She sent it to me as a text message, that is an image of a quote in situ, a piece of interpretation in a gallery. Saturday morning and I was driving home from a week in a remote cottage on a mountain. I had stopped to take one last look at the sea, where I usually take one last look, and the phone bleeped. A text message, but no text.  Just a photo of some words. It made me smile, the impossibility of it. Epic poems and tapestry weaving. Of course there are connections, in that for centuries the epic subject has so often been the stuff of the tapestry weaver’s art. I say this glibly, but cannot name a particular tapestry where this might be so. Those vast Arthurian pieces by William Morris to pictures by Burne-Jones have an epic quality both in scale and in subject, but, to my shame, I can’t put a name to one.

These days the tapestry can be epic once more - in size and intention - thanks to the successful, moneyed contemporary artist and those communities of weavers at West Dean and at Edinburgh’s Dovecot. Think of Grayson Perry’s The Walthamstowe Tapestry, a vast 3 x 15 metres executed by Ghentian weavers, a veritable apocalyptic vision where ‘Everyman, spat out at birth in a pool of blood, is doomed and predestined to spend his life navigating a chaotic yet banal landscape of brands and consumerism’.  Gosh! Doesn’t that sound epic!

I was at the Dovecot a little while ago, but the public gallery was closed. The weavers were too busy finishing Victoria Crowe’s Large Tree Group to cope with visitors. You see, I do know a little about this world even though my tapestry weaving is the sum total of three weekends tuition, even though I have a very large loom once owned by Marta Rogoyska. It languishes next door in the room that was going to be where I was to weave, where I was going to become someone other than I am. This is what I feel - just sometimes - when I’m at my floor loom, if only for those brief spells when life languishes sufficiently for me be slow and calm enough to pick up the shuttles and find the right coloured yarns. But I digress. In fact putting together tapestry and epic poetry is a digression from the intention of the quote on the image from that text - (it was from a letter to Janey written in Iceland). Her husband, William Morris, reckoned one could (indeed should) be able to compose an epic poem and weave a tapestry.  

This notion, this idea that such a thing as being actively poetic and throwing a pick or two should go hand in hand, and, in Morris’ words, be a required skill (or ‘he’d better shut up’), seemed (and still does a day later) an absurdity. Would such a man (must be a man I suppose) ‘never do any good at all’ because he can’t weave and compose epic poetry simultaneously?  Clearly so.  But then Morris wove his tapestries very early in the morning - often on a loom in his bedroom. Janey, I imagine, as with ladies of her day - she wasn’t one, being a stableman’s daughter, but she became one reading fluently in French and Italian and playing Beethoven on the piano- she had her own bedroom.

Do you know there are nights when I wish for my own room, even when sleeping with the one I love, as so often I wake in the night, and I lie there afraid (because I love her dearly and care for her precious rest) to disturb her sleep with reading or making notes, both of which I do when I’m alone.
Yet how very seductive is the idea of joining my loved one in her own space, amongst her fallen clothes, her books and treasures, her archives and precious things, those many letters folded into her bedside bookcase, and the little black books full of tender poems and attempts at sketches her admirer has bequeathed her when distant and apart. Equally seductive is the possibility of the knock on the bedroom / workroom door, and there she’ll be there like the woman in Michael Donaghy’s poem, a poem I find every time I search for it in his Collected Works one of the most arousing and ravishing pieces of verse I know: it makes me smile and imagine.  . .  Her personal vanishing point, she said, came when she leant against his study door all warm and wet and whispered 'Paolo’. Only she’ll say something in a barely audible voice like ‘Can I disturb you?’ and with her sparkling smile come in, and bring with her two cats and the hint of a naked breast nestling in the gap of the fold of her yellow Chinese gown she holds close to herself - so when she kneels on my single bed this gown opens and her beauty falls before her, and I am wholly, utterly lost that such loveliness is and can be so . . .

When I see a beautiful house, as I did last Thursday, far in the distance by an estuary-side, sheltering beneath wooded hills, and moor and rock-coloured mountains, with its long veranda, painted white, I imagine. I imagine our imaginary home where, when our many children are not staying in the summer months and work is impossible, we will live our ‘together yet apart’ lives. And there will be the joy of work. I will be like Ben Nicholson in that Italian villa his father-in-law bought, and have my workroom / bedroom facing a stark hillside with nothing but a carpenter’s table to lay out my scores. Whilst she, like Winifred, will work at a tidy table in her bedroom, a vase of spring flowers against the window with the estuary and the mountains beyond. Yes, her bedroom, not his, though their bed, their wonderful wooden 19C Swiss bed of oak, occupies this room and yes, in his room there is just a single affair, but robust, that he would sleep on when lunch had been late and friends had called, or they had been out calling and he wanted to give her the premise of having to go back to work – to be alone - when in fact he was going to sleep and dream, but she? She would work into the warm afternoons with the barest breeze tickling her bare feet, her body moving with the remembrance of his caresses as she woke him that morning from his deep, dark slumber. ‘Your brown eyes’, he would whisper, ‘your dear brown eyes the colour of an autumn leaf damp with dew’. And she would surround him with kisses and touch of her firm, long body and (before she cut her plaits) let her course long hair flow back and forward across his chest. And she did this because she knew he would later need the loneliness of his own space, need to put her aside, whereas she loved the scent of him in the room in which she worked, with his discarded clothes, the neck-tie on the door hanger he only reluctantly wore.

Back to epic poetry and its possibility. Even on its own, as a single, focused activity it seems to me, unadventurous poet that I am, an impossibility. But then, had I lived in the 1860s, it would probably not have seemed so difficult. There was no Radio 4 blathering on, no bleeb of arriving texts on the mobile. There were servants to see to supper, a nanny to keep the children at bay. At Kelmscott there was glorious Gloucestershire silence - only the roll and squeak of the wagon in the road and the rooks roosting. So, in the early mornings Morris could kneel at his vertical loom and, with a Burne-Jones cartoon to follow set behind the warp. With his yarns ready to hand, it would be like a modern child’s painting by numbers, his mind would be free to explore the fairy domain, the Icelandic sagas, the Welsh Mabinogion, the Kalevara from Finland, and write (in his head) an epic poem. These were often elaborations and retellings in his epic verse style of Norse and Icelandic sagas with titles like Sigurd the Volsung. Paul Thompson once said of Morris  ‘his method was to think out a poem in his head while he was busy at some other work.  He would sit at an easel, charcoal or brush in hand, working away at a design while he muttered to himself, 'bumble-beeing' as his family called it; then, when he thought he had got the lines, he would get up from the easel, prowl round the room still muttering, returning occasionally to add a touch to the design; then suddenly he would dash to the table and write out twenty or so lines.  As his pen slowed down, he would be looking around, and in a moment would be at work on another design.  Later, Morris would look at what he had written, and if he did not like it he would put it aside and try again.  But this way of working meant that he never submitted a draft to the painful evaluation which poetry requires’.

Let’s try a little of Sigurd

There was a dwelling of Kings ere the world was waxen old;
Dukes were the door-wards there, and the roofs were thatched with gold;
Earls were the wrights that wrought it, and silver nailed its doors;
Earls' wives were the weaving-women, queens' daughters strewed its floors,

And the masters of its song-craft were the mightiest men that cast
The sails of the storm of battle down the bickering blast.
There dwelt men merry-hearted, and in hope exceeding great
Met the good days and the evil as they went the way of fate:
There the Gods were unforgotten, yea whiles they walked with men,

Though e'en in that world's beginning rose a murmur now and again
Of the midward time and the fading and the last of the latter days,
And the entering in of the terror, and the death of the People's Praise.

Oh dear. And to think he sustained such poetry for another 340 lines, and that’s just book 1 of 4. So what dear reader, dear sender of that text image encouraging me to weave and write, just what would epic poetry be now? Where must one go for inspiration? Somewhere in the realms of sci-fi, something after Star-Wars or Ninja Warriors. It could be post-apocalyptic, a tale of mutants and a world damaged by chemicals or economic melt-down. Maybe a rich adventure of travel on a distant planet (with Sigourney Weaver of course), featuring brave deeds and the selfless heroism of saving companions from deadly encounters with amazing animals, monsters even. Or is ‘epic’ something else, something altogether beyond the Pixar Studios or James Cameron’s imagination? Is the  ‘epic’ now the province of AI boldly generating the computer game in 4D?  

And the epic poem? People once bought and read such published romances as they now buy and engage with on-line games. This is where the epic now belongs. On the tablet, PlayStation3, the X-Box. But, but . . . Poetry is so alive and well as a performance phenomenon, and with that oh so vigorous and relentless beat. Hell, look who won the T.S.Eliot prize this year! Story-telling lives and there are tales to be told, even if they are set in housing estates and not the ice caves of the frozen planet Golp. Just think of children’s literature, so rich and often so wild. This is word invention that revisits unashamedly those myths and sagas Morris loved, but in a different guise, with different names, in worlds that still bring together the incredible geographies of mountains and deserts and wilderness places, with fortresses and walled cities, and the startling, still unknown, yet to be discovered ocean depths.

                                    And so let my tale begin . . . My epic poem.

                                                 THE SEAGASP OF ENNLI.
       A TALE IN VERSE OF EARTHQUAKE, ISLAND FASTNESS, MALEVOLENT SPIRITS,
                                                AND REDEMPTIVE LOVE.

Once more the cauldron of the sun
Smears the bookcase with winy red,
And here my page is, and there my bed,
And the apple-tree shadows travel along.
Soon their intangible track will be run,
And dusk grow strong
And they have fled.

Yes: now the boiling ball is gone,
And I have wasted another day….
But wasted—wasted, do I say?
Is it a waste to have imagined one
Beyond the hills there, who, anon,
My great deeds done,
Will be mine alway?

