A Dirge For My Twenty-Third Year Copyright Š 2014 by David Hutt
Permission is granted to reprint any of these poems as long as written consent is given by the author. David Hutt may be contacted via oldpinepublishing@hotmail.com
David Hutt was raised in London (U.K). He has lived and worked in many countries: a labourer in Guatemala; a journalist in Nicaragua and Costa Rica; a farm hand in France. Every now and then he tries stability and a normal job, but it never lasts. He currently lives in Brighton, but will be moving to Cambodia soon. David's poetry and fiction have appeared or are forthcoming in: Eunoia Review, Penmen Review, Commonline Journal, Apocrypha and Abstractions, Smashed Cat, Uppagus, and other publications.
Follow David Hutt on Twitter @davidhutt1990 www.davidhuttwriter.com
1
At twenty three I was too excited and pent up with life - a renaissance I thought after I broke up with my girlfriend. In one year I went from seedling, now sprout, now decrepit oak that became a stereotype, and I was pigeonholed with alcohol, traipsing down rum split streets - people praised me for my professionalism. It took nothing more than a shimmer of self doubt or a half made invitation for the day to exist submerged, and hangover midnights mornings middays strayed across the sun like vain rainclouds. I felt it being in Brighton, the busy little hipster streets where perfection girls tittered around in skirts as open as the night sky, that great night sky with first world stars and tumbling red above the city, bleeding the cold round pebbles on the beach. I'd sit on the beach and throw pebbles at other pebbles and watch the tide racing away with nothing but pure pure hope of getting a little further each day… and the bars and pubs and clubs. If you stumbled you’d fall into another one; boutique bars with black gloss walls and faux Parisian chairs; chain bars with two pound drinks and a clientèle who hated being there and hated you more for being there and would stomp you like a cretin with no questions asked; Scandinavian bars, Spanish bars; bars you went to pick up woman who hadn’t seen their fair share of small victories in life, scarred by existence and ready to fuck like desperation; bars you go downstairs into basements to listen to bands all night long and bop away with no pretence; dive bars that put sawdust on the floors and served pints in old tankards, where you got to know the barman’s name and the barmaid flirted with you just enough to let you think she’ll give something away.
2
My friend was already there, sat on a stool at the bar, rambling about love and faith and truth to the middle aged barman who nodded along with closed ears. “Man, I think I've found the secret of relationships”, he said as I sat next to him. “Listen to this. It's all about dialectics, just like Hegel said. You have a thesis, that's the man, then the woman is the antithesis. They argue and argue and then come to a synthesis. That's the point of relationships – CONFLICT”. Ten minutes later he said: “Maybe love's like Schrödinger’s cat as well, do you know what I mean? Maybe it exists and doesn't exist at the same time”. I never understood what he meant, neither did he.
3
My literary heroes died at fifty so I’m near half life, their fingers burnt and now they exist with dust, and I’ve been calling myself a poet for years and haven’t written as much as one thing I can be proud of.
4
Those mornings. Those mornings when you wake up surrounded by smashed glass, led on the floor, not being able to remember the previous night, not knowing where you are or how you got there, and not wanting to know. Open your eyes and know it has happened again. A pain splits through your head. First you look around to see where you are. Then you look over your body. There are fresh bruises on your wrists and legs, and a pain in your side. Lift your shirt to see a bigger bruise. Scrape dried blood from your inner ear with a brown fingernail. All done mechanically. Nothing new. Bored doing it. Then the tremors start. Suck at the dregs of a whiskey bottle. Smoke half of packet, relighting the new with the old.
5
Two months before my 24th birthday I’m sat outside AA with a man who’s spending his life on me. I ain’t listening much. “My old man, he was rough,” he says. “And me wife left with the kids last year.” When he speaks he strokes his beard for comfort and smoothes the grin on his face. He’s happy to have my ear, I guess. People start to leave - some have beards like the man sat next to me. Others are clean shaven, wearing their best clothes - office types who hide vodka under the sink and smile at the boss each morning and have spent the last decade lying to their wives. I spoke at the meeting today. They all patted me on the back with kind words. They said I was youngest they’ve seen at any meeting. I spoke. Then sat down.
6
I lost my friends who were lost in green, rolling up colours in Rizlas and creating trees from memory, drinking down empty shots and feeling it in the neck, trudging through streets wrapped up in Gogol’s overcoat… and I lost alcohol too who had been a good friend (best friend) since we met when I was 12, been there at all my major events, backpacked with me across Latin America in 2008, and we formed a cliché at university, and sometimes I see it around Brighton with a new man, and I guess I’m a little jealous. But I prefer reminiscing about the good times than persisting with the bad.
7
When my girlfriend took me back I learnt that life is all or nothing, no grey areas of existence or just getting by - pure black and white - and you hold in your hands delicate possessions and some you can drop, let smash, carry on, but some once smashed won’t fix again and that’s it all or nothing - so we decide to leave Brighton and she says things like, “don’t you think we’re just running away?” and I say “there’s people who know what they want in life and there’s people who know what they don’t want, and if we keep on avoiding things we don’t want then maybe we’ll find the things we do want”. And I forgot how soft her skin is, like melting butter, and she lotions and oils it once a day and my fingers won’t go bored.