Strange Days #1 - Strange Days are here... | Page 14

Charlie Bailey
The View From The Pavement

Take off that face, put it aside for another day.

The view from the pavement of Zaragoza bus station and sleep
deprivation are doing strange things to my brain. It’s not just
that the landscape I can glimpse over the concrete parapet
looks like the moon - a black and white photo would confirm
this. The constant flicker of on-off of sleep and the vividness
of the dreams certainly doesn’t help. My eyes are itchy from
contact lenses and I keep rubbing them: from necessity and a
new-formed habit that stops them sliding quietly shut without my permission.
A giant of a man leaning in the shadow of the bus stop is casting Michelin Man silhouettes that only add to the impression
of moon landings and vast lunar plains: a rotund pioneer in a
Neil Armstrong spacesuit made flesh. His bulk unevenly distributed, he bulges in the bleached-out backlighting. I watch
him obsessively for a while before he turns and waddles off,
sadly unaided by zero gravity.

Feel the features,
Worn smooth by a lifetime in one night
A face for last night,
A face for smiling, laughing, singing, crying.
A face for wild abandon against the world
beyond those walls.
Eyes less bright than they seemed just hours ago,
when they flashed in half-lit glances.
A forehead lined by care (or dirt),
Stretched too thin,
It seems as paper.
Take off that face; put it aside for another day.

Start at the temples,
The snatches of sleep, when they catch me unawares, are trau- Still throbbing to the mix of sun,
matic even when they bring nothing but ple