GUEST POST, WHAT KIND OF MIRROR by Ron Heckert

What kind of mirror is this anyway?

And another day became another day.

I am writing this for posterity, to look back on in future times, better times hopefully, but worse isn’t wholly unlikely.

This space ship to Mars just keeps on travelling. 

There is an end to this journey, eventually, but whatever. 

On this day here I was/am/be, bored and uneasy, in my little spacetime travelling pod.

I drink a hard seltzer or two. 

I smoke a bit of pot.

I find myself at this daily; a drink, or two, or three; a hit, or two, or four. 

I play video games in VR. 

I play guitar. 

I talk to my co-inhabitants. 

I rotate, from station to station every half hour or so.

I look at awful facebook videos of awful people being awful.

What kind of a mirror is this, anyway?

I walk in circles.

I talk in half thoughts.

I smoke cigarettes and I KNOW it’s gross and may give me cancer.

I think boring thoughts in a stream.

I pause to pee in a stream.

The stream is not a brook, but it babbles as much as my prostate will allow.

My mind babbles too, constantly.

What kind of mirror is this, anyway?

It’s all I got.

This fool was alive, once.

from media.vam.ac.uk

TWO DOORS DOWN

the ambulance came
for
the
man
two doors down

one of those ambulances
thats just a car
with lights and yellow on

and the blues were flashing
and i heard them coming
but once out the car
they seemed to be
in
no
rush
at all

the man two doors down
got prostate cancer
got bone cancer

but
hes
only
taken
away
for an infected knee

cos hes tough as a dozen old boots

and theyll let him out 
when he can walk again
and i hope to see him again
going for his paper 8 AM

~

i see his son in the street

he now lives where 
they filmed heartbeat
he says

i been 24 yrs in the army
he says
maybe 4 or 5 times

n ireland
FN FALs at dawn
under end terrace murals
jammed inside the empires folly

then hazmat training
bomb disposal

demobbed in yorkshire
straight back in 
as an instructor

abroad again
as
an
independent contractor 

but can he talk
his mum and dad
into
accepting
a
twice daily council care plan ?

can he bunnies 

theyre from 1928
might as well be mars

or the hebrides

n ireland from pinterest