A text for five voices.

Note on text: For formatting reasons, this should be read on a full screen, or in landscape mode on a mobile.

i. Blank copy

I look out of the window at
the houses as they pass and they
don’t so much slide past
                                    or glide past
                                                the motion isn’t smooth.
They sort of click past.
They tick past, dit-dit-dit:
House after house after house after house
                                                dit-dit-dit­-dit-dit
My eyes don’t quite refresh the image fast enough
to keep up with all the houses
                                  as they pass.
It’s 10 o’clock when I arrive at my office
and no-one is there yet
and I turn on my computer.
I sort of just
                sit there
                for quite a long time. Then
at 10.37 I print a document I’ve been working on
and I pick up my mug and I go to the kitchen where the printer is
and I put the kettle on.
I log on to the printer but instead of pressing
                                                Print
  ­                                              I press
                                                        Cop­y
                                                        instead­.
The machine whirs
The light goes
                        across
And out comes this copy this
        Copy of
                nothing.
I pick it up from the cradle.
It’s warm.
And I hold it and I look at it and I think:
                                                This is a copy
                                                                ­of nothing.
And since it is no longer an empty piece of paper but now
                                                             ­   something more
                                                            ­    something
                                                   ­                                imbued
I don’t put it back in the paper tray
and I don’t put it in the bin.
I carry it carefully with my tea back
to my office and put it
                                Carefully
                    ­                            on my desk.
I close the door.
Usually when I arrive and no-one is there I keep the door open for a bit.
It’s my way of letting people know I’m here.
It also helps me get a sense of what’s going on in the building
which students are there and what they’re doing
and once I’ve got a decent enough idea
or if there’s someone around I don’t really feel like helping
                                                         ­                           I close the door.
Today it is quiet.
It is a Friday.
                     Fridays are quiet.
It is the seventh of March.
It is 2014.
              I’m looking out of the window as I recall
              without much interest
              that yesterday was my father’s sixty-first birthday.
The buses tick past the window.
Without really thinking I
roll down the blind
                            Until the window is as blank as my copy of
                                                              ­                                           nothing.
I look at it but I
don’t
              sit
                     down
                                   yet.
My computer makes a noise and a purple box
tells me I have a meeting in thirty minutes.
                                                        ­Oh shut up I tell it
                                                        out loud.
Now I realise that I never did print my document
so I go back to the printer and the file is still there waiting for me
and I press Print All
                     and out it comes
and the piece of paper looks
Obnoxious
                     scrawled over in heavy black print
                     and ****** coloured columns
                                                                ­      and smelling
                                                        ­              Smelling of toner.
For someone who claims to be conscious of the environment I
print excessively. But only at work.
It’s the combination of it being free
                                          (or at least, no cost to me)
and that feeling you get when you
swipe
your access card to log in to the printer
and tap the screen dit-dit-dit to choose this or that.
It feels
       to me
              like being a grown-up.
It’s intoxicating.
I don’t want to go to the meeting
and I’m suddenly annoyed by this ***** piece of paper
which
       I ***** up
                     and throw in the bin.
**** it.
Not even in the recycling.
**** it.
Who cares.
              What difference could it possibly make
              whether I throw this piece of paper
                                                 which I will now have to print again
              in the black part of the bin for waste
              or the green part of the bin for recycling.
I go back to my computer and press Print but
this time
I keep clicking my mouse
                                   ditditditditditditditditditditditditdit
                         ­          Yeah.
                                   ditditditditditditditditditditditditdit
                         ­          ditditditditditditditditditditditditdit
And I go back to the printer and the name of the document comes up on the built-in screen
dozens and dozens of times
the same name of the same document
and I tap
              Print All.
And as the machine spits out clone after clone I
mutter under my breath:
                                   **** it.
                                   Yeah.
Then out loud:
                                   **** it.
                                   Yeah.
And as I throw them in the bin and go back for more I think
I’m going to buy a car. Yeah.
And I’m going to drive my car to work and
when I finish work I’m going to drive it
to a big supermarket
                            a hypermarket
                            a super hyper mega market
where I will buy and buy and buy,
and on my way home I will buy petrol to put in my car
       And I will go on holiday
       I will book all those last minute deals on the internet
       And go to Turkey or Lanzarote or Corfu for a hundred
                                                         ­      or a couple of hundred
                                                         ­      pounds, every month maybe
And I’ll fly there on a big plane.
I’ll soar over the ocean on a big plane.
And when I come back
I’ll soar over all those people outside Stansted Airport
All those
people
With banners
Moaning and complaining and protesting
Banners saying things like
                                   I don’t know
                                                 “Down with planes”
And as the flight attendant smiles goodbye I’ll think
yeah.
       Down with planes.
                                   And I’ll drive my car home and I will
                                   stop
                                   worrying
                                   about
                                   everything.
I go back to my office.
I retrieve one copy of my document from the bin and I
put it on top of my copy of nothing.
Whereas before the document offended me
                            now I have difficulty
                            telling the difference between the two.
My colleague arrives and she tells me about the motorway.
She’s always telling me about the motorway.
I think about my car I’m going to buy and I
think about being on the motorway.
I think about being on that part of the M25
where the planes are so low you duck as they thunder over you
and they come
                     in rapid succession
                                          dit dit dit
                                                        rapid­ eye movement
                                                        ­radar.
I think about being stuck in traffic there and the air
thick with exhaust fumes
mixing with the air around Heathrow
and all those tons of jet fuel from the planes zooming over
Blink and you miss them
                                   but always another follows.
I go to my meeting.
I realise that I have picked up my blank copy
along with the document I printed for the meeting.
Someone says they wish I’d printed more than one copy
as it turns out it would be useful for everyone to have one
and I laugh in their face without explaining myself.
                                                         ­             I make notes on it.
                                                             ­         My copy of nothing.
                                                        ­              Without really realising
                                                       ­               I’ve scribbled notes on it
but as I look at my spidery black biro handwriting
and think with some real despair about how I have mindlessly
destroyed
something pure
the notes
              disappear
                                int­o the paper
and it is clean again.