I can imagine her in Aarhus Kunstmuseum coming across this painting, adjusting her glasses, pursing her lips then breaking out into a big smile. The gallery is almost empty. It is early in the day for visitors, but she is a tourist so allowances are made. Her partner meanwhile is in the Sankt Markus Kirke playing the *****, a 3 manual tracker-action gem built in 1967 by Poul Gerhard Anderson. Sweelink then Bach (the trio sonatas written for his son Johann Christian) are on the menu this morning. In the afternoon she will take herself off to one of the sandy beaches a bus ride away and work on a poem or two. He has arranged to play the grand 83-voice Frobinus ***** in the Cathedral. And so, with a few variations, some illustrious fugues and medley of fine meals in interesting restaurants, their stay in Denmark’s second city will be predictably delightful.
       She is a poet ‘(and a philosopher’, she would say with a grin), a gardener, (old roses and a Jarman-blue shed), a musician, (a recorder player and singer), a mother (four girls and a holy example), but her forte is research. A topic will appear and relentlessly she’d pursue it through visits to favourite libraries in Cambridge and London. In this relentless pursuit she would invariably uncover a web of other topics. These would fill her ‘temporary’ bookcase, her notebooks and her conversation. Then, sometimes, a poem would appear, or not.
          The postcard from Aarhus Kunstmuseum had sat on her table for some weeks until one quiet morning she decided she must ‘research’ this Sosphus Claussen and his colleagues. The poem ‘Imperia’ intrigued her. She knew very little Danish literature. Who did for goodness sake! Hans Christian Anderson she dismissed, but Søren Kierkegaard she had read a little. When a student, her tutor had talked about this author’s use of the pseudonym, a very Socratic device, and one she too had played with as a poet. Claussen’s name was absent from any online lists (Were there really on 60 poets in Danish literature?). Roge appeared, and the painter Willumsen had a whole museum dedicated to his work; this went beyond his El Greco-like canvases into sculpture, graphics, architecture and photography. He looked an interesting character she thought as she browsed his archive. The one thing these three gentlemen held in common was an adherence to the symbolist aesthetic. They were symbolists.
         For her the symbolists were writers, playwrights, artists and composers who in the later years of the 19C wanted to capture absolute truth through indirect methods. They created work in a highly metaphorical and suggestive manner, endowing particular images or objects with symbolic meaning. Her studies in philosophy had brought her to Schopenhauer who considered Art to be ‘a contemplative refuge from the world of strife’. Wasn’t this what the symbolists were all about?
         Her former husband had introduced her to the world of Maurice Maeterlinck through Debussy’s Pelleas and those spare, intense, claustrophobic dramas like Le Malheure Passe. It was interesting how the discovery of the verse of the ancient Chinese had appeared at the time of the symbolist project, and so influenced it. Collections like The Jade Flute that, in speaking of the everyday and the natural world, held with such simplicity rich symbolic messages. Anyway, she didn’t do feelings in her poetry.
           When she phoned the composer who had fathered three of her children he said to her surprise ‘Delius’. He explained: C.F. Keary was the librettist for the two operas Delius composed. Keary wrote a novel called The Journalist (1898) based on Sosphus, a writer who wrote plays ‘heavily laced with symbolism’ and who had also studied art and painted in Paris. Keary knew Claussen, who he described as a poet, novelist, playwright, painter, journalist and eventually a newspaper owner. Claussen was a close friend of Verlaine and very much part of the Bohemian circle in Paris. Claussen and Delius’ circle intersected in the person of Herman Bang, a theatre director who produced Claussen’s Arbedjersken (The Factory Girl). Clauseen wrote an important poem on Bang’s demise, which Delius set to music.
          She was impressed. ‘How is it that you know so much about Delius?’, she asked. He was a modernist, on the experimental edge of contemporary music. ‘Ah’, he replied, ‘I once researched the background to Delius’ Requiem. I read the composer’s Collected Letters (he was a very serious letter writer – sometimes 10 a day), and got stuck into the letters of his Paris years when so many of his friends were Scandinavian émigrés. You once sent me a postcard of a painting by Wilhumsen. It was of Clauseen reading to two of his ‘symbolist’ colleagues. I think you’d picked it up in Denmark. You said, if I recall, that you’d found it ‘irresistible’’.
          And so it was, this painting. Irresistible. She decided that its irresistibility lay in the way the artist had caught the head and body positions of reader and listeners. The arrangement of legs, she thought, says so much about a man. Her husband had always sat with the care embedded in his training as a musician at an instrument. He could slouch like the rest of us, she thought, but when he sat properly, attentive to her words, or listening to their sweet children, he was beautiful. She still loved him, and remembered the many poems she had composed for him, poems he had never seen (she had instructed a daughter to ‘collect’ them for him on her passing). Now, it was he who wrote poetry, for another, for a significant other he had said was his Muse, his soul’s delight, his dearly beloved.
          The wicker chair Sophos Claussen is sitting in, she decided, she would like in her sitting room. It looked the perfect chair for giving a reading. She imagined reading one of her poems from such a chair . . .
 
If daydreams are wrecks of something divine
I’m amazed by the tediousness of mine.
I’m always the power behind throne.
I rescue princes to make my own.
 
‘And so it goes’, she thought, quoting that American author she could never remember. So it goes, this strange life, where it seems possible for the mind to enter an apartment in 19C København and call up the smell of brilliantined hair, cigar tobacco, and the samovar in the kitchen. This poem Imperia I shall probably never read, she thought, though there is some American poet on a Fulbright intent on translating Claussen’s work into English. In a flash of the mind’s miracle she travels to his tiny office in his Mid-West university, surrounded by the detritus of student tutorials. In blue jeans and cowboys boots Devon Whittall gazes out of his third storey window at the falling snow.
 
There is nothing in the world as quiet as snow,
when it gently descends through the air,
muffles your steps
hushes, gently hushes
the voices that speak too loud.
 
There is nothing in the world of a purity like snow's,
swan's down from the white wings of Heaven,
On your hand a flake
is like dew of tears,
White thoughts quietly tread in dance.
 
There is nothing in the world that can gentle like snow,
quietly you listen to the silent ringing.
Oh, so fine a sound,
peals of silver bells,
rings within your innermost heart.
 
And she imagines Helge Rode (his left arm still on his right shoulder) reading his poem Snow in the quiet of the winter afternoon at Ellehammersvej 20 Kastrup Copenhagen. ‘And so it goes,’ she thought, ‘this imagination, flowing on and on. When I am really old like my Grandmother (discharging herself from hospital at 103 because the food was so appalling) will my imagination continue to be as rich and capable as it is today?’
          Closing her notebook and shutting down her laptop, she removed her cat from its cushion on the table, and walked out into her garden, leaving three Danish Symbolists to their readings and deliberations.

The Explorer

“Good evening everyone!  We are here outside the home of missing serial ****** and kidnapper, Chris Morris.
I’m here with my beautiful girlfriend Rachel and I’m sure being so close to Chris Morris’s house here on 21 Hoover Ln. is making her *******
tingle with excitement at the idea of the unknown we are walking into here.
A cop car has been parked outside the home for the past few hours now and has yet to disappear.
We have been waiting to venture inside just in case cops are inside doing another search,
but based on both long distance and short distance research
of the house and area, we are convinced no one is inside.
The house is dark, no movement has been detected so it’s time to decide,
go inside and explore, or bail and go home.
I’ve been salivating at the chance to explore this house and I’m pretty sure at the mouth I’m beginning to foam,
so inside we are about to go!
I’m your host Andrew Pittman and what we are about to find inside, well no one really knows.
What we discover will be caught on my camera for all of you guys to witness for yourselves.
We are going to video tape the secret room where Chris kept his victims locked up for his own sick ****** pleasure.
Whatever else we may document on this camera will be added treasure.
Here we go, on a grand endeavor,
to document and bring to you this dangerous and risky adventure.”

The cop car sitting outside the house still has me worried.
If a cop is inside combing through the building for evidence, he has not been in a hurry.
We have been parked waiting outside for a good three hours now and we can’t wait any longer.
What exactly are we walking into, well that’s the dilemma we currently ponder.
We approach the house cautiously remaining on our tip toes in order to remain silent and move undetected.
I look over to Rachel, she has to be as nervous as I am, but her face doesn’t look affected.
She’s smiling and in control of her emotions.
My face is a nervous wreck stuck in a monotone blank stare almost as if it is frozen.

We stop our approach at the front door and gather our wits for a moment.
I give Rachel a quick kiss in admiration of her determination, unbroken.
I place my hand on the door **** and hold my breath
as I turn the **** slowly opening the door, exposing a world that feels as if it’s plagued by the black death.
I was secretly hoping the door was going to be locked and we would have to find an alternate route inside or bail,
but I guess inside we go in risk of going to jail.

Once inside, we close the door behind us as quietly as possible to avoid detection if anyone is indeed inside.
I’m instantly hit in the gut with a feeling that someone has recently died.
The house is dark, very dark and quiet, too quiet.
Rachel grabs me on the shoulder, her face is excited.
She can’t believe we are actually inside the home of Chris Morris, no butterflies are swarming around in her stomach.
I, however, feel as if I’m standing on the edge of a mountain and am about to plummet.

I notice the bookcase in the living room still moved aside showing off the entrance to the hidden room.
We will explore there last as that will be the last scene my viewers are allowed to consume.
It will be the ****** of this film after all.
In the comments section below, you guys can debate that call.
Rachel moves ahead of me into the house and stops at the bedroom.
Her mouth drops nearly to the floor; her eyes fill with a sense of doom.
She looks my way beginning to shake, tears beginning to fall from her eyes.
She tells me that we have a problem and I can tell by the horror in her ****** expression that is no lie.

I make my way next to Rachel and look inside the bedroom.
What I witness more closely resembles a tomb.

With the camera still rolling, “What in God’s good name happened here?”

A naked man lies apparently dead on the ground.
A police uniform lies scattered on the floor; we may have found our cop that belongs to the patrol car out front.
A woman is handcuffed to the bed but is not moving.
If this was consensual or not, right now there’s no telling.

I approach the woman and touch her on the face to see if I get a response.
It only takes a few seconds for her to respond.
Her eyes shoot open in panic, she must have fallen asleep.
I’m not sure what we’ve stumbled upon, but whatever it is, it’s deep.

“Are, are you real?  Please tell me you’re real!’

“Yes, we are real.  What happened here?”

“That man on the floor is, or should I say, was a cop.
He pulled me over near the intersection of Bradberry and Hilltop.
He planted ******* on me and told me if I didn’t play along with his game that things wouldn’t end well for me.
He cuffed me and placed me in the back of his patrol car so I couldn’t flee,
then brought me here in order to **** me.
He snorted line after line after line of ******* off of my ***,
then as he began to **** me, he overdosed and died right there on the floor.
Honestly, I thought I was done for.
He died and I was handcuffed to this bed and no one had a clue anyone was even inside this godforsaken house.
If you don’t mind, can you find the keys for these cuffs and get me unchained from this bed?”

I agree to the request and take the keys for the cuffs off of the officer’s belt.
This is quite the unforeseen situation we’ve been dealt.
I take the cuffs off of the woman who gets up and hugs me for freeing her as Rachel looks on with a jealous stare at a half-naked woman hugging me.
I mouth towards her, “she’s just happy to be free.”

“So if you don’t mind me asking, what brought you two into this house in the first place?
I honestly had myself convinced I would never see another living face.”

“We are explorers who like to explore and document our adventures in abandoned or just down right creepy places,
and what’s the top place to hit up and explore right now?
Well…Chris Morris’s house!
So here we are to explore and document our findings.
Didn’t expect to find you and a dead cop here though.
We will cover up your identity in the film, just so you know.
O, and don’t call the cops and report this when you leave.
We will do that for you after we achieve
what we have come here to achieve.”

