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We lived in a cold water
hovel above a 2nd hand
bookshop;
Frieda was an elderly
lesbian and she loved
to handle books and
young women and
when times were
tough I’d drop
downstairs and sell her
at bottom dollar,
my 1st edition
black sparrow press
Bukowski books,
and I’d beg her not
to put them on the
shelves and she’d give
me a week to buy them
back at the sold price
and she’d give us coffee
and bread and tins
of salmon and I’d
search the streets for
tobacco and cigarette
butts and sell whatever
I could so we could eat
and drink and we were
loose and young and
now we find ourselves
as grandparents; living
comfortable and
Frieda and the bookshop
long gone and the
Bukowski books long ago
sold for long-forgotten
meals and drugs and
alcohol and broken
windows and rusty
door-handles and
youth now
laying quiet and spent
and longing for the
lazy back-yard of
middle-age.
copyright 2019
John D
Robinson |