ii. Ringing sea

My eyes don’t quite refresh the image fast enough.
What I’m looking at
my rational brain tells me
is a video of two people having ***.
I have seen that before.
But what I’m actually watching is a video of
my husband
                     having ***
                                          with another woman.
And my eyes don’t refresh the image fast enough
So I keep seeing his face.
The whole picture melts away and
I just see his face
                     Which belongs to me.
                                          It’s my face. I – own it.
                                                        It’s my- my- my-
                                                        And it freezes there
just his face is all I can see then the video continues for a
split second then freezes again
                                   His face
                                   His face
                                   His face       It’s him
                                                        It’s him
                                                        It’s him.
I stop the video and I put the phone down on the table
and I breathe very deeply and
every time I blink, between every saccade
there is his face
                            a face I know intimately
                                                      ­         and it’s looking away from me.
I turn on the television. It is Saturday.
He is flying back from Asia on Tuesday. I have until then to
                                                              ­        what?
The sound and light from the television
flicker over me
And I sort of just empty,
Quietly, like a balloon disappearing into the sky.
I don’t know what I’m going to do but
for now that’s
fine.
The brown armchair swallows me up
and I cry for two hours without really noticing.
The cookery programme I’m not watching finishes and I think
the news is about to come on so I turn off the TV
and I put on my shoes
and I go down the stairs and out of the house
and I get in my car.
It’s raining and I just sit there.
Without starting the engine I flick on the windscreen wipers:
                                                         ­      Dit / dit.
                                                            ­   Dit \ dit.
                                                            ­   Dit / dit.
It takes less than three seconds for them to pass
from one side of the windscreen to the other.
And I get this feeling this
unexplainable feeling
that I want to crawl inside that moment
when the wipers are moving from one side of the screen
                                                          ­                   to the other.
I flip down the sun shield and look at myself in the mirror.
There are two lipsticks in the glove compartment.
I pick the darker one
                            and apply it
                                                 carefully
                                                       ­          sensually.
I start the car.
West London ebbs away to the motorway
My car is silver and in the rain it feels invisible
I don’t know where I’m going
                                I follow words on signposts I recognise the shape of
                                without really reading them
and I keep driving
I let my eyes come away from the road and
watch the fields and trees tick past like cells of film
and I look at the cars on the other carriageway
and I notice they’re all silver like mine
                                                        (onl­y mine is invisible)
and I duck as a Boeing 777 soars over near the M4 interchange
and let myself scream soundlessly under the roar of its engines.
I wonder where it came from.
                                          I think about the people on board.
I think about their mobile phones and
all the ******* there must be on them
and I realise
how many videos there must be in the world
of people having ***.
I take the M23 past Gatwick Airport
                                          the motorway ends but I keep driving
until finally I come to the sea.
No-one is here because it’s March and it’s raining.
I have always loved the sea.
Not sailing or swimming or surfing
Just being near it, for me it’s
                                   a spiritual experience.
I’ll lie on the stones and gaze at the sky for hours
but not today.
                     There are some flowers tied to a railing
                     somebody has drowned.
Presumably they never found a body to bury.
The awfulness of that strikes me like a stone.
                                                        It­’s the not knowing.
                                                        ­The lack of 100% concrete total proof.
I take my phone out of my handbag.
                                                        ­But I know now.
The shingle crunches underneath my flat shoes.
                                                        No­w I know.
The cold burns my ears and the wind picks up as I get closer to the water
the tide slips serpentine up the stones
white-edged
                     beckoning me.
Without realising I’ve slipped
                                                 out of
                                                            my­ shoes
but the stones do not hurt my coarse feet
and the wind
                     howling now
                                          catches me behind my knees
quickening my stride.
The spit curls around my toes.
And then I catch myself wondering
                                          whether my husband will call me or
                                          text me when he lands
and I hurl
       my phone
              into the sea.
On the drive home I listen to the radio.
The news is dominated by the Crimean conflict
and the referendum that’s coming up there.
Florence Nightingale
                            is all I can think about when they talk about Crimea.
Until recently I never even knew where it was.
At school you only learn about Florence Nightingale
                                   not the geography
                                          not the conflicts
                                                 not Ukraine’s edges so charred by
                                                               invasion and,
                                                                ­             subsequently,
                                                                ­                                  explosion.
                    ­               We live in so many war zones.
and I’m wondering what else I never learned about when
the story changes and now they are talking about a plane.
A plane is missing
                                   between Kuala Lumpur and Beijing
                                          and the blood drains out of me.
It isn’t like floating away like a balloon this time
it’s like plunging off a cliff.
And at once I see
                            with brilliant, burning clarity
                                                        m­y phone, ringing, on the sea bed
The light from the screen illuminates the stormy water but
I can’t see the name:
                                   I can’t see who’s calling.
I need to know.
I need to know it’s him.
       I drive back at twice the speed limit.
In the dark the flowers look menacing and half-dead; my
shoes fall off in the same place
But the tide is in so the whole beach looks different.
I’m up to my waist but my
top half
       is as wet
              as my bottom half
                            because the rain
                                          is torrential
                                                      ­  and I can still hear the phone ringing
                                                        b­ut I can’t see the light in the sea.
and I howl
       his name
but the wind carries it away soundlessly
       and I can’t tell if I’m
              further out
              or if the tide’s further in
                            and the ringing grows louder
                            as the current takes me powerfully by the waist and
                                                             ­         the stars rush by overhead.



