Slowly it Happens

--I was walking down the street when it struck me...

--Bownanow..."Twitching out? You have to save us!"

--What? That's not how it goes. You interrupted me, I was about to say something apt.

--Course that's how it goes, all the boring bastards, you know, they go wild for a crazy geezer.

--What are you Delboy? He says, "To wear Chanel, you have to shave first", like if you're stepping out or something.

--Fuck off am I Delboy. Chanel? That's a crap line, why's it called 'Green Eyed Loco Man' then?

--Who cares? It's a load of rubbish.

--How come you know it so well then?

--It's not hard to listen. But forget the song. I was walking down the street when it struck me: this is it. It's really happening now. I'd had a haircut.

--When was this?

--This was the other week: after the cinema, the fireworks and the cenotaph. I'd been to the barbers. The man had said something daft, "you want your hair to look good when you're lying on the floor" or something, and then like how he used to want a receding hairline...haha, taking the piss! But when he gave me a tissue and I paid and that I walked out and it all just seemed...different.

--It's just really cold mate.

--No I mean, there was this sort of crisp feeling in the air, and the leaves were blowing...

--Yeah: it's cold.

--and it just seemed like anything could happen, do you know what I mean?

--Not really, you big poof.

White Letters, Green House

TLOM Sketches

Epidemic curve

The officer chalked an epidemic curve into the road, "Walk it." he demanded, and we trod the trajectory of ague and misery with unwavering concentration. Unsatisfied he marched to his vehicle, opening a door, and searching his glove compartment he returned with a neon blue plastic box.
"This comes in a hundred different varieties. More colours than light splitting on an oil spill."
And on this confession of unrivalled variegation our driver broke down in tears. The officer strolled over and lifted the driver's chin with the rugged edge of the remote control, the driver grasped it with both his hands and tears ran over his cheeks like fuses burning.
"How did you tell?" he asked sniffling.
"Thoughts of colours," the police officer sounded smugly, "of more colours than light splitting over an oil spill."
And the driver rocked forwards and backwards wailing, cradling the remote, and thought of his many parts, all of which were out of his control.

Swindon, You Have Killed Me

The stool was wedged up in the corner by the bar, my knees brushing the thick legs of a neo-nazi..."BLOOD AND HONOUR" read his neck; puffer-jacket sleeve adorned imperiously with obscure insignia --a white Celtic cross, jagged hook wheels...
"Morrissey tonight" smiles the barmaid. He grunts in reply, and I check my eyes, having lingered too long on this violent countenance. Behind the row of Hopback pumps my red face is caught in a steamed-up mirror; below it --red paper flowers. The Poppy Appeal for the 11th of the 11th...Remembrance Day, the one minute silence, "blood and honour".

Strolling out of The Gluepot like the Railway Village's little prince I check my bike, yes --still slumped against a post-box stalk. What was the connection between Morrissey's performance and the neo-nazi? None, of course, but an addled brain spins indecent fancies, and I was happy to indulge them. Across the road from the rammed, steamed-up Hopback Gluepot, ex-IRA hotspot, shone The Cricketer's Arms, with its rainbow flag in the window. The twin landlady-barmaids looked kindly on my poverty and offered me a cherry alcopop, which I relished, leaning with my poppy against the brown-lacquered filigree walls. Why had I never been here before? Of course, the gay thing. But there I was, welcomed in comfort and ready for Morrissey. It seemed the place had been unfairly maligned --an injustice which chimed with the night's entertainment, just as the presence of the muscular fascist over the road had...

"I've been dreaming of a time when the English are sick to death of Labour, and Tories, and spit upon the name Oliver Cromwell, and renounce this royal line that still salute him, and will salute him forever"

"Why pamper life's complexities when the leather runs smooth on the passenger seat? ...Will nature make a man of me yet?"

Were some of the wistful yodels that came to mind. A voice for all causes? I didn't know, but it sounded alright walking down the street in Swindon's New Town.

"Good evening...possibly" groaned he of the shyness that was criminally vulgar. As hundreds of speccy fops surged forwards and sung along he winced and moped through the song, then collapsed and was hauled off like the cover star on 'The Queen is Dead'.

"Mark E Smith played for an hour in a wheel chair! He wouldn't whimp out after one song"

"Motorhead would never do that --I watched Lemmy play for an hour and twenty minutes with bottles being thrown at him!"

Were among the scornful pronouncements, intended to cast the man out of the rock'n'roll pantheon. Of course, we didn't know he'd been rushed to hospital with breathing problems, and was not at all well.

"Morrissey has left the building" --and, slowly, so did everyone else, some crying, others confused. A friendly drink was thankfully on the horizon and suddenly there seemed to be a load of people from school I didn't remember the names of, and from somewhere amongst them our old friend Smails reared his ugly head and said something that silenced us like tumbleweed but didn't really mean anything:

"From before we were born and when our skin has long since dried and cracked, we'll bow our heads in matrimony in the highest esteem of the belief in all that is painfully obvious. It's happening already. It's easy to get roped into a world of fantasy that is, shall we say, less than humble? It's got less to do with redemption and more to do with jealousy. But just let sleeping corpses lie."

Morrissey, Swindon has killed you and hopes you'll sleep tonight.

Look out for Morrissey's new album, 'Swindon, You Have Killed Me' in shops now!
...
Last night at London's Royal Albert Hall Morrissey lay on the floor feigning collapse before jumping to his feet and declaring: "Thank you Swindon." --is this "self-effacing humour or admission of wankerness"? (Guy)

Torpedophile

The last day at school

"WE could play tennis in the summer sometime"

"yeah, maybe"

But his eyes were with the other boys. I shook his hand hastily and felt the tendons jar, his wincing.

'my best friend'

On the way home a cat got caught in some fairy lights and I went to douse the embers in its bushy tail, but my stale water bottle had run dry. The speccy owner emerged by my shoulder, grey curls, a flat neighbour-- "go home now" she said.

I was shaking a bit then, still unsure about that handshake, about what was going to happen next. SO I walked down by the lake, the nature reserve. Stood there, everything took slightly in the breeze as a coot trilled from out the rushes. Through the willows carried the sound of the other boys, their party in the woods.

The path home was well marked in the gloaming, set apart from the trees by trampled grass.

At home that evening a glass of wine --to celebrate the last day at school. I cling to it, but I can't hold myself at the table.

"you're miles away...are you going to eat those chips?"

And the glass shatters in my hand. What was going to happen next?

"Nothing", I thought, "is going to happen next."

Faggot Lamps

The faggot grotto lie under ancient hedgerow, waiting. A lost soul motif, hakenkreuz, breathing emblem of civilization, cut the blue stone ground into a temple floor, drawing the outsiders in. They knew there had to be something in there, beyond the hedge that twisted out past the abbey and the oaks, something older, closer to us now. A hedgehog scuttles, disturbed, from out the faggot pile. Stick bundles arranged in ritual acknowledgement of the fear of burning, a pagan altar, housed life undisturbed for centuries by the hand of man. Without rotting, the consecrated twigs had lingered in mute recognition of the possibility of living on --as oak, ash and yew. The outsiders traced their fingers over the oblique engravings, swastikas beyond reproach, written into the stone. The lamps they lit released ageless incense and glinted from eyes in the dark, reflected just as sharply as when the living temple was gathered, in ancient times. It was clear then, in the light of the faggot lamps, that the altar in the hedgerow has much to tell us about the unthought it has become necessary to think again.

Flaubertgine

"Why's there grass on my blancmange, what have you done to it?"

"It got spilt in the mixing, I had to scrape it up and hope for the best"

"My fork's got it tangled up now, the grass, I can't get it apart from the grass and the blancmange is in my mouth with bits of grass"

"Why's it green? It was pink in the mix then it went wrong and something happened"

"I've got grass in my teeth and the blancmange is green, I like it --sort of sick-- but it's in my mouth"

"Let's call it Flaubertgine"

"Oh! it's different colours like her eyes, she sparkled and watered and my mouth --the grass-- it's soft and the fork is metal on my grassy teeth"

"Flaubertgine surprise, plain daily and nightly obscene"

"She was about nothing... like this it tastes sick and wanting, just tightly mank"

"Oh God if Ambrosia were this good we Juliens'd be Flash Gordons to Emma's Barbarella"

"I've got bits of grass coming out of my mouth and my teeth are green and it's the sex"

"It's Flaubertgine"



[I hereby apologise to every reader]

TPFL rap

Sweat bees!
Linden trees!
A daguerreotype of mind.
Verdigris.
The green of greece.
The soul steering with its knees!
Trepan our day dreams.
And Spray them on like ambergris!
Outsource the anenome!
Breathe the breeze.
Build the pillory.
Soured!
Stentorian!
Deceit!

