perhaps i really have run out of things to say

my green and fertile mind yields its last spluttering words

i dive into the ocean all day today

memories not mine come into my head all  the time

because  i am a thought-catcher

i arrive in any-town i am any-man

it is any-christmas

i arrive in cabs and trains

i arrive on buses tired

i arrive down at the wharf jumping off a ship

in a street in an australian town

a woman rushes out from her home to greet me

we stagger over her threshold with all the baggage

in her cool dark house it is always christmas eve

in her cool dark house with a budgie and white cat

in her cool dark house its always summer

i am always arriving

this is not my memory

i remember nothing of this

she leads me into her kitchen where we drink tea and eat sandwiches

oh i have been away  (why?) for so long….

away away away away the time drifted away for him

in her cool dark small house they drink a beer he smokes a cigarette

in australian summer in 1968

the fishtank and the gurgling filter

in her cool dark house i struggle to catch her faces

in her seaside suburb with its freshest salty air and rusty gates

with its seaside graveyard full of unfortunate death

in her seaside dark cool house with 2 fords parked outside

a ford cortina a ford capri

we sit there looking at each other

the woman and i

although i look i cannot see her

only an approximation of this place

only a guesswork version of some memory i catch

a thought i caught

i know the woman is talking to me now

though i cant catch the words

she is kissing me

though i cant taste her mouth

and we walk down her long dark hall to her bedroom

in the summer christmas heat a record blares next door

a swimming pool full of kids and laughing in the garage

a plane lands somewhere nearby always

a tv crackles into life in a blocker flats

cant see anything in this darkness

this summer heat i am nearly drunk on it all

birds still singing …oh maestro …..such pretty tunes….

something else i should be doing (thinking very hard!)

anxiety cannot intrude in my caught memory (though it does!)

we lie in her bed

the sheets are not that fresh or clean

the air smells of incense and christmas decorations from long ago

we lie in her bed in her coolest darkest room on the hottest brightest day

oh i love you oh i love you oh i love you

oh i love you too oh i love you too oh you know i do

woman moving on me in darkness

this way and that

around and about

summer christmas 1934 did you say?

kids in the street playing with the hose scream

its miles away just outside her window

where the garbage bin sits against a grey fence

i arrived in a taxi she ran out to meet me

darkness coolness otherness

some other life

some dark cool other life in her arms in 1956

a car pulls up

hang on she says

everything stopped

i hear voices arguing

in a dream i fall asleep in her bed

in a hot cool darkness in a sleepy dream

door opens man comes in

he hits me though i cant feel the punch

woman saying no no no no no no no

woman saying stop stop stop stop

i fighting back

i smashing something heavy on him

in the dark i cant see

i just lashing out

oh horrible sickening sound of it hitting his head

he slumps i jumps up and pulling on my suit

its new years eve 1970 look at me all dressed up

the cops have arrived

out the back i flee for my life now

bicycle through an alleyway down a long concrete corridor

pedalling panting my lungs are bursting although i feel fine

chased and hounded i escaped back on ship away forever

then i awake its a next day

in the cool dark house

summertime christmas

the kids next door have gone overboard with santa snow stencils

a dog barks occasionally in a deep tone like a french horn

we sit in her kitchen eating breakfast

and i can almost taste the toast