iii. Acid rain

Every time I blink, between every saccade I see
a brilliant but infinitesimally brief flash of colour.
       Purple
       or green
       I think.
                     One on top of the other.
It’s hard to tell for sure because they’re so brief.
It’s like when you look at a light bulb for too long
                                                            ­   or stare directly at the sun.
I see it sometimes when I’m on my bike
or on a really big rollercoaster
                                   going downhill at 100 miles an hour
                                   the wind blasting through me
                                   the screams whirling through the air.
But I’m not on a rollercoaster, I’m sat very still
it’s Monday afternoon and I’m at school.
I haven’t said a single word to a single person today.
I didn’t even answer my name in the register.
I feel a bit dizzy like
                                   everything is turning together
                                   but I’m on a different
                                                       ­                 axis?
I think the bell goes, I’m
not a hundred percent sure,
but I leave anyway and no-one stops me.
       Outside in the sunshine the flashes of colour are
       several thousand times brighter.
In the next lesson I slip in my earbuds and
it looks like the teacher is singing the words.
                                                 I put on the most obscene song I can find.
I must have it on too loud
because eventually she notices and
she forces me to give her the headphones. This is the first time
someone has spoken to me today
                                          it feels a bit surreal
                                                         ­      but the world stops spinning
                                                        ­       a bit.
After school I go into the supermarket on Wigmore Lane
the enormous white of it is tinged in green and purple
and all I want is to buy a drink
                            I have a feeling of exactly the kind of drink I want
                            but I can’t find the right one
                            even though the fridge must be longer than
                            the driveway of my house.
Racks of newspapers and magazines clamour for my attention
       the only real colour in this great white warehouse of a store
       red tops and blue spreads
       and green and purple and green and purple
              and green and purple…
They’re talking about that missing plane in the news
and they keep using the same phrase.
They’re talking about the people on board the missing plane
and they keep saying
                            Missing
                      ­      presumed dead.
Not dead dead. Presumed dead.
I start wondering what it’s like to be both dead and alive at the same time,
as if all the people on board that plane are like Schrödinger’s cat
              (cats)
and we won’t know whether they’re dead or alive until we find the plane
and pull it out of the sea
and look inside
                     so
                         until then
                     they’re both.
Out in the car park I count the planes as they descend onto
the runway less than a mile away.
       One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight,
       I figure about a hundred and eighty a plane maybe,
       which means fifteen hundred people just arrived in Luton.
Nobody comes to Luton for the scenery.
Soon they’ll be gone,
A town haunted by a ghost population of thousands an hour.
                                                 filtered onto the trains and buses
                                                 and out from the sprawling car parks
                                                 to the motorway, and
                                                 onto connecting flights back into Europe
              but none of them will stay in Luton
                                                           ­                  Missing
                                                         ­                    presumed dead.
As I bike through Luton I think it might not be so strange to be dead and alive at the same time.
I’ve lived here my whole life and the whole place
                                                           ­                         which is a *******
                                                 moves with the mundanity of machinery
                                                 like the big car factories by the airport
                                                 the lights on, the production lines rolling
                                                 but all a bit automatic and lifeless.
But in the airport, it’s different.
The air, with its artificial chill, hangs with a faint shimmer
and the people here move purposefully, and with charge
                                                          ­     excitedly
                                                       ­                      or dejectedly
                                                      ­         but not neutrally
heading for the gates where they are sealed two hundred a time into airtight tubes
like Schrödinger’s cat:
                            dead and alive in the air;
                            one or the other on the ground.
                                                         ­      My teachers say I have an
                                                              ­ “odd way of looking at things”.
I leave my bike outside without chaining it up and go into the terminal.
In a café in the check-in hall I find exactly the drink I want
and I pay £2.75 for it.
                            I look at the departure boards.
                            Edinburgh. Bonn. Marseilles.
                            A green light flashes next to each gate as it opens
                                                           ­                  green and purple
                                                          ­                   green and purple
                                                          ­                                 Missing
                                                         ­                                  presumed dead
The flashes of colour are growing brighter
every time I move my eyes a green and purple streak follows behind like a jet stream
but the bustle and activity of the airport is so much that I can’t keep my eyes still
       so they keep darting
                            this way and that
                                                 until my vision is painted over
                                                            ­                 green and purple.
The streaks roll over each other like clouds of acid rain.
       This is the final call for flight 370 to–
My bike is gone when I go back outside
The front of the terminal is a plateau of thousands upon thousands of cars
and it’s probably in one of them
                                          but I’ll never know which.
The car parks reach all the way back to the runway.
Green and purple acid rain from all the jet fuel mixed with the air
melts a hole in the fence and I slip through
moving purposefully
                            with charge
                                          across the green and purple grass
                                          scorched by a hundred thousand landings
                                          a hundred thousand people arriving in Luton
And there on the tarmac
                     glinting in the rain
                     surrounded by blinking amber
       there is my bike
       its black handlebars spread like the wings of a jet plane.
I duck as an Airbus screams in just a few feet over my head
the rush from the engine lifting the soles of my feet from the ground.
I pick up the bike and start pedalling
                                                 pedalling down the runway
                                                 pedalling towards the blinking amber.
It feels light, nimble, fast
the tyres take the asphalt with ease.
And the faster I go the lighter I feel
       the acid rain eats away at my clothes
       and they melt off my body and pool on the runway below,
                     Lighter
                            and lighter until…
                                                 The wheels lift away from the ground
                                                          ­     and in the air I am dead and alive
                                                 and maybe nobody will
                                                                ­                           ever
                                                            ­                               see me
                                                                ­                           again.



