by Anton Martin Smith antonmartinsmithwrites@gmail.com or martinantonsmith@gmail.com
Her name was Rose W. Thorn
(Not her real name at all)
She was as they say a ‘small town girl’.
Who like all the kids in high school from the late eighties and nineties and beyond.
Was told by the clueless teachers you had to ‘go to university’ (or yer nuthin’?).
So she ditched the small town and studied something in the nearest city with a uni.
(In fact I did that too, didn’t we all? we were such lemmings!).
Of course moreover all the young want to leave their small towns – we all know it.
(And I’m not saying that’s bad per se).
She graduated with a quasi-profession credential and got an office job….
(She wanted to be an architect but didn’t have the grades – I can sympathize I wanted to be a physicist! What a pity that I couldn’t get out bed to see dear Einstein’s Equations)
Ironically she got an office job in a small town – one not so unlike her hometown.
(But aren’t small towns all roughly the same anyway?)
She had to return to this state of affairs – there were no big city jobs for her – for there was a recession in the early nineties.
It was the only office job she could get in her ‘line of Uni’,
(Beggers can’t be choosers just starting out).
So she stayed and started her career off – a good temp outcome it seemed.
She grinded…she grinded…and it was so long ago now that she may have even used a typewriter (?)
A couple years passed.
Her early ‘apprenticeship’ was duly achieved.
But she was still very young and anxious not to waste her youth (the young run on instinct).
Her feet were getting decidedly ‘itchy’ – as young peoples feet do when stuck in a boring place.
She was shy, but at heart adventurous – especially when blind drunk.
(We all drunk a lot back then, and we who lack confidence need it as social medicine. Entire Nations are like this).
But to go backwards a little.
At this first career-job she met a guy,
Who of course fell in love with her.
(Some people are of course all too easy to fall in love with – she was like that).
He wanted to settle down young marry, have kids and front lawn and a Labrador.
But she wanted to travel the world and party, see the sights, have total freedom.
(And Ultra-independence was like gold to her).
So she said goodbye to him and the future labrador and hello to a plane, a flying tin can.
She soon travelled around the world.
To England, most of Europe, and even to Africa and some other unnamed wild places too.
While on the road she stayed in many a dingy backpackers.
(As you do and are happy to do with at that age – in fact I did it for a long time).
For her home base she stayed in the typical antipodean way – ‘ten person flats’ with only two or three rooms.
After the first bout of travel she pulled beers in England and mixed a few temp office gigs too.
She partied hard – this goes without saying:
(On that looking back – were not the nineties simply an extension of the sixties and seventies?)
She was a westerner in the late 20th century and young.
The parties and dopamine and hormone based experiences rolled on.
(Don’t make me spell them out either, I couldn’t tell you details as I wasn’t with her).
When she was finally Thirty she had to give up that five years of fun and duly went home –
(So back in the tin can it was).
The ‘flat land of red dirt’ some thirty flight-hours away was calling.
She returned to a big dirty city for the rest of her career and is still there some twenty five years later.
(I dare say she will probably stay for the rest of her life).
She could never settle down – and she didn’t really want to.
She was used to and programmed for short relationships and fun times with the men with rizz aplenty.
The ‘trap of excitement’ you might say.
As she aged and all around her settled down – she steadfastly resisted.
Many whisperers did appear from ‘various gossipers’,
They said ‘she couldn’t love’, and of course much worse.
This was not the case that she ‘could not love’- the truth was that she actually loved too hard.
(Well once in a blue moon that is when the right biological, time-a-logical, socio-intellectual bloke arrived.)
Unfortunately, on ‘matters of the heart’ – she had a curse.
And when she did feel love or closeness, the electronics in her body went haywire.
(Her nervous system would pull rank on her)
Those pangs of anxiety simply wouldn’t let her settle down with one guy, once and for all.
Tragically the more she felt loving feelings the further she was made to run.
(Perversely this meant she could only essentially marry the ‘amorphous male blobosphere’).
So she kicked to the kerb many guys she really liked, and a couple or at least one of these she loved.
Not becasue she wanted to.
She had to.
(Her internal physiological Sergeant Major had pulled rank).
The electronics inside were stronger than diamond chains around her feet,
And it would take a series of perfectly planned and executed wars to break those chains,
To then allow the feelings of closeness not to trigger electrical short circuits within.
(I hope that day comes)
And so her career rolled on, money was made, rent was paid.