Blow Off

Mud Devil

Henry Whinchat was retired, he lived in Kent with his long loving wife, and one day, whilst watering the garden, Henry discovered a giant salamander living under his decking.
Henry shuffled excitedly through the sun stained French windows and into the bungalow, the “Little Gardener’s Guide to the Acacia” clasped to his chest, and his overall’s flapping like a cassock, calling:
“Maria! Maria! There’s a monster under the decking!”
Henry pottered around each room in turn, chanting of his amphibian epiphany, only to find the home wholly empty, as it happened his wife, Maria, was at a private piano tuition, discovering a hirsute, long fingered monster of her own.
“And why not, why not keep it a secret for a while” Breathed Henry to himself, leafing through a wrinkled encyclopaedia, “She’ll only tell others, and they’ll only want to take it away.”
An hour later Maria returned to find her husband’s feet protruding from under the decking. She shrugged her shoulders despairingly and slipped back inside, putting her chordophone fingers to work around the screw top of a half bottle of gin.
When he finally emerged, breathless and excitable with gravel stuccoed to the front of his favourite shirt, and collapsed into the armchair opposite his wife, she said nothing, pouting her lips and stirring her tea with languid, noiseless sweeps of her teaspoon.
“When did you get back dear?” Asked Henry cheerfully.
“What’s wrong with the decking Henry?” Sighed Maria.
“The decking? Why, nothing.”
“Secret DIY? Why are you keeping it from me? Let’s get a professional in if it needs work.”
“Caught red handed.” Laughed Henry, “We don’t need to pay somebody, it just needs some patching. A bit of tinkering.”
Maria looked searchingly at Henry for a moment, and he felt that her gaze passed through him, through the back of the chair, the walls, the yellowed windows, and between the slats of timber decking, to the short sighted monster, rolling its eyes and twitching its gills in the dust.
“It must be the climate.” She said dryly. “Well, at least you’re not building us another herb rack.”
For an hour each day, whilst his wife attended her piano class, Henry would crawl under the half rotten boards of wood and lie not breathing, watching the loose flaps of skin quiver on the giant salamander. He carried with him a claw hammer, and a leather pouch of nails, and kept his wife up to date with detailed progress reports of his pain staking and entirely fictitious restoration.
“Henry’s got the DIY fever,” Maria told her friends mockingly.
His time spent with the giant salamander, Henry reflected, had been the most enjoyable and profoundly limpid of his life, and as such passed too quickly, and soon a single hour a day simply wasn’t enough. He started visiting repeatedly, spending two three hours at a time, he purchased a head lamp, and plastered the bulb with red sweet wrappers so he could even crawl under the decking after dark.
“We should get a professional Henry.” repeated Maria, “It’s taking you an age.”
Henry assured his wife that, to the contrary, the project was to schedule and well within the ambit of his abilities.

One evening, Maria had held a dinner party, and the guests sat out on the decking, amongst the potted mint, sipping their aperitifs and asking politely where the master of the house, Henry, was this evening.
“Oh.” replied Maria calmly, “He’s visiting his brother.”
And tried her upmost to keep her smile steady, and her concentration focused on Mrs. Gannet and her rather depressing pistachio nut based parlour trick.
“Marvellous, absolutely marvellous!” said Maria through tight lips, and began clapping theatrically.
Mrs. Gannet was laughing manically, hugely impressed with herself and seized by a fit of pistachio madness. The other guests were embarrassed, looking hurriedly about themselves, the local iron monger scrutinised his waistcoat, and the Whinchat’s neighbour began toying absently with a tea light. Maria shuffled in her seat, closing her eyes, she declared:
“Anybody care for another drink?”
Henry laying still, red head lamp glaring and his dewlaps resting in the gravel, heard the commotion above. Every guest, except Mrs. Gannet, sprung to their respective feet.
“Oh yes.”
“A fine idea.”
“I am feeling parched!”
Maria made herself busy with the spirits, crushed ice and syrup, she stuck a knife through a half lime and struck a metaphorical line through Mrs. Gannet’s name on her habitual guest list. As she plucked mint from the potted plant she caught sight of the red glow underneath the decking, and squinting, she could make out her husband, lying happily, completely naked, a placid look on his face. He was staring at something out of sight, one hand under his chin, and the other at slow, deliberate work driving nails and screws into the soft earth with soundless swings of a hammer. She sighed a long doleful breath, and flexed her mint scented fingers, “he has gone insane,” she thought, busying herself with the harvest.
“Maria, what are you staring at?” Cried Mrs. Gannet boisterously.
Maria almost screamed, Mrs. Gannet was at her shoulder, gazing down into her husband’s glowing cote.
“Oh. You mustn’t sneak up on me!” She giggled, some what artificially, and guiding her quite forcibly towards the door, she added: “Come on, lets get inside.”

Harold awoke, choking, to a great confusion of smoke and heat. The giant salamander had gone. Harold was overwhelmed, a clamour rose in every direction. He pawed around helplessly in the thick smoke, his head lamp drooping off of his forehead like a loose flap of skin:
“Where are you?” He screamed hoarsely.
Henry had long ago given up wearing clothes under the decking, after his fourth or fifth ruined shirt and trousers he had forgone them completely, and so now, in the chaos, he writhed around in the scolding hot dust clothed in a wet layer of sweat and grey soil. Hot embers were falling through the slats, and water too, in thick jets like shaving foam. There were sirens, and the vertiginous roar of a bonfire. Dazed, and breathless, Harold crawled slowly towards the garden.
The Whinchat’s house fire made the national papers, it was reported that Maria Whinchat (60) held a house party that had ended in disaster, after a guest, Mrs. Gannet (61), had passed out intoxicated on a prime collection of cambric, and her lit cigarette had begun a blaze. But most curious, were the events that unfolded after the timely arrival of the fire fighters, not the miraculous rescue of every inhabitant, nor the speedy and efficient extinguishment of the house fire, but more specifically, what emerged from underneath the decking amidst the bedlam.
Henry Whinchat (66), retired, sliding out on his belly, from under the ashes of an inferno, short sighted and wheezing, in nothing but his grey, mucus mottled skin, appearing at the feet of the fire fighters, like a giant salamander ambling out from the ancient ash and hearth of mythology.

In the cabinet carriageways of La Specola
the concierge struts like a bantam,
past the mounted crickets
and pickled hens,
by the tussore coated orang-utan.
He fetches his washer-wagon
and lumbers
under its trilling momentum.

The caretaker, picking pinned beetles
like blackberries,
and dusting with a dabbled feather,
inspects the animal upholstery.
His cart’s clay wheels squealing,
he scours the forcemeat hounds,
the jaguar’s dry jowls.

Besom whiskered washer-man
with wattle dithering,
lowers his ostrich plume,
drawing his
bleach and whisky britzka
through an avenue of wax wombs.

falling

My walk in the park

Today I made the acquaintance of a shabby but dignified gentleman whilst walking in the park. He was hopping around on the spot due to one of his legs being rather demolished. He was very insistent in explaining to me that this leg had been mutilated during the Boer war, when he had been captured and tortured by savages. He didn’t look quite old enough for this to truly be the case, but I decided to humour the poor fellow, so earnest was he in his desire to boast of his experiences. He pointed out to me his cousin, not far off, who was attempting to mount a rather bedraggled lady, who shook him off irritably. She had rather sharp features and didn’t look entirely clean. She shuffled over to me when the young man had desisted in his attempts, and asked me if I was out walking with anyone in particular. I replied that no, I always came here alone. She then asked for a bite of my sandwich, which I considered rather overstepping the boundaries of conversation between new acquaintances. However I decided to comply for the sake of politeness. This caused quite a stir, in fact, fights began to break out all around me. ‘No really’, I proclaimed, ‘you may have the whole thing if you must’ and handed out the rest of my lunch. This only seemed to make the situation worse if I am honest. But before long, the hubbub died down, and the remaining crumbs of my cheese salad on rye were gobbled up very quickly. The crowd that had gathered around me parted, to let through a hulking fellow with his chest puffed out, and a mean glint in his eye, that he trained on me sideways. He strode up to me and proclaimed in a horribly common voice:

‘I’m going to shit on you’.

