Kragen
Smash Ace
As sun was setting, moon was rising, so was James’ patience.
He was sitting in his office, which was set up soberly: lundia furniture, with a big desk in front of the lonely window, which looked to the east, into the meadows. Most of the space was covered by his computer, old and in need of replacement. James wanted a new one, but never had the money nor the mood to buy it. Almost every other inch was filled with papers: little notes, links and letters. None of them would indicate that he was a poet by profession.
He took a sip from his coffee, decorated by an image of Venus de Milo. A job hastily done, for it had little cracks, but that could also be done by frequent usage. The brand he drank was familiar in taste, but refreshing nonetheless, in a way.
“Time to go to bed”, he thought by himself.
Putting his mug on the sink, above the dishwasher. It was never full enough to turn on: he would just rinse his tea mug in the morning.
“I think the interested party already has read and reread your little booklet, so we want you to make another one.”
That’s what his boss had said. His first book, Epos, was a small hit at our office: there was even a one-page interview in Poetry Magazine. That was pretty surreal, suddenly people want to know almost everything about you. Luckily the interviewer wasn’t that eager: all he wanted to know was about the book and the how and why. Stuff James never even thought about, although he regularly asks random questions to himself.
‘Time to go to bed.’
Lying on the cupboard, a card was greeting him in the morning.
“Strange…”
He didn’t remember getting mail yesterday, and the mailman hadn’t dropped by yet.
“Very strange.”
Showing a sloping landscape, it bore ‘The Isle of Man’ in curly letters on the front side.
On the back, with the same printed, curly letters, it said: bring pen and paper with you. A stamp was missing. The while irony of it all, resulted in a grin on his face. He’s supposed to go to the Isle of Man, with pen and paper, obviously to gain inspiration for his new book? It’s gibberish, nonsense!
And totally valid, he thought, looking at his computer, which he forgot to switch off, last evening. Atlhough Word was running, the only thing written, in Verdana, he never liked the strictness of TNR. Besides, Verdana is bigger in point 12, making it easier to write full pages.
Neat little trick at high school, smiling, he thought.
Filling his mug with freshly-made tea, he sat in front of the tv. BBC1: A dancing gorilla in the news. Nothing. BBC2: A cooking program. Although James enjoys cooking, especially in his student’s life, cooking for nobody else than yourself is just boring as hell. CNN: Kuwait! Again? Jeez…
“Avoid the mass, Lucilius,” he had said. Old-fashioned fellow.
Looking at his closet, which was neatly organized, with suits on one side, and casual clothing on the other, he wondered what to take with him.
A sudden urge made him grab the clothes, bottom of the pile. Wow, this is old, he thought, trying one out in front of his only mirror inside a room, which is not a bathroom, again.
“This is really old, but quite nice, actually.”
Instead of shirts, he was wearing a tee now. Not only feeling different, it made him also younger, at the end of college.
His bag packed, he was holding the greeting card, wondering how to go to the Isle of Man.
He placed it on the table, looking out over it, over the meadows.
Looking down again, he was amazed.
The landscape was no longer there. The curly letters were no longer there. It showed a…train. A really old train, a steamtrain.
“Well be damned.”
Looking around his awfully quiet house, thinking that the card was replaced, blown away by the wind through his garden doors, and another took it’s place, but he found nothing.
“Want to go by train, eh? Have your way.”
He looked at his watch. Around three, all right.
Walking outside, he was thinking how to get to the station. He never owned a car, he went to his work by bike. He was often commented on this, but he didn’t care.
“Goodbye, house. Goodbye, Ovidius.”
Taking the nearest bus, he was off. It reminded him of his student time, every time taking bus and train to go home. He knew almost all bus drivers by name, but this was a new one.
The bus was quite full. An old lady held her bag a bit closer to her when he was walking past.
The young man with spikes and headphones, never mentioned him, until James urged to sit next to him, where he firmly placed his bag on. He finally found a seat at the back, with three empty ones next to him. They won’t be taken.
