The Last Day Of September Poem by Padraig O'Connor

Buses and cars, and shooting stars outside:
Daylight, in a room of burnt paper and smoke…
With electric veins and wind dancing through the trees,
Where are we going; you and me; anyone, please?
If you can see…
Come on, let's take a walk
Down a September Street.

Look out of your own eyes
Leave it there, the freedom; let it fly free
Don't hold on to that energy of anxiety
In those restless electric veins.
Is that something to hold on to really?
Leave it there, let it fall down like rain.
There is magic outside: come see…

Colours much fuller than ever in summer;
Today I saw for miles along a city street.
The smiles were few and far between, walkers streaming by,
But a boy's gotta dream, and I…

Out there, where the evening sunset sits like a pin upon the water;
Stays on the top for a while,
Maybe forever in one of your smiles…
Have a try, while I while away the days, Marie Therese.
The streets stretch on like lights extending long and fast.
I float around in my bottle on the inside of the glass;
Walking on the path and on the grass;
Rustling leaves blow past my feet as I pass.

Is that a world all stretched and twisted?
The place which occupies my, my, oh my imagination
And I'm there for a while, while I dial that number:
About a mile away,
To find out where you are today,
With my senses opened up to the real world of people talking.
Anyway…
The smell of sick from an old man out on the street
Is a sad smell to see, so I keep walking.

In September, you remember how you said the wind in the leaves
Is not the same sound as the summer blowing through the trees,
Which is softer…
As I kick these dry ones off the ground,
I hear the sounds of rustling, crackling beneath my feet.
Blowing in my ears still, is the pounding breeze.
September throws down her leaves.

Love you, need you, Marie,
Would you like to know me?
To love me, need me, Therese, your name sings to me.
Would you like to show these things to me?
I would like to have the joy it brings
To know you well in the last rays of September sun,
To share all this with someone,
Before it slips away…
On the swings, kids take turns, reeling around a garden while it's
still bright,
As the evening burns out to a weak candlelight.

Outside, there are outcasts of your own design, from which you turn
away your sight: passers by,
And destinations written in the journey's eyes, they alight in your mind:
But let them fly…
Other places, where you wish to be
Forget them, some man walking down a street now is free.

Love you, need you, but not today.
Not to be today, but maybe one day, Marie Therese…
For now, I'll put that thought away;
I'll let those leaves blow away.

Listen to the bird sounds echo off the walls of the long-shadowed alleyway,
Which reaches to another sunny autumn estate lane,
Winding down through the sky, gliding above the street-
Sweet September they sing effortlessly.

Eyes that look out at empty rooms say
You should see what I see in front of me today!
Inside they smoke burnt butts of paper rolled over tobacco, sparkling,
Cloud-circling the mind with a restless fever revelling,
But not on cloud nine, that's outside resting there…9 o'clock.
Laughing at images in the air, as the hands turn slowly on the clock;
Thoughts that get stuck in their hair; wedged in their locks,
Thoughts which won't leave them alone;
A little scared, please take my hand and help me to get back home
Come down the stairs
People say he's okay, but I don't smile:
Right now I feel like a little child.

Inside the smoke still curls miraculously around the thin paper,
While slender yellow fingers lift papers to wet lips for sealing.
Dissipating in little streams, curling towards the smoke-filled ceiling;
The wisps rising with a poetic feeling.
But some of them are too busy staring at their own mind's television caper
To ever see that beauty revealing.
But it's okay: out here, it's all freewheeling;
Slowly unfolding like a flower opening… and closing, with a flowing feeling.

Early autumn trees are on the ground, soundly rooted down: forest splendour.
This strange season darkly creeps up the garden wall, shadows lengthening,
But I can see light, gentle through the trees, in the shortening evening,
And I want to see again, everything I've seen in this instant; this
instant shadily leaving.
I get carried away;
I get carried away on the wind today.

Eyes that light up an empty room,
Upstairs in the light bloom.
You will go somewhere tomorrow in the afternoon,
But tonight you'll sleep like a light-
Inside the balloon of love is alright.
September is pulling in all its foliage, back to the earth, to the
earth retreating…
Clover creeps along the ground,
Ivy hugs the walls tightly.
Not too many more evenings like this one, sings the lark-
The last day of September,
Cars look for a place to park
And now it's dark.

'31/09/2001, continued 2004,2005'