‘There’s really no need for that’ I pleaded, ‘what have I done to offend you?’

‘It don’t matter. I don’t like the look of you and that’s that. I’m going to shit on your head’.

Well how frightened I felt. This enormous chap with his bulging physique had taken a dislike to me. I decided to leave the park pretty sharpish, and began to walk away, trying not to act like I was scared out of my wits. The squawking laughter of the crowd followed me, and I felt so ashamed. From above, there descended a white sticky mess that landed squarely on the top of my balding head. What a day to decide not to wear my hat, I thought.

Evolved Drawin

Something Sedated

Spiderman's riding round on a bicycle.
Old men have retired from the boules
pitch, replaced by one young man
proclaiming The End Is Nigh with
black on white bilboard.

The sky is grey, the trees are splattered with dulux and the dog's
autumn colours range.
Spiderman's flying the track against an apparent arch-nemesis,
who's on a tricycle.

The man mutely announcing the apocalypse is now advancing down the boules pitch,
aged, blighted pensioners tremblingly fire at him in order.
Man tied to dog on a lofty top- ledge, rides down
the steep slope on a unicycle, newly cut clumps, ghoulish-green,
spray from either side of it.

Beyond the jostling of bikes and trikes,
of short films and circus skills.
Beyond the frenzied shouts and jumps
from playpark and noah's drowning ark
there is a stillness.
The stillness of something contained; something caged; something sedated.

Spiderman duly falls of his bicycle.

Clogging The Interface

--Captain, there's gunk all over the controls!

--Who's been clogging the interface? There's no way to navigate with all this muck in the circuits.

(Diminished visibility, screens clouded by toxic fog)

--We'll have to attempt a crash landing. Jiffy, alert the shock absorbers!

(In small cells under the star-bridge squads of shock absorbers were raised from space sleep, little hippo monkey men with rubber elephant-stump spring feet)

--Release the ecto jets!

(Phlegmatic green beams whirred out in spirulous emanations, clearing a descent zone through the murk, readying the path of the shock absorbers...)

--What do you think could be down there, Jiffy?

--I don't know Sir, the readings indicate snotty swamp lands, usual dwelling place of...

--No, don't tell me, Jiffy. I know what you're thinking.

Our channels were furred like filaments yet to be descaled. Ferruginous deposits had hindered our interstellar progress and we'd attempted an emergency descent. It became apparent on landing, on familiarising ourselves (messy and tired as we were) with the new place, that resistance, impediments to progress (such as the clogging of our interfaces), are sometimes in the end necessary for our advancement. Without these points of reference, without the grip offered by apparent malfunction, we would slip off into space unchecked, light years from any intervention, from any thing to notice. Nothingness, that seemed to us, Basic Astro-men, to consist in the lack of an up and a down, of any sense of here and there --a lack found painfully in the depths of space. Out of this silently acknowledged fear our equipment, designed to ensure the smooth progress of the craft through uninterrupted space, was occasionally sabotaged by paranoiac crew members. It was thus we found ourselves, broken yet ecstatic, plunging towards some known unknown, more reassuring by far than the unknown unknown of deep, dead space.

Run, don't Wank

--How old are you?

--21

--Oh sorry, it's just your face. You look like a 17-year-old.

"Could it be true?" I wondered, shuffling out the same old shop. I mean, perhaps I never went away and am in fact still 17... But then all records conspire to maintain the illusion, so who am I to argue? Best 'go with the flow' and take that extravagant holiday as given, real.

Instead of throwing up spurious doubts I decided to advance a programme of training, a remedy for our juvenile predicament. "A disciplined routine of energy conservation and allocation" --this is what the coach I employed to guide us on the course proposed. She was elegant, if spinsterish; ageless, if hard.

"What has in other lads aged them in you went down the drain. We are going to have to channel those mis-spent energy sources into ironing creases onto an otherwise infantile face, sprouting stubble and burning baby fat; in the process hairs on your head might fizzle out and croak their last curl, but hairs elsewhere may then strike out dark claws. You will become, if you follow my programme, King of The Man Beasts."

I was at first wary of the zeal she showed in pursuing my development, my maturation, but I began to consider her rather bombastic pronouncements a part of the prodding, the stick that would knock me into shape. Her eccentric and almost primordial world-view served to clear the distractions I would otherwise have faced, and I soon learned to echo her beliefs, whether sincerely or not.

"If all the bits and bobs swirling around now are made of the same stuff as bits and bobs ever were made of, then whatever we do simply moves some stuff from one state to another. Run off that pie!"

Around the field futile I went, grinding against the fat in my joints, the succulent clogging swine-fat buffeting her commands, slowing me down. Doesn't every good pig deserve bacon? --I whined, trotting around the field limply. She prodded on.

"STUDIES have shown that each stride as you run charges up the seminal glands through the force of friction storing enough energy to produce a single sperm. Keep running and you could spread it on thick, more gruel for the crucible [one of her more obscure yet distinctly unpleasant euphemisms]...or you can save your beans for man beast powers. Galvanised, replenished, you will shine from every pore like Olympian Zeus."

And so I followed her harsh system of running around fields, saving my beans, until one day when, one day that is...

--do you want to see my ID?

--No sir, that'll be OK, we don't want any trouble...Nanjpreet, call the police, it's a monster!

--I am King of The Man Beasts, my beans will buy all your beer.

Magnolia and the Messiah [extract]

“The mother-in-law is revolting” thought Harold Strayward as his mother-in-law, dressed as a myna bird, led a ten thousand strong costumed army against the gates of his place of work. Harold was kneeling on a patch of parched grass, supporting his very angry and very pregnant wife, Elise, as she clutched onto his arms and began to scream:
“Get a doctor Harold! It’s happening!”
Harold glanced behind him at the gigantic dappled egg that protected the multi million pound satellite dish for which he was responsible, in particular his gaze lingered at the large fissure on its surface, from which the back half of his car protruded, and at the exposed dish within, being wrangled and scurried over by a swarm of shrieking fruit bats, the sensitive equipment becoming littered with droppings.
“Get a doctor!” Harold’s wife panted.
Harold glanced helplessly ahead, several thousand men and women wearing beaks and wings shook the perimeter fence, and brayed at the top of their voices, “Mother Nature! Mother Nature! Mother Nature has returned!”.
Harold was having a bad day.

An altercation between a ring master and a dwarf over an alleged pig faced lady

Ring master and dwarf, sitting together drinking, both in full circus attire.
An altercation begins.
Dwarf Half pay! Surely you’re joking?
Ring master All I’m trying to say is, in this current economic climate, we all have to be prepared to make some sacrifices, and -
D and what?
RM And would it be so crazy, say, if one’s personal sacrifice were proportionate to ones height?
D You’re out of order Phillip!
RM It’s Hades.
D It’s Phillip!
RM Now, sit down Orilius, you’re making a scene.

Ode to woman at Snappy Snaps

Woman at Snappy Snaps,
Every time I walk past Snappy Snaps
and see you inside,
I want to fuck you,

I want to take you for picnics,
go to the cinema with you,
and meet your parents,
and fuck them too

Love

I love you, here is my heart. It is deformed and bulbous. A brick red, tired muscle. Its arterie walls are encrusted with fat and congealed blood. It is yours.

Two Diamonds

Pig's crackling

There’s talk of a monster of a bat roosting in the pump house. It’s been spotted in the lank junipers that lean over with disease. A monster bat, that carries off canaries and spits their bones over the pot-holed knackers yard. It’s said it makes its nest from umber passages of the old testament, and the grounds keeper’s children facing supperless penance for shirking their prayer, look up to the black rafters of the pump house to finger the blame. The lonely rocker, that rests, for the most part, still among grass and holiday creosote slats, knocks its cricket stump feet against the decking in the gale, and the farrier’s spaniel, tired of hunting truffles, is picking out earth worms in the paddock, and pauses suddenly, its nostrils flaring and then flips over onto its back like a fish. Bait in its mouth, white belly in the air, a rare and timid deep sea delicacy just hauled onto a lucky deck. It lays there frozen, and half an earthworm dribbles out between its jaws and buries itself in the straw and mud manure, a moment passes, the old rocker knocks and little bones begin falling over the yard, sinking into puddles and ringing off of the slate roofs like waves of hail.

