HOST

There are eels that travel across the surface of the land. Here they do not have a home and they travel fast in between the moments of completion when they are back in the water, floating free.


Most of us human beings, because we are land-dwelling creatures, have more of a chance to see the eels in their interim flight across our home-land.

We are host to this jettisoning outwards as the air is host to the stretches of light that current its surface from time to time.

So across our land they run, knowing too that if they stop they will run out and that the land will claim them like the thread on a bolt that remains lost.


So they run past us and we see them one replacing another so that their rushing away is ever present and to us they are like a fossil, as hard as the land upon which they ride over.

We hardly ever do follow them into the water for long and there are reasons why this is so.

SIMPLE

They called us the simple ones.

We smiled and dumbly grinned through

Their hard exteriors as if they were

Not there for, for them to be there,

Our soft skin would be cut to pieces.

So they dug in harder and harder bruising

Themselves against the walls of their own

Making. One or two did smile.

But then broke down and cried.

OTHER

There was a man who stood in the centre of a piece of glass. It did not break for he did not move. Soon the reflection of him in the glass appeared to be a part of the glass itself. The brightness of his coloured jumper added interest to the otherwise transparent surface. Soon he felt a compulsion to stay. So he stayed and set up residence where at first he had just happened to stop.


One day another came to stop in the same patch. She was not like him until the colours that she threw onto the glass surface merged and they became one. Now one could not imagine one without the other and taken apart the figure that they cut could be incomplete, a part-subsiding surface rather than a perspective of a whole. The two had a child and the child skated this way and that upon the surface of the glass, making patterns and remarks. He existed. He smiled. He spoke.


But then a stick came down. It was held by a tall man in a suit. He did not smile or speak. It came and pummelled the glass which shattered into a thousand fragments. And the child skater fell though the glass and all that remained of him was a patch of blood like a small lake. The parents looked into this lake as they stood amongst the ruins of their home and their tears made the lake grow into many tributaries but still it did not lose its colour and out of it many children appeared. They were children of one blood. A people who lived on the edge of those whom they found themselves amongst. The people of many lands.

FAR REACH

Two figures stood some distance away. There was nothing in between them. They paced toward one another but saw nothing but themselves. Both were alone. There was no comparison to be made for both were identical. They wore blue jackets and white trousers. The rest faded from significance. Both of them were tired. For this reason they wished to sit down. They wanted so much to rest in their own reflection. To have the peace of mind to think. They wished so much to meet with themselves and so cautiously they approached.


They got so close that they could almost touch. But face to face, this is not what they did. Instead they turned outward then shifted a little closer until back to back they touched. They slid down on to the floor with one another’s back supporting the other.

Each one reflected a little on the nature of their life so far. Then simultaneously they got up and walked back- back into their separate existences with the encounter that they had just had stored within.

BOUND OVER

There was once a man who could not speak. Yet he was an intelligent man and he had an idea to make a mint or two. He went to the bank and wrote down his idea. But he needed more than financial help because for what he had in mind he needed to be able to speak; to put himself across as is the way when people are trying their best to win something over for some purpose or other.


The manager looked doubtful. In fact he scratched his chin for a long time. For so long in fact that the stubble actually grew up around his fingers making the scratching louder and louder by degrees.


“Well now” he said at last. “I might just be able to help you”. The man without speech looked hopeful which is a look that anyone can have with or without speech. Then away went the bank-manager and back again he trotted with a plan of action in between his extended hands which he was rubbing together.


“O.k. all fixed”


“Follow me if you will in this here vault. It is quite comfortable you will find. Here you may stay whilst the speaking hologram of yourself, MR Speakeasy will take your place, clinch the deal, return with the mint and present it to you. We will take a small cut to cover our expenses as is the custom in the banking world and the rest my good man will be yours for keeps. Is that a deal?”


The man with the idea with no voice to give vent to nodded enthusiastically for enthusiasm as was the case with hope is not the prerogative of the speakeasies alone.

So, to work went Mr Speakeasy shining and glimmering at every turn in the road, radiating confidence, suggesting countless directions all of which seemed to validate his excursions to the place where a right old heaped up mound of money could be sought and collected.


At last it seemed sufficient to call a halt to the exploits of the day.


Mr Speakeasy bound the money up in a suitcase and tottered off to the bank. Thereupon he opened the door of the vault. But no sooner did he do so, catching a glimmer in the eye of the man of little words, then once again he ceased to exist. The man got up from the floor where he had been sat motionless for all this time and without an inkling of a thought or a hope in his empty mind.


As for the suitcase, when it was finally prized apart, for it seemed to be made of some kind of stone, it was found that the suitcase was nothing but a large fossil. It was the fossil of a jaw-bone locked in an expression of… but who can say what it in fact meant.


The man got up from off of the floor of the old vault room. He brushed himself down and went out.

THE LAST FLOWER

You see she too had a job though people were generally of the opinion that she sat around. True she sat down much of the time but she had a reason for doing so. For this was her job. It did not so matter where she sat as what she sat on. For so long as she sat on flowers then she was readily employed. She was a flower presser and so it was important that she stay put long enough for the deed to be done.


Unlike some jobs which call for a lot of running around, to and fro, this way and that way, up and down and around and about, her job was not of this nature.


It called for a certain resilience clear in the minds of those who knew what it took to stay put and yet certainly it was different from the non-activity of those who simply end up going nowhere. For she was employed to go nowhere and so her non-movement was given poise by the fact that it was a wilful and well-enough earning position.


How incredible that the same person when seated above these flowers; wedding bouquet’s, lover’s pacts and funeral wreaths was so noble, almost statuesque in her concentrated endeavours. Yet when denied this seating, as was the case in between shifts, she sat unsure of herself, unsure where to look and worried by the thought of life going by whilst she went nowhere. And then her mind fell upon thoughts of time itself and where it might end and what it might make of her. For well she knew the fate of the flowers was very different. The moment of their disappearance never came since before this moment was reached they were flattened, preserved, hung up- their colour dimmed but their ever-lasting presence ensured.


And so the young employee with a flawless record of very good sitting manners, when her season’s work came to an end and all the flowers destined to come her way had been flattened already, she carefully tucked herself under the onslaught of an on-coming lawn-presser then posted herself to her loved one. On the back of the envelope she had already written- for once flattened it is hard to write:


“To our ever-lasting love, affectionately, your flower”.

PATH PLANS

She found a container brimming with bricks. “What an eye-sore to walk around” she noted. She decided to put it to some use. So every day as she walked home from work in her tired stockinged wide stride she picked up a brick or two and quickly whipped it into her hand-bag; one which was never far from her hip. Swinging the bag casually but not so carelessly as to give herself an injury she returned home; a small neat and tidy house where she lived for the present, alone. Well she was a hard worker and there was time and plenty for babies. She had plans.

Now she emptied out the contents of her hand-bag discarding the lipsticks, purse and comb to one side whilst piling up the bricks on her kitchen table in a growing heap. She had a plan and this plan was unstoppable.


She was making a path in her garden. She worked by night and y day hid the path under a green curtain that looked to all intents and purposes like a lawn. Only when one looked close; when one noticed the omission of worms and bugs, weeds and daisies would there be any rise for suspicion but the attention that she got from the immediate public came in short and unstoppable glances. Nobody knew about the path so certainly nobody had a clue where it led to.


At last the deed was done and so on the night of completion, after the final stone had been finally put in place; after the container once brimming with bricks down the road from her neat and tidy dwelling had at long last been emptied, she sighed, kicked off the fake lawn carpet that was really a curtain and walked down the path.

BUILDINGS

A funny and annoying thing kept happening: whenever I walked up to the front of a building it would grow. So much so that I would be tempted to walk away that instance, unable now to say what I had intended to say.


From afar the building would be well enough maintained. Well turned out and fully presentable. But when it came to any kind of close interaction with it then that was a different story. I would be met by a row of railings, hard and monotonous. Glass that I could either stare at or bump into. Vertical grey terrain that I could not begin to scale.


So I would be offered up into the guts of the thing through a rotating system that churned the inside out and the outside in like a great milk-shake whipper. I would be shuttled down narrow shoots into odd pockets of vacant space. Then on through more shoots into little moving packages where I would be wrapped up and sealed with a rubber edged metal door and taken up or down, down or up as the numbers in rows described. All along these passages I would pass other little canon balls similar to myself until I wondered if it were not just more glass again that I might bump into. Yet if it were so than glass can talk for on either side of the glass the words, “Excuse me” would ring out and so I never did find out what bumping into one of those bundles would feel like for we evaded the question.

Then finally the day would run out and the distance would grow again between me and the building, the building and me. Then I would sit once again in my plot with the little building resting on the palm of my hand wondering and thinking about the way that titchy thing would grow to encompass me once again tomorrow.

BLINDED

Invisible birds flew out of his

Countenance and his face remained placid.

Wings that spanned the sky were far away

From where he now sat.

He never turned to the voices around him

For their eyes to him were unreachable.



They never looked at him so he got to

Wandering what kind of creatures

Met with their kind. For these

He could not see

Just as they to him

Were blind.