“Can I see your ticket please, young man?”
Said the control check man at the railway station. Odd. He didn’t call me sir, but young man. Maybe it’s the clothes. Opening my wallet, the first thing I notice is my old PT-pass.
“Pretty weird day for a student to travel, isn't it?”
“You’re right, but I have no lecture tomorrow, so…”
“Ah! Well, enjoy your train trip and your weekend.”
“Thank you, sir.”
‘Always kind,’ he thought, walking away with a grin and a PT-pass from four years ago.
Guess they just change the colors and years every time.
The train with Liverpool as it’s destination – there aren’t any channels going under the Irish Sea – was quite old. It had night coupés, where the benches would become beds, which were largely empty. James decided to be awfully selfish and took a coupé for two persons.
They were quite large, actually. There was a cupboard for each, but no sinks: they were on the toilet, he assumed. The clock struck 17:21 when the conducters where wisthling and nothing else made sound in that moment. Then the plate-size steel weels started to turn and rode backwards, in James perspective. Little did he know that the card in his bag was showing a woman with few tears and a handkerchief, waving the steamtrain goodbye.
After a wondrous dinner that night, among the presence of the lumptuous music of a skilled jazz band, he finally decided to go to bed. It was becoming darker, which gave the hallway, poorly luminated by the yellowish lamps above, warmth, along with the lights that came from the compartments, which went through kitschy curtains.
The bed he was facing was empty, and so was the other thing he could face, the wall. Boredom was present. Through a opening between the curtains fell a merge between bright moonlight and soft lamppost-light, and fell onto his bag. On top of his clothes lay the card that made him lay on this bed. It switched between pictures, but he was too far away too see what they were. Maybe it was anxious, nervous, just like James’ mind. Could it be anxious? What consciousness could steer the card, so it would show different images? Where did it get the images from? It was just like a normal card, it had the same width and size as a regualar card.
“Enough.”
He crawled out of bed, but fell on it again, when the train was making a sharp turn. He sighed, took his clothes, put it on top of the card and his bag, and crossed the hallway of the train on bare foot. The floor was cold, as was his new bed, which was standing in a compartment, fit for just one person.
“Much, much better.”
Although fresh and chilly, his bed was at least in a room fit for it.
The card was still flashing when he put his bag down and sat on the bed. He looked at it, while it showed two images, divided by a white border, like a comic. One showed a train-window with the curtains closed, and the other with the curtains open.
Opening them, they were riding past a landscape, clouded by night with clear skies, he decided to move his bed against the wall with the window. Lying down again, he saw that the picture in the card had moved again. It showed a night sky, just like his view, but three stars were shining more intense than the others and two lines linked them.
Looking out the window, it wasn’t long until he had found them. Looking back on the card with a smile of victory, he saw little curly letters appear below the sign:
Leo Minor
“Eh, what?”
The letters dissapeared, and were replaced by others:
Small Lion
With a loud “Ooooh!”, the card changed again. This time the lines showed an animal: a rough version af a leaping gazelle. This one wasn’t too hard too find, the real stars shining even brighter than the ones he searched before.
Leo
“Wonderful burning balls of gas, who happen to be in such position that people with lots of imagination can see figures in them. Coincidence rules.”
And he went to bed.
Isle of Man. Or Ellan Vannin, as the people here would call it, is an island.
Wilderness flows, untainted, around it as a wild coast, where the Irish sea surrounds it and the moon gleams on the water.
Villages with little extent, built on the edges of this piece of land, all share that same smell which fishing-villages have: scent of fish, screech of gulls, snuggy people.
“Good evening.”
“Evening.”
The old man, dressed formal, wearing a mackintosh, sat down on a public bench and looks at the building. James just came to ask for directions.
“How are you tonight, sir?”
“Very well, thank you.”
“A tourist, I pressume.”
“Yes, why?”