“Regardless of why you are here, I’m happy you guys showed up.
You just saved my life.
I won’t report this to the police, I’ll leave that for you to do.
This place does give me the creeps so that might be a cue
to not hang around here to **** long,
so do what you got to do and get the **** out!”

With that said, the woman departs leaving Rachel and I alone in the bedroom with a dead cop turned ******.
Time to find out just who this man is.
I locate the dead man’s wallet and take out his I.D. to identify just who he is for my future viewers.
Anthony Armstrong is the man’s name, what a loser.
I recognize the name.
He’s the cop that lead the searches of this house for both of the missing girls but was unable to find either of them each time.
He had everyone fooled thinking he had a heart of gold, instead it’s made out of slime.
The ****** wasn’t even able to locate the girls in this house when he executed the search warrants.
It took outside help for them to be located.
An anonymous tip lead to the location of the girls.
That must have been embarrassing.
And this Chris Morris guy is still missing!
He could be anywhere, even somewhere nearby, but he probably fled the country to avoid going to prison.

“Did you get that viewers?
This cop failed to located the two missing girls who were being held right here in this house, and was only able to finally locate them after an anonymous tip came in alerting the police to their location.
Then, when they arrived to save the girls, Chris was already gone and they have been unable to locate him ever since.
Police work at its finest, I’d say.”

Rachel and I, now tired of being in the same room as a dead corrupt cop, decide to finish up the adventure and check out the hidden room Chris used to keep the girl’s prisoner.
It would be nice to find some evidence pointing to Chris’s whereabouts so he’s finally able to face the executioner.

We exit the bedroom and make our way into the living room where the bookcase that hid the room is still moved exposing the hidden room for us just to walk into.
This is the moment we have all been waiting for, I hope you all enjoy the view.

We walk past the bookcase and enter into the hidden room,
where we are greeted with a nerving sense of gloom.
The room is even darker than the rest of the house.
Hanging on the wall is a skimpy school girl blouse.
The pervert was a teacher and I guess had a fetish for his students.
He probably brought them here to punish them for being truant.
Yeah I see it now, he would bring them here to punish them in hopes they would begin to show improvement,
but all he would do was leave them with their virginity’s ruined.

This room feels like a dungeon.
If I had to choose a way to die, I would have to go with being bludgeon.
I can’t imagine being ******* here, ***** and tortured for months on end.
This man’s actions, no one is able to defend.
The one poor girl gave birth to a baby just after being rescued from here.
That had to be one hell of an ordeal to endear.
After being ***** and abused for months on end,
she finally is rescued just to give birth to a baby that will remind her of her abuser for the rest of her life.
What a cruel ******* fate.
I hope one day she can find a good, loyal mate.

Rachel whispers into my ear…
o…I guess she is dead now…
murdered by the other girl who was kept here…
she was killed by the cops and is dead as well…
**** this adventure keeps getting darker as we go on.

Anyways, the room contains no windows as one would expect.
The one room has a table with straps and I swear it still smells of young ******* being wrecked.
*** toys still line the walls of the room.
I hope one day all of this is used as evidence in the courtroom.

The second room is just a chain attached to a wall.
The one girl reportedly spent many long hours chained up in here with nothing but a hard floor curled up in a ball.
She was drugged for her obedience or so the media has reported.
This is sickening, I wish there was some way it could all have been thwarted.
Chris really does need to be caught and forced to pay for his actions.
He needs to be punished in a merciless fashion.
I would love to have a few shots at him myself.
I would turn his final moments on the flat Earth into a brutal farewell.
This room, and house overall in general, really gives me the creeps.
I can’t imagine staying overnight here to sleep.
A constant, cold, nerve inducing chill crawls up and down my spine.
This place should be demolished and be covered by the local paper as their front-page headline.

Having enough footage between the dead police officer, cuffed to the bed, seminude girl and this godforsaken hidden room, I turn around to head back out of the room to leave.
I believe I accomplished everything I came here to achieve.
I stop in my tracks as standing in front of me at the entrance to the hidden room are a man and a woman.
The woman has a gun pointed directly at my head, wanting to pull the trigger I’m sure, to insert into my brain an life ending bullet.

The man speaks, “What are you two doing in this house?”

“We mean no harm, just came here to explore this house a little bit, to get a bird’s eye view of the set Chris Morris used to torture those poor girls.
This room is beyond disgusting and makes us want to hurl.
We found a dead cop in the bedroom and a young woman who was handcuffed to the bed who we released and has already called the police to come here, so I suggest we all make our way out of here before we get in real trouble.
Once the cops arrive and see their friend dead in that room, they won’t be in a mood to sit around with us to ******* and chuckle.”

The man motions to the woman to lower her gun.

“My name is Nathan and this is my friend Amanda.
We didn’t mean to startle you like this.
We got suspicious of the cop car that’s been parked out front for far too long and got suspicious after your car showed up and remained parked out front for an extended period of time now.
This isn’t a place for people to be hanging around anyhow.
We stumbled upon the dead cop as well so I suggest we do get moving and leave here immediately before trouble happens to stumble upon us.
I see you have a camera and like to video tape your explorations, so I have something I would like us to discuss.”

“What do you have in mind?”

“Well, my good friend Dr. James Allen Burke is conducting the most groundbreaking experiment of his life right now as we speak and could use a camera man to capture the moment on tape.”

“James Allen Burke, I’ve heard of him!  Wasn’t he the world-famous brain doctor that was forced into retirement due to trying to conduct very controversial experiments and surgeries on people?”

“Yes, however his experiments have not stopped, he just moved them underground and out of the spot light.
He lives right next door to this house, as do I on the opposite side, so how about you come over with me and use your camera for some good?  I promise you the man won’t bite.
You will be recording an event that will rewrite the history books as we know them.
Too pass on this offer would be mighty dumb.
So, what do you say?
Will you come with us?”

I look over to Rachel who appears unsure of what we should do.
I smile and wink towards her also feeling uneasy about this since this offer just came out of the blue.
But if Nathan is right and I’ll be recording a massive historic event, I can’t pass that up.
Worst comes to worst, we will thank them for their time and leave if this turns out to be a bust.

“Ok we will come with you.”

“Great, let’s get moving!”

he would sit in his room
and draw space ships
that could only be described
as something from star wars
or star trek

and he'd do geometry on the floor
his school books scattered
and punk music
would be playing on his
boom box

game informers stacked high
in tens and twenties
all over his bookcase
cozy against star wars
and hardy boys

the wood frame bed
simple and pure
until tainted by a name
of his first love
scratched in with passion
and heartbreak

he lied quite often
and was a sore loser
his mood usually consisted of
being short fused
and even more short fused

and then he moved
left for good
not visiting for another three years
and then three more after that
each time
he gets older
and less of the thirteen year old
i had known
when he lived
at home

"Soyez muette pour moi, Idole contemplative..."

I came home and found a lion in my living room
Rushed out on the fire escape screaming Lion! Lion!
Two stenographers pulled their brunnette hair and banged the window shut
I hurried home to Patterson and stayed two days

Called up old Reichian analyst
who'd kicked me out of therapy for smoking marijuana
'It's happened' I panted 'There's a Lion in my living room'
'I'm afraid any discussion would have no value' he hung up

I went to my old boyfriend we got drunk with his girlfriend
I kissed him and announced I had a lion with a mad gleam in my eye
We wound up fighting on the floor I bit his eyebrow he kicked me out
I ended up ******* in his jeep parked in the street moaning 'Lion.'

Found Joey my novelist friend and roared at him 'Lion!'
He looked at me interested and read me his spontaneous ignu high poetries
I listened for lions all I heard was Elephant Tiglon Hippogriff Unicorn
        Ants
But figured he really understood me when we made it in Ignaz Wisdom's
        bathroom.

But next day he sent me a leaf from his Smoky Mountain retreat
'I love you little Bo-Bo with your delicate golden lions
But there being no Self and No Bars therefore the Zoo of your dear Father
        hath no lion
You said your mother was mad don't expect me to produce the Monster for
        your Bridegroom.'

Confused dazed and exalted bethought me of real lion starved in his stink
        in Harlem
Opened the door the room was filled with the bomb blast of his anger
He roaring hungrily at the plaster walls but nobody could hear outside
        thru the window
My eye caught the edge of the red neighbor apartment building standing in
        deafening stillness
We gazed at each other his implacable yellow eye in the red halo of fur
Waxed rhuemy on my own but he stopped roaring and bared a fang
        greeting.
I turned my back and cooked broccoli for supper on an iron gas stove
boilt water and took a hot bath in the old tup under the sink board.

He didn't eat me, tho I regretted him starving in my presence.
Next week he wasted away a sick rug full of bones wheaten hair falling out
enraged and reddening eye as he lay aching huge hairy head on his paws
by the egg-crate bookcase filled up with thin volumes of Plato, & Buddha.

Sat by his side every night averting my eyes from his hungry motheaten
        face
stopped eating myself he got weaker and roared at night while I had
        nightmares
Eaten by lion in bookstore on Cosmic Campus, a lion myself starved by
        Professor Kandisky, dying in a lion's flophouse circus,
I woke up mornings the lion still added dying on the floor--'Terrible
        Presence!'I cried'Eat me or die!'

It got up that afternoon--walked to the door with its paw on the south wall to
        steady its trembling body
Let out a soul-rending creak from the bottomless roof of his mouth
thundering from my floor to heaven heavier than a volcano at night in
        Mexico
Pushed the door open and said in a gravelly voice "Not this time Baby--
        but I will be back again."

Lion that eats my mind now for a decade knowing only your hunger
Not the bliss of your satisfaction O roar of the universe how am I chosen
In this life I have heard your promise I am ready to die I have served
Your starved and ancient Presence O Lord I wait in my room at your
        Mercy.

                                        Paris, March 1958

Sitting in a spinning chair
In front of my laptop
Elbows perched atop a desk
I write underneath the bookcase
About writing underneath the bookcase
I am all too real, and I cannot escape anymore
Hello curtain, hello window
I am caught between walls with
Nothing to do say, nothing to do

I have spent the whole day alone
It *****.
I am tired of being alone, and I wish I wasn't left alone all day.
Hello bookcase.

after the painting by Mary Fedden

I kept seeing her around and about, but mostly on the beach. This is a small community and after five years or so I know who everyone is, except those who visit in the summer, though I am getting to know some of the regulars. I reckon she’s my age. When she looks at me in the store, and I look at her and smile, her smile tells me these things.

I have trouble with my hair. It’s thinned and doesn’t grow quite as it should. When I was pregnant and then nursing my children it was positively luxuriant. But later, and despite medical advice (and treatment I was unsure about and abandoned) it became an embarrassment, until he reassured me (just once) and I became an ‘adored woman’. He never ever spoke of it again and loved me so wholly and beautifully I had no reason for it to matter in his company, in his arms.

