Wednesday 25 April 2012

It was the best of times





We were fabulously wealthy. We rode horses in our sleep. Our walls dripped art. We knew everything & nothing. It was ours to lose.

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We were in heaven in a smart car. The streets saluted us as we passed. Behind us, like a honeymoon trail of trash, the big stores, grinning.

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Our servants were invisible. They ran about with heavy trunks containing their own lives. When we tipped them they glowed like embers.

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Sometimes we wanted rain. We knew the right people. They'd come running with their dry excuses. It was the excuses that we really wanted.

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For all our wealth we were unhappy. The sex was bad but the service was excellent. Our salt cellars were pure gold but our feet were tin.

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We dispensed largesse between meals. Crowds came to our funeral. They were sporting buttonholes of dead flowers. We fed them caviare

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Our dreams of avarice were spectacular affairs. Mountains moved. We had a fleet of empty cars. The music under the streets was perfect.

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Shari found herself in India. Martin was in China. We were in several places at once at the centre of the earth. We paid and left.

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We had people to do things for us. We paid them fortunes. When we woke we were those people. We led full and interesting lives on hard cash.

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One day the tap stopped running. We called the surgeons. It was a long operation. Cash in brown envelopes. The usual. Who needs water?





9 comments:

Anonymous said...

In the morning, we're thrown out of our dreams like banished dictators.

Anonymous said...

What makes this even more disconcerting is the length, or lack of it. Our lives, our age in one decatweet.

Ashwednesday said...

Some things are best left unsaid. I wouldn't be bothering. Keep your powder dry for better endeavours.

George S said...

I rather like these so will hang on to them. They are dreams not reality, fantasies of personal wealth. But thank you for the comments, Ash Wednesday.

Dennis Tomlinson said...

I agree more with Peter: a comment on our times and social divisions. I read it in a satirical vein.

Anonymous said...

Oh no... I wish I didn't know they fall within the twitter limit.

I like it a great deal. "We paid and left"... doesn't that sum up modern Conservatism?

George S said...

Think of Twitter as a telegram, Looby. I take it seriously as a verse form - any formal constraint has that potential. I don't mean I want to be solemn about it but I want to explore its dimensions.

Ashwednesday said...

OK explore the dimensions, but with caution, I'd say. If poetry and Twitter were ever to become synonymous we're doomed.

George S said...

Ash Wednesday - Twitter is just a stupid name for something that is both a given form (suitable for epigrammatic work or a brief haiku-like meditation) and a kind of publication. I don't need the publication though I am growing to like the faintly fugitive air of the momentary appearance. I suspect that if the medium were called something like Brevities you might be a little happier.