But as the years rolled,
Her social life was increasingly a ever slightly degrading repeat and rehash of her youth in England/Europe.
(You see with addiction, the hit gets less high each time).
Perhaps now described best as quasi-controlled-debauteurous weekends,
Mixed with typical middle class dinner parties, drunk racing events, cafe coffees and brunches.
As the grey hairs grew she new she was having the same year, done many times over.
(The Sergeant Major was not yet in retirement and was still ‘blasting ears’)
She knew she wasn’t happy (I know as she even let slip one day – but weren’t we city-o-office-o’s all that way?).
At heart she always wanted to be an entrepreneur – set her own hours – do her own thing.
But she got trapped as a salary-woman in a mega city does.
(After all – is not the invention of the ‘big city’ the oldest trap on humankind there is?)
Late in life she tried to become an entrepreneur –
I’m not sure if that worked.
After all, entrepreneurs are entrepreneurs while young.
They find a way – becasue it is who they are.
I guess I was lucky that she couldn’t handle long term closeness,
Becasue we would have never met at that drunken bar when she was pushing forty.
(When we kissed, didn’t come home with me and then handed me her business card pre taxi home)
Of course I may be deluding myself.
I could easily say using joes-schmo logic ‘that was a ruinous night and the start of a war’.
But now old I know that sometimes you meet who you need to meet at the time.
(And it will disrupt and shift your entire life).
And it might be someone who allows the needed dismantling of your entire life to occur.
That would not have happened otherwise.
And I guess that’s why I met her.
(I had a not just a destiny-date with a mirror – but a date to be thrown through it to a parallel-life)
But with the peace-and-fun-becoming-full-blown-war (that was us) being now long over,
With the mustard gas that was stinging my (our?) eyes long gone –
I (we?) can now see that clearly.
And isn’t it interesting that there is one part inside myself that has never changed.
Perhaps that is a all-knowing holographic part of her inside my chest.
I don’t know if that’s a healthy assessment – but I don’t really care.
It is simply an immovable object inside.
It is what Olympus Mons is to the surface of Mars.
But the question is (and has been over the rolling years) what to do about it?
Does the famous climbers Q & A adage hold for me? –
“Why did you climb that mountain? – becasue it’s there”.
And so I sometimes look at Olypus Mons, from far away Earth.
And I wonder if I too would/should Travel there.
To see her in true strikingly perfectly imperfect unique beauty.
After all – I believe that today she is still ‘There’.
Yet currently at star-date 2026.4958 I am still ‘Here’.
Perhaps I am like an asteroid that collided on Olympus Mons with a ‘glancing blow’,
And so natural physical law demanded I skip away into the black skies never to return.
Yet information cannot ever be scrubbed.
Yet the scars of the collision remain within the asteroid’s hulk, within me,
As so do more than a few small fragments of her (my ‘Olympus Mons’).
So I guess if I never see her rugged striking heights and cosmically unique grandeur again,
I can always say she never one hundred percent left anyway.
I carry literally a few pieces of her with me through space and time.
And will her short-circuiting electronics (her Sgt. Major Syndrome) ever be fixed before she is gone?
Perhaps when it is, this will be the spark that starts the spaceship’s thrusters,
And while I am thinking I will simply be whisked away to see her.
Physics itself will be in ‘dictatorial charge’ of the matter.
(it will issue an edict that will happen).
Yes – let’s end it there and agree to that seemingly quasi-copout shall we?
(Why do the most frank assessments also seem so glib and weak sounding or is it just me?).
It is time to wrap it up.
After all this prose poem has become an odyssey in its own right,
(Or is it the modern-version unsent letter?).
And perhaps with a mind of its own, and definitely a nervous system.
So there is now only one more line that I have to say,
And whatever the future holds it will remain true for everlasting eternity.
And that last line is this:
She was she, I was me, and we both still are…..
(And at least if nothing else – I still have that).
BONUS MATERIAL: WHAT DOES THE WORDPRESS AI BOT THINK OF THIS WRITING?
By by Anton Martin Smith Antonmartinsmithwrites@gmail.com or martinantonsmith@gmail.com
If Australia gets too much worse
I predict around the year 2032 it'll change it's name
from Australia to "Smellstraaya"
The new capital?:"Schmelbourne"
The new PM?: "Iyamba B. Smelly' (From Broken Hill)
The New Winter Sport "Smelly Rules"
The New Summer Sport? Cricket (The Gentelman's Game will not change)
TL:DR #Australia stop convicting yerselves...