But seeing her, and often on the beach, more and more regularly, seeing her with her mane of strong dark brown hair flowing behind her in the wind, I felt a curious desire for such a wealth of hair. In fact, I began to feel something stir in me that was desire of a different kind. I can’t think I had ever looked at a woman in quite that way in any previous life. It was always men I sought, I wanted.

Her name is Sara, no h, just an A at the end. She said that when I eventually introduced myself. We were walking towards each other, barefoot both on that glistening skin of water the sea creates between the tides coming and going. It was about midday and I was, I was thinking and walking. I do this now. I don’t bring my sketchbook, I don’t look everywhere I can and more so, I have begun to retreat into my most private self. Perhaps it’s my age and so many years of feeling I had to be wholly attentive and active. Being in this remote place, almost permanently, has slowed me down, and I have begun to dream, to see beyond what I usually would have seen moment to moment. I’ve been re-reading the prose and poetry of Kathleen Raine, who understood this sea-swept place and was haunted by its ghosts, and who dreamed.

Never, never, again
This moment, never
These slow ripples
Across smooth water,
Never again these
Clouds white and grey
In sky crystalline
Blue as the tern’s cry
Shrill in the light air
Salt from the ocean,
Sweet from flowers

Oh yes,  ‘the sun that rose this morning from the sea will never return . . .’* I have become a watcher, no longer an observer. I put my camera away last winter and now hold moments in my memory. Here I can sketch. I can have all the time I need, and more. And I knew when I began to talk to Sara I wanted beyond anything else to sketch her, to know her line by line with the pen, and later bring the texture of her into paint.

Painting is where I am now. It’s direct, mesmeric, challenging, wholly absorbing. My needles and thread only deal with our clothes, my clever printing and collaging lies dormant in my studio, a studio I rarely enter now. I have a room upstairs in the loft that is all light and sky. There’s just an easel, a table, a chair, a small bookcase, a trolley-thing of paints and brushes. Even that’s too much. I always collected things around me. I brought so much in from outside and now I’m trying, trying to have as little as possible. This is where I will paint Sara. I’m already thinking this as we take the first tentative steps towards knowing one another. Names, where we live, (we both know). Partners, family, children? I have all this, but not here, only my companion, my love who caresses me with such care and attention. There are my cats and my hens. She has no one, or rather she talks of no one. She asks the questions and avoids giving answers. She just nods and doesn’t answer. Otherwise, she’s a straight yes / no person. She doesn’t feel she has to qualify anything.

We’re standing together. We’re intent on looking at each other. Words seem a little unnecessary because what we both want to do is look. ‘I can tell you paint’, she says, ‘It’s your finger nails’. My perfect nails and the pads of my fingers hold the evidence of a morning at my easel. ‘I have seen your work’, she says, ‘One could hardly not. You’re well known beyond these shores.’ I feel myself blushing slightly. I thought blushing had stopped with the menopause, not that it troubled me much, the menopause that is. Blushing though was a torturous part of my adolescence, but let’s not go into that.

‘Your husband,’ she says, ‘he’s up very early. I see him sometimes here, on the beach.’
‘Do you get up at five?’ I am surprised. My husband gets up before five.
‘Sleep is difficult sometimes. I walk a lot. I need to be out, and walk.’

Her face, her head is larger than mine. She is a larger woman altogether, bigger *****, long-legged, but with youthful ******* that seem taut and well-rounded under her brown frock, no, her brown dress. I only think frock because that’s what he says – ‘I love that frock.’ And he means usually whatever I am wearing now that’s old and rich in memories of his hands knowing me through a dress, sorry a frock, which remains for me (and possibly for him) the most sensuous of sensations, still. Au nature has its place, and I love the rub of his skin and body hair. But when we are lovers, and we are still lovers and usually when travelling, in hotel rooms or borrowed cottages, or visiting friends and dare I say it, staying with our various children. Last autumn in Venice, in this large, amazing marble-tiled room, with this huge bed, he undressed me in front of a window opening onto our own terrace, and I was beside myself with passion, desire, oh all those wonderful things. And for months afterwards I would return to that early evening, remembering the lights coming on all over the watered city as he kissed and stroked and brushed my body through my Gudrun Sjödén frock. I would replay, find again over and over, those exquisite moments of such joyful touching as he then undressed me, and with such care and tenderness I felt myself crying out. Well, he says I did. In one of his poems (for your eyes only, he had whispered) he admits to his own celebration of those moments again, again.

Sara’s dress is calf-length. There’s nothing else. As the breeze wraps itself around the loose-fitting brown cotton her naked figure is revealed inside itself. No ring, no jewellery, nothing to hold her hair now flowing behind her. She has positioned herself so it does; flow out behind her. This is so strange. Am I dreaming this? We have become silent and together look in silence at the sea. I can hear her short breathes. She turns to me with a smile and looks straight into my eyes – and says nothing – and then walks backward a few steps – still with her warm smile – turns and walks away.

I tell him I met Sara today and ask if he sees her on the beach in the early mornings. Yes, he has, in the distance, mostly. He has said good morning to her on a few occasions, but she has smiled and said nothing. Five o’clock is far too early to say anything, he says. She swims occasionally. I keep my distance, he says with a grin.

I tell him I would like to paint her. I should, he says, You should go and ask her, do it, get it done and out of your system. It’s time you stopped being afraid of the face, the portrait, the figurative. I’d give so much to have been able to paint you, he says ruefully, my darling, my dearest. And he strokes my arm, kisses my cheek, then, he slowly and carefully kneels down beside my chair, places his arm across the top of my thighs so when I bend to kiss him his bare forearm touches the edge of my *******. He puts his head in my lap, and I caress his ears, his quite white hair.

Sara’s door is open. She’s living in Ralph’s cottage, a summer-let habitable (just) in the nearly autumn time it is. I call, ‘Sara, it’s me’, thinking she’ll recognize my voice, not wishing to say my name. She appears at the door. ‘I have the kettle on, she says, ‘I had a feeling you might be by.’ Her accent is, like mine, un-regional, carefully articulated, a Welsh tinge perhaps. There’s an uplift and a slowness in some of the vowels. ‘You will come in’, she says, more a statement than a question. It’s rather dark inside. There’s a reading lamp on, but she has the chair, her chair, close by the window. There are letters being written. There are books. Not Ralph’s, but what she has brought with her. Normally, I would be hopelessly inquisitive, but I can’t stop myself looking at her, wondering even now, in these first few moments in this dark room, how I will position her to paint her form, her face, her nature. What will I paint? I look at her still-bare feet, her large hands.

And so, with mugs of tea, Indian tea I don’t drink, but here, as her guest I do, but without milk, we sit, I on the only other chair (from the kitchen) she on the floor. And she watches me look about, and look at her.

‘I’m rather done with talking, with polite conversation. That’s why I’m here to be done with all that for a while.’
‘I came to ask you to sit for me. To let me draw you, paint you even. You can be completely quiet. I won’t say a word. I’ve never, ever asked anyone to sit for me. I’m not that sort of painter. But when I saw you on the beach it was the first thing that came into my head.’
‘I should be flattered. Though I have sat for artists before, when I was a little younger,’ surprisingly she mentions two names I know, both women. ‘I know how to be still. But, those are days in a different life.’
‘I only want to paint you in the life you have now.’ And I realise then that what I want to paint was Sara’s ‘aloneness’. I think then I have never been truly alone since he came into my life and took any loneliness I had from me. Whenever we are apart, and still there are times, he writes to me the tenderest letters, the most touching poems, he quotes his Chinese favourites down the telephone. We always, always speak to each other before bed, even when we are on different continents and time-zones. He told me I was always his last thought before sleep. And I wonder if I would be his last thought . . .

‘Do you want to do this formally?, said Sara.
‘I don’t know. Yet. I’d like to draw you first, be with you for a little while, perhaps to walk. A little while at a time. Whatever might suit you.’
‘Would you pay me? I have little money. It would be useful.’
‘Of course’, I say this directly, having no idea about what one pays a model. He will know though. He knew Paula Rego and didn’t she have a female model? I think of those large full-length figures rendered in pastels. Her model’s name was Lila, who for more than 25 years, had sat for her, stood for her, crouched for her, hour after hour and day after day. I remember a newspaper piece that went something like this: since 1985 Lila has helped to give life, in paint, and pastel, and charcoal, to the characters in Paula Rego's head. Lila was all Paula Rego’s women.

‘Sara’, I said, ‘help me please. It’s taken more than a little courage to come to see you, to ask you. My husband says I should do this, finally get myself painting the person, the face, body, not as some exercise in a life class, but the real thing.’
‘Of course’, she says, ‘Let’s go and walk to the point.’

And we did. Not saying very much at all, but I suppose I did. She made me talk and gradually I laid my life out in front of her, and not the life she would have found in those glossy monographs and catalogue introductions, and God forbid, not in those media features and interviews that I suppose have made me a name I’d always dreamed of becoming, and now could do without.

‘I suppose you have a studio’, she said suddenly, ‘Is that where you’d want me to come?’
‘Yes, I have a studio. No, I don’t think I want you to come there. Not at first anyway.’ I was floundering. ‘ I’d like to draw you, paint you possibly on the beach, where we met, so there would be sea and sky and breeze blowing your hair.’
‘And a steamer out on the horizon belching smoke from its funnel and the sea blowing white horses and dancing about. I’d be right by the seastrand with waves and spray and foam, and under a greyish sky. Not a sunny day. A breezy day. In my brown dress, sitting on the sand by the tide marks, looking out to sea, looking at the steamer away in the distance, sitting with my left hand behind me holding myself up, and the shape of my legs akimbo bent slightly under my brown dress. How would that be?’
‘Perfect’, I said.

And it was.

Trigger warning : aggressive ****** encounters, ****, violence

Walking down an empty street in London, I‌ was drawn to a crumbling, empty church. It's as if ‘decay’ was written on the walls. A sight unseen, I‌ just had to explore. It looks as though no one has been there for years, decades, or maybe even centuries. Wooden trim adorned the boarded up windows and an altar like a hidden stage lay in the very front. Layers of dust coated the floor. Two balconies towered over either side of the altar and what was left of the chairs sat facing the front of the church. The room was almost a half circle, drawing the attention to the front altar. The ceilings seemed to rise for miles and the windows cast haunted shadows on the floor. Everything is dingy and dull in color, as if it was a forgotten coloring book page that has faded overtime. As I tiptoed across the floor, I inspected each little thing almost in search of a lost treasure.

