first full day in Sydney
after thirty six hours
between departure and arrival
after leaving my Kathmandu hotel
for the ninety-minute walk to the airport
yes, walk
not an outbound form of transport anyone else follows
in the heat and the fumes
the traffic and the throng
the concrete and the tarmac
the bent and the sullied
the friendly and lively
yet delivering me and my
easing-out
departing head
into airport world
that non-time
un-space
monetisation
that absence of
almost anything that makes life good
that airport waiting world where
even more than anywhere else
all heads and necks and eyes are dipped to screen
where all my potential stresses were
stresslesly breezed through
and the best metaphor was the
tasteless sandwich
which could have been a lot worse
literally and metaphorically
as the viscous hours pass
or gloopily drip
from each other
into the next
finally delivering me
unslept at 4.15 am
into fifteen hours
yes, fifteen
in Kuala Lumpur airport
for three hours lumpy broken sleep
on a lumpy uneven row of seats
in some recess
next a clattersome and ksgsxchgging coffee-stall
before i coax a free Burgerking out of Batik Airlines
change some Pounds into Malaysian Ringgit
and begin to expertly deploy coffee
to raise my mind to a point of actual functioning
to a crested rise where poetry is possible
and i first muster
then corral
some motes
and grains
and pixels
and dots
of thought
into strokes
and letters
and syllables
and words
and lines
which generate themselves some kind of energy
some semblance of lyrical flow
some momentum of mustered meaning
and which soon become a poem i’ve been contemplating for
errr
years
which i then file away
to come back to
as it turns out my online book
The Disappearers
freshly out
by Marlon James
is actually
and this is a bit rare for a new and fanfared book
is actually GOOD
and an enthralment for my slipshod wearied head
and disappears some hours
with the newish poem and other writing bits
disappearing some more
as i switch from Gay Jamaica in the 80s
to my poem
to an article on the apparent intelligence of slime mould
to the poem
to 80s Kingston
and on through the hours
with slow walks around the nonspace
the untime
the commercialised millimetres
and monetised hours
and sensory vacuum
the white and grey and silver and black
where further sleep is impossible
yet the dimmed life in my subsub head
operating eighty-per-cent capacity at best
allows for thinking [?]
and enjoyment
and newness of word
as the shortened hours slip by
slide away
broken only by the surprise of
the best Malaysian meal i have ever eaten
some kind of spectacular Satay
the rich and savoursome flavours of which kinda shock me
and my slumped head
back into more coffee and reading
and finessed words
until the long fifteen-hour
un-odyssey
of grey-space and
hardless surfaces
and motionlessness
delivers me into the unspecialness of Batik Airlines
and a half-empty plane
where at first i am saved by Marlon James
and his ugly story
and by the good battery in my tablet
rather than the diminishing battery in my laptop
then some more by Marlon James
and his now-much-uglier story
well-told
shocking and
horrible
then by actually managing to sleep
contortedly unstretched-out over three seats
for another three whole hours
making that just six hours of shut-eye in two nights
before i am awoken by sheer discomfort
to see dawn to the East
and it is a long slow descent into Sydney
then a long slow circling
around and above Sydney
for an excess hour
before i am down into airport world
numb-headed in the corridors
and the nonspace
around the soft corners
until confronted by a uniformed
desked
glasswalled
Australian woman who is all
smiles and helpfulness
and then i am out
and its my sister Alison
smiles and ease and lively and welcoming
who, with her family
has me in her house for three weeks
so, after the grey concrete right-angles of an airport car-park
the time of hassles and long-stretch and unspace is over
and i am arrived into
another
unaccustomed world
Mortdale
South Sydney
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