OR IT WILL BE A BIG SMELLY MESS...
Apart From The Next ASHE'S Series (Go England)
#Austrlaia Now Please Be A Good Fellow And Unconvict yourselves!
Just Think Of The Tee Shirt When You Do:
I Stopped Australia From Stinking.....
.....And All I Got Was This Lousy Tee Shirt.
Bonus Material What does the new WordPress AI Podcast Bot think of this Poem? Listen below!
by Anton Martin Smith antonmartinsmith@gmail.com or martinantonsmith@gmail.com
‘Writers Block’ Is very handy. For Example: When you meet someone who doesn’t read? Out Comes The Block. You asked the said non-reader to close their eyes. Then…. !Whack! Rough justice employed.
Another example: You are at a poetry reading. You come across the “toolbox poet”. They’ve had an easy life. Their parents are (of course) still together, upper middle class types. Their progeny is this ‘toolbox poet’. It is they that is trifecta-masacre-ing you’re brain, eyes, and ears, Has never known poverty or genuine struggle. Is quite possibly what the Americans refer to as a ‘Trust-Fund Baby’.
Alas ‘Toolbox Poets’ – They have nothing to say, Yet yield Hiroshima like damage on new poetic pastures, usually in urban locales. They use ‘form’ like a mega-sledgehammer. They use rhyme far too much and for no good reason. Their empty platitudes flow like the cheap tract-nouveau-riche-wine, Delivered to their and their parents friends pristine well swept doorsteps, Like the badge of copy-cat-ism-style of dishonor it surely is.
The ‘Toolbox Poet’ not knowing what truth is – uses hearty dollops of ‘false mystery’. ‘False mystery’ is the poetic version of verbal sophistry – Basically they use empty-misjoint-imagery spoken with faux gravitas, To swindle audiences who have not yet purchased ‘intellectual imposter glasses’.
So where was I?
Yes let me backtrack to ‘Writer’s Block’ (the non-metaphoric physically real kind). ‘Writers block’ comes in handy with run-ins with the ‘Toolbox Poet’ set. And as my prescriptive advice, Simply throw said block from the very ‘back of the back’ of said room, Ideally throw from behind a billowy curtain or from an appropriate alcove. Aim for the trajectory to have a nicely curved parabola, but not too curved – less it miss its mark – i.e. the Toolbox Poets ‘schnoz’. Too flat a trajectory – and you risk hitting the audience. Watch this glorious ‘Writers Block’ fly with feeling-imbued-slow-ity through the air, Until it completely nulify’s the ‘toolbox poet’ in mid-bad-stanza, Mid-bad-imagery-rhyme & mid-flowery-false-platitude. And Congrats! You hit with a bullseye’d ‘schnoz splashdown’ (NB: in the event that you missed? – Abort mission & stay behind said curtain or alcove & whistle quietly).
And for when the audience turns around post successful ‘Toolbox Poet’ assassination & wonders what has happened? Well you just stand there sans curtain, whistle quietly & hold your hands behind your back, Contemplating your next ‘writers block attack’. Yes my friends of good and great writing – Contrary to popular sentiment – As I have outlined in detail above, ‘Writer’s Block’ comes in very handy. In this the stolen-valor-filled-faux-literary-world. Yes the valiant soldier wielding the ‘Writer’s Block’ is a poet-not-just-a-poet, But is also a well battle scarred poverty knowing poet-vigilante, Who’s parents duly hated each others guts and then in five to ten got truthfully divorced. And in so doing accidently created a glorious poet-vigilante, Willing to swiftly and parabolically destroy the high-crimes-of-poetic-dastardry – Wherever the ‘Toolbox Poet’ plies this evil solipsistic trade, Or doth present their oversized probably-open-mic’d-big-target-wearing-schnoz.