The energy is strange, almost as if it had been frozen in a paradox of time. Everything was left as if they fled in a hurry, untouched by the passing of years. What was it about this place that I was drawn to? What community used to worship here? What happened to them that left this church in this state. I‌ wasn’t sure I would find out the answer to any of these questions until I‌ spotted a dusty old book on a table by the door. Inside was a language I‌ did not know and notes scrawled on the page margins in pencil. “Gratias agimus tibi propter Princeps tenebris, princeps infernum.” it read. Was this latin? That might make sense as many of the Christian religions’ texts derived from the latin language. Since google is a thing now and we have an infinite access to so much information, I decided to give it a go.

‘We worship thee prince of the darkness, ruler of hell.’

I don’t think this was a Christian church…

As I‌ read these words aloud, a whisper seemed to escape from the walls around me. Carefully, I continued to explore, making sure to not disturb anything. Toward the back of the room was a wall trimmed in wainscoting dusted in a faded brown stain. A large hole was torn through a space on the bottom and a faint light flickered from inside. Was I not the only one here?

Next thing I‌ knew, I‌ was on my hands and knees, crawling through this hole. Why am I not able to control myself? I‌ should have left the instant I‌ read the inscription.‌ Something tells me that someone wants me to be here. Through cobwebs and rodent dung, I‌ reached an opening and stood up. It was a room with dirt walls and floor. There was a single oil lamp lit on a desk across the room. The furniture was skewed about and a questionable, almost luminescent red powder on the floor across the room. When I‌ got closer, I‌ also noticed the shards of glass spread on the ground around the powder. I reached down to touch the powder. I‌n the blink of an eye, I‌ was across the room, wondering what had happened. Before I‌ could even form a full thought, there was movement from the hole in the wall I‌ had just climbed through. A‌ little boy appeared, no older than 8, dressed in ***** wool trousers and a half tucked in, stained linen shirt. He wore a newsboy hat on his head that had certainly seen better days. On his shoulder was a worn bag which looked to be carrying something heavy.

“Hi there. My name is Anna. Are you lost?”

He walked by me as if I‌ were a ghost.

He was looking around, almost searching for something.

“Wh-what are you looking for?”

He made his way to the desk in the corner with the oil lamp and laid his bag down on the chair. He looked under and around with a near disappointed look. What was he trying to find? His eyes suddenly widened and he darted toward a nearby bookshelf, pulling down a crystal decanter from the top shelf. It was full of that same ghastly powder I saw before!‌ I‌ turned to look at that spot on the floor, only to find it clear and no broken glass scattered. To my surprise, the decanter came hurdling across the room, right passed my head, and smashed into the wall. I‌ turn quickly to see the little boy and he was gone. I blink and again am across the room where I‌ was before. I‌ shake my head and rub my eyes. What just happened? I‌ should really get out of here - I don’t think its safe to be here.

I‌ turned to leave but caught a glimpse of the little boy’s bag on the chair. Why was this still here? Why wouldn’t he take it with him? I‌ had to see what was inside. I picked up the bag and pulled each item out; a rock-hard loaf of bread nearly mummified, a small black book on elementary mathematics, a very old key, and sort of spherical item wrapped in a brown cloth.

I‌ removed the cloth to reveal a black clouded crystal ball. As soon as my hands touched its surface, I blinked and I‌ was out in the main room of the church with at least 30 people lingering around their chairs talking. I was no longer holding the ball, and everything had a bit brighter of a color to it. The room was still dark but the windows were not boarded up. There still lie some rubble on the ground but much less than before.

“Uhm, hello? Who are you? What is happening?”

I reached out to one of the people and they said nothing - they didn’t even acknowledge my existence. Everyone was dressed in very old clothing. Corsets, bustles, and shiny leather shoes. It was as if I stepped into a chapter of a victorian era book.
Despite the demeanor of the patrons, their clothes were still a little worn, torn, *****, and drab. Everyone carried on their conversations in a reasonable tone until a bell rang - everyone found a seat.

A lanky gentleman appeared at the altar in black clothing and spoke to the crowd.

“My fellow followers of Lucifer, I‌ beseech thee to bow down in worship to our almighty prince. He hath lead us to the depths of the fire and bestowed on us the power to destroy life itself.”

Each person knelt down and faced the ground in what I‌ would assume is reverence.

“For over a thousand years, this temple has held a dark mass for our dark lord, in which we show our dedication to his unholiness in the form of a sacrifice. Who among you has brought a gift to Satan himself?”

A petite, young, beautiful woman rose and approached the altar. Her head bowed in reverence and a veil over her head, she held out her arms. The man took a small item wrapped in a brown cloth from her and set it on the altar. They continued their ritual by spreading what I imagine was blood along the edge of the altar in a circle. As the man worked, the crowd of people mumbled in unison like a prayer. I watched from the side, trying to understand why I‌ was here and why no one would speak with me.

“Ma’am, what is this place?” I‌ asked a nearby worshiper. She said nothing.
“Excuse me,” I‌ nudge a young man to her left, “what is everyone doing?” He did not even look at me.

The mass continued in latin and I‌ watched quietly in confusion.

Nearly an hour passed and the mass seemed over. The people start chatting away as they had before and the gentleman at the front makes his way to the back wall where the hole was before. The young woman stopped him and asked to speak. I follow them to the back of the church. The gentleman quietly opens a door hidden in the wall right where the hole was and they walk in. I sneak in with them as the gentleman closes the door.

“Elizabeth, I am glad you came today. I was starting to worry that your faith was wavering. You haven’t seemed yourself lately since that human left.” the gentleman addressed the young woman as she sat in the chair by the desk. Everything was neater now and the furniture was placed in a purposeful way, much like a room in a house.

“Jonathan was the love of my life, Cain. I miss him every day. I don’t wish to go on in this world any longer.” Elizabeth squawked back with tears in her eyes.

Cain goes to comfort her, sits with her, and holds her in his arms as she sobs gently. He offers her his handkerchief and she accepts gracefully.
“Darling, you have so much more to give here. Lucifer needs your fortitude and dedication. But most of all, I need you.” He says, wiping a tear from her cheek.

As she rests her head on his shoulder, I look around the room. The powder is no longer on the floor and the decanter is on the table. I turn my attention back to the couple and I‌ see him kiss her softly. She turns away,
“Cain, please…” she whimpers, “I am not ready for this yet.” Cain nods and stands up. He walks across the room to a metal bowl with a pitcher and pours a glass of water.

“You should leave, Elizabeth.” he states without making eye contact. “You have no business being here if you will continue to cohort with humans. You have been given a dark gift that you are wasting away. You have been made beautiful to be a glorious gift to our community and you have disgraced us by your unfaithfulness.”

Shocked, Elizabeth stands and walks toward him with more tears in her eyes, “Cain, you know I‌ love you. I‌ want to stay with the community, to contribute and prove my worth. Please give me a chance.” she sobs.

He takes her in his arms and calmly says, “Elizabeth, you know what you must do. You know your purpose. You are the source of intimacy in this coven. You are our only hope to offer what we have to Lucifer.”

Elizabeth sighs and softly agrees. She looks defeated, tired, sad. I just want to wrap my arms around her and tell her it will be okay. I‌ blink back tears from my eyes. As I open them, I‌ am back in the main room surrounded by people. Cain is standing at the altar beside Elizabeth who is dressed in a beautiful black lace gown and veil. Cain lifts the veil from her face and kisses her neck. Her expression unchanged, still flooded with defeat. Cain starts to unbutton her gown. What is happening? Why are all these people watching this? She doesn’t look happy… why is no one stopping this? Cain starts to aggressively remove her clothing until she is standing bare and vulnerable in front of the crowd.

“What are you doing?!” I‌ scream.
“Leave her alone!” I‌ run to the front to try and stop them but I‌ am invisible.

As Cain removes his trousers, Elizabeth stands there calmly but with deep sadness in her eyes. He motions to the altar and Elizabeth lays down. Cain climbs on top of her and starts to penetrate. He begins aggressively … well there is no other word for it besides ****. He is ****** her. Her eyes fill with tears but she blinks them back. He gains speed until he finally ******* inside her. She blankly stares at the ceiling and a single tear rolls down the side of her face, landing in her now unkempt hair.
Why? Why did this happen? What is going on? Why did no one stop this?
A man in the crowd stands up and walks to the front. When he reaches the altar, he begins to undress.

No.

Not again. There is no way. Why would they be doing this? Why is no one stopping this?!

Man after man after man violates Elizabeth while she lays silently on the stone altar. I am sobbing now. Why am I‌ powerless? Why can’t I‌ stop this? Why is this happening?

What seems like hours pass of this horror and Elizabeth finally stands up. She puts her gown back on and replaces her veil. Cain stands beside her and grabs her hand. He recites something in latin then repeats in English, “The marriage of the many.” They begin a ceremony similar to a wedding but instead of a groom, on the altar lies the decanter of powder.
The ceremony continues and I can hear Elizabeth faintly sobbing, “Jonathan…” she whispers. She blinks back her tears and looks up. She sees him standing by the door, tears off her veil and runs to him. He was not there. Men from the crowd drag her back to the altar. She is screaming, “I‌ won’t marry him! Jonathan has my heart. I‌ would rather die than give myself over to Lucifer!” Cain hits her across the face leaving a throbbing red mark.

She cradles her face from the pain as Cain yells,
“Don’t you dare disgrace us! You are the ultimate sacrifice to our king and you must obey!”

Cain drags her back to the altar and chains her down. He pulls a knife from his belt and lifts it in the air yelling, “To thee I‌ offer, oh king of hell, this sacrifice of violated innocence. Come forth and bestow your gifts upon us as we offer her to you.” I‌ lunge forward to try and stop him. Just as he is about to plunge the knife in her chest, the decanter on the altar opens and the powder bursts into the air. A loud voice bellows through the church,

“You dare disgrace this innocence. An offer of such little worth hath no result for a coven such as yours.” A strong gust of wind throws Cain against the wall. The blow kills him instantly. The crowd bursts into chaos. Elizabeth, still chained to the altar, is hysterically sobbing and trying to break free. From the cloud of wind, a man walks toward her. He is tall with dark features. He has deep black eyes and a chiseled jaw line and body. He walks to her. Elizabeth looks up and is speechless. The man crouches down to unchain her and kindly helps her up.
“They hath defiled you, oh innocence. For this they shall burn.” He speaks in a deep voice. He extends his hand and half of the crowd turns to ash. He looks into her eyes and kisses her neck.

