Paul J Penton – Songwriter

Fragments and thoughts May 21

Legacy

Thinking about my legacy
and leaving a mark on history
what is going to be left of ‘me’?
The things I write?
The things I think?
And if nobody’s listening
what’s the point in anything
The purpose of life
is to touch a heart
the purpose of life is to love
how far short am I falling?

Chapel street

The refurbished Sony shop
you walk in and it just smells ‘new’
the combined odour of manufacturing
of carpets,
of M.D.F.
of cabinets
of televisions
everything is so new
just down the road
a Greek looking grandmother
sitting right outside that store
the one I can’t identify
when I’m sitting eating breakfast
she’s wearing a scarf on her head
and a long sleeved dress
with stripes in muted blue and green
looks like she’s been sitting there a life time
what’s she waiting for?

That mystery store I realise
not only sells clothes
it has a range of action figure and figurines
from Batman to Robocop

At the Coles carpark
[why don't I also refer to it as Safeway
they share equally?]
A skinny man with a pink cap
is calling out for Jonathon
is this a lost child,
or an imaginary friend?

Printing

I have only nine print outs for a class of 14
and In my mind I’m making justifications
as to why
I don’t have enough copies
I could say it’s about the expense
or the environment
but the truth is it went slightly wrong
I should have had more
I was doing my best
trying to print out on both sides
but the machine made a mangle
and some only got half
of the lousy print out
so I have to make more
waste more paper
and I’m not even sure
if anybody’s going to read it
In the class it seems quite normal
to share a copy one between two
but I didn’t know that
before today
so why did I get into such an inner dialogue?
Explaining and justifying
why I had only bought
nine copies.

Train trip

Thin spiky haired blonde
looking an like ex addict
talks about her father to another chap on the train
it’s out there for all to hear
no boundaries.
He appears to be listening
but I’m suspecting he just wants sex
while she is f’ing that and f’ing this
about her situation
she says that so and so is really keen on XYZ.
And there seems to be some incident
regarding a surfboard.
Am I being too judgmental by assuming
her intelligence level is not university?
Am I being terrible to have such thoughts occur to me
and do other people judge me
by the way I speak and the way I act
how terrible!

Terminus

Inside Flinders
there are arrows and missiles
tracking platforms
they cross paths
and move in similar directions
all getting on with the business of their destinations
they form a criss-cross lattice
and their lives are creepers that embellish
Like a hundred international flights
criss-crossing Europe
everybody is on their way somewhere
to something
to homes and families
to imaginings
to hopes and dreamings
everybody is crissing and crossing

TRAFFIC LIGHTS

No longer are we faced with a bulb and a lens
nowadays it’s light emitting diodes
look really close
and you’ll realise
this is no longer a light bulb
but a series of tiny spikes
in the form of a circle
the mind fills in the spaces
I stare at them
there must be more than fifty
aligned neatly.
First impression
up close
is the shape of a cross
and each diode
has a luminescence of its own
it becomes fuzzy and merges
with its neighbour
giving the impression
of a whole
a circle unbroken.
They’re brighter
than the globe driven models
and more dependable
they don’t need changing remotely as often
they’re secret silent servants
obeying the commands of switching mechanisms
running on their own little programs
controlled  at traffic central
by hawk like eyes