PETAL

There was this lady whose name was Bertola Clarence. She sang songs to the public but in order to keep her life private she sung from behind a thick orange curtain.

She had this trick well not really a trick for it happened of its own accord. The song had a way of arranging itself so as to construe a presence on the other side of the curtain all on its own.

And so appeared the presence of Clara Petal. Night after night she danced and smiled for all the audience to see. An audience that stretched out to a horizon the shape of a flower and clapped and roared with such delight to a sound which touched something within each of them.

At last Clare Petal bowed and took her leave – like steam fading back into water again. It was for this reason that at the end of each performance Bertola Clarence was to be found standing behind the curtain, in floods of tears and it is for this reason that emotion is often tearful. For it is the movement of feeling backwards into the body upon whose contact it is liable to melt back into water.


Moments later there stands Bertola Clarence; a small and stationary figure waiting to board a bus.

CHORUS

From a distance they looked the same as you and me. Shadowy figures waving arms and legs, torsos and head as they moved along the street from one position to the next.


Through the windows of buses spattered with rain it made no difference really. We looked or did not look as is the way in cities. And yet they never let us get too close. They stared us down and warded us off keeping to themselves at all costs.


At first we did not understand this in them. Indeed we even took it personally examining ourselves for flaws.

But when at last we did manage to find an approach, moving in from behind, closer and closer until all of a sudden they turned and there we were, facing one another in the dry clear of daylight, we became aware of the fact that they were not constituted in the same way as us. No they were made up instead of tiny little independent animals that undulated in unison one after the other over and over again and that now, faced with a spectacle so overwhelmingly vast as ourselves, they begun to panic. To lose their thread. To forget about their team-work so central to their continuing existence in the human world. And yes bit by bit they began to fall. To separate out from one another scattering on to the ground around our feet. And then they were gone. Gone from view.


After a while however we learnt how to handle the problem. We would whistle a little song and bit by bit the animals would join us, rising up in unison again until we had a great and mighty chorus by our side.

This is how we finally got to meet the little creatures who appeared to us now, as we did to them, in a sympathetic form.

OCCASION

Two bodies come together. In an instant

They hit. They are locked in an occasion

Of some sort. There is an ambience

That it is hard to recollect. Only the

Feeling of their terse bodies makes the

Hit contactable.

She wants to get through and out

The door. He wants to stay put.

There is no way through for the moment.,

And they cannot simply find one out.

Instead they strain against the limiting of

Space that each feels on bodily contact.

It is this that they feel as they touch.

They are bordered up with nowhere

To go. Circumstance points

Only to this. So they try to move

Through one another. Though this is an

Impossibility. Each believing themselves

To be hindered. It is this that

They move against. It is this that

They move towards. They are sweating,

Their bodies rigid- upright in fear.

Then with one large surge, body

Mass against body mass, their intractability gives

Way and they slide past one another exhausted.

The man sends the woman through the already

Sliding doors with a kick.

She flinches and then turns to see

An old man with a walking stick.

He turns to see a slight woman. He had

Imagined her larger somehow.

Something catches between their eyes.

Then the old man blinks.

The woman turns

Into the crowd.

They have come apart.

STORY OF MAN

Between the water and the wall was the beach. A mass of stones layering into a finer and finer selection of pebbles. Then finally sand. The largest of these stones bore the heat of the day and on such a stone, warmed now from beneath and above, sat Fleck; a tiny creature; a human being.


Fleck sat sunning himself as the water lapped the distant pebbles further down the beach where land finally gives way to sea and the pebbles plunge beneath the foaming waves where they are turned and turned and made smooth. Only then are they thrown back up onto the land into the sun-light where they warm themselves from the coolness of the sea.


As Fleck sat gazing into the distance the distance drew closer and soon the water was lapping at his toes. At first he liked this but then he felt trapped his back against the wall, the water pervading him. All around licking him softly. He tightened to its embrace his back against the wall, the beach all gone. But the water kept on. It took him and he overwhelmed by its caresses finally went with it.

Time passed and gradually the water retreated. The beach was back in view glistening with water as the sun shone down. And there lying on the largest stone where before Fleck had rested, was a tiny baby. A baby soft and vulnerable and as volatile as the changing waters from out of which she had come.


Her mother was the sea. Her father the land. Yet now as she lay there on the stone it was the sun that breathed life into her.

WHAT THE EGG SAID

In a shop today I asked if the eggs were free-range. She rolled them across the floor and said “yes”.

Then one hit my shoe where it exploded. A chicken appeared who had been treading water for some time in an effort to keep from drowning and it was relieved to get out. It looked me in the eye and said, “when your range is contained within the boundaries of an egg shell I don’t call that free-range. It ruffled it’s wet feathers and one fell out. Then as the door swung open and the next customer entered it quickly wobbled out into the road where it was run over and flattened on the wheel of a passing car.


Than a very strange and out-or-the-ordinary thing happened. The car turned into a giant hen that few up into the sky even though hens usually can’t fly. This was its way of jumping the lights I suppose. Chick over chat I shouldn’t wonder.


“Why…” said the woman who had now resumed her place behind the counter; that one grew up fast. But that I suppose is the way of youngsters these days.”

Then she turned to her next customer who was a man with no hair on his head who had forgotten what he had come in for. And so the conversation was halted at that point and never continued.

Just as I was leaving he remembered and said, “ah yes I’ve lost my hair and I’ve a feeling I lost some of it here” then, searching around him he spotted the tiny feather still on the floor, picked it up and said, “Ah yes”.

BORDERS

Sydney had lived in a hole for ten years. Today he emerged. He popped his head up and looked around. Then tentatively he pulled himself up until once again he was standing on the ground up above his hole. He begun to walk and when after a few steps he turned around he could not see where the hole was anymore.

He walked into a shop right up to the lady behind the counter and questioned her with his wide eyes. But when at last his mouth begun to flap no words came out. The woman clapped her hand over her own mouth. She walked backwards through an open door which was then closed so that it now separated Sidney from her.

“Oh” said Sidney and his mouth took on the same expression as his eyes.

Then he too walked backwards until he found himself outside the shop once again as if about to enter.
“Excuse me” said a passer-by who now entered.


Sidney begun to walk down the street but people kept walking into him. So he began to learn that walking backwards was the thing to do. This is how he now progressed in life adapting new skills in the heels of his feet that he never knew he had. These were to guide him through the pitfalls and holes which quite by accident seemed to entice him yet which he was now skilful at avoiding.


Yet it was not his eyes now grown accustomed to the light that guided him and so gradually they changed expression until instead of being wide “Ohs” they were thin “dashes”. Very agile but not too good on detail.


And so gradually his body too took on this more agile shape and this is how one fine day he back-trod his way into the heel-dance competition and won face-down.


And so Sidney became a huge success. For he was pliable and easily accessible to the shapes around him. For having lived down a hole for ten years severe preconceptions of how things ought to e did not trouble him.


But of course Sidney’s success had, in a manner of speaking, its own pitfalls.

Maybe Sidney should have stuck to the dancing but success demands a sentence or two. Yet it was chatter that Sidney cold not contain. It slipped out and chasing it he lost his balance and swung out all around.

And so the flapping mouth of long ago became the flag which brought action in high colours and a certain restlessness not to be found in the ordered placing of heels on the dance-floor.


And so Sydney forgot his steps. And at last he overstepped the mark chasing forever further into the distance where the colours in his words swayed and beckoned to him.


So Sydney was tried before a court of law. And it was suggested that he should be put in a hole so as to contain his capacities in an appropriate setting.

And so Sydney returned to his sitting place and it is from here that he is talking to you.

HARRY’S FAST TRACK, AMELIA’S WEDDING AND A NEW BEGINNING

There once was a snail named Harry. Harry moved across the terrain in a stream of mucous. In this respect he was somehow mid-way between being a creature of the land and a creature of the great rivers that span our continents. The river that Harry travelled along was a river of his own making. He laid the tracks for it and only just in time for in truth he was only ever a moment behind it.


These mucous glands were working to their full extent and any interruption could send Harry falling head over heels into the unknown future of an arid and ship-wrecked land. For Harry knew the importance of not over-stepping ones’ faculties. Something that his great grand-mother had reminded him of on her death-bed in the gentle spring showers of two years past but even these could nor reinstate her withering away. For as Harry knew everyone’s time must come. So Harry was speeding yet even now he daren’t go as fast as he had once maintained as his life-force through the territories of the world. A world which once touched bloomed with the golden glitter of his passing through, as the sun toasted his moist tracks rather like the frozen Ink on a page and yet the meaning continues evermore even when the pen-scratcher is some place else or even not at all.


But now on this particular sunny afternoon, a day when going down-hill was, as far as energy is concerned, rather like going up-hill, Harry met a couple of old class-mates from long ago; Jason and Amelia. Harry had always had a crush on Amelia but he was shy. He had spent most of his school days wedged between walls and cupboards, sneaking glances at Amelia and she had never had an inkling. Once but not only once he had been found stuck like a blob of blu-tak between the pieces of furniture which hid him and it was necessary for him to be hosed down and prized free and what could be more shameful than that in the snail community? Yet by this time Amelia had long since parted to join her lover of long-standing, none other than that wide-boy, Jason and she was never any the wiser as to the causes of Harry’s discomfort and shame amongst the snail community.


