Tag: alley

Fragments of Meaning

ned Leave a comment

Take my visual fragments
And place them at the foot
Of an old chedi,
For I don’t want my queues
To scatter my own thoughts
Like a back alley
I’ve stood for too long admiring.

Take my meaning
And lessen it’s grip
For it crawls
And has not yet learned
The intricacies of
Falling and getting up,
Though these scuffed knees
Have surely tried
Against the pain.

Hold my hand and remember
That I’m not here for a long time,
This shall become dust
And my subscriptions shall expire
Like organics back to earth,
Like music into silence
For it is without question
That life surely begets death.

Fragments of Meaning by Ned Tobin

Beirut (day 2721)

ned Leave a comment

Every time I hear of the city Beirut
I dream of what dreams are made of
There are city lights that wave at me
With a luminosity that cuts through my being
Little chairs with patrons chilling
In a modality unknown to me
But harming with smiles
That feel half drunk and half alive.
My feet rattle off ancient cobblestones
On the better walks of town
But I find the dead alleys
And imagine how many eyes are watching me.
I have companions here
Who sing with instruments only found
Along this edge of the world
And in Gypsy caravans roaming the deadlands.
My lover sleeps with the curtains open
And silk pyjamas that are usually draped
Upon the wooden chair that’s older than I
She burns a scent I can only find here
With old books I cannot read
But admire the covers and the ghosts within
She kisses with a heavy lip
And smiles with a curious snarl
That keeps me here dreaming.

Primal Experiences (day 2535)

ned Leave a comment

I’ve grabbed on to the primal experience of holding you
One fist grabs and caresses the creases
That keep running down the back of my spine
Spinning reality into a sequence of verses
That forgive me for thinking these thoughts.
But in the alleys of my caresses
That pigeon hole my expression like a crab upon my toe
I’ve gone beyond what I used to call fairness
To a land of sacred union
Derived from the ancient practice of you.

Sea (day 2287)

ned Leave a comment

When the sea gains a rosy tinge
Of the being you’ve led me to
Each ripple of truth shall hurl
All explanations down
A thunderous alley of cringe.
But the worst shall come
When letting go
Floating down she goes..
Lest my vision blurs
To my heart’s endure
And I see deep depths of blue.

East Hastings (day 1539)

ned Leave a comment

I watch a line slowly trace a sidewalk
Up a wide street called Hastings.
Glitter trash slipping off
Into fuzzy life lessons in a tracksuit.

I plug my nose because last nights urine party
Leaves a sour taste that makes me uneasy.
But I like the back alleys
Where life is avoided and you avoid eye contact.

Alley walls make me think.
I look at them wondering how many years it’s been
Since the last painting was applied.
How much more graffiti can be tolerated
Before a shop owner thinks they have a more alluring color.

I stay clear of crowds gathering at bus stops.
They loiter and litter,
And ask bus drivers for free fares,
Assuming they’re sober enough to acknowledge
The annoyed union worker.

I’m not afraid to lock my bike here though.
I know the game enough to know when to be walking
Hand in hand with a lover who’s [not] scared.
I know my way home and I’ve got the good places marked.

Hand Stamped (day 1533)

ned Leave a comment

This works along the outlier,
A hard gamble with two cigarettes
Dangling loosely in his left hand.
This pulls hard on conscience’s trigger;
Chrome circles and hand stamped VOID
Letting his tight heart
Make shadow puppets on a busy street corner.
This walks home lonely,
Clip-clopping a sweet tap-tap-song out
With rats and harmonized spray cans
Keeping alley cats tempered.

Dreams in the Key of Darkness (day 1343)

ned Leave a comment

Sometimes dreams don’t leave room for imagination;
Waking with a fright and deep recollection.
Hollering into night cools my lone wolf.
I’m a man of slip-slopping recollection,
I dine with strangers who share my wine.

We beg for answers when we’ve shown no mercy.
We all do.
It’s the cruelest of tortures that bless us rancid
Until our feverish states blow our sails full.
Darker seas then any wind-swept sailor would care to see.

Rupturing up my torn soul
I do continue to howl in my brief waking hours
For my window has closed and my feet become sore
And my alley of sinister has just become cold,
To await my march as darkness in greeting.

Athens (day 894)

ned Leave a comment

I remember it there
A different kind of cement
Patch work
And cracks that weren’t cracks
And hand made fences of stones
Clearly crooked
But placed with utmost care
While the roads
Not the big North American style
But built for horse and cart
Slower traffic
Pequeño
While flower boxes teetered
On hooks and ledges
One hundred years old
And steep stair
That went to the top of a hill
Around a park
Upon which locals sat at night
Mingling in casual groups
Drinking in the streets
Setting off the busker’s alarm
Where on all the walls
All the buildings
All the staircases
Any last bit of exposed canvas
Was graffiti
Skulls, gas masks
Political hate
Grotesque mottos
Dreamed characters
And warm nights
I would walk down to my favorite café
Sit and talk to a cute girl
Excited I was foreign
A beautiful woman
With a foreign tongue to me
An exotic look to me
Serving me free shots of Rum
As I ate the complimentary peanuts
And commented on the quotes
Littered around the walls
I was a revolutionary with a fine perch
And the misfigured man
With an eye for a cheekbone
And a snarl for the other
Like those suspicious eyes yelled
But the kind soul he was
A political radio DJ
In a time past its prime
With an uphill walk home
And fuzzy contemplation
Past gas masks
Boys up to no good
Parked scooters
And the upstairs neighbors
Fucking all day
And especially all night
The sounds
First night there I thought
The sounds came from an alley cat
Never before
With a torrential heat
Driving any sober thoughts
Out the window
Sinking into the gay fellows bed
But the shower was nice
A clean house
A cheap house
In a beautiful city
Filled with angst
Sunk so deep
It poured out of eyelashes
It poured onto the streets
It fell out of cars
It was raised upon signs
It was marched along
It was a memory

Athens - 092012 (156 of 411)