Elizabeth looks to the ceiling with tears in her eyes and mutters, “Please don’t hurt me…”
“Why would I hurt the most purest gifts my father has given the world?” He says as he holds her face. “I have removed the human from your life to clear your path to glory. In my father’s spite, we will be betrothed tonight. You shall rule hell beside me and bear my children.”
She sobs, “You … you killed him? I loved him!”
“Girl, you know nothing of love.” He says flatly. She looks at him in surprise, tears still falling down her cheeks. Chaos is still roaring around them as the crowd tried to escape the hellfire. “These filthy creatures are not worthy of your power. You belong to me now.” She tries to break free of his grip but he is far too strong for her. He lifts her up and lays her on the altar and begins to overtake her as she cries.
I stand to the side helplessly. Sobbing with her. I close my eyes and wish it over. I‌ want to leave now. I can’t take this.
Silence. I open my eyes to the sudden stillness and there sits a pregnant Elizabeth in a dark, empty church. Tears are gently running down her face and I realize that I‌ have not yet seen her with a smile on her face. Lucifer appears to her and holds her in his arms. I can’t hear anything. They are speaking but there is no sound. He lays her down and she yells - she is in labor. A small bundle wrapped in a cloth is delivered and the dark lord holds it in his hands and looks down calmly. Elizabeth stands up behind him with anger in her eyes. She pulls a knife from her cloak and plunges it in his neck. He drops the child but Elizabeth reaches to catch it just in time. She runs to the door with the cloth in her arms and slams the door behind her. A furious Satan rips the knife from his neck and runs to the door. He slams on it with his fists and yells. I‌ still cannot hear.
I blink and see Elizabeth on the steps of a church, crying softly. She gently lays the bundle on the door step and runs away. A woman appears at the door and picks it up, cradling it in her arms.
I‌ blink and see Elizabeth back in the church, holding the decanter and stealthy creeping around the corners. She turns around and Lucifer is standing there.
“You have betrayed me. All freedoms have been stripped from you. You will no longer sit beside me and rule hell. You will be caged and retained for only reproduction. You WILL bear my children and I‌ shall take them from you, never to be seen again. This will continue until I‌ have used the last of you and then you will be destroyed.” He exclaims angrily.
Elizabeth stands straight up, holds the decanter in her hand and yells, “I‌ banish thee, Satan, to the confines of this prison. You shall never again walk the face of this earth.”‌ As she opens the lid, the dark lord plunges the knife she used on him into her chest. A gust of wind engulfs him into the decanter. Elizabeth drops to the floor. A‌ knife in her chest, she struggles to put the top on the decanter. She crawls to the wall where the door once was. She begins to peel away the pieces of the wall weakly. She works in pain for what seems like hours until she makes it into the room. She drags herself over to the bookshelf and hoists herself up. She places the decanter up as far up as she can and tries to cover it with a cloth. As she reaches, she falls. Upon hitting the ground, she fades into dust.
I‌ stood there silently, shocked. This woman. I feel like I‌ know her. She is so strong and brave. I‌ am in awe and also in tears. I‌ collapse to the ground in the dust she left behind. I‌ mourn her, her hardships, her life. She deserved so much more.
I open my eyes and I‌ see a little girl, maybe 5 or 6 years old enter the room. She looks around. I yell, “Leave!‌ This place is dangerous!‌”
Bewildered by the things around her, she wanders to the bookshelf. She looks so much like Elizabeth. Could this be? Could it be her daughter? She is holding a small bag. She sits down at the desk and opens it. Its her lunch. She begins to eat and continue looking around. She sees the light from the oil lamp gleam off the crystal decanter. Excited, she pushes the chair up against the bookcase and climbs up. On her tippy toes, she manages to reach the decanter. She sits back down and twirls it around, moving the powder from one side to the other. A small amount of powder escapes in a puff. You can hear a whisper, “Victoria…” I‌ hear. She hears it too.
“Hello? Who’s there?” she squeaks. She puts the decanter down and walks around. She turns around to return to her lunch and is greeted by Lucifer himself, though she doesn’t know this. He is weak. The remainder of his strength lies in the decanter. He can’t speak. He grabs her and yells - she screams and breaks away from his grasp. She takes off in the other direction and crawls back through the hole. She looks behind her then darts toward the door. He is standing there in front of the door. He waves his hand and the large metal door bolts shut. She stops dead in her tracks, stares at him for a moment, then takes off.
Frantically running through the church, Victoria is trying to find any means of escape. Tears in her eyes, she evades Lucifer’s grasp several times. The windows are boarded up, the doors are bolted, and it seems there is no way out. Suddenly a little gleam of light comes from above. The balcony. She starts toward the wall and begins to climb up the trim as quickly as she can. Lucifer is close behind, yelling but unable to speak words to her. She reaches for the balcony and pulls herself up.
Suddenly I‌ am outside on the balcony and Victoria is reaching for the railing. She is reaching for the light. She is reaching for me. She looks into my eyes and yells, “Help me! Please!” and extends her hand. Surprised that she can see me, I reach out to grasp her hand but before I‌ can get her, she is pulled screaming back into the church. I‌ lunge forward to pull her back but land on the floor of the back hidden room breathing heavily. I stand up and dust myself off. I am in the middle of the powder and glass that was on the floor. I grab the book I‌ found and start to run for the door. I‌ can’t get caught by him, he will **** me. A thousand things are running through my mind. I crawl through the hole and head toward the door. Something compels me to look back as I pull open the door.
There he stood.
Staring at me.
“Daughter, fear not. I will find you and we will rule together with your sister.” He says.
Daughter? Sister? Who am I?

controlled intellectual tolerance,
considered Golden Age,
became first exchange, wars took their toll
turning point called second Age.
seaside expanding new suburbs
food shortage, riots, rooms had fallen
city invaded, concentration camps
some lived, one girl died, bookcase covered
scarce citizens, countryside foraged
spaces provided improved conditions
restoring entire city
city centre has reattained former splendor
buildings have become new millennium,
flat man is city inhabitant
city limits of foreign origin,
large wave settled asylum seekers
social projects make up the population
eight windmills summarizes open society,
increased influx has strained nationalities,
widest varieties share immigrant ancestry
city centre forms the foundation
Canal boats most popular
million visitors flood inhabitants, travel freely through
only staying for illuminated red lights.

In your granddad’s bookcase
was a book you liked
with a blue hardback cover
with German warplane

pictures in it
and you loved to study
the photographs
even though

the words
were too big
or long
for you to read

and on that Sunday
you sat
while the parents talked
and studied

the bookcase
hoping your granddad
would get it out for you
if he saw you

looking that way
long enough
but the parents talked
and the grandparents

listened or talked too
and the book stayed put
in the bookcase
and you stared

and counted the books
on either side
taking in
the various colours

and sizes
on the shelves above
and below
and how neat

they were placed
and tidy
and well polished
it all was

but the book
kind of attracted you
with its German warplanes
with the Swastikas

on the wings and sides
and some pictures
had Spitfires
and Lancaster bombers

with red white and blue
on the sides and wings
but that Sunday
Granddad didn’t

get out the book
and hand it to you.

There is a house on Southeast Bank.
It simmers as it has done since the 1900s,
it's been derelict for at least a decade now.
Sometimes, the local teens hangout and drink underage
but mostly it sits
Patiently.

There is a living room in the house.
The house that sits on Southeast Bank.
A leather reclining armchair lays, sprawled across the carpet.
A carpet in which the previous mother of the house would've claimed "costs hundreds" and "came from Egypt".

As daylight stretches toward the bookcase.
The bookcase in the room,
The room in the house,
the house that sits on Southeast Bank.
It's not unexpected to see
all the dust that flitters in the air
dancing to the tune of what was once life
a place for the living.
Reminders that once there may have been a family here.
But who knows.

Who knows what happened to them,
did the kids grow up too fast?
Did the parents split up?
Did someone die before their time was due?
And it's all written in the dust.
The dust that haunts the bookcase
the bookcase in the room,
the room in the house,
the house that sits on Southeast Bank.

In the large bookcase

the cat is choosing the scent --


to lie down and dream.

Bedroom’s painted fisherman’s blue

There’s a cut out of Hayden Panettiere naked in a pink bikini with a hula-hoop on the back of the door

Copies of British Vogue desperately hidden underneath the bed accompanying an empty bottle of Glen’s

Manchester United duvet cover and matching pillows to boot

The bin’s filled with pre-packed home-made lunches from the last six months

Wardrobes a collection of ill fitting blue jeans bought for me by grandmother and football jerseys for teams that I’ve never even heard of, yet let alone see play a single game

Uniform ironed and sitting out ready for school on Monday at 8am sharp

***** clothes cover mostly all the floor smelling of Lynx’s finest even though there’s an empty laundry basket just waiting in the corner to be used

Inside one of the woolen blazer’s (that is way too big for me) pockets a single unopened ****** and an AES 256-bit encrypted USB stick

An old PlayStation 2, with a single controller; games including FIFA years through 2004 to now, Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell, and GTA.

Blood red shoplifted lipstick that’s now melted hidden in the little secret compartment at the back, meant for network expansion.

Artemis Fowl, Alex Rider, and Harry Potter all adorn the bookcase

Physics, Maths, and IT textbooks remain firmly closed on the desk in addition to a smashed phone from me and Daddy’s last “physical altercation”

Lady Gaga’s “I Like it Rough” is playing in the background on repeat…

I was raised in a house that seemed big on the inside
With a garden that was larger than the rest of the earth.

My bedroom was shared. But there was more than enough room.
So proportionally, I always felt small.

The curtains were vines in a furniture jungle
The bookcase a tower of riddles.

I used to spend my days inside the wardrobe
Because I heard there were whole worlds inside of them.

The sofa was a cloud, I liked to sink into it.
The bathtub an ocean, that I was constantly floating adrift in.

The TV screen might as well have been
A stage compared to me when I was younger.

Even the cupboard was a cavernous place, my sparrowbone limbs
Would fold up only slightly, but still there would always be too much space.

Space blank as a bullet hole
Like the gaps between stars.

An absence you're constantly falling through. When you're so tiny,
And surrounded by nothingness, its easy to forget that you're not nothing too.

I was compressed in the classroom behind a scrawl splattered desk
The lines of graffiti looked mammoth.

The teachers were giants
And I was just jack

They ground up my brains to make alphabet stew
And gave me only a handful of A, B's and C's back.

The playground was Olympus, I was acting atlas
I felt as though the whole world was on my shoulders.

See I was a really loud kid, always shouting out
Because I thought that was the only way to get anyone to hear me.

Lungs like an opera singer by the age of just nine
And in the habit of using embellishment.

I've been where you've been kid,
I've seen it all.

I know exactly how the sight of a bullies hand-down button-up
Can be enough to make you choke...

Sometimes it still is enough.

And I know I don't look so tiny now
I expanded as I grew more constricted.

Trying to compensate for the empty place,
I had made a habit of occupying.

See I understand, I know
But I promise you, one day you'll stop standing under things
Find your feet and grow.

The leaves of your family tree do not define
Who you'll be
You do not have to hold up those branches all alone.