“Not that many people come here. People don’t like to talk about it, and not that many people know it anymore.”
“Excuse me, but who are you?”
“Norbert Elias.”
“Ilias?”
“No. Élias.”
“Alright, Mr. Élias, what way is it to Douglas?”
“You could just ask your card, did you know that?”
He looked at it, while it stuck out of his packet. Sure enough it showed a map, highlighting Douglas and the way to it. It even showed, with a big red crossbar, the where he was, and the building next to it was called:
“Camp Knockaloe. An interment camp.”
He turned towards me. His grey eyes looked tired, but his face showed a small grin, as small specks of water dotted on his big glasses.
“But that’s the past. I’ve left it behind, like my youth did.”
His head turned back to the building as he continued, but James was sure he was talking to him.
“I’ve read your little book. Very nice, I have to say. Your style is very technical, made me go back to my Latin classes.”
“I don’t know what you’r…”
“This is my past.” His arms spread around the building, embracing it. “What’s yours?”
“My past?”
He felt like a young bird who couldn’t find his mother. His screams don’t cry out to safety, to recognition. As impossible as it is for him to survive without parents, it surprised James that he still felt like a poet.
“You’re still holding to the past, to those rules that you once learned. You always had the choice to stop following, you know? I envy you for that determination.”
James remembered that in every magazine he was discussed in, they were all surprised he had followed all, and all, the rules.
Norbert went to stand in front of him, face to face.
The sun broke through again.
I saw a poet and a sociolgist, standing face to face on a field, nearby a public bench and a building on the Isle of Man.
They held their hands together, as if something delicate was in there. A sparrow’s young, or maybe just air. They released it, and I followed what they let go.
I couldn’t find it in the blues of skies or the white of clouds.
By the time I looked down again, the poet was gone.
The sociologist was sitting on the bench, again or still, as nothing has happened.
I flew further.
The sociologist watched me fly.
Train from the past
riding current landscaping
Zoom over history
the border of Roman Empire
Birds in the sky
in flying V
Those words were written out on a notebook, with pencil, looking out over the landscape the train has left behind.
“What are you doing?”
“Oh, nothing.”
James was always shy when somebody asked him about his work, especially when he’s writing it. The woman who had asked it just came out of carriage. She had a strange, unique attractiveness over her, not anybody would notice. James did.
“A poem, right? That’s pretty cool.”
He could ask a question.
“Have you ever done something creative out of your own?”
“Well, yes”, she smiled. She probably wasn’t expecting a question like that.
“I paint….paintings.”
“Well, that’s true. What do you paint?”
“Hmm, though one. I paint everything I see as conspicuous.”
“Corresponds you paintings to the sentence: a painting is a window in the painter’s heart?”
“No, it would be: a painting is a window in my mind.”
“So you lay your thoughts inside your paint? Ever been difficult?”
She nodded. “Well, yes. Not every thought is that clear to me, and I want to know what I’m painting. I guess my feelings are that vague.”
“You can express your thoughts in paintings? Ever tried it in words?
“Yes, once. During a workshop. The guy who held it was very enthusiastic about my poem, I thought it was crap. Of course, they don’t want you to leave a workshop, feeling like shit.”
“You do understand that expressing thoughts and feelings in words is very hard?”
“Yes.”
She smiled. She got it.
“Well done.”
“Now, can I ask you a question?”
“Sure.”
If he would to pose for a painting. Being perpetuated is weird thing to do, but the conversations they had while she was sketching the ending of the carriage, the star-filled sky and James, was very amusing.
When she was done sketching, rush hour was up: the bar was closing and people were heading back to their coupés, with loud chattering, piercing through unnotified silence.
She didn’t mind the wait, but - finally - took the time to get my name.
Aliss Taylor was hers.
When every noise was deadened again by the rolling steel trainwheels, he heard a knock on his door. It was Aliss.
“I’m sorry. I’m actually here with my brother, who is on a honeymoon, and they wanted me out of the room.”
