Friday night, 1997

David G O'Sullivan

Locked gate with heavy rusted lock,

Metal fence with chain link,

One section broken, wire opens back like a flap of skin,

Allows us to duck in.

Cement columns holding up the highway,

The overpass, dirt floor and vandalised walls.

Someone has a fire burning in a metal barrel.

The kids stand around nervously warming their hands in the strange half light.

Cigarettes and laughter, stories of sex and drugs

I watch mesmorised as two older kids kiss,

The girl has dark hair and black eyes.

A firecracker is lit and explodes in the night,

The sound of traffic above is a roar

And the night runs on like sharp needles and broken bottles.

A homeless man was murdered here

Simon claims.

John, the school’s football hero,

Sneers and takes his three friends away.

But we sit by the fire on the cold cement ledge

And talk about Mickey and…

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Old man

David G O'Sullivan

Folded back, broken down,

he is very thin, and he has missed patches of hair on his chin while shaving.

The young in their strength pity the old

and shun him with condescension.

But he sees well enough,

his eyes still sharp and his mind able to keep up, if not surpass.

Broken glass dropped by his hand, lying on the hard wood floor,

the house that was built generations before is now too expensive to be bought by anyone

and debts are accrued, banks holding the cards

and arrogantly so.

He worked hard

and now his health is fading.

What you are when you are young,

is what you will be when you are old, he said to me in whispers.

No smart man ever became a fool

except for where the brain is diseased;

likewise, no fool ever became wise.

I knew a man once who died because…

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washing day

David G O'Sullivan

Fabric softener destroys the machine,

The machine that spits out wet clothes, half clean.

 

The clothes that dry so quickly in summer,

Under that cancer giving sun

 

Hang soggy on the stretched line and grasp at the grass

That has turned a peculiar sickening brown.

 

Walking out on that winter day

To get away from the smell of clothes

 

I see a man come out of a café

With a face wrinkled so badly, that his eyes are invisible.

 

He looks at me as if he knows me,

I look at him, but look away.

 

It’s so cold, I step into a supermarket

And pick up a basket and walk the isles.

 

The old man with the brown folded face is there too,

He walks toward me, then steps aside at the last moment.

 

The bright shopping centre lights

The old hard…

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