Mail for a Dead Guide — Dave Lordan

Mail for a Dead Guide

Dear ——

my friend and fellow guide,

green-shirted puppet just like me,

It’s been a long time

and a lot of shite has been spewing into the bay

since were dossing together

in the Model Village.

Forgive me my intrusion on your peace.

(I guess its you whose been

fiddling with the TV and the lights).

I needed to let you know I’ve been looking back

trying to figure out what exactly happened to us

and to me

and I’m pretty sure it was our tininess

our lack of power that finished you.

I remember the afternoon you were told

you’d failed the August exams.

Now mom and dad would be taking a scissors

to the pocket strings

and the wide panorama of your life

had suddenly zoomed

to a puppet show in a shoe box.

So it was straight on the lock after work

straight to the cider and chasers

till six hours and ten pints later,

speechlessly locked,

you tottered from your stool to a raggy heap

on the pukey sawdust in the Fiddler’s Green.

What a howl! We were nearly split!

Then we pulled you up and slapped you off

and continued downing pints

till September drew its tawny blinds

around our summer cabaret.

Then it was good bye good luck

and see you next June as we all flew away in a whirl

to College balls and all night parties

or to summer’s second coming in Australia.

Left behind to tread the mulch and lick the drizzle

from your lips you kept on boozing all alone,

falling and falling again,

falling and falling back down

into your own hollowness,

into the paralysis of an uncast marionette.

While winter sped towards you darkening

in the massive shadow of a hand stretching

down through the ceiling

to shuffle you around

the mouldy stage to Tipperary.

Where a human factory tried shrinking you

to the dimensions of the fake smile

in the photograph on your CV,

trying to melt you down

and filter out your elemental care,

and gentleness,

stir you dizzy with their nightsticks

in their butchers’ vat

bubbling with gristle and blood and fat,

mix you up in wigs and sirens and harps,

boil you senseless

along with warrants and certificates

and stamps, pour and stretch you stiffening

into a quota into a uniform

but you would not fit.

I know

that according to our village scriptures

we shouldn’t be talking.

I know they’ll carp I have salt in my eyes

and know nothing,

for sure I’m only speculating

but, meaning no offense to you and yours,

I do believe

it was because

you wouldn’t harden to their mould

that you went out that January day,

deep into the forest’s changeling ground

so nakedly

and slipped yourself into a knot