She blushed a bit. It would probably be the first time to tell a stranger her brother has a sex-life, James wondered.
“Mind if I spend the night here? I won’t be of any trouble.”
“No, sure. Come in.”
She took the time to make herself comfortable on the other bed, this time there were no single coupés left, and lay down.
As busy as it was, and as much we had chatted before, so silent was it now. The repetitive sounds of the weels were already part of the tranquil background, and night birds don’t sing as much as their little nephews who like the sun more.
Even my card was “silent”. When I returned, it was all flashing signals of love: two doves, two swans, etcetera etcetera. After a while he kept repeating the images, so I placed it back in my bag. But now it was just as quit as its surroundings, a silent sleeping song.
The next morning I left a note with all his personal info. It’s not often a girl chooses your coupé out hundreds to choose from.
He wanted to write it on the card, but the ink just slided off. Nothing he wrote or drew had stuck on, so he put it back into his bag, thereby finding his pack of post-its.
He hesitated, picked up the note and wrote near “Adress”:
Will change soon
She still asleep, he left the train. With light tread, but his mind racing.
It was a bit cloudy, but the sun had enough room to warm his face, already showing a light-brown complexion. One bird flew over. A sparrow.
I saw a poet walking, a card in his hand. His pace was calm as well as exciting, and he seemed to step around town without goal, but still purposeful.
Although he passed by many of them, there was only one PO box where he stopped. I landed on it and looked around. It was on an avenue, beautiful trees accompanied the double-carriageway street. It was a beautiful still life, but nothing really happens here.
The poet was accostumed here, I could tell. As if he lives here. Although stunning, this surrounding doens't truly belong to thriving people, just in their adulthood.
He looked at the card, a very ordinary one, for a moment, as long as the scenery was a still life, and finally dropped it in.
The tune he whistled was well-known, as well as fresh.
__________________________________________________________
I will change the ending and proofread it tomorrow, but I wanted some comments, so hopefully I can improve it.
PS: Comment on the poem. if you like
He was sitting in his office, which was set up soberly: lundia furniture, with a big desk in front of the lonely window, which looked to the east, into the meadows. Most of the space was covered by his computer, old and in need of replacement. James wanted a new one, but never had the money nor the mood to buy it. Almost every other inch was filled with papers: little notes, links and letters. None of them would indicate that he was a poet by profession.
He took a sip from his coffee, decorated by an image of Venus de Milo. A job hastily done, for it had little cracks, but that could also be done by frequent usage. The brand he drank was familiar in taste, but refreshing nonetheless, in a way.
“Time to go to bed”, he thought by himself.
Putting his mug on the sink, above the dishwasher. It was never full enough to turn on: he would just rinse his tea mug in the morning.
“I think the interested party already has read and reread your little booklet, so we want you to make another one.”
That’s what his boss had said. His first book, Epos, was a small hit at our office: there was even a one-page interview in Poetry Magazine. That was pretty surreal, suddenly people want to know almost everything about you. Luckily the interviewer wasn’t that eager: all he wanted to know was about the book and the how and why. Stuff James never even thought about, although he regularly asks random questions to himself.
‘Time to go to bed.’
***
Lying on the cupboard, a card was greeting him in the morning.
“Strange…”
He didn’t remember getting mail yesterday, and the mailman hadn’t dropped by yet.
“Very strange.”
Showing a sloping landscape, it bore ‘The Isle of Man’ in curly letters on the front side.
On the back, with the same printed, curly letters, it said: bring pen and paper with you. A stamp was missing. The while irony of it all, resulted in a grin on his face. He’s supposed to go to the Isle of Man, with pen and paper, obviously to gain inspiration for his new book? It’s gibberish, nonsense!
And totally valid, he thought, looking at his computer, which he forgot to switch off, last evening. Atlhough Word was running, the only thing written, in Verdana, he never liked the strictness of TNR. Besides, Verdana is bigger in point 12, making it easier to write full pages.
