Noel Negele

Nothing but cricket sounds left in my heart

Bukowski said
that money is magic
and the older you grow
the more true this rings.

Like most people out there
I’m over informed in matters
not cohesive enough to evoke
a tendency towards some career path.

So much random knowledge
In the basic person,
Unhelpful and unused but
in random conversations.

And then there’s this whale:
The fuck to do?
Like the careerists
you yourself as a bum too
are enslaved by the need
to accumulate.

You have to have the money
so that you don’t need the money.

And like many other thirty years olds
Between the yes to this and the no 
to that offer
an ocean of useless knowledge 
and almost crippling indecisions
where I suppose many years are wasted.

Many of mine were.
Maybe it’s also laziness,
because it keeps on happening.

I witness many people stuck in 
dead-end jobs. 
Not even the fake promise of a ladder.
And they mix. I watch them
they mix 
out of loneliness
and the weight of the solitary struggle.

Two paychecks are better than one.
A more humane house.
The first step into normality,
into that pleasant boredom.

Two years later
I’m balls deep
into somebody’s wife
and many more doing this.

People are alone 
even if they’re with people. 

Temporary solutions 
that become long term problems.
Surely being miserable with somebody
is better than being miserable alone.

Two years ago
I was alone, yet again
in Hague, Holland
while the cold dark of the night
descent
in a deceiving speed
and walking on the rails 
a Spanish couple of girls
and boys, laughing
asked from me to take their
photograph
and I did
and I tell you 
it was one of the most beautiful photographs
you’ll ever see.

And when I got on the pier sky view
and the Ferris Weel went up
and then down
and then fucking up again
the city looked nothing
but lights on concrete
and I got bored
there, fifteen minutes on my own
realising that feeling alone
can be a passing feeling
and that’s all well and done
but sometimes it can last a decade
and then you can truly catch a glimpse 
of things in yourself
that will be difficult
to make peace with.

Things you won’t be able to shake off 
so easy.
Things that follow you.
Things you fight on the daily.

But today, on bank holiday
as I smoke on my bed
and I take one diazepam after the other
it all looks doable— 
all of it looks doable, the being alone 
the being not alone, the unpleasant fact
that most conversations in your life 
will contain very little meaning to you,
the morning alarm clocks
and that dangerous mess 
of human affairs that can derail you
like no other.

There’s a time for a full heart
to be opened up simplemindedly
from hinges to hinges 
like a playful child

And a time 
to be closed shut
to be considered 
as a fortress.