Well might Harry sigh long and deep. For this shame had set the pace of his life and even now Harry was still trying to prove himself along his endless rivers.


So of course when Jason, his school tormentor, the thief of the only kindred spirit that he had ever ventured to seek out of the great unknown that we call the world suggested a race, how could he refuse? Caught in this feeling of inferiority he had to take the bait. This, Jason knew.


“On your marks, get set…” and over the mark they flew, up, up and up and down, down, up a little, down some more. Horizontal for some time. And then tumble on they did go until they no more knew what was up and what was down than a sweeper knows from what angle will the next piece of dust come from. So then to land smack down there on some kind of foreign terrain where colourful eyes shone out from the odd body and music which somehow seemed to be locked into a single note fell like dust from a burnt out fire, still warm but lost.


The snails were feeling dry so they spat around and the loser was the one who failed to get hit. This game sent them flying hither and thither over the rough terrain as they tried, for the sake of their own survival; to catch the wide shots that each threw to one another. But soon they grew tired of one another’s exhausting company. They begun to feel out of touch and craved the nearness of their loved one, Amelia who seemed to be nowhere in site. And so realising this they sighed for they realised too that all their endeavours were going unnoticed and so suddenly their whole manner of relating seemed to be somehow pointless.


No, Amelia had long since gone underground. For the earth was getting too hot for snails and so she resided now down in the disused subway tunnels in the capital city which had been her place of birth and which now, friendless and single, was where she had now returned. For Jason and Harry so it seemed were out the picture. But not so fast. For these distant space-hoppers had accidentally stumbled upon an old microphone which had popped up upon a rock and was churning out the hum of a musical note that seemed to exist without going anywhere. Not so the crackle of those grating and wrenching lamentations of those two snails, once so distant in time and space now closer than ever before. And their voices now harmonised to give impact and depth where apart they would have been insubstantial. Amelia was captivated by the sound that now touched her from such distant parts. This was a unification that brought tears to the eyes and made vibrant and fluid down below the earth’s crust where above was all dry and untogether.


Amelia swelled like a soon-to-be-mother and all the toads came out to croak their applause and silently she applauded her secret joy. And the pigeons fluttered their wings between the weeping arches as glints of light shone through from above. Then stood up the great mime artist; a spider named Spider. He weaved his multiple limbs to and fro and swung his head most convincingly until Amelia, assured that the voice she heard was his fell madly in love. The two were married. The hidden microphone fuelled by the slugs in outer space was never discovered and so the marriage turned out to be abundant and highly successful.

CAFE

The warm air hits in the café. You swallow. Then you are in it, moving around amongst others. It is a limited warm space. Sitting with wrap around hands the mug is secure. You swallow and try not to gulp through eyes occasionally flung up and down like ping pong balls in a bath.

It’s hot. You wipe the steam from your face, pushing your face further and further out. The pores in your skin are jostling.

The door opens a crack. A cold blast. Your face sets in the reality of a day passing, then shuts. The wandering face is pliable, unsettled.


Water is dripping down the inside of the glass frame which you are facing. Shielded by your back on one side and condensation on the other you are in a little vacuum all of your own. You watch the drips race wondering which will win. It is like watching your face crumbling into different expressions. There is really no point in it. No good in this isolation.


Yet a moment ago you were out in the streets, smiling to all and everyone with the world in your face, the rain on your hair….

INTEREST

There was a bare and solitary light socket hanging off a piece of chip-board which was itself suspended from a piece of crumbling plaster. The building was vacant and the air was heavy with dust that found its own passage undisturbed by moving forms. The atmosphere was one of lifelessness. Time did not change in this stillness. Then in walked Mop and accompanied on his right arm was Morley. They might easily have been over looked by you and me as unimportant. As lifeless even as the dust particles which here and there scattered around. And all this on account of their size and their hard uninteresting beetle-like exteriors that to our eyes looked dismal. And yet to one another each swam in the radiant colours of each other’s existence as if looking into a multi-coloured oil pool shot through with patterns and formations truly enticing. Such is the intensity of a beetle’s gaze. They were unhindered by distractions for their size did not persuade them to follow all the directions that for a human seem to be part and parcel of a rich and varied life and yet actually seem to have the affect now and again of confusing the issue.


So Mop and Morley approached the loose hanging light-socket. On touching it a crack resounded and joined the two together in a brisk cantor of a dance within the sure embrace of one another’s affections. All was radiant like the ripple found on a fruit tree about to be eaten. But not so. Time seemed to speed on almost as if it were making up for lost time and within seconds they were shrunken back down to their dark beetle forms as if only the pips of these fantastic fruits now remained. They fell down on to their backs and spun around a while like the cogs of some inter-locking mechanism. Then they came to rest, their legs still entwined, their eye locked.

FOCUS

I wanted to live but first I wanted to learn. I put my eye to the telescope and examined what was before me. Layers of tiny creatures flitting this way and that.

There. Then gone in a flash. Only to be replaced by another.


My eye got stuck open like that nursing the exterior of that metallic telescope that I had had ever since I can remember counting.

So I remained as I had always been, watching the life-form, seeing all that for me was ungraspable. For I never could close my eyes. My concentration was that focused.

THE COLOUR AT THE END OF LIGHT

There is a colour that does not register in the half light. At such times of indiscriminate light that colour so removed from its attention-seeking presence, is altogether missing. Registered then it is only a darkened shade noted only for its absence surrounding the lighter shades that are now more visible than before. The colour is red. It is the colour of death for when it is made visible it flows towards a certain end and remains only in the memory of that last and fading day.

NOT OF THIS WORLD

She is walking into a café-bar.

The lights illuminate the bottles

Within. Behind the counter a

Woman moves from place to place.

Men, tired from a night of sitting

And standing, lean against the

Counter. Their eyes are peeled

Off of them, on to the surfaces

Surrounding. Sometimes they

Rest upon the woman but never

For long for she is moving

Always moving from place to

Place and so must they.



In broken words the foreign woman is

Asking for two coffees to

Take away. Between the

Words which are only

Just about received there

Is a sluggishness as if the

Air is caught in the fluorescence

Of the lights and sent

Turning around on itself. The men

Are watching the episode

With the foreign woman

The woman who neither looks nor

Looks away but stares through

The bottles to another world.



A song starts up on the radio.

It is a blues number and the

High energy

Of intense concentration

On nothing is dropped.



Eyes come down, re-enter bodies. Postures relax. The woman,

Forgetting for a moment, orders

Coffee rapidly in her own

Language. The air cracks

And bubbles and it is the

beginnings of a joke.

Motion gets more real as

People let go of one another,

Stand back and rest.



The woman behind the bar offers

Up the two coffees, two cakes

Which she wraps and seals,

Sachets of sugar and two tiny plastic

Spoons which even these she wraps. It causes the foreign

Woman to smile at this.

There is the beginning of something in the air. Then the door

Opens and in walks a young

Boy in uniform. The woman

Turns rapidly, rings up the

Price on the till which appears florescent red. Faces

Disappear. Only the staring

Eyes remain. The foreign

Woman leaves, carrying one

Coffee in either hand. The cakes she tucks into her

Blouse. She tip toes through the

station, stopped by no one.

For already she has floated on.

Floated onto some other place.

COMIDA

The peacocks are fasting

On the burnt-out rubbish

Of yesterday

The motorway flicks past

And trucks pull in for an

Instant



There is the Club Panther

Studded with dusty flowers

The mountains reaching out

Beyond



It is the end of the road for tonight

At least



Inside a naked woman sits upon

A clothed man’s knee

Eyes cross then glance up

In the half-light

The morning will be blinding.

FURTHER

I am in the church of God

Stone surrounds me

Lights burn above me

Catching mosaic, shimmering

There is a lady whose blouse is

White where the sun comes in.

Pockets of shadow beckon

A woman with a stooped back

Walks back and forth

From door to door.

She looks right through me

And I am beginning to remember

That I am not really there

She is talking in Spanish

Focusing on something I can not see.

THE LIFE AND DEATH OF AN UNKNOWN

She was certified dead. That is to say she had glazed over unable or unwilling to put sense to the chaos all around. So she was plugged into a charger and pumped back into life though of course the frequency had to be high enough to overcome the conditions of permanent death that now seemed a fact. At last with sparks flying into white light and voices piercing into shattering trills that seemed to circle around one another indefinitely the deed was done and life had its say. But what kind of a life was this? A high one that is for sure. And her shoes needed to be weighted down with heavy led in order to keep her from flying off from place to place. And so it was that her very life needed to be held in check in order that it could be held at all. Such was the conditions of her life and she reached around for the colours just above her head which every now and then condensed out of the steam of white light that was her life condition but could never be seen for what it was. For such a life is too fierce and almost blinding to those around who must according to their judgement avert their eyes. So the colours each at a time became her life-line and out of these colours she wove necklaces which wound their way around her and took her from moment to moment in a series of eclipsed fragments. She had no memory of her own but she wore the colours that people liked to see. And so it was no loss to her when one day she was unplugged from the high voltage which was too high to be lived and then she melted back down into one as all the colours that had moved her merged into a huge calm open lake and from here she gazed up at the trees and the birds and the sky all day long. And the stones that one finds underneath the water of a lake or an ocean or a river are all that remains of the shoes that she once wore to route her to earth. Yet she found another way of flying. To stay put and meet the world from where she was. To see clearly in the transparency of things the whole picture.