Coffee shop

She entered the coffee shop, all the presence and charisma of a smoked ham, and people began taking their leave one at a time, like they were taking tickets at a Deli counter. The local laundry store charged a special reduced rate for those wanting to wash her out of their clothes. All around the shop, a forced inflexion rages like a fire, there is a dark trembling trolley which the toothless workers drag around the floor like a cart for the dead, collecting spent espresso’s and the occasional terminally ill Mocha-Breeze. When the filter machines run, and steam is forced through the mountain of coffee beans, every patron in the shop and those walking across the street feel they have a conch shell over their ears, and are shaken by violent childish memories of the sea. She drinks espressos, and sits over in the corner, fingers tapping, legs crossed, a supercilious glare directed at all who spoil their coffee with water or milk, ‘they are breeding out the coffee,’ she thinks, ‘how the English did the Celts.’ She was talking to a friend, who was describing a man, and she nodded up and down whilst her friend spoke, like she were sizing up a horse. When she drank, she drank the cheapest whisky, straight, from the bottle or a dirty glass, she was wearing a T-shirt with Howlin’ Wolf lyrics on the back, ‘I asked my baby for a glass of water, and she brought me gasoline.’. They’ve ordered food. And the curious calm the horses of their heels to stay and watch the circus act. When she ate, she did so in a slow calamitous panic, with her eyes wide open. First scooping up her food and then drawing her arm out wide to cautiously, tentatively retract - the spoon trembling with her anxiety. The remaining customers peek over their steaming cappuccinos, and the tips of their sticky magazines, she was looking at her arm as if it were not her own, but a stranger’s, and the spoon in that stranger’s hand as if it were a syringe. Her eyes swell, the food nears, a hypodermic fix of jacket potato, her hairs stand on end. The ghost with the injection is in her bones, and holds her stock still as it administers the dose. When they depart, she leaves a tip for the waitress and reaches out to shake her hand. The waitress is looking away, distracted by the shambling coffee cart, and reacts so late that barely their finger tips touch, as she watches the girl leave, a feeling of panic rises up in her like milk froth from the machines, dread. Rushing over to the sink, she’s almost sick and she’s thinking, over and over, in a loud voice, that at a zoo small animals can fuck through the bars of their cages. Scrubbing her hands and thinking, that at a zoo small animals can fuck through the bars of their cages.

Poem in the Library

In case of fire.
Do not use the lift.
Use the stairs instead.

Snookered

The Rocket stares gaunt and pasty from out the shadows of an Essex snooker club hall, the green baize casting a sickly hue on his unshaven face. His otherwise blank expression is fixed on a cue ball: gliding on some pre-determined course, nearing a corner pocket only to arch away and turn back on its path, white shine undisturbed as it drops into place, a mid-table pocket right by the point from which the globe was launched. The wilful obscurity one is confronted by on witnessing such an overt display of ultimately empty technical prowess does not erode the aura of genuine command emanating from the snooker player. Ronnie's eyes flick away from the now forgotten ball, his hand, open for the duration of the ball's flight, clenches and returns to its leather jacket pocket, safe in the dark.

"Alright, pal? Let's start --yeah, them demons are gone, they're not behind me now."

Ronnie has been off the drink and anti-depressants for almost a year. I ask if these are the demons he's talking about.

"My dad is coming home soon, he's going to watch me run. I run everyday. It's a reason to get out of bed. It used to be, 'oh what's the point getting up just to knock a few balls around in a big dark room' and I'd crawl out of bed in the afternoon, drink some tea, piss about...those are the days you just lose. I'm trying to put them behind me.

Was he succeeding?

"Mostly, yeah, mostly. I can run to a very high standard and I don't need some pills to get me through the day --fuck that! Look at me now, I'm standing on my own two feet."

Ronnie's road to Damascus, though it's brought him almost to a professional standard in his running and has restored a semblance of normality to his personal life, has not improved his snooker playing. This sober, healthy man is not The Rocket who defeated the Canadian champion using his wrong hand. However, Ronnie is adamant that he will return to the power of his darker days.

"I'm kinda still getting used to flying solo, you know, without them demons behind me. The fear now, it isn't there, I'm not playing to save myself now, which might mean some of that Rocket urgency is gone, that all-out-balls-to-the-wall-guns-blazing snooker Ronnie mastered in those days...Ronnie, that's me. I, Ronnie --I've a clear head now, screwed on properly, you know [he raps his skull lightly with his knuckles] so when I'm playing it's like I'm cruising through cool water, not hopping over hot coals, spat at by tongues of fire... [he pauses as though he's lost his bearings]...Ronnie, that's me. I, well ...we'll just have to see, won't we? I'm playing tomorrow, come watch, we'll talk at my place after."

He shakes my hand hard, hot and firm, smiles forcefully and sweeps out of the shadowy hall. A bodyguard tells me not to expect Ronnie to talk to me again and, of course, he doesn't. The next day Ronnie gets properly licked by this young Chinese player and, after just a few frames, raises his cue aloft like a sword and, with a great cry, brings it splintering down against the table. It was obvious then, them demons were still behind him.

DISCLAIMER: this was written from memory of an interview with Ronnie O'Sullivan in 'theguardian' sport supplement, but it's been twisted along the way.

Back to work

May day

The needle contours of the neck,
piano strings, stud pinned,
you proud and spinning like a coin.

The briar bickerings of my skin,
leather winged, that wedding ring,
balancing butterflies on the geraniums.

Lasagne

Forgetting Adrian

Since the clot came,
the Kafka in her bloodstream,
she says she’s not supposed to drive.
The train trolls, a pitch for the dogs,
who charge gaping at our tail, like trout to a fly.
“Look Adrian,” she recounts,
“we’re both married to the wrong people.”
She needs to take a year, she chirps,
to forget about Adrian and the clot,
"life is too short," she cries,
whilst the band leader beats out on the tracks:
life is life is life is long.

Fine salt follows coarse words

Red trees bristle,
the wet world
smells how her hair smells,
after she’s been crying.

Late night aggregate

I’ve been dreaming about bardon hill, the dark slope upwards, fumbling barbed wire hurdles and dusty quarry drops, and the black peak, where the wind crooned black nothing, and water swept up its jagged quarried face, in the hands of a baiting February gale.

Blinkers

Watch the dogs in the meadow water,
dapple horses by the primroses,
the strays baying in their kennel cages.
Along a mile mongrel skyline
amble the fitful ramblers, caparisoned in gaiters,
woollen, unsteady, like colts in blinkers.

Wash the hounds after walking.
Ringing out the meadowed rags,
clay suds on the dun tarmac.
Slop out the watering can
and its soap sorrel contents,
the dogged struggle precedes
the matted armistice.

Watching us washing the dogs,
and blinking indignant,
canter the ramblers,
through mire and muzzle water,
animals flaring eyes upwards,
at a cremello cloud like a cataract.

Extract from 'The lives of mammals'

Mr. Sotto, like a remote control aimed at a broken television, was not responding. He drew in through his oxygen mask every few moments with an effort, his eyes were opened, but fixed on the now black screen. A forlorn, defeated look lit his face between the croon he adopted each time he took a breath. In this way he looked almost comical, from effort to dog gone defeat, the absurdly recurrent and short lived vicissitudes of a man with his soul hooked up to the festive lights, blinking season’s greetings, between rasping laboured breath, wet like dish water being sucked through a plughole.
It is possible that the man pacing the room, well, picking himself between the webbed wires, took this as mockery. He was very far past holding his temper, chagrin stuck his shirt to his back, and swelled red in his cheeks, he seized Mr. Sotto by the shirt:
“Where?” he breathed.
“Is” he breathed again.
“LANCE?”
He erupted, shaking Mr. Sotto clean out of his chair, he fell like a stuffed animal, toppling from its exhibit at a museum, his oxygen tank tumbled to the ground too -- it being attached to him like an umbilical chord. His eyes remained on the television, his posture unchanged, although now transposed, huddled as he was, on a safety net of cables.
Mr. Sotto rasped on, his face blinking exertion and perplexity, like an animal in an electric shock experiment. The man stood beside the empty chair, and the blinking buoy face of the beetle in the room’s cobwebs, and began to also despair, but unlike Mr. Sotto’s sawtooth vacillation, the man’s despondency was smooth, and ever increasing, soaring with each watery breath Mr. Sotto pulled in through his mask. The man looked down at the chair, there were heavy creases where the folds of Mr. Sotto’s body had sat for the last however many years. Despite this, he sat down, and it felt, he reflected, how a hermit crab must feel taking home inside another’s bones, with hair and gristle still fresh on the walls.

