comrade after Russell Hoban

it’s the start of may and the flannelette sheets are on the bed, powder blue for comfort.  i’m taken by a sense of camaraderie with the lonely, we always had it, believing greatly that our stories were our free hands, played for now and in the spirit of ‘our holy miracles’ and not that it mattered, counting matchsticks for currency, beer and cigarettes, laminex bent out of shape in the rain,

we comrade, were a simple tune o.k.

not that it would bend your pretty nails out of shape but that time on the merry go round was not o.k.  it was a shadowy afternoon, on the brink of winter and the city was closing down to ordinary business.  why did i want to be a freak and ride beside my cousin on the elephant?  why did i want to visualise my pony on the pony?  riding free to the fucking hilltop. well i was riding round and the curious ticket man was more marvellous as he stood beside the machine, piped music all out and over the empty circus.  i wouldn’t have liked to ask for more than my share.  how that changed.

return to the plum in red all summer and about to lose the leaves and what now? what answer do you give a child when the ride is over, when puzzled and creased like the new red polish she arrives full of empty street and strange man and cavernous elephant? a pretty afternoon comrade. this took shape in all my dreams.

today it feels like that, like you cousin. i’m using you for drama. we were used cousin, cus. used. brave little soldiers taking note, when the evening wore on and the bedroom was safe enough to pick our fingers through abandoned cosmetics. and to jump headlong into each other and you know.