STILL TIME
I sit in this room, the door closed, listening to words.
I used to speak like that.
The life I led is in the other room.
I’m aware of repetition, the cycle of things,
there must be an end for a beginning, elsewhere.
I know that. An echo-chamber, the endless duplication,
the vast sea of life, is understood.
There’s a hesitation, at times, in the voice.
I had that too. The seizing of your moment,
the embrace of your turn, is not of note.
It’s standard. Expected. Job. Money. Spouse. Children.
It’s a sign of the pointlessness.
The mimicking of things on the road to nowhere.
Your place in the spotlight’s glare makes you blink, step back,
cower. It comes out of the darkness. It points you out.
To the exit. I am here, to listen to the words.
To step out of the light. Sideways.
Hear someone else, while I’m in my room,
still able to remember and compare,
hold out,
for something,
hold out.
INTRUSION
Her face lit up reading her news,
as he watched her, saw in her reaction
emotions of his life.
Like from behind a corner he espied her,
interpreted the duration of her gaze
as much as anyone can reading things.
He felt the hesitation he saw in her,
sitting alone, quizzical after
the facts, slumped into the mode
life had made expected,
in her gaze, slightly down,
saw questioning, disbelief, suspicion.
Minutes, hours, the day passed,
petered out the vestiges of triumph,
its souring, his observation of her,
intrusion into her space, and his life.
INSIDE
That little thudding noise comes from outside.
It gets repeated. I become a little anxious.
I look up. Sniff the air like a dog. Stay still.
Come to a conclusion. A reassuring conviction
the noise doesn’t come from inside, something I
need to worry over, to do with me and mine.
So long as I push it away, I can forget.
It doesn’t have a story, I don’t have to delve
into a plot with causes and consequences. Nastiness.
Here and now. It might be the beginning
of the end of the world, but, if it’s not inside,
I can turn the page, close the book, forget demons.
It’s nothing I should investigate and resolve,
shed tears over. And suffer.
Stir myself, brace myself, stiffen sinews, shoulders back
to confront my destiny. Face what is here with me.
No need.
FEAR
I lock myself in a room, shut out the world.
It bangs on the door, it screams,
hurls insults and bestialities, utters words of filth,
accuses me of the demons in its head.
I am the depositary of its hatred.
My fear welcomes fearlessness. My cowardice embraces bloodless venom.
I find a place for it, let it define me, I allow it room.
A sewer to vomit and defecate upon. I give it my space. I allow it to live.
A perpetrator of violence needs a victim. Without it, it would wither.
It would wither. I am its God, I take upon me its sins.
My wounds, my tears, my palpitating body, my sorrowful glance
upon myself in the mirror, give it time to spend itself,
breast heaving and gasps ceasing slowly bit by bit.
I wipe the sweat from our bodies. I know what I’m doing.
I’m the punch-bag, the absolver of sin. I absorb all the sins of the world.
I am invincible. Immortal. Just by continuing to live. Never giving in.
Locking myself time after time away. Not letting it in. Not letting it take over.
Letting it subside until the next time.
In my powerlessness I become the saviour of mankind.
Fearless. Unflinching.
In my fear I am fear’s nemesis.
THE GLIMPSE OF HIM
We hadn’t seen him a few years.
He took drugs, boozed a bit, smoked a lot.
His mate said he hadn’t been drinking so much,
still smoked, though. Never mentioned the drugs.
Described how they’d found him. Phone not answered,
TV blaring away, inevitable ladder from somewhere.
There he was, sprawled on the floor. The bed. The sofa.
I didn’t ask for clarification, I’d got the gist.
We’d known him twenty-odd years. At times I’d speak to him
two times, three times a day. Chats about work. Life. Nothing much.
Most things. He lived where we lived. So much of my life passed
near him, with him, within earshot of him. Within the glimpse of him.
Alan Hardy is an English teacher, for many years running a language school for foreign students. His work has been published in such magazines as Envoi, Iota, Poetry Salzburg, The Interpreter’s House, Poetry Nottingham, Orbis, South, and others. Alan hasn’t been submitting in the last 5 years or so, but has still been writing poems in that time and has returned to poetry just recently in a much more concentrated way.
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