Hazaar to the Poet-Vigilante & his mighty non-aerodynamic ‘Writer’s Block’. Hopefully he is not deluded, Hopefully he is not living in a fantasy world of his own choice, Hopefully he is not merely ‘projecting’ some twisted internal trauma based misery. Hopefully he has met his ‘Jungian shadow’ and now gets on not just like a ‘house on fire’, But as the houses warm embers the day after the house was on fire. Oh yes – I know what you’re thinking. It would be a shame if this ‘poet vigilante’ I speak of was in fact ‘dead wrong’ – For all this would be a waste of time and a total ‘all encompassing lie’. It would be an exercise in acute effrontery (which is definitely not cute). But surely not – surely he is not then a ‘Poet Terrorist’. Surely not dear highly-intelligent-literary-loving and truth loving avid reader! After all – we’ve all seen the multitudes of ‘Toolbox Poets’ that abound – The ones that litter the urban poet-scapes like maimed-and-hobbling-town-square-pigeons? I ask of you dear discerning reader of near angelic virtue – have we not seen them everywhere? Of course we have….Of course we have…..Of course we have. I’d stake my very reputation on it. And let me give you the tip – That’s worth more than a few cases of ‘Smith’s Luxurious Highly-Blunted Flying Writer’s Blocks’.
by Anton Martin Smith Antonmartinsmithwrites@gmail.com or Martinantonsmith@gmail.com (I use this one most)
Yes we came up from the gutters…and the wrong side of the Tracks – Lemmy Kilmister
I’ve been on rooves clearing out leaves from gutters. This is one of the tasks I do to make some money in my day job. I’ve done 2 rooves in 2 days. Wealthy folk with big houses where if your ladder falls your in for a trip to the ER. this week I got ‘lucky’ – I got 6 out of 7 days booked with jobs. This little business keeps me mentally healthy, fit and allows me to do fun things like work on this creative site. Yes it is the ‘day job’ although since I’m self employed it’s a bit more than that. In theory it could ‘take off’.
But of course – theoretically I’d rather have my writing take off. If I was really smart I’d ramp up my advertising and employ some sucker to do all the work and I would write all day and try to get things published. That would be pretty wild to do that. I wonder if it would be easier than it seems.
Sometimes I think about the ability to make money. I think growing up poor gives you some good and bad programming. On the good side you can learn to live frugally – because you had to growing up. I think that ability stays with you for life. in business that’s a ‘cost side benefit’. But on the negative side – I think growing up poor makes you think that having a lot of money is some kind of ‘mystical thing that’s not for us because we are poor’. In business that would perhaps be called ‘revenue atrophy problem’.
You see in business you got to go out and get sales, then you get money. The poor programming doesn’t see this reality. In my business I have to go out and make sales – so I have broken that old cycle BUT I don’t think I have broken it enough YET. You see I don’t really push sales – I tend to ‘go after’ them with the pressure of a low bank balance. If I was truly over my childhood no money upbringing of thinking ‘money was a mystical thing we don’t see’ I’d push myself to make more sales.
Oh well I have time to improve in this life on many things & this is one of them. The good thing is when I make a sale I am truly helping someone, clean their driveway or take leaves from the gutters, mow lawns, fix a fence etc. This is good as I don’t need to feel I’m a ‘corporate sell out’ who is (for example) selling overpriced insurance to people that don’t need it etc.
In other news we are heading into winter here in South Island NZ. It gets freeezing here – which is great for reading and writing so YAY WINTER.
On the writing front I am editing my new novella which I am worried is too boring – I’m wondering if the main character needs to do something wild. But I’m also thinking I’ve never done a story where nothing much happens, so perhaps this could be a test case. It does have a lot of underlying existential philosophy in it, so I’m hoping this will be the thing that makes people like it. It’s about a guy that lives in the higher plain of the ‘holographic world’ and is having one of his regular jaunts as a physical being on a planet as a joe schmoe. In this case the joe schmoe is a High School principal who is a functional alcoholic that travels to the neighboring town to get drunk at the pubs. This happens a lot I think with the ‘teacher’ set.
For the record I don’t like teachers much (and at root it’s because they live in an cloistered Marxist intellectual fishbowl) but let’s not get into it NB(people always pretend teachers are ‘great’ yet everyone agrees the good teachers they had were few and far between). And yes there are always that 10-20% V. Good to Great Teachers – I won’t be so mean spirited to deny that truth. The good ones must suffer their colleagues with grace no doubt.
Anyway these were just some quick thoughts.
happy creativity everyone and thanks for reading and liking my stuff – especially the guys who do it regularly – I really appreciate it!
Now it’s time for me to have a beer (I have 2 a night and it’s a fantastic tonic).
‘May all your gutters be clean’.
We who grew up poor may have (As Lemmy said) ‘come up from the gutters…’ but I will add this to that line
…that doesn’t mean we can’t bloom be be a giant sunflower that somehow crawled out of a deep crack in the concrete after having finally seen the light of the eternal supernova
p.s. My DM’s are open (email me an idea or comment)
Anton Martin Smith Writer 