The Unending Man
1.
It was a pretty miserable place. That's why I left.
Three months later my mother rang me.
She said, "A boarder has hung himself inside your wardrobe.
I ended up finding his body, by the smell of gas."
When she slid open the door, his leg shot out -
And his shoe flew off across the room.
When she parted the clothes, she saw his face.
There was black blood down his front.
He had been dead for twelve days before he was found.
She touched his purple forehead to make the connection,
Had she actually felt something this time?
They ooze and weep. They decompose.
The smell gets into everything; the wall paint, the carpet,
the curtains, bedspread. It clings to the hair in your nostrils,
So that you smell it, as you go to sleep.
She said, "he took away my future when he did it,
Because now no-one will ever stay in that room,"
And now he has done it, he will always be doing it.
Even after the body has been taken to the mortuary.
2.
When the police finally got there, they were not interrupted.
There were eight of them sent, all just standing around
Alongside the forensics, who would turn eternity upside-down.
I still sensed him there like a dream.
Who wants to stay in a room where a man has killed himself?
Who wants to sleep next to a wardrobe where his body hung
Black and bloated for twelve days, crouched behind the clothes?
Like a dream that would never end.
My mother snapped, "...If he was going to do it, then he
should've done it in the park, or out on the football oval."
She was angry, since she was left, to clean up the mess.
When the police opened the door, his foot exploded -
You know how they swell to over three times their size.
The police said that you can never get rid of the smell.
They said that one summer, maybe five years from now,
It might me a humid day and that smell, would return.
3.
For twelve days, while he swelled, my mother went about her business.
At night, when she was in the house washing dishes, he was out there.
For twelve days, while she hung her washing out on the line, he was
Several feet from the house, inside the wardrobe, of the granny flat.
For twelve days, he was oozing and weeping and turning black.
Unfound death is very quiet and it was already a very lonely place.
My wardrobe has been used as an escape route.
A door has been opened and limbo repeats itself.
The wood and the plaster have not released him.
It takes a low crouch, to get a six foot man, inside a wardrobe, as small as mine.
And it takes a lot of push and tug, to break him out.
It belongs to his body fluids and his stench, that has seeped in, behind the mirror.
So who can we blame? Who can we blame for one man's pain?
4.
It must have taken alot for society, to finally bring him down and to kill his hope.
He must have made an amazing decision, to add his name, to the long list of infinity.
He was a baby once. He was a boy and a teenager. He was a husband and a father.
He had two boys and a new girlfriend in Singapore.
He killed himself, in Macquarie Fields, because he couldn't afford the airfare.
It must have been a long and drawn out painful process.
She was waiting at the airport terminal. She was waiting for his next letter.
His name was Allen. It was a messy divorce. Aside from that, he had no face.
5.
How can we just go on day to day, ignoring the sorrow of this world?
And all the men like Allen, who are driven into sorrow and die, inside their clothes.
How can we harden our hearts, to those who won't come to any good?
How can we go on, knowing that he does not?
How is it that there is such great tragedy, when there need not be?
How did Allen slip through our fingers?
And how will his two boys feel when they know the truth?
How can our lives ever be the same? How did we take his joy away?
What more might I have given to this world, or to a man like him?
6.
The family law court knows how to hide the truth.
A society knows how to integrate you into itself.
They hit you so hard, that you never returned.
Until the smell of your corpse, will not leave us.
And now I must remain, within my own darkness.
Where I slept and read and washed my hands.
With the dead body, of a man, I never knew.
You knew, that you were found, by my mother
with a blue stocking, around your swollen neck.
Your rent did not give you permission to do it.
You never left a note for your lover, your boys,
Because Allen, now you are no longer a dad.
You are a faceless victim, sucked into a system.
You are human carrion. You left your kids behind.
Your lesson to them, was not to give, but to give in.
What will become of them, since you did not fight on?
You are the loser. But who amongst us is not?
You are eternal, while they mopped up the stench.
7.
I said to my mother, "It is very dark. We are not alone. Are you all right?"
For three days following, the lamps switched on. No-one touched them.
We thought that we saw him, on the stairs, in the shadows and wearing a hat
And really he was just like that, a shade, that had passed through our lives.
I said; "Those lights have stopped flickering, they have all gone out -
Are you all right?" If you are, or if you are not - Remember him,
that he was, a human being. Remember, Allen. Remember those lights ... |