WATER

There is a man cutting the grass. He is a tiny man and he has a long way to walk. He walks back and forth in tiny steps which when all sewn up together mark his passage across the wide open space. He never repeats himself for where he has walked the grass is shorter and where he has yet to walk it is longer.


Then all of a sudden it begins to rain. The rain comes pouring down and the weighty grass cutter which up until now the man has been pushing in front of him no longer works. The man is stuck there in the middle of the field, water-logged.


There is no single way out for the man. For he cannot cut a path in which to tread. In this respect he is trapped.

He lifts his face to the sky and like a drum, the rain falls on his taught skin then bounces off again. There is a resonance in the air.

PASSAGE

There were a number of vacant parking lots. Desolate patches with nothing to fill the air above the concrete flat.

All around these patches were lights that shone out brightly into the night as if scrubbing white a tiny bit of darkness only to leave the remaining space darker than before.

Cars slid in and out and around the desolate parking spaces never blinking, never looking to the left or to the right. Right on course were these cars moulded by the light from above.


There was a lacking in conversation in the air. Intense concentration was needed. There were directions that did not come casually. They needed to be learnt through scrutiny as an eye adjusts itself to a changing light alerting itself to the momentary discomfort of blindness so better to operate in the long run. Nothing could be taken for granted. There was a technique to this parking thing and cars needed to get it right moving off or staying put as needs be.


Only the hushed whisper in the half-light of dawn which came smoking across the lights from above could suggest another way. One which did not relate to the cars and their whereabouts but rather to the passage of time itself which seemed to occur in the squinting light all around. A memory never lost to the past, with no past to tell of.

CRAZY SITUATIONS

And if you saw me

Would you ignore me

Going in all kinds of

Crazy situations



Running in the thick of it

Never seem to get enough of it



Going in all kinds of

Crazy situations

THEMES FOR HEALTHY LIVING

She was born into a

Jar of black pepper

Corns.

Consequently she woke up

Into the world sneezing.



There seemed to be

No remedy in sight



Then one fine day

She woke up clear-headed

A miracle cure



Nobody thought to explain the cure

To the fact that the supply of crushed pepper corns

Had at last run out



On her death she left her life’s writings



It was a book of cooking recipes

For black pepper sauce and variations around that theme

It was a theme lesson on good living.

BETWEEN YOU AND ME

A jelly-fish swimming in the water free. What is it that distinguishes it from the sea? A thin membrane across which a process occurs. Water is vetted at the gates. Some is let in, some ejected. Other than this it is casual in its surroundings. It moves with the movement and that is all. It speaks plainly, moving in and out of currents as they occur. It’s body is a motion. The motion of the sea. Contemplating existence outside of this is pointless though for some a life without a back-bone seems equally pointless. It takes different types. This is a common saying in any time and place.

But look, along comes an aggressive type with teeth and jaw-bone. It is heading directly towards the jelly fish. Why? Because it does not see it. It simply does not know of it’s existence. So that’s when the jelly fish turns to other means. It colours itself in the blackest of inks- from the inside out. And this secretion. The colour in which it is recognised is also the colour by which it destroys the intrusion of such recognition for the ink is a deadly poison.


So it clears its passage and sinks back into the transparency of the water. For truly it is a part of the sea and it needs no other company.


It exists. As perhaps you and I exist, in these moments of danger when each of us are allocated at the borderlands that separate you from me and it is in such a tenancy as this that this existence, once it comes into being, is simultaneously ruled out.

CURSE OF THE CURE

There was poison in the air and some of it

Had got into my thumb. It was pulsating in a

Horrible kind of way and it really did

Take my breath away.



I looked at my thumb

Carefully as though it didn’t belong

To me.

It was causing me a great deal

Of pain and this alone was

Inexcusable.



So this is what I planned to do;

I ignored it hoping that such treatment

Would make it go away. It would

Get the hint- who wouldn’t?



So I waited,

Concentrating hard on ignoring the pulsating thumb

Which I no longer thought of as a part

Of me. Here was an alien

Stuck on the end of my body.

A vile thing.



And it scared me.

After some length of time

I went into the bathroom to wash my aching

Face. I was that tense.



I glanced up at the mirror and I saw one large

Pulsating thumb, it’s very breath

An anguish

That would not let up.

TIDY

There once was a boy who was told to clean the steps outside his front door. So he set to work sweeping and tidying each step at a time until not a trace of dust or dirt remained on these steps which he had taken so much trouble over. Now, by comparison, the pavement directly below the last step seemed awfully grubby to this boy’s mind. He gave it a quick flick of the brush and turned to go inside. But what was this? Out of the corner of his eye he caught or rather the grubby paper caught him and rooted him to the spot. Step by step he lowered himself to where the article lay wasting before his eyes. With a quick almost violent action he seized the object and crushed it in his hands. He held his breath not wanting to be contaminated by the smell of it though in order to remove it from sight he had to get closer to it then he thought propper. He cast his head this way and that trying to bathe it in the freshness of the early morning air far removed from the dirt he now held in his hand. But what was this? For off down the road there was a semblance of litter taking up the energy of the wind as it blew it back and forth. Hurriedly the boy ran to where the litter was tickling his attention. With broom in hand he swept at it ferociously. It moved and then stopped. Again he pushed it moving a little further forward away from the house where he lived. Of course the litter was still in sight. So he pushed again, ran to where it was now, cursed and pushed again.


Down streets he travelled at each turn accumulating more and more litter until he was a tiny figure pushing a mountain of litter in front of him.

Gradually the pile got so large that he could no longer avoid people or buildings in his travels. So they came along for the ride resigned to the scrap-heap at the end of that straw broom that shot ahead of the small boy like an accusing finger. At home his parents shook their fingers in turn wondering what mess the no good for nothing had got himself into this time.

Finally the boy found himself outside the city. Only at least half the city by now was on the end of his broom. He was desperate by now to find a quiet place to sit down. To breathe in fresh smells and take in the colours of nature. But it wasn’t to be.


To this day the boy still walks around restless but if you see him I would advise you to take that broom from his restless hands. For until he is free of it truly he is a prisoner to the chaos and disturbance which it is a broom’s task to seek out and which it will undoubtedly find, whichever way it goes.

MADE UP

My mind is made up

And yet I would rather

Forget all that for now.

I’d like to sit in front of the

Water and watch the children

Playing like I used to do

Rolling with the waves- carelessly.

IN THE CURRENT OF THE NIGHT

There was a type of

Currency that never did see

The light of day for when

Subjected to the sun’s rays

It was bleached white and so

It fell into the transparency of

The world around it its colour

Gone from the scene.



Only in the dark did it

Reposition itself briefly into a

Situation of existence.



And yet in the darkness what

Was it like to be a colour?

It was like a thought locked within

A mind that cannot speak. For the

Words fall into the dust that

Scatters at the heels of passing strangers.

BETWEEN APPRAISALS

People spoke to

One another

Then the conversation

Ended and they became

Dangerously engaged

Only the mute looked on

And smiled.

THE CONVERSATION

There was once an infant who tried to talk to its shadow. And the shadow talked back. That is how they met and this is how they came to focus their attention in upon one another. For no sooner had the infant spoke to the shadow then the shadow answered. Then the infant would find a compulsion to remain in the conversation extending it into his own point of view. And this is how they progressed chiming in on one another until all the activity seemed to be of a constant hum. A single voice. A single soul. As perhaps it was.


So engrossing was this particular on-going conversation that it used up all of the gestures, all the words, all of the thoughts of both infant and shadow. They glued together and could not be prized apart and yet to the outside world; to the figures that flitted and jumped so erratically around this moment of consequence there seemed in this conversation only the frozen stiffness unmoving, unchanging and unrelenting. For like the two halves of a nut which has grown together the surface reveals nothing of the activity within. But both shadow and infant knew that though bound together it was in the very unity that the pattern and shape for their release lay dormant, guarded and now hidden from the punched out faces of the exterior look of things which seemed always to be pointing the wrong way and never could be faced.


Time passed and yet there was no change. The infant widened and grew taller and so too did the shadow. And still the activities beyond their own unique involvement with one another seemed like so many pieces of dust blowing against their backs as they turned to face one another for fear of fracture. And so for the time being they remained, the infant whispering in the shadow, the shadow whispering in the infant. And still people beyond this locked up and loaded formula could not see a meaning in the averted countenance in which it held itself in check. They could not see a movement in the repetitive action. For infant and shadow were like the balls turning in a roulette wheel. They turned, they met. They separated. Again they spoke. The shapes changed but they alone remained the same oblivious of the games of winning or losing in which the behaviour was accredited or frowned upon in a mass of movement that seemed never to bear any relationship to them.


