#113 - Diogenes (notes for 'a penny drops')

22.4.20

113

notes towards

Diogenes

or

a penny drops

a penny drops

and here I am

where you see me

go on!

see me!

how did I get here?

it’s alright to ask…

ask me anything you like

travel always has a mechanism

I mean to say

however accidentally

we have to be from somewhere

and where do we go?

nobody knows

I catch at the whites of their eyes

or I try

do a little implore

do you know this language?

I dare you!
could be from anywhere

mere moment of your day

that’s it

hand to change pocket, purse

you can do it

all in the wrist action

a silence in the city hum

and pick

no, not a guitar pick

30^th April ’77, Led Zep at the Michigan Silverdome

just like that there

and this is the pick Jimmy Page lost on the night

perhaps one of many

how can I know?      why would I care?

but someone has … someone has carried this close many years by now

(no, I won’t say how many)

and this is the night

deafening, a crush

more of a Mozart fan

and making a way back out of the stadium

where all the clamouring’s to be in

to find a nice sitting position

the cupped palm

drunks and the drug addled pass

one will put a hand in pocket

I will hold one out

and now you’re with the mundane facts of passage

a lousy dime

let’s say this one shows me

Winged Liberty or FDR?

there is that split second one tries to see

prepare oneself for where to land

it’s like learning how to take a fall

fall asleep in the soup queue

wake up hungry

how is it I’ve come to call here home?

I can’t explain all coincidence

but you can see I try

… yes you see me scribbling, shameless

and this is what I am writing

exactly where you are

I’m gone, I suppose 

you’re here

how to be shameless? – this is the hardest thing

do my business anywhere

and equally at home

but that doesn’t mean that I won’t notice

let’s for argument’s sake call them

the objective conditions

everyone’s from anywhere

that’s the street in a nutshell

and here we again

month to month

full, empty

moment to moment

you’ll never guess

anything happens

brick solid and still

this is the majesty of time

whom no god can invent

circumvent

(it’s as close as I get to paying rent)

yes, I’m trying to explain it –

it doesn’t matter where I drop off

I could fall asleep in a taxi

I could pass out base jumping

or under a surgeon’s knife…

I wake up in front of the Commonwealth Bank in Martin Place

or somewhere nearby

always within a few blocks

and it’s now when I open my eyes…

I won’t tell you when

and so my day begins

I could say

‘a funny thing happened on the way to the bank’

this is … I call it the re-set

here I come… ready or not…

rancid crust, pigeon intended

and yesterday once more 

why would I tell you when

it’s like – remember encyclopaedias

in print I mean

how you could never find a date

because that was how they kept their forever

… you’d have to look up the latest war to know

…

yes, who?

and here’s my mystery –

to occupy space anonymously

not as anyone

not like you

no

but as anybody else

I am a pilgrim mendicant

and sent

though no more saintly

than the great

gone to the year in my hand

the year of the minting

this is how it works

the time and the place

you don’t get much time to think this through

just when the coin is falling

you’re there

consider the physics of this

Galileo did

I had a soldi from him once

but that’s another story

I think you’re beginning to get the picture

I’m there and I’m not

and you won’t know the difference

not that the vanishing power’s mine alone

one sneeze and crowds scatter

such are the times

and then there are no crowds

an age

another age

until a penny drops

it all takes the patience of Job

and many look upon me as scarred

pox-warted, stinking, vile

and cannot see my mirror skin

or glimpse their moment in me

it’s true I see the smoke around them

but I’m not Job

or any saint to church top brink

guess again

I won’t jump

I’m thrown

in rags, a sometime, suit

sarong or kaftan

how can I make you believe

I would be anyone

except

no one else has this ticket out

oh I know people go on mystery cruises, party flights

who’s ever truly tamed their TARDIS?

but

it’s not the same

as sleeping rough outside a mighty pile

made of money

and waiting on its whim

that I suppose is the point

they say

money makes the world go round

and how they can be wrong ?

for every time its tune

I could be Walter Mitty with it

but think of me, more of a Houdini

you would be surprised what people drop

what they let go of

meaning to or not

what they even have in their pockets … I have been transported by lint

and found myself on the floor of a laundry

been chased by jealous husbands with knives

by women at times too

who might have been wives

you see how my clothes have become so ambiguous?

for a while I thought it was which way the monarch’s head went

but there doesn’t seem to be any system

except that wherever I go

I have never been before

fragment of bison bone

and I’m all day chased around a frozen swamp

savages and marvelling at these rags of mine they’d like to have

then you wish you could sleep better

wish you had that subway knack of falling asleep on the straps

you see

a little siesta would send me back

would bring me

it doesn’t take more than that

but when you’re dodging clubs and kicks 

bows and arrows

sharp steel in your face

… these are not conducive to slumber

I make it more exciting than it generally is

.. there’s a lot of back a year or three

and just around the corner  

but odd coins of no value here

kept for curiosity

curiosity ran out

this is how I mostly travel

or souvenirs whose time has come

by happenstance or otherwise

a potsherd fragment

call me Kismet

give me that island sunset

I see from your heart

a straggling fleet home from the Battle of Actium

and here’s that jug of Falernian

I’m drunk on it to this day

where else could one ever see from?

though my destiny is as unknown as it must be ignominious

I nevertheless very much dread a meteor fragment

or anything otherworldly

it works with notes as well by the way…

that’s just a hint for the punter…

and though these usually mean short journeys

just the shopping list on the back of one could take you back a year

or give you a shot a sandwich

I had camped outside a coin shop once, hoping for adventure

but that kind are hanging onto time

might carry just a bit for luck

random is a zeitgeist thing

a way of life and from it

but often very often I think

warm pavement, a smile

or a look of concern

this is a day too lovely to leave

whenever then nevertheless I am gone

perhaps it’s that time’s of my nature

call me dog

I bring my own light

I live in a barrel

dream how once the questions came

how the great have sought my counsel

yes it is said that this was my punishment you see

for watering down the coins with my dad

rub tum

days once of public pleasure

step out of my light

won’t you please

is all the favour I ask