iv. Burning sky

The faster I go, the lighter I feel.
I’ve taken the night watch and the yacht
is cruising across the Indian Ocean
penetrating the black abyss like a white bullet
and the lights in the portholes send shimmering white bullet shapes
for miles across the endless ink.
                                                            ­                 What?
                     We’re not going very fast at all
                     But it feels like any minute
                                                 we might drop off the edge of the world.
I hope we do.
I feel light and dizzy and irrational
                                          and I feel aware of being
                                          light and dizzy and irrational
and I wonder if this is what going mad feels like.
Have you ever felt like you’re living in a corner of your own life?
I
       feel like that a lot lately.
Marc is sleeping.
We didn’t speak much today.
I can’t really remember how long it’s been
       since we left Victoria but the fight
       we had there
                            in a bistro by the port we
       said things we
       said things that
                            we can’t take back.
The Seychelles were stifling.
The heat was stifling.
He was stifling.
And the people were stifling
                                   the people kept talking about pirates.
                                   They kept warning us about pirates.
                                   You’re sailing where
                                                        the­y say
                                   You must be careful
                                                        t­hey say
                                   It’s notorious
                                                       ­ they say
I have fantasies about being kidnapped by pirates.
Not stupid Johnny Depp pirates with *** and parrots, no
       Real pirates.
                     Nasty pirates.
                     With dark snarls and AK-47s.
When we were at sea off the Horn I’d see things on the horizon
Dots or lights I couldn’t make out
And I’d imagine the rifle against my neck
Their hot breath
Chains and ransoms.
                          I’d wonder how much we’d be worth.
                          If we’d make national news.
                          Would it be David Cameron to announce,
                                                       ­        regrettably,
                                                    ­           we don’t negotiate with pirates,
                          or would it be someone less important?
                          Maybe just the foreign secretary.
                          What is the worth of my life at the end of a steel barrel?
But it would only be a buoy, or a plane on the horizon,
and I would get into bed with Marc
       disappearing under the covers like a different kind of hostage.
I
              oh
                                   I
                                                 Sorry
I’m crying.
                     I don’t know when I started crying.
The thing is I don’t know if it’s me breaking the marriage
or the marriage breaking me.
I’m watching everything literally fall to pieces and for all I know
it’s me with the detonator.
And then
              everything
literally falls to pieces
                            My mug of coffee falls from my hand
                            shatters on the deck
                                                            ­and the sea rears up nightmarishly.
Above me
a long orange **** of flame
is burned into the sky.
                            No, really.
                            That’s not a metaphor.
                                                       ­        There is fire in the sky.
It’s about a mile up and a mile away.
Look.
       There.
              ****.
                            **** **** ****.
What is that?
                                   Marc!
I call for Marc.
                                   Marc!
       There is fire in the sky.

–              Katherine.

       Fire in the sky.
       Fire in the
       Fire in

–              Katherine.

       Fire

–              Katherine.

       What
              Marc, what?

–              Are you awake?

       I think so.

–              You were calling out again.

       Calling

–              Calling out. You were shouting.

       What
       where
       What time is it?
                                   Where

–              Dubai. We’re in Dubai. It’s 7.
                They delayed again while you were sleeping.

       Dubai?

–              Katy I really think you should see a doctor.

       Don’t call me that.

–              Pardon?

       Katy.
       Don’t call me that.
                                          Like

–          ­                                       Like what?

       Everything’s okay.

–

       Everything’s not okay.

–               There’s
                 doctors. You’re not well. You’ve been confused since,
                 well actually since before it even happened.

       You think I’ve been confused.

–              Not right.
                Not you.

       You’re **** right.

–              Forget it.

       Thank you.

–              Go back to sleep. ****.



–              Are you still seeing it?
                The plane? On fire.
                                   You’re dreaming about it, aren’t you?

       Yes.

–              It’s affecting you?

       I’m
              just
                     unhappy,
       Marc.

–              That’s not just it though is it?

       What’s that supposed to mean?

–              Something about seeing that
                                                           ­   plane has scared you.

       We don’t know it was the plane.
       The one that –

–                            No. But, right place, right time.
              They said

       Maybe.

–              It’s still a coincidence.
                It’s not

                                   What

–                                   A sign.
                                     From god.
                                     Or
                                          whatever.

     ­                                     Whatever you think it means.



                            Katherine.

       The thing I don’t know, Marc
       is if I’m more scared that it was the plane
       or that it wasn’t.

–

       Imagine.
       Vanishing.
       Into thin air.

–              I know.

                            No, you don’t.
       Disappearing
                            into thin air
       Or falling
                            out of it.

–              Falling.

       You can’t imagine that.

–              I can.



–              I can, Katy.
                I ******* can
                                          Imagine.
       ­         Falling.
                Disappearing.
             ­   Into thin air.