Happy Easter?

Stage Fright

‘Stage fright?’ Laughed Alistair incredulously.
‘And why is that so funny,’ thought William, reproaching himself silently, he should never have said anything, least of all to that brute.
‘Hey Cosimo! Cosimo!’ Alistair began bawling across our stylish, yet understated decking.
‘Cosimo! Guess what William has contracted!’ He continued.
Cosimo was our pet name for Charlus, Charlus-Ottoman in fact, partly because of our house rules pertaining to double barrelled names, and partly because of his Florentine sculpt physique - we are awfully clever like that.
‘Correct me,’ Alistair said, turning on William, after it became clear Cosimo was ignoring him, ‘but I thought it was only actors, who were afflicted by stage fright,’
William knew that Alistair always struggled with metaphors.
‘You are murdering that cocktail,’ he said trembling.
‘There it is again,’ said Alistair.
‘There’s what?’ William seethed.
The drink Alistair was tossing around so carelessly should have six distinct layers. The grenadine, lime and pomegranate mixer, has to be applied first, to a cold glass with the upmost subtlety, then follows a medley of liqueurs, including a few rare numbers, the exact recipe of which is a strict house secret, invented somewhat empirically, after many a failed attempt - needless to say it is not a light undertaking to create such a thing, our cocktails are only a drink in the sense that the wandering albatross is a bird or Michelangelo was a man.
‘You haven’t taken up acting have you dear boy, on the sly like?’ He slurred mockingly.
‘Three layers,’ thought William, ‘keep it still, keep it still, keep it still.’
‘Are you listening to me?’ Alistair blurted out, finding it all terribly amusing.
William wasn’t listening, he was absorbed.
‘Just hold it upright for Christ’s sake!’ He cried, ‘The layers are mixing!’
‘You are a maniac!’ Alistair guffawed, ‘it’s suppressed ordinarily, but when you drink, oh boy, it all comes out!’
‘Two layers,’
Fear gripped William in the face of such homogeneity. Alistair will not be invited again.
Cosimo stumbled over, ‘What’s getting him so excited?’ He asked William.
Alistair was laughing hysterically. The cocktail was destroyed. The king is dead long live the king.

Extract from Michelin's guide to Sexual Positions 2009

Position: an Ian Huntley
Description: Wash the car afterwards

nothing

4/4

After the meditating monolith of the fresh-cut summer grass garden, brought on by brother's brew (likened to the effervescent guzzling of sweet-toothed childhood) through Volkische crystalline feminine Folk (twangling many-hummed around the old living room) --we got down to blazing up the night sky, eulogising the Bard with redundant biographical speculations, that ultimate decadent tendency, then cidered off down the street.

Plucking out melodies far in excess of the usual crude strumming, the Dirty Projectors, with their harmonised oh-oh bleeps and ear-itchy beats, had the blatant potential to exceed the room we found them in, that potential therein absorbed by the arched brick enclosure. Words there fell out with that stoned resonance, with that overflowing (characteristic of poetic dwelling) that made talking more a matter of lingering in vague grasping clutches than of actually saying anything --Just so we piped into each other's ears... until cymbals over a grand electric twang fuzzed up one big shimmering sound haze, and drowned all speculation.

Sat there after cider'n'smoke, the potent puffing & potation (clear evidence of gratuitous gluttony) sent the whole vault spinning with an unsteady flick-back response, not rotating but shuddering around a half-circle. Standing up we staggered out for the sweetly tingling orange dark lung fingering night air & stumbled into a wall where the gut switch mechanism clicked and we vomited beautifully in the same tone as the time, the same shade as the bricked night.

Brushing away incriminating specks we fumbled back to the sound. Hovering barely buoyant under blazing saxophones, the Polar Bear was determined to make its big-foot surly way into our head, fazing out all suspicion of failure to bring the night forward into a culminating sense of half-new beginning, which basically meant we could be sick and still have fun (the message was clear, the kids would hear us).

The above Bard's ancient broad shouldered trickster henchman killed Penelope's suitors as we killed the bad vibe traditionally expected to be necessarily consequent on the tumbling world of chunder chunks.

Then we really got into the music.

(After DIRTY PROJECTORS/POLAR BEAR at Taylor John's House)

It's snowing in Cologne

The Year of The Paper Dragon

From our glass bubble viewing tower we could see down the pier and across the wharf to the uniformly worn blocks, their smudged windows and the burnt ochre gloaming creeping above them, dimly reflected. The message had begun, the Speech, the New Year Address. The old idols, the now merely lingering miasma of the dying year, were to be torn down. On our wall were two: Beyonce's nose, altered in our reverent eyes by the concerns of the Master (once a perfect pop artefact, immediately made by the message a receding antique, crumpled, unfashionable); a horse racing chart, torn at the pins, sagging, gambled events dead in the past –both previously worshipped, both mercilessly discarded at the word of the Master. Into what new sense-targets would the Pop Master initiate us? I and, I knew, all the others across the pier, behind their dusty-cloaking windows, gleefully anticipated the new rites, knees bent above quivering calves, glassy eyes blinking at the gasps of dry throats, sticky palms sealed by yellow knuckles. The preparation for the initiation of the new idols was about to begin, this noon before the new year, and, crudely at first, a foreign signal disrupted the Message. A paper dragon without feet loomed out from between the flat roofs, over the water. The monster drifted horribly by over head, drowning the known voice of the Pop Master with its unrestrained, wragged roaring. It had been speaking for a while before our habit-tuned ears gathered the sense, and it was something like this (I dimly half-recall after the event):

We took refuge in canoes, we escaped the unknowing overlords, we collected the trolleys...and unleased the power of KLENK, we were exiled but now have the highest power, we are the new gods, we bring to you the first year of the power of KLENK, we will overturn your old master, we are the new gods, the masters of KLENK...

The hot air that had supported the paper dragon trickled to an end and the nonsense fizzled out of earshot. The question marks that permeated the silence hung in the thick air greenly with the fading sea light. The walls of our houses painfully naked, the cracks in the slats pressing into each directionless worshipful gaze, we waited for the end. ...Eventually the Pop Master resumed its message and introduced to us the New Idols, the Idols of this Year of the Paper Dragon.

Where is your love, Jamaica?

Along the railway tracks young people smart-casual queue for mini-vans. I ask a black man on the bridge what the biggest get-together in the country is, where I suppose these people are going. He takes me away from the queues, in the know, away through some esoteric channels. We arrive and it's yellow amusement arcades, toss-the-banana and jungle basketball, a definite 'Afro' vibe. A garish electronic enquiry croons around the festivities: "where is your love, Jamaica?" My friend leaves me in this alien environment with a chilled-out invitation, "there's some chicken'n'rice round the corner, bwoi". The dusk starts to take the yellow and turn it brown, the bananas mellowing to a fusty ripeness; already the vans, having taken control of the nation's tracks this one Special day of the year, are piling up off-loading steam-drunk revellers. One red-faced-slick-back-bloater opens his sack to a specky, naive passer-by and smirks, "look what I've got" --a tentative tense and wary peek yields a reciprocal chuckle, nervously lisping, "awhaha, oh, you carn't go wrong with BELLS!" --How did the crowd shift along the spectrum so swiftly from monochrome mostly black/occasionally white, against the lurid gorgeous yellows and greens, to this nauseous orangey brown sexless vomit stream of braindead natives? Perhaps it's the old-fashioned lamps, I vaguely propose, or perhaps it's this DRAGON STOUT, "original Jamaican since 1920" dustily wafting foreign clouds across my addled visage. Either way, the Gathering that had stopped the Nation for a day clearly drifted with the sun from global celebration to parochial inebriation, and the culture of love lost its way as the light shifted yellow to brown. Stranded away from the tracks, lost from my sensible black friend, the easiest option was to go with the flow, and so, never mind multiculturalism at this global gathering, we're pissed in England now. Like Captain Beefheart all those years ago, I woke up in vomit and beer, in a banana bin, with my pirate friend, and a soft lass with brown skin*...she sighed in her sleep, "where is your love, Jamaica?"

