Holden, Nick and Tom (conversation 6)

Some things are hard to remember:
The Petoskey road runs straight uphill
and Monday mornings find Tom Sawyer miserable.
I don't just fool around,
disappear into the woods,
go into captivity.
The corridor is all lino
with berry bushes and beech saplings
that make me sick, so I can stay home from school.
I didn't even bother to answer him
I pack in the buckets
He detects colicky symptoms.
He hangs it up on a hanger
outside the cottage by the lake
One of his upper teeth is loose
He is always stroking his stomache
around the house -
It hurts.

Holden, Nick and Tom (conversation 5)

We always have the same meal on Saturday nights -
On one Fourth of July
about half past ten
you should've seen the steaks.
The guests came on horses, jumped down into the road
with their parents -
It was nice.
Nine of them
far away from the open window and seductive outside.
I didn't have a date or anything, so I and this friend
looked out from the back seat to watch
the wife and other unnecessaries.
We watch Ackley in his room, sqeezing his pimples,
his pants look mighty -
the only palace in the town (and the most hospitable!)
He is back behind the shower curtains
before I seen a thing.
The new notable from a distance.

Holden, Nick and Tom (conversation 4)

I didn't have anything special to do,
Dick Boulton came from the Indian camp,
The sun rose upon a tranquil world.
I have this nervous habit -
it flops over his shoulders
with scriptural quotations.
You remember I said before
of the lake shore
where Tom girded up his loins -
he looks good when he finishes fixing himself up.
And if nothing were done about it
part of the Sermon on the Mount
would see his picture in the Year Book.
Into the lake to make a new boom
for his mind is traversing
frequently.
Nick's father always
finds his way through the fog.

Holden, Nick and Tom (conversation 3)

I'm the most terrific liar you ever saw in your life!
At the lake shore there is another rowboat drawn up
Tom presents himself before Aunt Polly
I live in the Ossenburger Memorial
George is sitting in the stern of the camp rowboat
in the balmy summer air, the restful quiet
where family is buried for about five bucks.
Quite a way ahead of us
she is asleep
the locomotive.
Another boat moves farther ahead in the mist,
her power again in this intrepid way.
We should always pray to God - talk to him and all -
not just when we're sick.
It's all done by him -
What a swell guy he is
for pulling the boat way up the beach.
Aunt Polly places small trust in such evidence.

Holden, Nick and Tom (conversation 2)

They each have their own room and all -
Nick is undressing in the tent
Saturday morning has come
I mean he is all stooped over
because undressing reminds him of the night before.
There is cheer in his face
some other guys and I
tell him that if any emergency comes up
he should go beyond the village
and buy a blanket.
He should take the oars of the boat in the dark
and arrive on the side-walk with a bucket of white-wash.
It gets on your nerves sometimes -
to hear the oars
to see thirty yards of broad fence nine feet high!
We guess he was probably born
quietly between the blankets in the dark.
He repeated the operation the night before.

Holden, Nick and Tom (conversation 1)

If you really want to hear about it
I don't want to hear it
No answer.
If I told anything
about the water rising
about the room
around last Christmas just before
the bay, listen again -
how it could have stretched on for
two hundred miles like
his shoulders, broad.
If I get hold of you, I'll
let anybody look.
Did anybody tell them
to breath to punctuate the punches with?
You've probably seen the ads anyway.
Are they good ones?
Go open the door and see.

8 AM and the government finally awakes to the worries of working people: telephones ringing unanswered, wallabies roaming Kent, cosmic rays leading to cloud formation, gardens lacking box hedges and the idea of voting only when sober. This calls for radical change. We must enlist British spies a cross between Bond and Hood to partake in textual vandalism, to crowd source and data mash, to identify unknown people on photo-sharing websites. Steinberg believes the revolution is in its infancy but we'll create potholes, broken street lights, rubbish and graffiti then plead for quick fixes @ FixMyStreet.com We've arrived at the dead end of bureaucracy we'll produce another sick comedy starring redneck hockey loving mothers who canoe across the arctic (only to get trapped in ice). Again. Let's take our covered wagons and head West to ignore policies of nasty hysteria, scour the country for libertarian babes keeping armoured vests close to our chests. The PM wants a second chance to give us lessons in happiness to shrug off set-backs and banish pessimistic thoughts. Immunise us all, us all against in depth analysis, size-optimisation and Russian jets. Today art means a few old fish and a restaurant dish of detritus and size-optimisation means putting fewer Pringles in a can. Russia's been negotiating with an impostor but we've been taught how to act positively in seemingly negative situations. The time has come to hand the free world over to strangers, the time has come to create pigs with humanised hearts, the time has come for Republicans to favour women. A philosophical revolution is underway as we anticipate the Nietzschen Ubermensch but all Superman costumes are missing - we're now lost - the doppelgangers continue to leak sensitive info in return for financial benefit and Parisians are soon to be horrified when Paris becomes London's double. The world is a dosh pit with a 50p bonus. We all want cult status like Jackie O and Warhol, we all want to source out US bribes, we all want to spawn new cities then another and another avoid signing off with P.S. It's vulgar! It's too late - forget law forget journalism - scientists have isolated the love rat gene divorce lawyers and female columnists are out of work, however the door will remain open not only for immigration but for slaves to the free market for farmers sowing the seeds of later unhappiness - teach us about happiness! We'll get through a tremendous number of women look back, become o so nostalgic and list all of our bad choices - collisions with beauty queens that echo showers of neutrons where only for a day we see the world differently. Eventually we'll give up the idea that women will only vote for women but we'll never give up our control-freak tendencies even though we yearn a crowd-sourcing democracy. We'll continue West with wagons and Russian jets looking for some cult status for our own doppelgangers, the strangers that lead us there.

Yesterday I was on the Central Line and overheard two tourists wondering why people on the tube never talk to each other.
Today I was back on the Central Line and for the very first time somebody spoke to me.
The man shouted "Either you move down or I move!"