Neat little trick at high school, smiling, he thought.
Filling his mug with freshly-made tea, he sat in front of the tv. BBC1: A dancing gorilla in the news. Nothing. BBC2: A cooking program. Although James enjoys cooking, especially in his student’s life, cooking for nobody else than yourself is just boring as hell. CNN: Kuwait! Again? Jeez…
“Avoid the mass, Lucilius,” he had said. Old-fashioned fellow.
Looking at his closet, which was neatly organized, with suits on one side, and casual clothing on the other, he wondered what to take with him.
A sudden urge made him grab the clothes, bottom of the pile. Wow, this is old, he thought, trying one out in front of his only mirror inside a room, which is not a bathroom, again.
“This is really old, but quite nice, actually.”
Instead of shirts, he was wearing a tee now. Not only feeling different, it made him also younger, at the end of college.
His bag packed, he was holding the greeting card, wondering how to go to the Isle of Man.
He placed it on the table, looking out over it, over the meadows.
Looking down again, he was amazed.
The landscape was no longer there. The curly letters were no longer there. It showed a…train. A really old train, a steamtrain.
“Well be damned.”
Looking around his awfully quiet house, thinking that the card was replaced, blown away by the wind through his garden doors, and another took it’s place, but he found nothing.
“Want to go by train, eh? Have your way.”
He looked at his watch. Around three, all right.
Walking outside, he was thinking how to get to the station. He never owned a car, he went to his work by bike. He was often commented on this, but he didn’t care.
“Goodbye, house. Goodbye, Ovidius.”
Taking the nearest bus, he was off. It reminded him of his student time, every time taking bus and train to go home. He knew almost all bus drivers by name, but this was a new one.
The bus was quite full. An old lady held her bag a bit closer to her when he was walking past.
The young man with spikes and headphones, never mentioned him, until James urged to sit next to him, where he firmly placed his bag on. He finally found a seat at the back, with three empty ones next to him. They won’t be taken.
“Can I see your ticket please, young man?”
Said the control check man at the railway station. Odd. He didn’t call me sir, but young man. Maybe it’s the clothes. Opening my wallet, the first thing I notice is my old PT-pass.
“Pretty weird day for a student to travel, isn't it?”
“You’re right, but I have no lecture tomorrow, so…”
“Ah! Well, enjoy your train trip and your weekend.”
“Thank you, sir.”
‘Always kind,’ he thought, walking away with a grin and a PT-pass from four years ago.
Guess they just change the colors and years every time.
The train with Liverpool as it’s destination – there aren’t any channels going under the Irish Sea – was quite old. It had night coupés, where the benches would become beds, which were largely empty. James decided to be awfully selfish and took a coupé for two persons.
They were quite large, actually. There was a cupboard for each, but no sinks: they were on the toilet, he assumed. The clock struck 17:21 when the conducters where wisthling and nothing else made sound in that moment. Then the plate-size steel weels started to turn and rode backwards, in James perspective. Little did he know that the card in his bag was showing a woman with few tears and a handkerchief, waving the steamtrain goodbye.
After a wondrous dinner that night, among the presence of the lumptuous music of a skilled jazz band, he finally decided to go to bed. It was becoming darker, which gave the hallway, poorly luminated by the yellowish lamps above, warmth, along with the lights that came from the compartments, which went through kitschy curtains.
The bed he was facing was empty, and so was the other thing he could face, the wall. Boredom was present. Through a opening between the curtains fell a merge between bright moonlight and soft lamppost-light, and fell onto his bag. On top of his clothes lay the card that made him lay on this bed. It switched between pictures, but he was too far away too see what they were. Maybe it was anxious, nervous, just like James’ mind. Could it be anxious? What consciousness could steer the card, so it would show different images? Where did it get the images from? It was just like a normal card, it had the same width and size as a regualar card.
“Enough.”