Then one day a bird appeared small and dusty from its long flight throughout the night. Yet now with the morning light its colours shone through and gently now it tapped against the surface of this hard nut, this outer form. For within it knew there lay a world and in the dark places in which it had passed through its tortuous journey it kept in mind the look of things, distant then and distant still, yet still there. And it was this look that it saw now within the darkened nut.


And so this is how the shadow and the infant came to make room for another and the meaning that they spoke reached out into the world around until people could not help but hear their message.

This is how at last the distant world of the bird and the distant world held between the shadow and the infant shifted together and light realised itself in a sentiment called empathy, a sentiment that reaches out of the distance.

A DAY'S WORK

There is a man who takes his dog for a walk. But the man has an ever-extendable lead for the dog. So in effect the dog takes himself for a walk. He walks around and about on the end of that lead while the man sits in his front garden watching the cars go by, which they never quite do. For the lead acts like an elastic catapult stretching taught across the road so that the cars who if they are to keep on track can not dodge the issue, are rebound into far off and distant orbits and so their destiny is settled for them.

Meanwhile the dog walks around, stops for a pee, sniffs a bit, looks up the road, looks down the road. Then returns to his master wagging furiously. They are the best of friends and the connexion remains between them even when separated by these lengthy excursions.


They believe themselves to be well on the way and in the lead in the race of life, whatever that may entail.

THE TEMPTERS

The tempters didn’t know they were tempting. How could they? All they did of a day was to sit on the wall and swing their legs to and fro in time to the steps of passers by. This was their way of coordinating themselves with the world at large. But the people outside, swayed by the rhythm, captured by the mechanics of their own rhythm, so swiftly subsumed in the sway before them, fell quickly into the arms of who? Their seducer? Such affinity so soon was seen as a rush of sweet warm liquid in which one could live, in which one could also die. So begun the battle. For these people of the world, seeing now without what had always before remained within confused them in such a way that it quite often tripped them right over and they feared for their body which now seemed to have fallen astray. As for the well balanced wall hangers they were survivors no matter what came to pass for all passed through them entering one way only to leave again by a channel of least resistance. War was not what they had on their mind for they knew the danger of waging war with a rhythm that passes through to the heart. And yet it was war that rested always on the fringes aggravating their feelings. So, feeling at last to be misunderstood and misplaced by the vessel of people who mistook a rhythm for themselves and could not let it wander freely the wall-hangers let go at last and took to the sky. Here they danced out what before they had sensed within. This is how in action they came to meet one another and so grasping on to one another they floated back down to earth where they hung out together swinging and undulating wherever fancy took them to be.

THERE

Formulating whatever it is I have to say is a matter of evolution. I will meet you there and being there we both of us will be met. Being met we will find ourselves there, together.

CHANGE OF SCENE

All is identical. Yet there is something amiss. As if things are not quite filled out. And yet they are there nevertheless. Who can say what it is that differs. For being here we are bound to the connexions before us. Of which we are a part. Why then this incongruity so that the colours seem to shake in their sockets? And lift a little into the air above? We are waiting on tender hooks for things to settle back down but they never do. So we switch off and go outside.

HER

Once, don’t you know who there was? Even if she did walk a little high off the ground making the greater part of her unavailable for speculation. Wandering about in the air meant that at any moment she could be anywhere which is better than being nowhere.


Ye the people with their feet in the concrete still felt her to be misplaced. And they talked to one another about her speechless gabble that brushed through the leaves residing in the treetops. For really she was the wind. And the wind can talk of any subject under the sun excepting the specifications of exactly what, where and how it is and how it came to be. For in its speech is movement and in this movement is a frequenting of many different places and manifestations.

But one day and a day is only one amongst many she decided to join or at least try her bestest to address the questions of where to place herself amongst the human beings whom she loved and wanted to join.


So she tied weights to her person which indeed she never quite knew in this way until she started securing to it these weights and gradually, ever so gradually and first and then finally down with a thump, she landed on a place of smooth and regular, highly groomed concrete. There she stood erect and immobile and people gathered around her new-formed person opening and closing their mouths, emitting sounds of countless variety. These she tried to grasp and memorise but the more she took in the more there seemed to be squabbling and bruising up against one another just on the other side of her new-found boundaries. Within this shape she could contain so much and the rest remained cold and unaccounted for. These words grew restless and begun pushing her, bumping her, shoulder to shoulder, small shocks at first then growing in intensity.

With her feet fixed to the ground she fell flat then bound up again. Bowing and straightening like a straw filling and emptying of liquid, it was a tiring way of existing. This was her initial thought concerning her new existence. Then the ferocity of the falls started to grow as the outside influences swelled against her. As for herself she was locked to the spot. Speechless and overwhelmed. Somewhere and going nowhere she was trapped.


So what did she do? Yes she untied the weights and dissipated once again into the spaces between people, the spaces between words where she played in-between the leaves and gabbled herself back into a stretched out existence where she grew once again and seemed to appreciate the humans that she knew feelingly and for this reason could not in the normal way join.

THE UNCLES

Every time somebody did something right they were allocated an uncle. This uncle was summoned by all parties witnessing the deed. All present voiced as one that word, Uncle. Then of course it was the job of the deliverer who was all ears to such proclamations to make it to the store-room, pick out an uncle from the many who crowded the floor space therein and about-turn. Now all debts were paid and this is how the uncles found their way into the homes and lives of the lucky ones.


But sometimes these uncles had to wait many years. A life-time almost to be collected out of the crowded living space of their shared home where none belonged in their own right and one was very much like another. How different from the refined homes that they were delivered into. Their positions of honour; the unlimited attention that was served on to them knew no bounds. For here they were unique. Even rarefied and what is more they reflected in their very presence the goodness of their host and so the utmost care had to be taken of them.

Is it not surprising that in the circumstances their deliverance into the very heart of this warm feathered nest, so very different from what they had known before, made a few of them opt to become a little grabbing in nature? And to be sure when this happened all confusion was let out. For when the reflected figure of ones own goodness turns around then all manner of meaning changes. Floods occur and borders perish.

It was in one particular household that this breakdown in the nature of things was most extreme. There sat Uncle, surrounded by a family, lavished upon, spoilt and billowed up with countless cushions all sewed tight with impeccable stitching and laced around the edges. Then was served one dish after another faster than it is possible to consume so that an assortment of fine foods grew up and grew up before Uncle and as it did so many cushions and still more had to be placed underneath him so that he could keep pace with the food. Finally as his head neared the ceiling he begun to snore and all those down below skirting the edges of that fine fellow; their one and only Uncle, begun to clap and whisper admiring comments. They were talking about Uncle. Who else?

Uncle could do no wrong. Is it any wonder that he tired? Yet no, it was simply not taken in and that was that. He could do no wrong and because of this over time Uncle seemed to acquire a mad, bad way which was like a secret friend to him in the midst of all that niceness. And yet the laughter and the clapping, the pats and the puddings continued. Uncle could do no wrong. He was left alone with his mad, bad side who so it seemed no one recognised. And this is really the crux of it. For in effect he emphasized what might not have been so bad after all. He gave his personality what we might call an edge and he used this edge to cut into conversations which fell away like dry cake on his touch and never seemed to nourish his true sentiments.


One after another he ripped apart the cushions spreading fist-fulls of soft duck-feather to the still air, covering the dining table with a fleece of white which was to him like a black shroud. But to the others it was a party trick for which he was much applauded. This caused him to go a little further in his activities and with the flick of the finger he had overturned the table and the food slid in a heap on to the creamy carpet. The people jumped up and over-turned the chairs in counter-balance. Maddening, thought Uncle.

Uncle was beginning to feel disturbed by the ripples that seemed to ensue every time he did a single thing as if the very bricks that surrounded him were made of cloth and he could make no impact on it. The softness of his world left him blanketed on the verge of oblivion.

He felt alone and he reflected for the first time on the gathering Uncles whom he had left behind in that strange storage space from his past.

“Well” said Uncle, “Of all the countries I have visited home is where you want it to be”

So saying he grabbed his fallen mountains of edibles which right now he could not get a hold of as something digestible and took off in a different kind of way through walls and people which now he could not see. For he had a vision. A vision of a bare room filled with people just like himself. Caught between good and bad.

Uncle walked in. But what was this? He was not the only one returning. Other figures converged along with him each carrying their own special bounties. Much laughter commenced as mouths moved in unison eating and talking in fits and starts.

Then the time came when it was time to put aside the outfits which of late seemed so out of place. Uncle was no more. Just a collection of ordinary people getting on with things as only they knew how.


As for the people in the households they had to find a different currency to mark the presence of their best qualities. In the absence of Uncle they began to recognise one another.

RELOCATION

We were having a fair exchange

Then in walked someone who changed the currency

We shrugged and looked away

Because to look meant something different from before

And the means that we had just spoken of

Now became unmentionable, impenetrable.

So in silence we looked away

Enclosed now within the walls of that room

That filled our averted consciousness

And made us restless

Not like before.

MEASURES OF REGRET

In the gap between

Energy and prohibition

Comes upset



Bodies break

That do not stretch



So give a little

Lest your tongue

Should take fright



Wailing like a lost tail

That won’t return

ARRANGING THE SHOPPING

Sometimes it is convenient to have a grocery bag.