                *******
                            i­nvisible.

                 I am
                           right
                          ­          ******* here,
                                                        K­atherine.

       I see you.
       I see you Marc.
       But you’re not
                            solid.

       I’m not
                            solid.
                          ­                              See?

                           ­                             It passes
                                                          ­     right through.

       Now you see me.
                                   Now yo–



v. 2015

Have you ever felt like you’re living in a corner of your own life?
The hotel room here in Singapore is almost identical
to the room I had in Mexico City.
The heat feels the same and it’s the same
nondescript decoration
which doesn’t really belong to any time or culture.
It gives me a headache. The neutrality of it.
As I check my messages I remember
                                                        ­       I’m not in Singapore.
I’m in Kuala Lumpur.
I haven’t been home for nearly three weeks now.
It’s ridiculously late
The IOC conference is at six thirty
              and I’ve been asleep all day.
                                   I get dressed and grab my camera
                                   and leave the hotel with a large, black coffee.
At the press call I see a man from Reuters I recognise.
       The coffee here is terrible.
I talk to him about his family
              his daughter is four now
              he’s shaved off his beard since I last saw him
              and he’s moving, he says,
                                                 near me apparently
                                                 to Southend.
                                                       ­               “London Southend” he jokes
                                                                ­      with a roll of his eye
                                                             ­         and inverted commas.
I say yeah that’s quite near me then move away to take a phone call.
Inside the press conference there are ten people at the table
       the women are all wearing identical powder blue suits which
       strikes me as idiosyncratically Asian for no good reason.
The men all wear simultaneous translation headphones
                                                      ­                but the women don’t.
I wonder if this is because they speak better English than the men
or if it just isn’t considered necessary to translate for them.
       They have given the Winter Olympics to Beijing.
              I wonder what is lost between the
              Mandarin spoken by the mayor of Beijing
              and the English spoken by the translator.
                                                     ­          The space between words.
                                                          ­     The space between looking left
                                                            ­                               and looking right.
It’s a nice atmosphere in the cool air-conditioned room.
I’m struck by how nice everyone is
       except for the British delegates
       including the man from Reuters who speculates
       that the voting was rigged.
A while later someone else calls it a “farce”.
              I get a photograph of the IOC President’s face
                                                            ­          as it falls
              and email it to my office from my seat.
Outside, the Petronas towers rise above the conference centre like
enormous empty silos.
This is my first time in Kuala Lumpur
                                          the last city I have to visit before I go home.
I get in a taxi and say the name of my hotel
                                          and the city flashes by.
I look out of the window at
the buildings as they pass and they
don’t so much slide past
                                   or glide past
                                                        the motion isn’t smooth.
They sort of click past.
They tick past, dit-dit-dit:
Building after building
                            dit-dit-dit-dit-dit
My eyes don’t quite refresh the image fast enough
to keep up with all the buildings
                            as they pass.
The taxi stops and I pay seventeen ringgit and get out:
it has gone by the time I realise this is not my hotel.
I don’t know where I am but I was in the taxi long enough to know that I
am some distance
                            from the centre of the city.
I look up at the name of the hotel the driver has taken me to
and the English transliteration is very similar to the name of the hotel I am staying in.
       I go inside.
There’s a nightclub in the hotel
I order Glenfiddich