And I know I look so small right now
But in here, in here
I'm mammoth.

And I promise the world is not so nothing filled
When everyone is giant.

My back hunches
Like a stuffed bookcase in a corner
Too full
My back laden with possibility
I find myself lost in a maze
Of what should be tranquility
Except you lurk there
Your eyes filled with miserable possibility
I've watched your pale fingers
Turn into twiggy claws
And your green eyes
The ones that look like the sea
Turn cracked and dark
Under the light of the grey sun
She clutches your shoulder
Cackling at how I search
For an exit
And exit from this maze
A maze of possibility
Her stature slouched and heavy
Her hands cold and grey
Stroke your thick hair
And I see the disgust in your eyes
And taste it on the air
I struggle through
Getting closer to you
Trapped in a maze of
Possiblity

The little black book I keep next to my journals sits on a bookshelf I made from recycled wood. A fresh coat of paint may hide a splintered past unknown to me, but that is of zero importance when refurbished trees that died for a purpose hold books containing paper collected from a different tree that is now dignified in service.

One that expands as more hot air is blown, and shrinks when cold shouldered. The little black book holds numbers without faces, but the pocket in the back holds a face that could never be confused as paint by number.
It maps out the girl I've been searching for that never deserved a page in this book of lust, only the pocket in the back that will one day accept my trust.

And the reason this little black book is kept on the recycled bookcase is because the paper is also recycled, the same as the trash that litters the pages.

I think about the day I was born.
I had a leg deformity due to a stupid *** nurse ******* up.
They gave my mom to choose between a lifetime of surgeries to correct them or break my newborn legs into place and hope for the best.
My mother choose none.
She put me in double diapers till she noticed my legs growing back to normal.
And for her, I am grateful she choose to ignore them.

I think about the day my dad left my mom and I.
He choose 5 minutes of *** with an already adulterous married person than to be with his loving wife and only child.
My mom before and even after the demise of their marriage, would still pick up my biological father from unknown locations.
Too drunk to even remember, he wonders how he got there and why his now ex wife and baby were in a strange unknown car with him.
Too dumb to remember the person he's sleeping with, they didn't even bother to look for him or even care to notice he was out.
Those moments that I've soon to know about, I acknowledge my mother's strength in all the chaos that was to come about.

I think about the day my mother, my aunt and I got assaulted right in front of our home.
The man had a large machete sticking towards my throat as he asks for my mother's car keys.
She throws them out and quickly grabs me and pushes my aunt into our apartment.
My mother calls the police as my aunt tries to comfort me.
I cry for my biological father.
My mother tucked me in and kisses me to sleep.
I learned that day to never depend on anyone for security but myself.

I think about the day we lost our home.
My mother and I were to be evicted from our first actual home because of a disgraceful woman who had been defrauding us.
We moved in with my uncle in a tiny room he spared us.
It seemed it would wonderful living there, as I saw my uncle as my father.
A new life came into the house and everything changed.
My mother and I were now felt to be confined in our room.
I witnessed a paper by mistake of some apartments for rent on his wife's desk.
Who else would this designated for? Obvious right?!
We were then forced to look for a home as soon as we even just moved in.
I learned that day that *** is more important than helping out your own flesh and blood.

I think about the day I decided to end my 6 year relationship.
The beginning was great until he saw his potential with others.
Secret messages and meet ups began happen behind my back.
Yet still, I forgave him after finding out this later on.
Of course he continued as I turn a blind eye.
The last first time of our day, I began to see his un-interest in me and our future together.
I began to unravel and truly see for the first time that history was and would be repeating itself.
I saw myself caring a child as he would be off drunk and being with adulterous women.  
Just as my mother.
Later found out, he had physically cheated on me.
On our last first day.
I learned to let go of what was hurting me emotionally, of what was to be my future and what was the future of my children to come.

I think about the day this person hurt me.
He was to be my savior.
He helped me through a nasty breakup and what emotions I had coming out of it.
He comforted me as I comforted him as well.
He listened to my secrets I never even told my past lover, not even my best friend.
I heard his dark secrets as well as we hanged out in a beautiful cold beach.
What was to be our place of solace.
Our place.
Things couldn't go on anymore for him with our complex relationship.
He ended it as while he ended my trust.
I began to feel things I thought you could never feel with someone you cared for deeply.
But it was too late.
He had said goodbye before I could even say thank you for at least being there for me when no one else would.
I learned that the person you are meant to be with is the one.
Your soulmate, your sun to your moon.
But it's just not the time or even the right moment in this current lifetime.

I think about the day I wanted to end my life.
I cleaned my room spotless. Cleaned the bathroom, the backyard, everything.
You get the gist.
I placed a note on my bookcase.
Each note was to be dispersed to an individual in whom I love deeply.
I wrote down information to all my accounts to everything I was connected to.
Instructions were even put in place to what to do with my body as well as my belongings.
I had a plan.
Everything was set.
I looked around my house for what was to be the last time.
Swallowing a container and preparing a knot, I glanced at my dog and the picture of my best friend.
He looked curiously at the knot I was preparing.
He cried of course, being the crybaby he is.
I sent a message to my best friend saying I love her and I'll be watching over you.
No reply back of course.
Life moves on.
I know she was busy working.
I got on a chair and wrapped the knot around my neck.
I breathed in and out as slowly as I could.
Preparing of what was to be my escape from all the pain.
I began to cry, thinking about my mom.
How devastated she would be.
She would have to witness my lifeless body hanging in the closet.
Cutting off the knot so viciously and giving herself every ounce of her strength to bring me back.
Knowing what I know about my mom, she would 100% join me soon after.
That is how much we love each other.
For we could not live without each other.
I felt a tug at the chair I was standing on.
My dog wouldn't stop trying to get on the chair with me.
He began to cry and of course wanting my attention.
I loosened the knot and throw away everything in such a rush.
I immediately made myself ***** as much as possible.
And then cleaned up, and hugged my dog.
Even though he hesitantly hates hugs, he willingly let me.
I learned that even though things seem tough, there will always be a shining light waiting for you. It just wasn't my time to go yet.

I think about the day I needed to do something with my life.
I finally and unwilling let go.
I went on a couple dates.
Finally meeting someone that loves me for me.
I thought of before how some people look for certain characteristics when looking for a potential partner.
At this point of my life, I don't care anymore.
I don't look for a a person with money, with a extravagant home, rich lifestyle or any of that mess.
He was nothing at all what I had expected to fall for.
He cares for me as I care for him deeply.
He wants a future with me as I just want a future with him as well.
He builds me up and I encourage him up towards our dreams, our hopes and our desire to be better people for each other in this ever growing world.
I know I have a purpose here on this earth.
I just gotta keep looking forward.
And hope it will continue this way until it is my time to go.

Elephantine swirls
Careful, unraveling threads
Bookcase, bookcase
Zig-zag treads
Vaulted, deep, brown and steep
Held by wicker
And woods and peach
Stones uneven, pathway in
Phrases painted with
Juniper and gin

I used to think lying down was therapeutic.
Well, I still do,
It's just that I recognize how comforting
Standing on my own can be
Looking above the ***** of dust
That litter the ***** tile underneath the bookcase
Allows an entirely new point of view
And ability to notice the picture frames
With pictures that hold so much action
In squares that don't move.
Before, those pictures were only to be seen
When a strong breeze came through the window
And knocked them onto the ground
But now, from this perspective
There's really no way to know
Whether the picture is hard to see because of the cracks after it fell
Or from you fading from my memories so much that even pictures are unfamiliar.
It's almost as if instead of a photo collection,
My newfound view has allowed me to stumble into a library,
One I created myself, but filled with stories of somebody else,
And just like the layer of dust that has made itself at home atop the glass screen of the frames
I have to blow on each separate page as I turn through
This vaguely familiar story
With characters I kind of recognize
And places I feel like I've been
And as I go deeper and deeper into the library
I begin to realize how many short stories are buried deep in the back corners
In comparison to the couple of epic poems that still lie wide open in the front
As if I had just finished reading them
Whether I meant to or not.
And with each row of books I find myself immersed in
I become more and more interested
and even though they're cloudy, the pictures my mind creates from the stories
Become more and more vivid inside my head
Almost jumping off the page
With characters so real I could imagine myself there
Which made a desire start to form rapidly and intensely inside of me
To write another book
Because when I look at the author of each of these books
Even their name sounds like a sound I've heard before
Something I've heard my whole life
And it makes me want to be like them
And create books like these myself
So while my conscious mind gently lets my body wipe the dust off these old photos
And finally put them away for good
My subconscious being lets me close down this library for good
And the two finally meet together at the coffee shop down the street from my house
And at the park across town
And at the local restaurant with friends who look like they might have been the ones in the pictures long ago
Who've already written dozens of trilogies since
And who invite me to become a character in theirs
And finally, I feel like there's a fresh new bookcase, and a empty camera roll that need to be filled
So the next chapter is finally here
And I'm excited to turn these pages for once.

I remember when my pillow had a shirt.

Laying in bed every night it was gripped tight
And there were wrinkles not creases
And the silence was so ceaseless
Laying in deadest night made memories my light

The shirt, sized small and plaid.

Now the cold morn feels so warm.
And I know no more old guilt
And it's a lilting life I've built
Distorted social norms
Former perceptions deformed.

**A box in a closet, now folds, unworn.

I staggered through the desert, dressed
in brown rags,
ripped. I was surrounded by flies.
They picked at my sweaty forehead,
spoiled my food.
I had in an old wicker basket two crisp apples,
which are brown
now, thanks to those flies.
My feet are dry, cracked and ******,
not from flies—
from hot scorpions.
They hide under sand
and pick at my feet.
One day I left my house n’went for a walk; kicked open my front door
        walked over the old stone bridge over water bright and blue, for
        miles and miles,
on footpaths by little rivers, through mossy forests,
knee-deep in marshes,
hiking over rocky, cold mountains,
stammering across the plains.
I saw the desert:
punched me in the gut.
Beautiful,
I thought—
immortal.
A great tornado of sand
came whisking from the dunes. I checked
my watch: The glass was shattered. The hands were bent crooked.
I unstrapped
my watch and threw it
on the edge of the desert and
I sprinted toward the endless tan horizon, kicked off my rotten shoes
        to feel the hot sand between my toes and ran. I fell and fell asleep.

I was bored in my old, old house.
The floor was always swept to shine,
my bookcase:
big, glossy, oak monstrosity.
And no, I did not have a wife,
or children.
I lived in a sunny village,
paved with stone.
By the fountain, birds sang, merchants sold felt and mallets.
I’m too tired for explanations.
And besides,
there is no trick, I left to leave,
to run and jump and roll and howl.

