Part 1: The Train Station Steps

I loosely based this short story off of two older men who lived in my hometown and happened to pass away early last year. They were both homeless (one for 40 years, the other for over a decade), and both said a major underlying reason for this was that they didn’t want to live within the confines of ‘conventional’ society. It should be noted, however, that the vast majority of homeless people clearly do not want to live this way.

Part 1:

Michael stared remorsefully at the glossy wood of the front door. Clutching his laptop bag with one hand, he turned the creaking brass doorknob with the other, to re-enter the outside world for yet another day of... something. His body moved mechanically, predictably – closing the door behind him, bent knee down three steps, and keys slung into greige overcoat pocket. Gray pebbles glazed with slick street ice dazzled under morning sunrise, and his click-clack trek to the train station began. A pack of bubbly blonde school children loomed ahead, rolling in their own world of laughter and pushy play, and Michael’s brow furled as he tried to remember if, at some point long ago, he was anything like them. The elusive illusion of freedom dissolved from school days to college years to middle-management fears so that laughter from his own mouth seemed foreign, or at the very least, forced. Forays into romance were short-lived and sparks died as soon as they started to fly. He was alone.

Crossing the main road, cars crawled towards the intersection, all going somewhere with seeming purposeless purpose, simultaneously interconnected and disconnected, with zombified drivers gazing vacantly ahead. Paycheques dictated the drive, and people threw themselves languidly into a predetermined hierarchy of bosses and managers and to-do lists. For what? Michael himself was languishing under this same structure, in the mix of why-bother existence to pay his mortgage and climb towards someone else's version of success on an uninspired, undesired imaginary ladder. All ladders, if you were ‘lucky,’ merely led towards retirement: a wrinkled face you could no longer recognize, perhaps the odd buffet-ridden tropical vacation, and impending, unspoken... death.

As he approached the pockmarked portico of the train station, Michael noticed a dark figure curled up against a column, swaddled in sooty blankets. A pang struck, for things could always be worse: he had a roof over his head, and while days were doldrum-infested, he lived comfortably. Reality smacked him in the face, and he dug into his suit pocket for his wallet to pull out a tenner to put into the cracked collection cup next to the hobo’s nodded-off head. A mangled rumble of limbs made Michael pause, bill in hand, and a glint of dark eyes emerged from within the mess of blankets. The hobo was awake.

Michael was not prepared to hand the homeless man the money while he was awake, as he felt chest-gripping discomfort at any public display of charity - some unspoken code of vague embarrassment - although he wasn’t sure why. Society commands that those visibly in need are invisible, and the middle and upper classes, when face-to-face with such poverty, are never quite sure where to look, or they risk confronting the possibility that they too, if raked by ill-fate, may one day find themselves shivering under a frigid overpass. Mail-in donations and faceless food drives were one thing, but on an individual level, Michael squirmed. However, the bill was already out, and he wordlessly knelt to place it into the dingy collection cup.

A gnarled hand gently wrapped around Michael’s forearm.

“Thank you...” The man spoke softly, and the wealthier man started in surprise. Perhaps Michael was expecting a slurring wino’s gurgle, and he winced at his own misdirected preconception. He looked away, ashamed, yet still aching to make a quick escape.

“You’re welcome,” he stood back up, then added, with a tinge of guilt: “you must be very cold.”

“Horribly...." he paused, "but I’m just passing through here. I’m looking for my younger brother,” The seated man tugged off his threadbare toque to uncover a mottled mess of smoggy grey hair. Judging by the thick lines slashing across his cheeks, he looked a lifespan-ravaged 70 years old.

“Ah well. Good luck with that...” Michael started, gripped by a spell of awkwardness and wanting to get away. The older man eyed his laptop bag, and Michael pulled it more tightly towards his slightly pudgy middle-aged torso, then felt a heightened stab of shame

“You going to work or something?” the homeless man asked casually. “I’m Bud by the way.”

“Hi Bud. I’m Michael. Well yes, I’d best be off.”

Bud offered a snaggle-toothed grin and pulled a half-smoked cigarette out of a crumpled packet, “You like your job, eh?”

Michael gulped.

“Uh... no, no I don’t at all actually.”

The hobo threw his head back and roared with laughter, lighting his cigarette, as burning paper and tar mingled in the air.

“I could tell. I could tell,” he added, slapping his blanketed thigh.

“You could?” The younger, clean-shaven man asked, a little stunned at being so confronted.

“Oh yes, you look a miserable thing. Say, why don’t I buy you a coffee with this tenner. You can just go in late. I’ve got to get out of this cold for a bit.”

Astonished, Michael nodded wordlessly, while Bud neatly rolled up his grime-caked blankets and tucked them under his arm. A pair of fat-coated pigeons bustled past a nearby trash can, giving low throaty coos. Opalescent feathers shimmered amidst winter air as the birds' pinprick pupils darted to-and-fro in search of rogue coffee shop crumbs; they were simply trying to make their way in the world too.

Michael looked down at his work cell phone and silenced the the ringer, almost... almost reconsidering.

And off they walked.

http://www.timescolonist.com/news/local/peter-verin-uvic-s-reluctant-philosopher-king-dies-at-71-1.7101837

Lost Cause

I've not liked any poem I've written since my cat died...and I've been through a long spell of depression... my brain doesn't work the same way? I don't know. But at least I wrote something...

Midnight

In a city that closes down at dusk.