                            double,
                 ­           cut with water.
              not because I like it but
              because there’s something about scotch that feels
                                                           ­                         moneyed
              heavy amber liquid in heavy-bottomed glasses
              it helps me buy into this idea of the travelling businessman
              even though that’s a lie.
                                                        I’m just a man who takes pictures.
                                                       ­ And I want to go home.
I sit at the bar which is as long as my driveway.
I swirl my glass and watch the amber legs trickle down the sides.
A moving light above it hits the gloss black surface
with an open white like the early morning sun on my gravel
                                                          ­                   as I get into my car.
A girl from here, young enough to be my daughter, is talking to me.
She points out her friends and I half-wave, uneasily
and she asks what I’m drinking.
                                          A news alert on my phone says a piece of
                                          plane wreckage
                                          washed up
                                                        on Réunion
                                                        i­n the Indian Ocean,
                                   east of Madagascar and south of the Seychelles.
The girl seems nice. She says her name is Dhia
                                                            ­                 it means “glowing”.
She doesn’t seem to want anything,
certainly not ***;
her friends have disappeared so
                                          I dance with her.
As we dance I see something in her eyes that is at once
both young and
                     endlessly wise.
She has deep brown eyes exactly the colour of earth
and a small mouth which smiles brilliantly.
In the half-light they open up to me like pools
                                                 and I imagine
                                                         ­             swimming
                                           ­      in them.
Even though she’s only nineteen, twenty-one at most,
there is something about her that’s
                                          maternal
       ­                                   spiritual
                    ­                      nourishing.
She asks me what I’m doing in Kuala Lumpur and I tell her
I don’t know.
She asks me what I did today and I tell her I
                                                               ­              slept
                                                           ­           then took some photographs.
You’re a photographer, she says, and I shrug
then she leans into my ear and says
                                                        don’­t tell anyone.
What
       I say
and she says
              I’m a princess.
And I look into her eyes and she isn’t lying.
She says no-one is going to recognise her
but
       just in case
                            she isn’t supposed to be seen drinking.
Who would I tell
I say to her.
She grins and finishes her beer and it’s true
                                   no-one is looking at her
                                   but she’s the most magnetic person in the room.
In the taxi I say the name of my hotel extremely slowly
and the driver replies in perfect English
                                                         ­      yes sir, I know where you mean.
Kuala Lumpur ticks by in electric darkness.
I flick through the news as we drive
                                                 I see the photo I took this evening about
                                                 a dozen times
                                                 or more.
There is something bitter about the tone in all the British press when they talk about the Olympics
as if:
Beijing get to do it twice?
                                   What about us?
I think about a country with a quarter of the world’s population
and I think about the tiny little island I’ve come from
                                                        and I feel smaller than I’ve ever felt.
The aircraft wing that washed up in Réunion is from a Boeing 777,
they say.
The same type of aircraft as the one that went down last year.
The one they never found.
                            It was going from here to Beijing.
                            Last communication at 1.19am.
And it’s at
                     that
                     time
                     precisely
                                   my phone rings.
It’s my boss in London
she says the Chinese Olympic Committee
are scheduling press conferences.
                                                    ­    It looks like I’m going to Beijing.

