Graffiti Moon Read Free

One
    Poetry 101
    Student: Leopold Green
     
    Where I lived before
     
    I used to live with my parents
    In a house that smelt like cigarettes
    And tasted like beer if you touched anything
    The kitchen table was a bitter ocean
    That came off on my fingers
     
    There were three doors between the fighting and me
    And at night I closed them all
    I’d lie in bed and block the sounds
     
    By imagining
    I was floating
    Light years of quiet
    Interrupted by breathing
    And nothing else
     
    I’d drift through space
    And fall through dreams
    Into dark skies
     
    Some nights
    My brother Jake and I would crawl out the window
    And cut across the park
    Swing on the monkey bars for a while
    On the way to Gran’s house
     
    She’d be waiting
    Dressing gown and slippers on
    Searching for our shadows
     
    She’d read us
    Poetry and fairytales
    Where swords took care of dragons
    And Jake never said it was a load of shit
    Like I thought he would
     
    And then one night
    Gran stopped reading before the happy ending
    She asked, ‘Leopold, Jake. You want to live in
    My spare room?’
     
    Her voice
    Sounded like space and dark skies
    But that night all my dreams
    Had floors

Lucy
     
     
    I walk across to the wall. A yellow bird lies legs up under a blue sky and the word Peace is sprayed in fat letters across the clouds.
    ‘I guess it’s too late to give peace a chance,’ Al says. ‘Looks like it’s dead.’
    ‘Nope,’ I say. ‘It’s only sleeping.’
    Most times when I look at Shadow and Poet’s work I see something different from what the words are telling me. I like that about art, that what you see is sometimes more about who you are than what’s on the wall. I look at this painting and think about how everyone has some secret inside, something sleeping like that yellow bird.
    I look and get a feeling, a tickling zing. That zing has nothing to do with sex like my best friend, Jazz, says. Okay, in the interest of honesty, maybe it’s got a little to do with sex, but mainly it’s got to do with knowing that there’s a guy out there who’s not like all the other guys out there.
    ‘I need more details,’ I say, my eyes still on the wall.
    ‘It’s like I told you. Shadow does the painting. Poet writes the words.’
    ‘Did you get a better look this time?’
    ‘Same look I had before. They’re young and scruffy,’ Al says. ‘About your age.’
    ‘Cute?’
    ‘I’m a sixty-year-old man. I really couldn’t say.’
    ‘Which direction did they go?’
    ‘My street hits a dead end, Lucy. They went in the only direction they could.’
    I walk over and sit next to him. I concentrate really hard.
    ‘What are you doing?’ he asks.
    ‘I’m trying to bend the laws of time so I can get here five minutes earlier.’
    He nods and we watch the dirty silk of the factory smoke float across the sky.
    ‘Having any luck?’ he asks after a while.
    ‘Nope. I can’t get no time reversal.’
    He smiles. ‘You’ll see him, just a matter of waiting. Since this place became legal Shadow’s been working here a bit. And you finished Year 12 classes today. Are you and Jazz hitting the town?’
    ‘We’re meeting at Barry’s around nine-thirty.’
    ‘Late start.’
    ‘Jazz wants to have a late-night-all-night adventure.’
    ‘Got time to help me with a piece before you go?’ he asks, and I nod and follow him inside.
    I’m addicted to this place. To the heat coming off the furnace. To my muscles aching as I help Al blow glass. I ache with the weight of the piece on the end of the rod. Ache with the thought that in a place as ugly as this, a place of rust and sweat and steel, something shining like love can appear.
    I’ve got Mrs J, my Art teacher, to thank for introducing me to Al. In Year 10 she took us on an excursion to his studio and we stood behind a wire safety fence and watched him and another guy turn glass, heat it in a furnace and turn it again. The heat was burning me up but it felt like it was happening from the inside