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Some kind of disarmament of dreams. is this what age has become? He heard himself asking. heard himself reading the text in his head. already there were books written about this. conversations recorded about this. the worst for the moving forward were first thoughts. or were they first thoughts? they could’ve been second thoughts. they could’ve been any thoughts. could he remember the thoughts? could he remember anything? deep rattle the windows and tap, tap the ghosts, ghosts of so many nights, drawing into the impending future. It strangled the life from you. at any time when alternatives were already more infinite than the stars and eyes. then the miles. then the hands. then the hope. then back in the mud. the sludge of this perfect decay. Smell life. taste the death. together with his dog under the night under the stars. so vast and free. just enough fall and fall off the edge. or/and so you could say he did. that long/head long fall into the beautiful and painful blackness of the unknown. way past the sweet looking girls on the street corner. way past the chairman of the young farmers club. even way past the long and hot drawn-out days of your infinite youth still going strong. while creating so much of your inadequacy. in fits and starts so jerky the stride beyond the A to B movement. sun over horizon. dip of shadow and contrast of home. landfall for the brave or an escape for the weak. As day in day in we hammer out our theme. those silky waters beyond the time of it. beyond the sign of it. Or does he really have nothing to say at all. Climb, climb the aspirations of the mute. So too her voice from living memories calling out from across that divide between this death and that life. heard tell today of the coming of her own way of getting out of town. Was this a nudge from the consequences of my abandoning her? when times were mean. lean. saw the lonely sadness from within such a boy cuddling cold up to the poster painting of a life so little understood. gee golly. the gee golly of it. the thump, thump to carry on was his own way to navigate I suppose. to sign off on it I suppose. upon this new backdrop of autumn fog. the do’s and the don’ts of false ways to master strength. painting it now the black and hard strokes depict and then absorb into the grey mass of an endless sequence of new days. until see how all becomes so mild. enough to ride his bike into it. or be dragged into it. those rapids of dismay. I’ll bend to new and silly misunderstandings and the fear of letting go. feel the heartbeat still. Heartbeat still. still the heartbeat. still. so still.

Copyright © Graeme Perrin 2023