of nature into the house. He remembered the time his mother had come home from a Tupperware party with the entire boot of the Morris Minor filled with tubs. And how she’d struck him with that despised wooden spoon when he’d taken a couple of them and poked holes in the lids. She’d been livid.

The lesson was confusing. Sometimes poke holes in the lids, then.

Growing up the holes in the lids began to make sense. The creatures scuttling around scavenged bits of bark and handfuls of soil needed the air to breathe inside the tubs.

He didn’t always find them the right food. He’d hold the box up to the window and peer inside, but the creatures would be on their backs, brittle legs folded in silent prayer.

Now that he was an adult, he recognised that childhood rules can change. He still liked storing things, although Tupperware no longer suited his purpose – the company that managed to dominate the market in containing leftover food had overlooked his storage requirements.

He preferred to let the insects and crawly things have their way in the house. He’d study them as they claimed their corners and spaces inside the cupboards. The spiders would keep their filigree larders polite distances from each other, and the moths, roaches and ants doodled their own cartography throughout the rooms.

Joe looked at his wrist. The scar was tingling in a way that reminded him of the pain he’d felt as his mother had lashed him with the spoon, but he couldn’t recall everything that had happened the night his uncle had held him down while his mother had taken the pot of roiling cooking oil and poured it over his hands.

The air in the basement was odd. It was damp and dry at the same time, the same way that a snake looks slick and wet, but the scales feel papery. At least the smell had lifted a bit. That was something he’d picked up very early on: Never poke holes in the lids.

Stacks of large plastic containers formed a wall within a wall, and he gathered the insects in one hand as he lifted the lid to one of the boxes. A liquid darkness reflected back at him as he dropped the bugs inside.

He replaced the lid. Listened to the rippling noise and smiled. A lesson his mother had taught him well.

Never poke holes in the lids, Joe, the ripples seemed to say, never poke holes in the lids.

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This post was written as part of a tandem blogging experiment. SEVEN other bloggers have used the same title as a prompt, and their work will go live at the same time. None of us have seen anyone else's posts yet, so each will take a unique angle on their blogs. Take a look at their creative efforts at blogging “Tupperware party” and like, share and comment if you've enjoyed what you read!

Click away on the names below:

Kerry

James 

Megan  

Nick

Dave

Brett

Cath