He crawled out of bed, but fell on it again, when the train was making a sharp turn. He sighed, took his clothes, put it on top of the card and his bag, and crossed the hallway of the train on bare foot. The floor was cold, as was his new bed, which was standing in a compartment, fit for just one person.
“Much, much better.”
Although fresh and chilly, his bed was at least in a room fit for it.
The card was still flashing when he put his bag down and sat on the bed. He looked at it, while it showed two images, divided by a white border, like a comic. One showed a train-window with the curtains closed, and the other with the curtains open.
Opening them, they were riding past a landscape, clouded by night with clear skies, he decided to move his bed against the wall with the window. Lying down again, he saw that the picture in the card had moved again. It showed a night sky, just like his view, but three stars were shining more intense than the others and two lines linked them.
Looking out the window, it wasn’t long until he had found them. Looking back on the card with a smile of victory, he saw little curly letters appear below the sign:
Leo Minor
“Eh, what?”
The letters dissapeared, and were replaced by others:
Small Lion
With a loud “Ooooh!”, the card changed again. This time the lines showed an animal: a rough version af a leaping gazelle. This one wasn’t too hard too find, the real stars shining even brighter than the ones he searched before.
Leo
“Wonderful burning balls of gas, who happen to be in such position that people with lots of imagination can see figures in them. Coincidence rules.”
And he went to bed.
Isle of Man. Or Ellan Vannin, as the people here would call it, is an island.
Wilderness flows, untainted, around it as a wild coast, where the Irish sea surrounds it and the moon gleams on the water.
Villages with little extent, built on the edges of this piece of land, all share that same smell which fishing-villages have: scent of fish, screech of gulls, snuggy people.
“Good evening.”
“Evening.”
The old man, dressed formal, wearing a mackintosh, sat down on a public bench and looks at the building. James just came to ask for directions.
“How are you tonight, sir?”
“Very well, thank you.”
“A tourist, I pressume.”
“Yes, why?”
“Not that many people come here. People don’t like to talk about it, and not that many people know it anymore.”
“Excuse me, but who are you?”
“Norbert Elias.”
“Ilias?”
“No. Élias.”
“Alright, Mr. Élias, what way is it to Douglas?”
“You could just ask your card, did you know that?”
He looked at it, while it stuck out of his packet. Sure enough it showed a map, highlighting Douglas and the way to it. It even showed, with a big red crossbar, the where he was, and the building next to it was called:
“Camp Knockaloe. An interment camp.”
He turned towards me. His grey eyes looked tired, but his face showed a small grin, as small specks of water dotted on his big glasses.
“But that’s the past. I’ve left it behind, like my youth did.”
His head turned back to the building as he continued, but James was sure he was talking to him.
“I’ve read your little book. Very nice, I have to say. Your style is very technical, made me go back to my Latin classes.”
“I don’t know what you’r…”
“This is my past.” His arms spread around the building, embracing it. “What’s yours?”
“My past?”
He felt like a young bird who couldn’t find his mother. His screams don’t cry out to safety, to recognition. As impossible as it is for him to survive without parents, it surprised James that he still felt like a poet.
“You’re still holding to the past, to those rules that you once learned. You always had the choice to stop following, you know? I envy you for that determination.”
James remembered that in every magazine he was discussed in, they were all surprised he had followed all, and all, the rules.
Norbert went to stand in front of him, face to face.
The sun broke through again.
I saw a poet and a sociolgist, standing face to face on a field, nearby a public bench and a building on the Isle of Man.
They held their hands together, as if something delicate was in there. A sparrow’s young, or maybe just air. They released it, and I followed what they let go.
I couldn’t find it in the blues of skies or the white of clouds.
By the time I looked down again, the poet was gone.
The sociologist was sitting on the bench, again or still, as nothing has happened.
I flew further.
The sociologist watched me fly.
***
Train from the past
riding current landscaping
Zoom over history
the border of Roman Empire
Birds in the sky
in flying V
Those words were written out on a notebook, with pencil, looking out over the landscape the train has left behind.