Though the pressing of some things together

Makes for a clashing of taste.

Other things simply do not rest easy.

Take the cucumber that got shredded by the bicycle wheel.

Salad followed me home, basking in the sun

And passing its peak alone.

Back outside the fridge

I ring out the cherries from the ham, daffodils from the pie.

Other misfits give me cause for alarm

And the carrier bag is discharged with confusion all around.

Next time I will juggle my groceries home the way I please.

LIFESTYLE

I used to be a mammal, you know with lots of fluffy fur. The I went to the hair-dressers and I said “Can’t you do something with this? Style it into a couple of fins for me one on either side, so I can swim 'cause I’m fed up sitting here day in day out on this land waiting for something to happen”. I said to the stylist, “You know what I think? I think it’s up to us to make things happen. In this life we can’t just be sitting around waiting for things to happen. Because that way they never will”. He said, “Uh huh, uh huh” as he combed and shaped my fur into the required shape, lacquered it and patted it with the slightly red palms of his hands. Then he showed me the fins in the side mirror which reflected back into the front mirror so that I could see how perfectly matched they were, one on either side. I said “Yes that’s exactly it- you do know me”. Then, placing a heavy tip into his hands I left.


So now I was a fish. A fish out of water. I was aware of others noticing me as I ploughed my way through the busy streets. Now my main concern was to find some water.

I went down into the underground but there seemed to be no pointers. Only different strips of colour on the wall all tangling outwards and ending in different locations. I chose blue because blue gave a suggestion of water. But when I got out at the end of the line there was nothing very blue about my surroundings. Just a grey sky with rows of streets and houses. Similar in kind to the ones I had known all my life. I had gone somewhere without going anywhere I thought.


Then I saw a sign. It said “To the pool”. I went in paid for my ticket and was handed a towel. “I shan’t be needing that” I said. I didn’t bother to state the obvious. “Uh huh, uh huh” said the swimming attendant without looking up. “Same charge”.


And then I was on the diving board, waiting for the spatter of little ones to disperse so that I could take my plunge. “So here I go” I thought, the water breaking open like cellophane on my touch- the gift of a new world within. Me a creature of the sea. Down I go.


The water filled my lungs. It caught me and dragged me down. I coughed and spluttered, rose out of the water gasping for breath, down again. Then up squinting into the fluorescent lights with a mouth gaping water.

I got out of the water and went into the changing room, shivering. I was without a towel. Then I combed my dishevelled fur back into shape, into it’s original style and left to return from where I had come from.


I used to be a mammal. And I suppose I still am a mammal. Yet I am a different mammal from the one I was before. For I have done various things in my life that one could describe as not altogether typical of mammal- life. Yet perhaps it is only because of these wanderings that I can truly believe in what I say when I say, with hesitation, “I am a mammal”

NAME THE GAME

I looked at the chair

And it looked back at me

I went to sit down

And it just turned around

I asked it a question

It asked me the same

The question we asked was

“What is you name?”

THE DAY THE WORK ENDED

It was an area in which work was carried out. The evidence for this was all about. Work tools and half-finished fabrications were strewn haphazardly and poised for a moment in the absence of the worker. All was still and yet there was a stirring of energy within.


Then somebody came and lay down right in the middle of it all. He was carried out on a stretcher as he awoke to his own protestations.


With the worker gone the work was done.

THE NIGHT THE ACTION TOOK PLACE

The actor stood on a bare patch of grass. He would act nowhere but here for he proclaimed that it was here and here alone that he belonged. So they moved the scenery to a few feet behind him. They moved the orchestra to a few feet in front of him. And beyond the orchestra rows upon rows of seating were arranged which on opening night were filled to breaking point. And so as the show progressed, to the rolling of drums, each pair of ears was tuned not to miss a single utterance of the great performance. And every gesture was equally well received by the keen pair of eyes that every member of the audience now possessed. And for this sharpening of the senses they paid dearly. And the green patch became the centre of an outward spiralling vast mesh of security gates which remained closed to all those save the ones who held the tickets. And so, on approval of these printed pieces of paper, the guards who were trained to recognize the value of these tickets and to be fooled by nothing else let them in.


The audience watched amazed at the actions which now occurred to them down on the bare piece of grass below.

After the performance with a final roll of the drum they filed out in silence. For they had seen nothing like this before and nor would they again. For tonight was the last performance. It was unrepeatable and quite memorable.


The scenery was dismantled, the orchestra packed up and the chairs upon which the ticket holders had been seated were stacked up and driven away in a large lorry. The security fencing was cut and the pieces were packed away. The security guards were paid and they too begun to disperse.


Now only the actor remained upon the bare patch of grass.

He paces up and down, looks out and speaks into the distance. Then again he moves on, stops and speaks. This goes on for a couple of hours. He bows and begins again.

A telephone call is made from a public phone box. A lorry stops. Two men leave from the front of the lorry. They approach the actor. They take an arm each. But because the actor is mid-way between a gesture there is a scuffle. Finally they manage to lift him. They carry him and place him in the back of the lorry. As they drive away there is loud banging coming from the inside of the metal lorry. Heads turn at the sound of the noise within, but they cannot place it.

CIPHER

A billowing cloud marked her presence

And if one looked closer

Steam threaded through steam ever more.



Even in her stillness this was her all.



Yet she was viable in this way

And conversation spanned around

Only to come back to the solution



But deciphering her was not so assuring

And in the stillness of a frozen expression



Her eyes fell to the floor

Her mouth took off



And the gaping jaw

Said nothing.



___



Dictionary Definition.

Cipher: An interweaving of the initials of a name. A secret mode of writing. Continuous sounding of a note not played. A person or thing of little value.



CIPHER



The continuous sounding of a note

Not played

Holds my attention open

And things appear.

MISTAKE

Within the hard edges of things something was happening. And yet it seemed such a long way off. Distant eyes reached inside and stilled the body from view.

Outside there was growing agitation as a woman, nervous from the exhaustion of warding off a stranger’s eyes, knocks over the standing pint of a brimming glass. It falls and only the lather remains upon the wooden grained surface of the table. Too late to catch or even to see is the action gone and the glass smashes. Other things move, stop, prepare to move again and change direction. Several times occurrences seem to begin only to turn the other way.


Only the child crawled now underneath the surface of the table, drinking off the last of the liquid giggles to itself. And the vacant and distant smile of the adult looks on but dares not approach.

SENSE OF PLACE

The newcomers were tormented. For they did not fit in. And they looked at us in a way tat made us feel uncomfortable.

So we provoked them out of their seating and waited to see how long they could stand like that. The length of time became the length of their development and gradually as they changed, we begun to feel comfortable. Once again we invited them to be seated. Knowing what this meant they looked at us one last time from where they stood. This time we met their eyes for it was an occasion and therefore did not affect the day to day running of things. There was a moment’s confusion as the two sides; the new-comers and ourselves met and merged into one- and it manifested in the smile. Then they sat down and their faces clouded over so that once again we could define clearly the edges of our particular existence.


This is how we managed to contain the problem and even to give the new-comers a place where they could stay. So we have nothing to feel uncomfortable about.

JEWELS

She got up and started to prepare for the day. Quickly and expertly tucking away the straying pieces from the night before. For now it was morning and the morning led into the day.

In the mirror she trained her face for almost any occasion. And it was getting so that she could achieve this in less and less time.


Finally she put on the glasses. The ones that rested upon every person’s mantelpiece or equivalent resting point. For strictly speaking it was a must. She put on the glasses and just before they covered her eyes something indiscernible shot from one eye to another and then out again.


Now clicking the lenses into place her eyes stared out like two perfectly formed jewels and the transparent lenses that supported them faded into insignificance.

The sun shone brightly outside.

THE LAST PERFORMANCE

Preparing was half the battle. They were dressed in satin one in green the other in turquoise; cool colours that reflected the air around one another creating an air of disturbed excitation. To the exposed faces make-up was applied out of tins held by the thick fingers of their preparers. These fingers slid over the eye-lids, mouths and ears Primed and on tip-toe to the sound of the familiar music one at a time they entered the arena and sat facing one another in opposite corners staring into the mid-distant middle space of their own individual routines.

Then they met as only now they could. Fists struck fists. The bodies were introduced. And blood was drawn.

THE GREEDY GREEN GIANTS

“How many light-bulbs can you swallow for breakfast?” said Yok.

“As many as you like” said Yak.

So they lined them up. And as each put away more and more of these glowing balls they grew in bursts and spurts as if the added light gave am extra fluorescent greenness to their thick yet tender figures.

They were heading upwards as though they were a river running towards its source.

“Ahh… the source of light” said the two competitors with open eyes and gaping mouths. Then with one last extra large gulp they had done it. They had swallowed the sun. They coughed a couple of times, then swallowed and looked down at their swollen bellies that stuck out way ahead of them.


But now all around there was only darkness and gradually Yok and Yak began to wither and recede. Soon all that was left of them was two large green bellies. The rest of them had been eaten away by the long hard winter of that darkness.


