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Thread: Payment

  1. #1
    Registered User DieterM's Avatar
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    Payment

    … I come back
    barely
    in bits and waves
    the ceiling as blank as my mind
    a question mark floats mid-air
    suspended time expanding in a sigh
    and it feels like morning o’clock
    but the mobile on the night-stand
    shows a longish one forty pm
    flashes of last night emerge
    as if they were the blood-stained ghosts
    of a savage family drama

    in the bathroom mirror
    I gaze at something foul
    although my Patsy Stone-hairdo is still in place
    but flattened on the pillow-side
    tufts standing out in spooky places
    feathers of a recently plucked hen
    and then the question arises:
    throw up
    Bloody Mary
    or surrender…

    I remember fancy nibbles
    iced vodka
    early tides of champagne
    a bell tolling something allegedly new
    that already felt old
    a wobbly cab sometime
    when things got bleary
    my embarrassed giggles
    ‘Sorry, lovey, no cash…’
    but the driver thank God has left by now
    a Jim
    or James
    or What’s-his-John

    when I return from the kitchen
    with a fag and aspirined water
    I ponder the fifty-euro note
    that lies crumbled near my bed
    I wonder if I haven’t put on
    too much make-up last night…
    "Im Arm der Liebe schliefen wir selig ein…" ("Liebesode" - Otto Erich Hartleben)
    New poetry collection available (Kindle and paperback)

  2. #2
    On the road, but not! Danik 2016's Avatar
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    "… I come back
    barely
    in bits and waves"
    You certainly do, Dieter. Interesting poem, but a lonely one. I hope you are well.
    "I seemed to have sensed also from an early age that some of my experiences as a reader would change me more as a person than would many an event in the world where I sat and read. "
    Gerald Murnane, Tamarisk Row

  3. #3
    Registered User DieterM's Avatar
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    Hi Danik, yes, ty, I'm fine – had a marvelous time back in Austria, unlike the poem's narrator ;-) Hope you are well, too :-) Thanks for commenting.
    "Im Arm der Liebe schliefen wir selig ein…" ("Liebesode" - Otto Erich Hartleben)
    New poetry collection available (Kindle and paperback)

  4. #4
    Registered User miyako73's Avatar
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    Nice one, Dieter.
    "You laugh at me because I'm different, I laugh at you because you're all the same."

    --Jonathan Davis

  5. #5
    Maybe YesNo's Avatar
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    Nice line: "the ceiling as blank as my mind"

    I sometimes wish my mind blanked enough that I could see the ceiling I'm staring at.

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