Memoirs of a Life Unlived

As the time between each breath increases And remembrance of past action wanes, So the need for scraps of life – all worthless – Turns to rummaging inside old brains. And the mist becomes a fog, envelops Every fibre dying for the light. Now the sun – a damp and hazy lampshade – Falls again to make way for the night. Yet for new eyes all this must be different, And we know that it will never change. Every day is someone’s distant memory – Such a brutal sweet time, now so tame. In a darkened room clasping the old days Flickering light takes on a magic air. From the outside things are very different: It’s so faint that we need never care.

For weekend homework: ‘This Is How I Spend My Day’. This one poor soul spends ulcerated hours in captive state, occasionally gazing at the sun and poring over Term Task Three. Come first thing Monday here we are, awaiting little speeches: small after-breakfast anecdotes of infant life. And up she stands, eyes darting, white knuckles, scrunching up her Meisterwerk . The audience hushes. “I get up and get stressed” and pause for thought. “I’m sorry dear? What was that again? I think she means ‘get dressed’, don’t you?” Completely, wholly, absolutely: no.

Delicious anticipation before the depressed button invokes the shutter momently to seize this world is tempered by jealousy as I realise the view is not mine. A cosy whirr truncated by the click of hard moving parts belies the unhuman speed of my surrogate eyes. Despite myself I enjoy this important sound belonging to worlds we understand.

The old man lost his footing on the second or third step; God knows why I looked up to see his face open. We both knew as his eyes gripped mine the outcome. Time slowed down. As if reacting to a clapperboard a brown brogue slipped on polished stone. Intently I watched knees buckle sending aged legs supple catapulting him towards me. I felt the unease of something much too close and came to cinematically with eager faces swarming overhead. In fact, I viewed them from above and they, in trepidation, awaited my descent.

“Tired?”, a man so small he barely saw him Asked, his beady eyes fixed on the ground: His life might have depended on the steel-tight gaze. Our man was shattered, broken down, no sleep for days: “Sure I’m tired.” No more was really needed. The small man raised his eyes and looked around. “Man, it’s cold”, he smiled and spied the main street, Blew into his badly blistered hands. The wind was whistling hard and hurling city dust And both men shuffled leeward to avoid the gusts. “Guess it’s true – there ain’t no God in Heaven: I can’t see us in any master plan.”