Then one day a small faint light begun to shine through out of the darkness and as it did so the two bellies began to stir. Then all at once they broke asunder and the green from so many lights came tumbling and rolling down the hills in a multitude of shoots bursting up towards the new light.


In amongst all this commotion and excitement no one could really say for sure where Yok and Yak might be; the greedy green giants out of whose bellies so much life had come.

THE WAR

There was a disease in the land.


Those who did not have the disease were undoubtedly carriers of the disease. For it was said that the more agile one was the more efficient one was at spreading the disease to other locations. And so the disease grew and it was written upon the faces and felt under the skin of the people of this land.

So it was agreed that something should be done. Something to stop the carriers from carrying their sober message across this land. So it was agreed that the carriers; the agile ones, such as they remained, must e shot. To every sick person a shot-gun was prescribed and it was their task for the betterment of their people to route out the restless agility that was, for sure, bringing them such bad tidings.

They knew what they were and knowing this it was important that they recognise who they were not. For it was a discrimination that this recognition brought that would cure them. This in any case was what the prescription, wrapped around the barrel of a gun, indicated. So they popped back the barrel of the gun, loaded it with pellets and whilst sipping water, wrapped beneath their warm duvets they waited behind the open crack of a closed door.

As the agile ones circled and played outside one by one they were picked off. Each time a crack was sounded from the barrel of a shot-gun the figures outside dispersed and vanished from the immediate vicinity. But everywhere they went now in diminishing numbers it was the same and so tired and exhausted they either joined the sick or ended their days there on the spot. When at last the agile ones were all gone then it was that only the sick were left and then of course their over-all majority made them feel a little better.

And so the measuring pole of well-being was undoubtedly shifted in favour of the sick and everywhere people whispered of a miracle cure.

Then one day a young and agile traveller happened to pass that way. When he saw the shrunken manner and pale complexion of the people of this land his face begun to darken, especially as he was being watched through the long dark tunnel of a deepening crowd of shot-guns.

BENJAMIN'S PLACE

Benjamin was a flat and simple limpet. But sometimes he took on the attitude of other animals. Though this was no easy pose.

Benjamin who was something of an inventor, knew the recipe of rush and freeze that were needed in different volumes and intensities in order to ram-raid ones way into a new existence. He knew how to stir the blood, quicken the pace, whirl the air around the body until it flew up and broke into brightly coloured strips of light. He knew how to then grasp these whirling possibilities. To draw them down into the size of a bean whereupon their massive energy would pump out into the limbs and body of the creature who operated at that specific frequency of speed and colour. Then would stand the creature on the ground, dust still rising all around.

If perhaps it was a cow it might stamp its feet, snort and move off in search of some grass to chew. If it was a duck no doubt it would quack. A donkey and it would bray. As a bird it would flap its wings and take to the sky. And so the destiny of each creature would come about according to the will as held in the balance of that particular form and its bearing n the world.

The animal would go about its own particular business picking up and putting down as it was in its nature to do.

Not so the human being. It stood complete and fully-formed. A man standing above the dust-scented land and smiled. And yet it did not move.

He was dressed in a white satin costume with pointed shoes upon which hung two large ribbons. On his head was a conical shaped hat tapering into a tiny point. Ad still the dust rose for the rush and ram “spin” into this particular form had been ferocious.

Benjamin was a clown. And he smiled for he knew that there was no going back to his ancestral forefather the limpet. And his eyes shone and watered dark in the centre, red at the edges and his lips which were full and wet quivered with the knowledge. For he knew that he was a combination of every possibility balanced back down to nought. And that the limpet was within him and that there is no going back to what is also present. And for that reason he smiled. He smiled and did not move. Though inside his white satin suit the colours were still raging. And down beside his ribboned white shoes the dust was still billowing around him though for him and perhaps for anyone concerned it seemed as if he had always been there and had not just arrived.

Why was this? It was because on the human scale of things arrivals and departures such as this seemed very much like standing still for all eternity.

And so it was with the clown whose eyes watered a little from the inside as the colours tried once again to escape back into the air from which they had come.

And yet contained within the satin white suit Benjamin knew what he was though the activities of the cow, the donkey and the duck; of his fellow beings did not encompass him. For he was bound tight to where he was. He did nothing. Spoke nothing. Gave no sign. Only the colours; the colours in his mind. Raging and swimming above the room in circles. Bound within the white flaccid skin of the clown. For Benjamin was a man. And he knew what it was to be a man watched.

SKITTLES

There was a guard dog that was kept in state of deep-freeze.

Hard a s a rock it sat outside the Engineers Arms, a popular venue for the local elite where positions were secured by the playing of skittles. In this game everything that they had learnt together in their youth was pitted against one another and they fought to the end. It was the winner of this game who was chosen to be the guard dog for the next game and was ceremoniously hoisted into the deep-freeze department of the local abattoir to be hardened into the appropriate stance.


And so the guard dog stood hard and still glaring ahead with a look of frozen indifference on its face. Yet when another dog happened to pass, warmed slightly by the excitement that this approach brought, there grew a tiny soft patch hidden deep within the frozen countenance of the guard dog. This gave rise to a confusion of intentions. And in the gap between control and excitement came the twitch; a convulsive and erratic twitching of the body both towards and away from the object of desire. It was the suddenness of this movement that proved the greatest deterrent to the approaching dog and so, terrified into submission it would run tail to its belly away from the enigma. Again the guard dog would freeze over in the isolation of its solitary position. And so it remained this way, keeping at all times intruders at a distance.

At the end of its term of office when the game of skittles was over it was finally thawed out in front of the gas fire in the reception room of the Engineers Arms. The fixed expression would then seem to droop a little. And as it sat there in the warm soft lighting of the interior of the Engineers Arms it could sometimes be heard to sigh deeply to itself. And the casual drinkers at the bar, noted for their strong sense of clan-manship, took note of the odd character of this new-comer, already unrecognisable as the former guard dog to their establishment.

As the guard dog’s period of de-frostation came to an end so started a new life. It was quickly led away by officials and put into retreat in a retirement house somewhere in the suburban corners of the outer reaches of the city. Here it was fed until its belly wiped the floor and on the slightest rustle its expression would wrinkle into a thousand tiny knots of expectation and its tail would wag stirring the air around it and occasionally thumping the ground below.


The young ones got into the habit of teasing the inmates of the retirement home by swiftly approaching and leaving again. For they had no time for the comical greetings of the old.

No it was the enigmatic intransigence of the guard dog that they admired as it stood as always outside the Engineers Arms with a look of frozen indifference on its face. For here was a dog that had mastered the game of skittles at least once in its life. And it was every small dog’s ambition to do this.

NEVER TOLD AGAIN

This is a true story of a woman who had to look at the world as if it were a story for otherwise her gaze was too direct to be tolerated by absolute strangers.


Every time she saw someone of interest she hastily mumbled the words “Once upon a time” and then she looked at them as if recounting a found memory with far away eyes. This is how she became a well-loved visitor in the company of others.

Then one day, mesmerized by the bright lights of a shopping precinct she forgot her lines and found herself colliding with the many strings of people that seemed to converge in her path as if it were at that point and this point alone that the present moment could be found.


Such a lot of company all of a sudden that she clean forgot herself and danced a jig right there in the middle of the shopping precinct to the tunes of an accordionist.


The next day the two were married and apart from the words “I do” their silent bliss has never been broken by those distant words, “Once upon a time”.

HOW PEOPLE MET

The beat of the metronome was in each of them. They were erect and impenetrable. One replaced another and then another as they forged passed one another guarding their corners; looking straight ahead.


Then the sun came out. These figures slowed down to a halt, looked around them as if for the first time and waited. Then it begun to happen. They begun slowly to melt.

Light shone off surfaces ringing out colours that hummed in the air and merged with one another.


Then the figures began to hum. And out of this came the thin growing pitches which arranged themselves into the word-sounds, Man and Woman.


Whenever the sun goes in the words become separated once again from their sounds like cold pebbles washed up out of moving water. So then there is nothing of value to speak of anymore until again the sun comes out.

THE HERO

And the arm dismembered itself from the body, drummed its fingers on the table, stopped and raising its forefinger into the air pointed directly at the body and said,

“Now I know who I am but who are you?”

“I am, I am , I am..”

But just then the ear dropped right off.

“Now” said the ear, gaping widely,

“Tell me, for I am all ears. And now that I have explained myself to you, tell me, wouldn’t you be so kind as to let me know, who are you?”

“I am, I am, I am…well, I am” said the remaining sections of the body to the ear. But just then it was interrupted by the unexpected disengagement of a knee.

“Now” said the knee kneeling down for effect.

“I know what it is I can do in life and it is this that I will keep on doing for the moment that I stop this, don’t you see, is the moment that I cease to exist. And yes it is true that I sometimes miss the company of my own kind, namely the other knee but still I carry on doing what I know best happy to be that way inclined. And tell me what leanings do you pride yourself on good friend whose name I have yet to learn?”

The remaining pieces of the body begun to perspire under the growing crowd of questioners whose questions were all the same yet all of whom demanded a different answer.