(*Orange Claw Hammer by Cap. B'fheart)

PS --this isn't supposed to be racist

Beat For Billy

(Gawky doing the WAGONSTEP: Left foot up, on > right foot up, on / left foot down, off > right foot down, off)
"It's like a machine gun!"--"Bit slow, entit?"--"A gattling gun, one of them winding ones: turn the crank, wipe out the cowboys, rattling over hot sand by the old saloon:thud-a-dud-dud-a-dud!"--"He was so hard, right, even his nightmares were scared of him!" ~~But to the resonant frequency of too many big boys' boots bouncing, the record skipped & the beat just lingered in that paranoiac emptiness, bereft of melodic reassurance. The space could no longer be filled and, awkwardly, it became clear again that this was the realm of the Billy. Over some brazen school girl bum the beat said "Billy go home".

Traffic

Turning Siamese

Cheerless

She would trade sex for cigarettes
And the boys would burn both to their ends
On long drawn out nights
Where small talk would pass by like traffic

Malt Beer

Friday Morning

Mementos of busking at Manchester Square

Smiley

Chelonia mydas

Sugar drip

Sugar drip,
most celebrated
of all our canaries,
our Russian singer,
snatching
lace wing
meadow hoppers
from the barley.
Virtuoso performer
rolling up
yellow sleeves
and grasping
at fat beetles
like black keys
on our piano forte.

Poppy

Remembrance Day,
and I keep looking at my watch,
Remembrance Day and the guns ring
like nails into wood.
Poppy broach bearers
croon through koy-carp lips:
‘Make haste, and efface,
in honour of the dead.’
And I sit taciturn like a drunk,
tired of his own clumsy words,
behind the dumb-drunk eyes of a fish.

-

"it was my secret"

Sallied home to sanctuary,

a secret abode,

coffee moving

in the air like a flag.

Finger prints worn

from handling

dirty change,

and head hung,

on puppet string,

tethered taut by our

morning alarm.

And from sanctuary

we sortie, an assault

on the working day,

secrets pinned

to our pinafores

on a broach

with our names.

And venture:

“life moves by like a flash”,

an electron drift of days.

Insomniac

The Unutterable Gayness of Being

{{{CLICK}}}
--Is she with you?
--Hello, yes she is.
--Tell her I'm sorry I walked out incognito that time.
--She already knows. Where are you?
--At the piano in the black room.
--What have you been doing?
--Bashing ecstatic at a world of sound and little deaths.
--But what happened before?
--It put the willies up me, the invisible leeches...the horripilating silence hung queasy between two ageing children, and it started to feel subversive.
--What did? Who was the frightener? I don't understand.
--Don't try to, it doesn't go anywhere. We only managed minutely to nullify...to 'go beyond the zero'...but there was nothing left when we came back.
--From where?
--Nowhere. Where are you? Wait, I'll make the inference:==Beaumaris / dinner with Drambuie / Red Stripe / the phone / the club / drum and bass / heavy metal / spooning long-hairs / long-embracing, spooned==[A sensible set, palpable particulars] Hold on to the night brother.
--Yeah thanks, it's been a good one.
--MUCH TO THE ENGINE IS DUMBING DOWN THE NORTH SEA AND AWAY, TO HOLLAND
--What?
--I mean, the subtitles were presumably inaccurate, it's just a mechanical response. ...They only see the colours, they don't know meat.
--What?
--They don't know meat.
--I'm sorry brother, you're not making sense, I don't understand.
--Any similarity between any persons living or dead is purely coincidental.
--What? I'm sorry, I don't understand, I'm replacing the receiver.
{{{CLICK}}}

Solitary City

"Hmm. £6.66, that's how much change you get. Watch out! You'll turn into a wizard on the way home!"
Then I leave Oxfam with my books.

--A message from my brother

wrongly proud - you
L.A. philosophical - me
stop touching my ears - the cat

In a Bubble

Swineair

In a drastic attempt at diversification the low cost airline Ryanair has taken on a multi million shipping contract with Zurich Swine, one of the largest suppliers of pork in all of Europe. When confronted with strong scepticism at such a move, Ryanair spokesperson C.A Madden said that the company was more than able to juggle such a large commitment without any expense whatsoever to the regular air flight passenger. Though this seems to many, somewhat at odds with the Ryanair’s recent and controversial introduction of the Safety Ham. Mr Madden replied that the Safety Ham is not, as it is being claimed, a cheap way of transporting meat around Europe, but on the contrary is a very sophisticated, and very necessary piece of equipment, ensuring a considerably safer journey for all involved.
Passengers boarding a Ryanair flight will, from this March, experience a radically different in-cabin experience. On ascending the portable stairs and entering the aeroplane the first noticeable alteration will be the cabin crew’s new attire, the aptly named Pork Pinafore, a full body garment, individually tailored and consisting entirely of meat. The design has met with overall encouragement, and was described by the British Society of Uniforms as ‘functional and delicious’. Once again Mr. Madden denied any accusation of foul play, stating that the move was not in any way influenced by their securing a lucrative pork shipping contract but was in fact a decision made independently by a committee of officials who felt that the staff’s previous attire had become embarrassingly antiquated, and that a bacon based uniform was a real step forward into the modern age.
Another marked difference comes with the announcement that Ryanair will be taking a veritable u-turn on its until now unfaltering no-frill policy, long gone are the days of minimal decoration inside the cabin, the simple blue and yellow fabrics, the cheap beige window facets, and flimsy plastic arm rests, are all being scrapped, their proposed replacement being an inexorable procession of pork based upholstery. Loin window shutters, luxury reclining ham seats, belly of pork cushions, are only a few of the many intended furnishings, also on the cards is a selection of meat orientated entertainment items, with toys for the children such as Spare Rib Princess, and Terrence Trotter Arctic Explorer, and most notably a rather ambitious integrated DVD/Blue-ray pig’s head player with 5.1 pork chop earphones, available to every customer. It has been rumoured that IKEA are some how involved in this gristly gentrification, rumours that have to some degree been substantiated by the sheer magnitude of flat pack pig furniture available for purchase through Ryanair’s new in-flight life style magazine, ‘pork pipe dreams’.
Finally we come to perhaps the most momentous of all changes, the notorious Safety Ham, that has purportedly already caused the deaths of twelve aeronautical engineers, a claim denied vehemently by Ryanair. In addition to the obligatory safety regulations already in place, including emergency oxygen masks, and inflatable life vests, Ryanair has made the decision to introduce one further measure, namely the Safety Ham. Critics have labelled the move a ‘powder keg’, despite this Ryanair have gone ahead with their decision, contrary to general misgivings within the public and specific concerns expressed by the FAA last November.
So, what exactly is the Safety Ham? Mr. Madden described it as:
‘…a revelation, an invention of such genius that it’s introduction will echo through the industry like a gun shot, compelling all and everyone to step up to this benchmark of innovation or else allow their dated practises to perish, along with their businesses.’
Whereas Richard Salve, chief editor of ‘Airways!’ simply branded it, ‘a mistake’.
Debate and business aside, what the Safety Ham really is, fundamentally, is a fifty plus kilogram cut of prime meat, that each passenger is given before take off, and obliged to hold in their laps for the duration of the flight.
Dr. A. Wilson, a practising Consultant, said:
‘A young child, pensioner, or even a particularly unfit or unwell adult could quite feasibly die of exhaustion subjected to such treatment, even on what is deemed to be a relatively short flight. It is incomprehensible that this will be allowed by the FAA this coming march, but ultimately the decision isn’t mine to make, so we must wait and see, yes, Ryanair could implement this monstrous Safety Ham, yes, thousands could die, and yes, pigs could fly,’

im lovin' it

i feel sick

evolut

Coco Ranger

Sprung in black three-stripe lycra the little coffee ninja made us a brew. She showed she had processed the request by gymnastically popping off her stool and initiating the breakfast sequence. With one hand in a pocket and the other jittery through unkempt near-curls, an acceptable word order had formed and spilled over the tips, the chocolate beans, the twisted bars and the business cards. At least I didn't need to prove anything. She smiled neatly cheeky, sweetly quelling the stagnant air: "take a seat, I'll be with you in a minute" --crisper than cornflakes clearly she had what it takes, but I, shuffling over the papers, clearly didn't.

