Cobwebs, dust, windows sealed from time
faded photos, art, the smell of morning coffee...
We stopped by the roadside to inspect the house, satanically decorated with hand-painted bottles dias de muertos skulls demons the dead & dying, a squat for occult bikies & disenfranchised evil, it was 1976; my father acknowledged no master, no god no state
but looked seriously at the 5 of pentangles, the adults stopped their curiosity packed me back up in the car & drove off.....
Driving down that dip always reminds me of that roadside place, as though if we pulled off the highway it would be Queensland & my father would be alive & smoking Turkish tobacco & be smiling at the lithe young woman in the floppy straw hat & I in my Principality of Hutt River Sovereign State 1970 t-shirt would I risk another's purgatory for a Lethe draft that past that past.....I guess I would.
Heat to the paint, broom to the cobwebs (& the system, DFW), air through the rooms & fresh coffee made & drunk I look forward to the next memory as I scrape back the past that clings, unwanted, & the past that fades, so wanted, wanted, but brooms & rooms & air & tomorrow......