“Oh I suppose I am..I am..I am. Well now let me think”

But just then another interruption as this time the mouth rolled off, stuck out its tongue, licked its lips and said,

“Come on Sweety, tongue-tied already. I have called out many names in my time but now your silence makes me suppose that the only name to call you is fool. Am I right or am I right? I always suppose I am but then no one ever talks back to me.”

The pieces of body such as were left, itched and fretted. They jolted and sparked so much that just then the legs came clean apart from the torso. The two halves simply went their separate ways. Then the head rolled off and out sprung the eyes bouncing, tat, tat, tat, one up and one down in a cacophony of sound.

Then everything was silent once again. All was still. All now came to face one another in the silence of that room. Then out of the silence they all in unison; the arm, the ear, the knee, mouth, legs and torso all voiced the same concern;

“Who are you?”

The answer came loud and clear without hesitation.

“Nobody”.

So they all climbed back into place and our hero walked into the sun-set.

THE GLASS BOWL THAT CAME AND WENT

I was walking along keeping myself to myself. Concerned with a thousand concerns that perhaps I wouldn’t have been able to name if put on the spot.

The world seemed good enough to me and yet it was then that I noticed a tiny crack no thicker than a hair no larger than a finger-nail somewhere out there ahead of me as though I were looking into the concave of a transparent glass bowl.


As I watched the crack it seemed almost as though my watching it made it grow for all of a sudden it grew shoots in every direction and now all the things of the world seemed somehow perched between cracks; little islands of “now” ready to be punched out by the slightest breeze.

Piece after piece stared in at me and I begun to wander from what side of the glass-bowl the breezed would come.

I shielded my eyes as against a glaring light. I could no longer take in the scenery. I forgot what I was doing there in the street. Why I had come out and where it was I was going.


Then I looked up:

I saw a bird flying overhead swiftly without thought or concern. I realized it had flown straight though the glass bowl and that there were no fragments to be seen. All was simply one again. I carried on with the day so far.

THE DUTIES OF WENDY MAYHEM

Wendy Mayhem acted inappropriately at unexpected moments in time. She walked through rules as if they weren’t there. For indeed for her they weren’t. She was always in possession of long lists of complaints for damages which so it seemed she had committed. And there were people all around her expressing anger.


This is how she came to learn about rules in retrospect.


And so she gained a definition of the shape of the world much as one feels out the shape of a cheek by blowing air into it. For what is a cheek but a piece of skin balanced between two tides of air? The face changes as does the balance.


Wendy Mayhem had her duty to do even though those around her tried as best they could to suck in her cheeks until the skin clung to the bone. But it was no good staying that way all the time.

ACCOUNTABLE

There was an accumulation of little known facts outside my door. They wait in a hustle closely packed and limited in space. So much so that their movement is curtailed for fear of bruising.


They hum and mill around there on the spot. Shifting only from one toe to the next, drumming now in anticipation as we would our fingers. It sounds to me like hail-stones though the day is sunny.

Finally I open the door. The crack grows and as it does so they pour in. I am overwhelmed by these strangers with their strangeness. Their close edginess. Their elbows and knees.


So quickly herding them rather like cattle with a long prodding stick I guide and sometimes even push them, single-file, one by one into the conversion room. God knows what goes on in there but it seems to work. For after a period of time they are accountable, sociable and even smiling broadly. Their good behaviour takes the show and elbows and knees are forgotten to us now.

Simply they introduce themselves as friend and this is how I come to meet the many aspects of the friend now facing me.


Under their breath they whisper of the child in the cowboy hat and pressed coat who has seen them inside the conversion room. His eyes so they say are unchanging like a boat on the sea.

THE POUCH

Into the digestion track went the food.

And marmalade got to chewing.

Crunch and crunch- downwards it goes.

More input. Crunch some more. Slide down.

To join what is already there.

Though not so far down that it hits the

Sack and melts out into the extremity of

The body.



For there is a pouch

Just about half-way down. A detour from

The main route only it is fast becoming

The one and only. For nowadays the main

Route never gets a look in.



The food finds a resting place in this

Pouch and then it never thinks of leaving.

Soon it is turned into fatty substances and

That is how the pouch has come to be magnified

In size and status. It is growing past the

Limits of the now regressive body which

Seems these days only to be a small ligament,

Like a branch that hasn’t been pruned from the

Main force of life. Only this life is heavy.



Well, let’s go talk to Marmalade again

And get her opinion on all this.

Well it seems she’s left. She’s left

Her pouch behind and is breakfasting with

Some friends up the road.

Marmalade is a fine and robust

Figure of a lady these days. And that big-

Headed pouch of hers is beginning

To shrink to its true size in her absence.

Whoever said a girl needs a pouch

To get on in life?

Perhaps it’s the other way round and the

Implications of this should always be kept

In mind.

VENEER

I decided to put a veneer on my money.

I crushed six eggs and soaked

Note after note.

That’s how I made what I had more worthy.

The monarchy looked radiant.

As if in youth.

I stood them up in my window

And they shone out at passers by.

While I went hungry.

MARBLE

There is a marble. It is small.

And it sits in the palm of my hand.

I roll it over the surface of your back.

The marble is between us.

Keeping me there. At first it is restless.

Wandering all over. Shifting. Then it becomes more still.

Until it is simply there. And we breath together.

There is only one look. The meaning is clear.

Then I meet you outside.

There are lights. A video is playing in the pub

In which we enter. It is of a man’s face

In between two unhinged feet. There are so many

People. In all walks of life.

You shore off into the distance. Focusing and unfocusing

As people expand and shrink before your eyes.

This makes it all graspable in the confusion that it would otherwise be.



I am sitting there watching you, now from outside beside you.

For I am not at that moment anywhere near you.

Your face twists behind your glass.

We kiss with dry lips. Impossible.

The marble is at home.

UNINFORMED

It’s a crime they warn. It’s a crime to carry on that way. Carrying around with you such an expression as this. For to feel that way when we do not is not to take account of the way we feel. You are shutting us out. Wrapping yourself in a blissful world far from reach. You smile and you smile so beautifully. Where does this smiling come from? Not from here. Not from these parts. Never, for to smile is to give something away and we have nothing left to give away. It was taken long ago.

Your smiling empties us from what we have become. Is it derision for us? We who are defined along hard lines of sufferance. Would you deny us this you who smile? But at whom do you smile and why? Are you loose? Unhinged? When we are tight, held in? You are punishable as any one person like you deserves to be, but yet you do not seem to comprehend our punishing looks. You question our meaning and we can not explain. For there is nothing to explain. It is how we have come to know ourselves and that is all.


What are you trying to do? Looking. Beckoning. Smiling. Still smiling. We look around. There is so much to fall into. If we expand off this line of ours. This is how it has come to be with our smiling. We smile because for a moment we have lost the look. We are blinded by the look of another. But your smile is all seeing; unidirectional. So we feel we can not look back. Nor can we look away. We can not contain is as we are used to doing with our looking. We are unplaced by it.


So what is it that you want of us? Since you would have it all ways and you have caught us in this way. You who are foreign through and through. Who are unlike us in every way. What do you want of us? To be joined?


We look around questioningly. But there is nobody to locate. Yet it is the first time that we have searched the wide open emptiness for meaning in this way.

STONES

Well a stone after all is just a stone. And a stone may be worn by the elements- made smooth. Even a mountain may lose its edginess.

What is underneath a stone but more stone? Yet it is only the surface that is seen; seen according to our limited inscriptions. Here we locate the thing in a single moment of our choosing. Here on the surface is where we choose our version. Yet our inscriptions never penetrate to the essence. We never have the last word though we may forget what is said beyond our own breath.
Yet what rights have we to occupy in this manner. There is already so much that we must pass over so that things are never really there in their own right.

Stone of my stone I would break this tenuous obsession for that which is not there and catches itself in the very things that do exist so denying them of their true existence. For is it not the same with flesh and blood as with stone? That we are weaving our antidotes for the past and the future out of mouths which flag as if from a passing wind but cannot truly accept the passing of time, No we never really allow the wind to take us with it.. This is why it battles us so.

So I want to do something to address the problem of the stones. That evening, dressed in black; carrying only a small torch and a battery operated scouring brush I made my way down to the cemetery. It was dark. I set to work, eradicating names and dates and words of remembrance.

I worked methodically and I worked hard passing from one stone to another. I didn’t know but it seemed to me that each stone seemed to come back down to rest and stand a little easier than before like a soldier whose rigid salute has been relaxed and whose face begins to breath again in its own right.
Now it was the sediment of the thing itself built and compressed over time, rising from the interior to the surface that coloured and gave meaning to the expression of each stone. And the names of the dead rose into the air without, I think, recrimination. I stayed with the stones a very long time until day-break because they had much to tell me and these things were very strange. It was my first real conversation.

As the sun rose I left returning to my flat in Basingstoke where I slept until that evening, changed into my work clothes and made my way into the centre of the city. Then I entered the night-club where I worked. I was a cocktail waitress entertaining lonely men whose tongues spoke freely under the influence of alcohol and under my professional guidance they forgot the constraints that they had made their lives. Yet it was this very constraint that they never mentioned though it was that that had brought them there in the first place. I listened long into the night.