“What are you doing?”
“Oh, nothing.”
James was always shy when somebody asked him about his work, especially when he’s writing it. The woman who had asked it just came out of carriage. She had a strange, unique attractiveness over her, not anybody would notice. James did.
“A poem, right? That’s pretty cool.”
He could ask a question.
“Have you ever done something creative out of your own?”
“Well, yes”, she smiled. She probably wasn’t expecting a question like that.
“I paint….paintings.”
“Well, that’s true. What do you paint?”
“Hmm, though one. I paint everything I see as conspicuous.”
“Corresponds you paintings to the sentence: a painting is a window in the painter’s heart?”
“No, it would be: a painting is a window in my mind.”
“So you lay your thoughts inside your paint? Ever been difficult?”
She nodded. “Well, yes. Not every thought is that clear to me, and I want to know what I’m painting. I guess my feelings are that vague.”
“You can express your thoughts in paintings? Ever tried it in words?
“Yes, once. During a workshop. The guy who held it was very enthusiastic about my poem, I thought it was crap. Of course, they don’t want you to leave a workshop, feeling like shit.”
“You do understand that expressing thoughts and feelings in words is very hard?”
“Yes.”
She smiled. She got it.
“Well done.”
“Now, can I ask you a question?”
“Sure.”
If he would to pose for a painting. Being perpetuated is weird thing to do, but the conversations they had while she was sketching the ending of the carriage, the star-filled sky and James, was very amusing.
When she was done sketching, rush hour was up: the bar was closing and people were heading back to their coupés, with loud chattering, piercing through unnotified silence.
She didn’t mind the wait, but - finally - took the time to get my name.
Aliss Taylor was hers.
When every noise was deadened again by the rolling steel trainwheels, he heard a knock on his door. It was Aliss.
“I’m sorry. I’m actually here with my brother, who is on a honeymoon, and they wanted me out of the room.”
She blushed a bit. It would probably be the first time to tell a stranger her brother has a sex-life, James wondered.
“Mind if I spend the night here? I won’t be of any trouble.”
“No, sure. Come in.”
She took the time to make herself comfortable on the other bed, this time there were no single coupés left, and lay down.
As busy as it was, and as much we had chatted before, so silent was it now. The repetitive sounds of the weels were already part of the tranquil background, and night birds don’t sing as much as their little nephews who like the sun more.
Even my card was “silent”. When I returned, it was all flashing signals of love: two doves, two swans, etcetera etcetera. After a while he kept repeating the images, so I placed it back in my bag. But now it was just as quit as its surroundings, a silent sleeping song.
***
The next morning I left a note with all his personal info. It’s not often a girl chooses your coupé out hundreds to choose from.
He wanted to write it on the card, but the ink just slided off. Nothing he wrote or drew had stuck on, so he put it back into his bag, thereby finding his pack of post-its.
He hesitated, picked up the note and wrote near “Adress”:
Will change soon
She still asleep, he left the train. With light tread, but his mind racing.
It was a bit cloudy, but the sun had enough room to warm his face, already showing a light-brown complexion. One bird flew over. A sparrow.
I saw a poet walking, a card in his hand. His pace was calm as well as exciting, and he seemed to step around town without goal, but still purposeful.
Although he passed by many of them, there was only one PO box where he stopped. I landed on it and looked around. It was on an avenue, beautiful trees accompanied the double-carriageway street. It was a beautiful still life, but nothing really happens here.
The poet was accostumed here, I could tell. As if he lives here. Although stunning, this surrounding doens't truly belong to thriving people, just in their adulthood.
He looked at the card, a very ordinary one, for a moment, as long as the scenery was a still life, and finally dropped it in.
The tune he whistled was well-known, as well as fresh.
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I will change the ending and proofread it tomorrow, but I wanted some comments, so hopefully I can improve it.
PS: Comment on the poem. if you like
