Badges

Someone said something recently in an instant message about badges being a good conversation starter. I was resting because my back hurt after I’d lifted something stupid. A little while back I had a fall. I put my badge on and stuffed a reusable cotton tote bag in my back pocket. I decide to pop to the local shop to buy a four pack.
I exit the rusting metal escape stair at the rear of my first floor apartment. A guy stands fanning a barbeque adjacent the boundary wall. There’s a farm’s worth of meat lined up on the hot steel grille, already turning brown. I wonder how much carbon all that accounts for. Dub music is playing out so loud you’d hear it three streets away. As I descend, I remember there’s no last step.
I can’t decide which beer to buy so the shop owner comes over to help. We’ve run out of that one but if you want flavoured beer try this. I buy flavoured beer, maybe because I feel my life has lost flavour. Nice T-shirt I say to the little girl. On it is an image of a unicorn surrounded by colourful psychedelic rings. I assume the girl is the shop owner’s daughter. You hear what he said, the man says. The girl shrinks but manages a smile. I give the man £12 to get a fiver back but he seems confused. I explain it to him.
I leave the shop and cross the road, staring accusingly through the windows of passing cars. A car alarm goes off behind me, the same one that’s been bothering me each day since I moved in. I peer over my shoulder and realise it’s the shop owner’s. Sonofabitch, I mutter.
A couple look down at my badge as I pass them. I see a mouth move but no words. I walk back past litter lining the alleyway, knowing I’ll pick it up tomorrow. The recycling bins are overflowing with beer cans, only a handful mine. My neighbour sits rigid against the ground floor rear extension wall, leering grin on his face like Al Capone, clearly heavily intoxicated. I think about the garden again, all hardscape concrete. If there was a fire, I thought, it’d be quite well protected.
My life’s pretty quiet now. When I can get out of bed, I’m turning over the same goddamn stuff in my head. Everything I see, everything I hear, touch, smell. It’s exhausting. Every time I get up I start to feel rough. I thought it had gone away. I’ve been taking some medication but that’s stopped. My friend died and all I seem to think about is myself. They say we’ve a good head on us, trying to save the world. But my head’s a mess, and then I often reckon it might all be for pretty much selfish ends anyway.
I get angry a lot these days. I think it’s the sense I have of a dwindling mental faculty and inability to understand. That or an incapacity to control. I take another swig of my drink. Beer probably doesn’t help. But then it calms me down and helps me forget at least for a while. Then there’s the writing, helps that within reason. A sort of tarot card of a naked Japanese man and lady, usually propped at an angle against the digital radio, has fallen over and I hadn’t noticed to reposition it. Unusual. I hear someone outside my window say something along the lines most things are really blurred and I’m glad for this moment at least my mind isn’t sent whirring. I stare into the laptop reflection or somewhere about it and it helps me centre. It’s running on battery. I start to feel a little drunk and let the thought go.
Sometimes I get so tense and my body seems to just lock up. But if I don’t keep fighting, I’ll lose it. Do I deserve to do this to myself, I think. I have to keep feeling that I’m processing it all, or I’ll flip. Sometimes I think, if I don’t think about it, nothing’s any different, and I can save myself all the stress.
I stay up late in the summer, something to do with my diurnal clock. What badges do we all wear, I wonder. My mind appears to slow down again. I hear a sound knocking against the wall. There’s a racket upstairs, someone stomping about. A house alarm goes off in the distance. I take in another breath.

Bus Driver Vacancies

Bus driver vacancies
Call this number now
We reguarly have new opportunities
When our doors open
To welcome new recruits
When the old ones have faded
Lost their pizzaz
Their highs exhausted
Drifted away from
Former allegiances
People come and gone along
The way
Their stories told
Been and gone
Memories all that’s left
In their jaded eyes
All alone to count
The days
Before they became
A bus driver
Their whole life
Ahead of them.