I hang on the mind’s window ledges

Like an onyx spider dangling

From a spindly web of gauze.

Shell-shocked and cell-locked

By my thoughts – a lost cause.

Mid-flight,

Insanity spreads its wings,

Becoming the mundane.

And hope?

A cigarette flame, its ashes to ashes

Twist and turn to rust, turn to dust.

Smoke-fuelled, hope dissolves like whispers,

Drifting through dead air.

The knife always slashes.

The axe always falls.

Misanthrope -

Yet one part scarred romantic

Though clearly that’s in vain.

Asphalt

Suffocating with bleak swells.

Grotesque raucous families

Congregate on sunshine-y days

And seem not to obsess with churning guts

Over life’s decay while I always dwell.

I do still laugh at strange things.

My own fault?

I ended up here,

I don’t know why.

The Fortune Teller

Pt. 1

The clatter of crates packing up for the evening clacked through dusky air, interrupting Milandra’s nap. Cat-like, her stretching limbs reached for nothing, undecidedly, languidly, as the wash of a dream dripped from the corners of her mind. Again, she had dreamt that curious dream, always of the same man. Inevitably, the man’s silhouette lingered, but his identity- the details – remained burrowed in that ungraspable, uncertain dream-state.

Slits of dying sunlight slipped through heavy Egyptian blue curtains, zebra striping her skin as she lounged on scattered cushions in the nook of her shop. She realized in spite of her sleep-addled state, her heart was drumming against her ribs, its pulses beating in flustered, disjointed rhythm. Her hands fluttered towards the little metal pipe on the floor: would there be enough to calm her down? Perhaps. She struck a match and inhaled as the last glimpses of sweet, tarry smoke poured into her lungs.

“I would die this way,” she mused. She thought it was coming many times, every time. At this point death was a waiting game; but wasn’t it that way throughout life anyway? The grey hollows ravaging her once-plump cheeks told her so; the gnawing knots in her guts told her so; those strange aches in her bones told her so.

Amber embers curled and faded in her pipe as remnants of smoke burned down into tin-trapped air. She carelessly threw the pipe into a massive jet-black ashtray, and stood, swaying - ever so slightly. Practiced like a drunk teenager feigning sobriety, her movements were a little too precise, a little too exaggerated. Smoothing her skirts, she felt sharp bones underneath, jutting through softened fabric, the skeleton making itself known. Hours would go by without customers, and certainly no visitors, although she was thankful for this in her modes of exhaustion. As she walked over the creaking wood floor, her mind sank down into waking dream, as the lingering lull of smoke flowed through her throbbing veins.

Outside, carts and cars rolled up rusty dust streets and the last calls of working men wavered in her ears. The familiar sounds did not distract her from her undistractable state, but rather became an extension of her internal thoughts. The mundane is taken for granted by those in in the throes and thrust of life, but perhaps she would, in death, miss street sounds and men’s voices, no matter how tobacco hoarse or sun-parched their grate.

Milandra parted another set of curtains leading to the back of her shop. A cracked slab mirror leant against the wall and she stopped to study her reflection. The only face she had ever known gazed back, yet, marked by time’s change, in another sense it was hardly recognizable. At 46 years old, she appeared ancient beyond her years, with creases marking complex emotional road maps around her eyes. For the past few years, every smile, tear, and wince seemed conveyed and betrayed on the canvas of her olive skin. Each morning she lined her eyes heavily with smoky kohl and their pale citrine colour still pounced playfully with youth, in spite of her near-constant suffering. Rose petal lips had thinned to a pale pink crack; blooming no more. The pang of their sternness in place of kissability affected her, and a deep-set yearning for love ached, even though she knew she'd soon be dead. She remained somehow exotically attractive – but she denied such knowledge, because any love discovered could only end tragically. Pulling her glossy onyx hair, strewn with strands of wiry silver, away from her face, she half-frowned, and turned towards a heavy chest of drawers.

Nestled inside the top drawer, folded in amber-scented fabric, was the only tangible reminder of him that remained: a seashell he once gave her on a gloomy-evening beach walk. She could still sense the drifting mist dancing on her skin, the touch of his hand: fainter, but with that reaching, desperate clarity of a re-lived memory. Over endless time and rolling waves, the shell itself had been worn down, smooth against her fingertips as silk, yet one side was jagged and snagged like a witches nail. The symbolism wasn’t lost on her – as this reflected the eternal emotional state he had infernally left her in. Typical... luckless. She carefully folded the fabric around the shell, returned it to the drawer, and traipsed back to the front of her shop.

In the centre of her shop stood a round table covered with brocade cloth, upon which lay a tasselled pouch containing her tarot cards. Knowing herself to be perpetually damned, she gave up reading the cards to shed any light on her own life long ago: well, what was the point? However, many in town still flocked to her for glimpses into their futures, whether it be through the cards or palmistry. Some visitors were anxious, some dismally disengaged or sulkishly skeptical, some excited - all because time had played or frayed them one way or another.

Lost in thoughts and her waning high, the tinny jangle of a trio of bells was nearly missed, and it wasn’t until the young man cleared his throat she noticed he had entered her shop. Neither startled nor necessarily surprised at his arrival, she avoided eye contact and gestured with a coarse, almost exasperated motion of her hand for him to take a seat in front of the card table.

However, as soon as she looked up into his eyes, she knew she was damned.