Risk Assessment as a New Skill For Life

++The tannoy clicked on, buzzed before amplification ~

>>Brrpptzap<<"We must warn you"

~ A voice from somewhere else, adult, bureaucratic ~

"We must warn you face to face"

~ And the otherwise unthought tread-patter of a thousand industrious boot pairs receded below the cracked sound, as this many minds registered the authorial intervention ~

"We must warn you face to face before entering the next zone"

~ The garishly designated area on the threshold of which we had gathered to a quietly grinding halt was presently made distinct from the implicitly acceptable current zone space; everybody turned an ear in mute afeared concentration, to the voice with renewed urgency ~

"We must warn you face to face before entering the next zone that on crossing the zone restriction barrier you will carry a risk factor of ONE.">>Brrpptzap<<

~ Cautiously, uncertainly, we, disinterestedly similar acolytes, acknowledge the event with straight lips turned to the next and other neighbour, and, consensually insouciant, shrug and proceed, stepping without reservation from left to right over the zone restriction barrier. We had assessed the risk and deemed it negligible.++

Heron

Fucked

“I know!” Said Alpha, “We could pretend that we’re having an affair!”

“We could! That would be so funny!” Said Beta.

“It would be so funny!” Said Alpha.

“It would be so funny!” Agreed Beta. “We could pretend we were having a gay affair!”

“We could pretend that!” Alpha said.

They were in bed together.

“If we pretended that, people would believe it!” Said Alpha.

“They so would believe it!” Beta said.

Later they fucked twenty times on the couch.

Biro

The Pig Faced Lady herself

So there they were, five children of the atom, siblings in the sense of the solar system. They had travelled up an artery of the country, in a three door hatchback clot, the service stations being valves for the weary platelets to come and settle, hot dog vans and bacon butty joints bloated cists, brought closer to bursting by each family saloon exchanging gristle for small change. It had been soon enough dark, the evening pressed down on the car with great pressure, heavier than Mr. Proton’s feverish feet against the accelerator pedal. Mr. Electron beat his chest, to the solemn heartbeat of the motorway, and Mr. Neutron swung his legs and mopped his forehead against the cool glass of the windowpane.
On one stretch of road, the car reached a peak of a hill and the motorway scrabbled forwards two miles ahead, the only lights being the white head and red tail lights of hundreds of vehicles, some the size of the stars appearing over the horizon, white alive, and red dying, a blood stream, white blood cells and red blood cells in a long, long turbulence, the sounds of the all the engines was the soughing of a sea, a million meal worms writhing through fine sand.
The car is parked up now, and the five of them are drinking, tepid beer from cold tins.
Mr. Electron raises his voice:
‘Drink is the fifth fundamental force of the universe,’
‘What are the other four?’ Asks Mr. Neutron.
‘Malt, water, hops and yeast.’
Mr. Proton interjects:
‘Ah, but Malt, Malt is a contestable fundamental, being itself a collection of other things.’
‘Could I suggest, Barley? As a replacement?’ adds Mr. Neutron amicably.
‘Malt,’ says Mr. Electron, ‘It’s most definitely Malt,’
‘Mr. Proton’s argument holds: Malt includes Barley. It surely must be Barley.’
‘Barley,’ slurs Mr. Proton triumphantly.
Mr. Electron is undeterred, he counts out on his fingers as he speaks:
‘Malt, water, hops and yeast,’
‘We’ll put it to vote, unless you can give us a real reason,’ says Mr. Proton.
‘If you must know, it’s a matter of syllables, rather than science, Barley has too many syllables. Barley, water, hops, and yeast, is a list that veritably sticks in ones throat.’
‘Syllables? That’s it?’ scoffs Mr. Proton.
‘Life, gentlemen,’ says Mr. Electron, urging the others to lean in, ‘is more about the syllables, than anything else,’
Later in the night club Mr. Neutron was thinking about wild animals. He was trying, unsuccessfully to convey his thoughts to a drunken Mr. Proton.
‘Well, they’re eaten aren’t they?’
‘Who are?’
‘Animals, most animals are eaten,’
‘By people?’
‘No, yes, no, well by other animals - including people,’
‘Here hold my drink, I need a piss,’
Mr. Proton got up, and stumbled through the crowded dance floor, a green light shone atop of the tall staircase, a beacon for the restroom. Mr. Neutron watched his progress, from his seat beside the bar; people stood on tables, and kicked off pint glasses to the music, men leant against walls in a stupor and women dragged their semi-conscious friends beside them like heavy handbags. Mr. Proton limped through the dancers after the green light like a Wiseman after a star. A hand fell on Mr. Neutron’s shoulder.
‘I’ve got us a place to stay,’
It was Mr. Electron.
‘Where?’
‘Her place,’ Mr. Electron gestured to girl queuing at the bar ‘She says her name is Ms. Photon,’
‘How fitting,’ laughed Mr. Neutron.
Mr. Proton returned from his pilgrimage to the restroom.
‘We have a place to stay,’ said Mr. Electron.
‘Great,’
Ms. Photon had finished at the bar; Mr. Electron beckoned her over, introducing her to the group, he began telling a joke. At the first word something happened, as curiously Mr. Electron had inherited a certain habit from his namesake, that is, he could be in two places at once, and after the first word of the joke, two events unfolded simultaneously and dichotomously. Two jokes, entirely antipodal, one so foul and maladroit that Ms. Photon struck him then and there across his cheek, and marched out past the clumsy bouncers and onto the sickly orange streets. The other joke, intelligent and insightful, with such tangible wit that all in ear shot fell about immediately into laughter, and Ms. Photon finding herself peering down the gun barrel of Mr. Electron’s irrefutable charm had no other option other than to be instantaneously and utterly enthralled.
And this is how they found themselves spending the night in their car, amongst the pornography and empty beer cans, with Mr. Proton and Mr. Electron occasionally opening the front doors to let their clotted vomit stream out onto the road.
And how they found themselves in feather beds, with plumped pillows, at the seemingly bottomless hospitality of Ms. Photon. At sunrise Mr. Neutron rolled off of his mattress, and snuck around the flat, to find a whole room of prosthetic limbs and dismantled wheelchairs. He followed the faint sounds of something like a pair of bellows to a room beside the lounge, and peeked through the keyhole to find Ms. Photon’s father on a respirator, wrapped up like a mummy, with a pharaoh’s oxygen mask, and his innards piled in canopic jars on a dresser with the potpourri.

Happy New Year!

Everything that happens today has already happened. The streets are dying, filled with kaleidoscopic vomit and shards of glass from bottles of low alcoholic lager. Crowds gather, dull eyed with viscous skin, they make their way around searching for sustenance, to purge the taste of blood and acid from their mouths. The cafe’s and bars are full, 45 minutes of waiting for food. Tables are crammed with bags of fat and bone. None of which are sharing any words.

My petal, my flower

Luminous Blue was a spacer who walked with a limp and drank the run-off from his cockpit’s cooling system. His vessel was a one-man pilot boat and most of his work came from navigating the asteroid belt bisecting the solar system of Mercia V. Mercia Vb had once held life and was now mined for its heavy deposits of rock-oil; hyper-tankers dropped into real-space on the outskirts of the Mercia system, brimming with mining equipment, food and water and oxygen, and left again full of petroleum. Blue brought the ships through the asteroid belt in both directions.

Each pilot job lasted four standard months and when he finally made it back onto the little junk station he bunked at he was exceedingly hungry, first for human company, and then for sex. Being away for huge chunks of each year he had a hard time keeping a mistress and so he regularly visited the station’s brothels. His favourite prostitute was a non-human, a Comerdeco whose name he pronounced as K’tock. Her genetics derived from the same cosmic germ-cloud that had spawned terran plants, and her people came to intelligence a long time ago. He had it on the pimp’s assurance that she was roughly speaking a female of her species, but given she was not human Blue was unsure why this was supposed to be important.

K’tock was not bipedal. The three limbs that supported her bulbous body were thick and fleshy, very warm, rough and veiny, always slightly moist. She stood like a tripod, the leaf-covered sack of her torso dangling inbetween her three pillared legs. Her whole frame sprouted little bunches of well-cultivated leaves and petals, which she checked relentlessly for signs of damage or mould. And nestled at the centre of her body (or at least Blue thought that it was her centre-point) behind a curtain of fronds and creepers was her cunt.

Each time Blue visited he was struck first of all by the immense heat of her chambers. The room was filled with a plethora of beautiful plants, lolling and draping vines and flowers across the room, big broad leaves down which water ran in runnels and thin creepers that seemed to twist and shift as he disturbed them. These were decorative, he had decided. There in the centre of the room, standing with her feet evenly planted, was K’tock, her leaves riffling slightly as she angled them towards the sun-lamps mounted in the chamber’s ceiling. As he approached, treading carefully so as not to step on anything organic, she would shuffle slightly and lower her leaves, seemingly turning so that she could get a better view of him – although Blue had no idea how the Comerdeco saw.

