I just wandered in off the street, you know. I was goin no place special, so I thought why not. It was a Saturday and time like so much loose change weighed heavy in my pockets and nothin else to spend it on. So I just went in. I didn’t know what the event was exactly. I just followed this girl, like we might be together. She wasn’t anythin to write home about, the girl, her hair tied back from her face like she was a schoolteacher, and her torn skirts draggin on the ground, makin a shushin sound like wind whisperin in long grass. But she reminded me of someone I once knew and I just needed to know if it was or it wasn’t her. Turns out it wasn’t and she smiled a little nervously when I asked, and I could see she thought it was a line I’d just fed her, and she left in a hurry. Then I was in this space, just me, by myself and strangely not really alone. It wasn’t no room. Too big by half for a room. Almost a hall it was and the walls all blank red brick and the ceilin so high it was far off. Made me think of school gym halls with the floor all polished wood and my footsteps makin a sound that seemed to bounce. And everywhere there was metal twisted and sculpted into people and I swears there was somethin about them. And I was by myself in that space and yet not really alone. Of course, they was just things made and I could picture the artist with an oxyacetylene torch all starburst and hot spit, and one of them square masks that covers the whole face, and metal bendin and meltin into people, the shapes of people. If one of ’em had upped and walked or danced across the floor, I wouldn’t have been at all surprised. Or if they’d started talkin or singin or hands and fingers makin shapes in the air, then that would have been just fine. They was just so real, see, and lookin at ‘em I thought of the bodies in Pompei. The ones that was dug out of the ash and they was all real people once and I remember I cried to see ‘em, all huddled against the wrath of God and cowerin. And in the hall, those metal people was somethin the same. There was one in particular, and it was reachin out its hand as if in greetin and I took the hand in mine and it was cold and hard and not like a person then, not till I let it go again and then it was a woman once more, the bones of a woman, and her hand lookin for mine or lookin for someone’s and not ever findin what she was lookin for. I spent the best part of the mornin there, movin between ‘em and it got as dark as rain comin and when no one was near I told one of them metal people my name, like we could be friends if ever it was allowed, which of course it ain’t.
September 9, 2013: These people…
I just wandered in off the street, you know. I was goin no place special, so I thought why not. It was a Saturday and time like so much loose change weighed heavy in my pockets and nothin else to spend it on. So I just went in. I didn’t know what the event was exactly. I just followed this girl, like we might be together. She wasn’t anythin to write home about, the girl, her hair tied back from her face like she was a schoolteacher, and her torn skirts draggin on the ground, makin a shushin sound like wind whisperin in long grass. But she reminded me of someone I once knew and I just needed to know if it was or it wasn’t her. Turns out it wasn’t and she smiled a little nervously when I asked, and I could see she thought it was a line I’d just fed her, and she left in a hurry. Then I was in this space, just me, by myself and strangely not really alone. It wasn’t no room. Too big by half for a room. Almost a hall it was and the walls all blank red brick and the ceilin so high it was far off. Made me think of school gym halls with the floor all polished wood and my footsteps makin a sound that seemed to bounce. And everywhere there was metal twisted and sculpted into people and I swears there was somethin about them. And I was by myself in that space and yet not really alone. Of course, they was just things made and I could picture the artist with an oxyacetylene torch all starburst and hot spit, and one of them square masks that covers the whole face, and metal bendin and meltin into people, the shapes of people. If one of ’em had upped and walked or danced across the floor, I wouldn’t have been at all surprised. Or if they’d started talkin or singin or hands and fingers makin shapes in the air, then that would have been just fine. They was just so real, see, and lookin at ‘em I thought of the bodies in Pompei. The ones that was dug out of the ash and they was all real people once and I remember I cried to see ‘em, all huddled against the wrath of God and cowerin. And in the hall, those metal people was somethin the same. There was one in particular, and it was reachin out its hand as if in greetin and I took the hand in mine and it was cold and hard and not like a person then, not till I let it go again and then it was a woman once more, the bones of a woman, and her hand lookin for mine or lookin for someone’s and not ever findin what she was lookin for. I spent the best part of the mornin there, movin between ‘em and it got as dark as rain comin and when no one was near I told one of them metal people my name, like we could be friends if ever it was allowed, which of course it ain’t.