I knew it would end,
like this or something similar.
I decided to
just lie down,
and the vultures came like a great black cloud to circle,
and the heat,
the headache,
my body buzzed cooled a dizzy, breaking feeling came and body was freed
        like ice smashing to shards . . . on desert floor, old rags drenched
        in sweat-body.
I open my eyes wide.
I keep them open.
Tears come to my eyes.
I let the sun blind me.
I turn over on my side and close my eyes, see red.
My eyelids are hot.
The vultures caw
and shriek like
squealing pigs.
I’m dizzy and my head feels thick.
The vultures will eat me,
rip my skin with beaks,
and the flies will buzz around me
until I’m bones, but
I came here just to come here,
and I lied here just to lie, and
I lived just to live,
so then I’ll die now just to die.

afternoon hanging heavy,
caressed by a tomato soup fog,
tired carpet, fleshy velvet couch
both aching for validation.

ten photos of the same dog
speak Latin all at once

a desk in utter disarray,
fishbowl walls slimy
and coated in shame

a bookcase crammed with
stepfather books,
trying too hard, too much, too soon

giant cilia lined lungs swing from the ceiling,
******* in and out and in and out and in and
all of the oxygen and

it has already been an hour,

$150,
a check is fine,
see you next week.

I read to forget
I read to feel
I read to escape
I read to heal

I read to remember
I read to distract
I read to connect
I read to backtrack

I’m okay when I read
but it hurts when I don’t
Characters are my friends
when my real friends won’t

The words are my freedom
from this desolate kingdom
Isolated by feedback and uncontrollable flashbacks

I need release from the pain
To breakout of these chains
They torture my brain
looking to blame

I keep running away
from the grief in my mind
I’m tortured by thoughts
I’m not ready to find

I’m trying to outpace my agony and resentment
But my only liberation is to accept contentment

My bookcase is filling with more empty reads
Who am I kidding, what more could I need

Find an outlet.

It should be
Behind a
Desk
Or
A
Bookcase.

I need
Warmth

I need
Energy

I need
Life

Plug me into the
Wall.

Charge me.

Let me sit there
Long after
My eyes glow
Full
And
Powerful

Let me
Sit there
When I
Might
Explode.

Plug me into
The
Wall

Save me

I don't want to die.

I wonder where I was all those years ago
Not a twinkle in a soldier’s eye
Nor the girl who took the guides
To them I became a surprise.

I lay down on grasses green
With Pooh and Eeyore
In Hundred Acre Wood
Hope Eeyore has his balloon.

In my mother’s bookcase
Is where I would be born
In the names of wildflowers
And the songs of the birds.

My father’s walks in London Town
Hyde Park Corner, The Serpentine,
Visits to family in Chester Road.
This is where I would learn to know.

All those years ago I never knew
Who I might be coming to
But never was there a single regret
The couple that loved me were the best.

Love Mary ***

Thank you. For everything.

Cecilia touched the red splotch on my polo shirt, removed it with her finger, and wriggled her nose, as the overhead light brightened with a hazy blue. She licked her finger. I was just glad when she pulled out a chair, sat down, moved closer to me, as I poured myself a ***** cran. Cecilia clapped her hands once, and then clapped them again, as the ceiling slowly morphed into a blanket of green smoke. I guess it looked more like the planet, as the smoke turned into small pockets of water blue.

She closed her fingers over my wrist and choose to look at the floor. "What happened to the carpet?" Cecilia asked, her eyes raising. "What do you mean?" I asked, looking down at my feet that were drenched in honey and chocolate. The TV crackled to life and a picture of Joey Biden appeared and he was writing in a diary. He wore a tennis hoodie, sweatpants, and Birkenstocks.

“What do you think he’s writing?” Cecilia asked, as she munched on a pineapple.

Joey put his pencil down on the desk, then walked over to the window on the right-hand side, opened it, and took a green **** sitting on his nightstand, ripped it, letting out a plume of smoke.

I shrugged and took a large bite out of of the pineapple.

“Something funny? Something serious?” Cecilia asked again, not seeming to notice the green smoke filling up the living room.

“You want my honest opinion?” I asked. The walls trembled from the hammers beating against them. A baby grand piano was being played somewhere upstairs. Outside, stray dogs were barking up a rainstorm. I tossed the pineapple over my shoulder and pulled a candy bar sticking out of the couch cushions. I felt the years of decay and melted caramel apple coating my palm, as I hunched forward, and tossed the candy bar out the windows. The dogs howled gratefully and crooned an old jazz bebop tune.

Cecilia laughed, clicking her heels together. “No, lie to me like you do when I ask you, ‘does this dress make me look fat,” she said, as Joey reached up to his bookcase and inserted his diary in between a history text book and Joseph Heller’s Catch-22. He sighed, closed his eyes, and began to talk in Portuguese.

“He’s writing something about ****. Probably because he just got high,” I said, as I put my hand over my mouth and yawned.

Joey stopped talking in Portuguese and then he got up, walked over the TV screen, touched a button. The screen went black.

Cecilia’s face was shrouded in green smoke, green as crinkled dollar bills. “Do you want to go to sleep?” she asked, stepping over the passed-out brown bear laying in a puddle of honey and chocolate.

“It’s our anniversary,” I said, moving my finger gently over a plush red box. I turned and looked at Cecilia who was grabbing my face and kissing it. The box fell into the honey and chocolate, sticking to the floor.

I bent down, picked up the box, and opened it. A paper airplane floated out and unfolded itself, landing neatly in Cecilia’s hands. She began to read it, “Dear President Obama. Thank you. For everything…”

I closed my eyes and listened to an old Louie Armstrong record playing on a turntable a foot away in the kitchen. The needle scratched. Then, the volume lowered down.

The curtains closed.

And the TV buzzed as the dogs burned each house in the neighborhood.

My expression in verse and word.
It is my rock.
My salvation though I. Walked away when limbs were healed. Over the
Years. It sat in dusty corner like the forgotten bookcase.
Runway living.      Reaching for the next thing distraction.

Social interaction has become a relic. As we wiggle and prance but
Speak less about truth. Face to face. Eye to eye.

Raise your hands out there if you hear me.
Look up from. The screen if you know. Ditto.



Pain is the great equalizer. Fatigue makes cowards of us all.the mighty has a date as well as the meek .
Nod your head if too weak to speak.

I swear. This coil.

This man-ifestation of struggle and toil.
Fear not. The bottom approaches with a rush. A sudden stop.
It is the anticpation that tingles and teases.
Breathlessly we glide.



My words are my blessing and damnation. Barbed and tipped with buffalo ****.

Sweet as the sweetest nectar. Volatile   and ******.
Willful and recklessly they exit to strike and injure.caress. Convince.

My fathers legacy. Process of elimination.
Truth. Has gone wanting today
Never to return I fear. A vagabond.outcast.
A *****.

The wellspring rustles and bubbles patiently not stagnant.

Time is of essence an essence. In essence. A dab or two behind each ear.and sodium pentothal. politicians fess up.
Money caves see sunlight in all corners the thief has absconded. The judge

Slinks down from his perch blood red hands clasped behind his back

There stands the summit. Still I must climb. Unknown the other side.
Will truth abide? there .Another expanse of lies and  distortion.Trickeration says I.
a misty bog. Listen. Bagpipes ?. The leafless branch vibrates  a siren song to the sod.

The shimmering pool in the parched desert of god.
I stagger foward now unaware. No I am past caring. The will still is there
A ghost. Soon soon.

No ?. No. A mirage

i have spent the last three days humbled
on hands and knees, relinquishing all of myself
into the welcoming mouth of the toilet seat.
i don't know what is wrong with me.
i havent seen you for a while but i am certain that you hate me.
i can't help but think that this is my fault,
wonder if i should be giving more of myself-
something other than mucus and bile.

i look back on the day that i cut my hair,
embarrassed that all i had to give you was
a lock of it, a small insignificant piece of me, knowing that
you wouldn't have accepted all of me if i had offered.
i don't know how to show you that i've tied myself to you,
that you now possess a piece of the last nineteen years of my life.
i bet you threw me in a drawer or underneath the bed,
let me drop unnoticed behind the bookcase:
out of sight, out of mind.

i now know what lovesick looks like
although it is not the kind of love (or sickness)
that you would accuse me of being capable of. it is more like a mother
ripped away from her suckling child
by the guilt instilled in her through a man's laughing eyes.

i wish i could leave this body,
fly away to worlds untouched and forget you, but
i am still learning that we are rooted to this earth by hatred and hips,
destined to be left behind,
no lumps of flesh to save us,
flapping behind our backs or between our legs.

and when hagar looked down upon his beautiful face and froze,
i'm sure she contemplated driving that knife
in the centered nook right below her own ribcage,
confused as to which she should aim for:
the heart or the womb,
both equal conspirators in her shame.

I would argue that what is happening here isn’t the crushing of creativity but the addition of knowledge. As people get more knowledgeable they are better able to evaluate their ideas and sift out the ones that won’t work. Looking at the quantity of ideas for the use of a paperclip tells you nothing about creativity but the quality of the ideas might.

If we want pupils to be good at problem solving we need to give them a lot of knowledge with which to solve problems. There is no generic problem solving short cut we can use. The problem solving skills of “I need to put up a bookcase but have lost the instructions” is very different from the problem solving skills of “We need to resolve the conflict in the Middle East.” I we spent less time trying to find these short cuts we might have a lot fewer wonky bookcases and a little more chance of peace.

I can’t speak for all subjects and contexts but in secondary school geography we are constantly problem solving. It is what Geographers do but each problem needs a wide body of very specific knowledge. We look at how they would solve the problem of the UK’s energy mix, how they would improve housing in informal settlements and yes, even how to solve the problems in the Middle East (if someone without a knowledge of catchment hydrology tries to pontificate on the issue I wouldn’t give them the time of day).

The same applies to “creativity”. The ability to create is an important and wonderful thing. Music, art and drama should play a full and important part in the curriculum but they aren’t about teaching something as generic as “creativity”. They are about teaching the skills to allow you to be creative in that particular domain. Learning to express your creativity in art is unlikely to help you pick up the trombone and learning how to write is unlikely to make your interpretive dance any less awkward.

If you think that these things can be taught as stand alone generic skills (I assume you there is a 54% chance you are) then please do send me a lesson plan because I would love to see how it is done.

Conclusion

I think the term “21st century skills” is a nonsense. The generic skills that people will need in this century will be the same as they have needed in all of them because they are the things that make us human. I don’t think they can be taught in isolation. I don’t think we get better at “problem solving” by solving problems in different domains or better at “creativity” in one domain by practicing another.

Schools play a role in preparing children for the future and that role is to ensure they leave us as knowledgeable and well informed adults.

layers of scars
over your heart
sedimentary footnotes
pages of insults
stacked one atop another
novellas of reminders
select a spot on the bookcase
pray to forget