A Rubik’s cube, an ‘80s icon, object d’art, he never actually solved it. On a bookshelf alongside a photograph of a ration book, and the novel The Fellowship of the Ring, which he never read, a gift to him from a colleague during a secret Santa, the year before last. or was it pandemic year? He received that book and a bottle of wine, he polished off the wine, he left the book, he’d seen the movie.
He seems to always have pins and needles in his left hand nowadays, maybe it’s the handheld devices, smartphones and tablets, and the like, connected to apps, disconnected from nature, no looking under rocks for insects, no rose petals in his hands.
Once real functional stuff is now just there as decorations to give a place some personality, artifacts of a past spun by the media, modern make-do imitation, a framed photo of swinging London, a coffee mug with a picture of a VW campervan full of loose change.
He once had a girlfriend who had dream catchers, like cobwebs hanging in the window, what are they for he asked? They’re for catching bad dreams, she replied, he thought, this relationship is not going to last.
Years later, with all the tat gone, given away to charity shops, recycled, and sold for little money, he finally held the rose petals in his hands and thought of the girlfriend he lost.
January 2023
Political Poems & Others 