Blue would pull out a note for her and lay it down on the wide flat metal counter that was conspicuously bare of earth in the centre of the room. Then he would unzip himself, and she would shuffle round, approaching him with her trunk directed towards him from a different angle. In the end he would have to do the work of disrobing her himself, since she could not direct the digits on her feet to her body without sitting down. He took the gloves off his hands, stowed them in a pocket, and parted the leaves on her torso, gently, very tentatively unveiling the flower, her cunt, a juicy funnel trickling with insect fooling nectar, a double ring of swollen petals, a beautiful purple flower. Then he would grab her by two of her legs, thrust his dick inside, and ejaculate immediately. Every time he did this he felt as if he was dissolving into the hot, sticky, wetness of her body – as if he would fall into her cock first.

Luminous Blue felt absolutely no shame in this habit of his. Although occasionally he did wonder if he was the only man who copulated with her - and he felt a little guilty had no idea what the flower he called her cunt really was, nor how she, alone of her species, had come to be trapped on this tiny backwater station.

Two Problems

I had two problems with the Tracey island i made. The first problem was that it stank. The second, it didnt look like Tracey Island.

Once more with feeling

Bryn could feel the huge crayfish scrabbling over his feet as the wreckage of the biplane sank deeper into the marsh, and he shivered, naked except for his mother’s welding helmet, his chest coated evenly with the last of the Vaporub, his arms wrapped tightly around the dead lion. His eyes streamed with tears. Every sodding Christmas, he thought. Every sodding Christmas.

Richard is a ventriloquist, he is standing arm in arm with his mentally handicapped wife Susan, rain is spitting, they are both dressed in black, and looking down at their infant son Liam’s tiny grave. Richard begins to throw his voice.
Richard Down here mummy! Look down here!
Susan Oh Liam! Liam baby, be quiet.
Richard Mummy!
Susan Shh darling, you must shh.
Richard But I can’t shh mummy, I’m in a hell.
Susan No, not a good boy like you.
Richard I’m in a hell. I’m in a hell.
Richard I’m thirsty here. They don’t let me have milk.
Susan If you’re good, they should give you milk.
Richard There’s a cist I suck on. Daddy is a ventriloquist. You said that means he can put words in other people’s mouths. Could he put words in God’s mouth? Could he say, ‘Liam that’s enough, you can come up to heaven now.’?
Susan Could you? Could you Richard?
Richard No. Because first I’d have to know what God’s voice sounded like.
Susan You can’t?
Richard No Susan, I can’t.
Richard Can he say, ‘It’s ok Liam, you don’t have to live in a hell anymore, you can come to paradise,’?
Susan Can you?
Richard I can’t.
Richard Can he say, ‘This is a hell for sodomites Liam, not for you, we’ll stick your nose back on, and replace all the skin we peeled off,’?
Susan Can you?
Richard I can’t.
Richard …‘It was a clerical error Liam, that led us to pluck out your eyes, We’re sorry we raked away your bones like splinters,’ ?
Susan Can you?
Richard I can’t.
Susan Your little bones! Oh Richard! His little bones. You must throw your voice to God. You’re a ventriloquist! You must! You must!
Richard I’ve told you, I’d have to know how God’s voice sounded.
Richard Tell him he must mummy, tell him, I can’t live in piss and carcasses any longer.
Susan I know. I know. Liam, baby, have you heard God’s voice? Daddy said he needs to know God’s voice or else he can’t do anything.
Richard I’ve heard it
Susan You have! You’ve heard it. Then daddy can do it!
Richard I’m in a hell mummy.
Susan What does his voice sound like?
Richard I can’t say. You don’t hear it, you just have a feeling that he is speaking, like how you can feel that your fingers are moving, or that the wind is blowing through your hair. Can’t daddy throw his voice? I can’t live in stick insects and afterbirth anymore.
Susan Can you? Is that enough? He said what his voice was like?
Richard I can try.
Susan Yes!
Richard is quiet for some time, he then turns and holds Susan.
Susan You did it! Didn’t you?
Richard Let’s go home now dear.
Susan Tell me you did it?
Richard I did.
Susan Oh. Oh thank goodness. Liam. Goodbye Liam.

Another day in the village

Clever girl, Clever girl

In truth, no

I thought I knew her face very well. But seeing her again in a fairly pretty (new) dress and without her glasses, I could see that it was not quite as I remember/imagined it. Her teeth were worse than I had come to think of them as being, her chin a little more forward. Her complexion was better, her eyes the same but different – I’m not sure in what way different, but different.

I don’t imagine she has changed. Perhaps I saw all of these things differently because she wore contact lenses instead of glasses. Perhaps I presumed that I knew what she looked like because after three, or was it four? years, I would be expected to know what she looked like.

In telling you this I have fixated on her appearance, because in the eight hours we were in that room together we didn’t speak about anything of consequence. We didn’t speak much at all.

High board diver

Joseph Kittinger is falling through our atmosphere. Moments earlier he leapt from a high helium balloon. He is wearing a fully pressurized suit, without which his blood would boil, evaporate into steam, and swell his body to twice its size. A stabilizer chute trails behind him preventing him from spinning uncontrollably. A flat spin at these altitudes could reach two hundred revolutions per minute. The pressure seal in his right glove has broken, and he is in excruciating pain. This is the highest parachute jump in history, the world stretches out below, looking like a satellite image, it has a curve like a child’s globe.

Joseph Kittinger sprang from a high board thirty kilometres up, at the edge of space, the highest high board dive there ever was. Do the low board divers think of high board divers in order to quell their nerves? Do the high board divers think of Joseph Kittinger tearing towards the desert like a meteor?

When we were children we’d sleep hunched like cannonballers in our beds. Lightning could strike the house whilst we slept, and tear through the walls and the bedstead. So we kept our knees balled against our chests, like high board divers, and that way our toes could never complete the circuit with the storm outside, or brush against the scolding rubber of our hot water bottles.

Merry Fucking Christmas

“I stood in Venice, on the Bridge of Sighs; A palace and a prison on each hand.”

Capitalism Revisited

Flotsam and Jetsam

In Saint James’s park I pause above the lake, and crook my elbows over the railings of the bridge. Pelicans teeter on the ugly rocks, moorhens bicker in the bull reads. The gibbous moon blinks under speeding clouds, its pale light rolling across the skin of the black water like milk from a tanker spill. 

Some days I ride the circle line for hours. People here are always moving with a purpose or a direction, purpose on their lips, in their briefcase, prepaid purpose on their oyster card. I huddle on the underground, and watch women’s faces in the glass, and their novel bodies, their sultry bones swaying like puppets to the tube’s sledgehammer pulse.

Black swans and white swans, like flotsam and jetsam, are passing under the bridge. One is looking up at me, with a red bullseye on its beak. The Westminster dusk has settled like duck-down over the park, and in the distance, tourists are flashing cameras from their dark seats on the London Eye.

People avoid me on the underground, and on the buses and bus stops. I sit beneath the shelters fumbling with my shoelaces, feigning activity, or else I board, wave a dead ticket and slide behind a seat to close my eyes, and dream circular dreams, a sleeping satellite in corduroy.

Out of the park, and onto the streets, where the spent chewing gum and pavement cracks make hand-holds for the drunks, who on all fours, between fits of vomit, climb the paving shakily like shivering mountaineers. I follow the embankment, with the river on my right. It’s important for me to look busy, look occupied; I attempt an air of ambition and impending conquest.

There are yellow lights swinging above the water like cooped canaries. I pass people on the riverside, they hardly notice me at all. I think they can tell that I am not really moving, at least not how other people move. It’s like I’m sat on a train at a standstill, watching the other trains grind past, convinced I’m sliding back. I’m a swan in a current, like flotsam and jetsam, I have freedom, complete and unabated, but no purpose and only a pretence of direction.

I will eventually become part of the architecture. The copper change in my pockets, the zips and nickel teeth of my jacket will ball together, and spread across my skin. The gravel that scuffs my hobnail boots will creep over me. It will most probably happen in the early morning, when the wind blows cold and the night shift workers begin to bawl in the bars like frightened birds.