Bumper to bumper.
Stormy rain.
Strong gusts of wind.
Bridge closed again.
Anti clock wise delays.
Bored of radio.
Stuck in the traffic.
Light blinks...
                      Fuel low....
                                           Oh no!

Feel like my life is when you're driving on the motorway, everything is grey and the same and there. And you occasionally smile and people in other cars but you can't reach them, and you're meant to be on the way to somewhere but it feels like you'll never reach it.

Not much compares to the beauty of a motorway

the perfect example that the most beautiful things can be the deadliest

(with poems from the Chinese translated by Arthur Waley)

My bed is so empty that I keep on waking up.
As the cold increases, the night-wind begins to blow.
It rustles the curtains, making a noise like the sea:
Oh that those were waves which could carry me back to you!

Suddenly she was awake. She could feel a cool breeze on the cheek that wasn’t warm on her pillow. She could smell the damp fields, the waterlogged moorland and the aftermath of recent rain. The action of rain on wood or stone seemed to release particular vapours wholly the province of the night in a small town. There was also the not entirely welcome residue of the past evening’s cooking from the kitchen below. But such sensory thoughts were overwhelmed by the rush of conversation clips; these from a day of non-stop voices that had invaded and now occupied her consciousness. She had listened furiously all day, often fashioning questions as the listening proceeded, keeping it all going, being friendly and wise and sensible and knowing. She could hear her tone of voice, her very articulation in the playback of her memory. It was so difficult sometimes to find the right tone, that inflection suitable to different aspects of ‘talk’. She didn’t want to appear pompous or too serious. That would never do. The thing was to be light, but intelligently light so her colleagues would say to one another – ‘Helen is a treasure you know: brilliant person to have on the team. You can always rely on her. ’ She knew she was often anxious for approval, for a right recognition of her efforts, to be thought well of. ‘Doesn’t everybody?’ she thought wistfully.

There was a momentary flurry of what Helen often dreaded when she found herself awake at night – yesterday’s embarrassing moments. These invariably began with ‘Am I wearing the right clothes?’ It was Caroline’s jacket that came to mind first. That mix of informal but simply smart that can only be bought with serious time and a clear conscience with the credit card. Her favourite blue affair (mail order) with big pockets and the slight pattern on the hem suddenly seemed very ‘last year’. Anna had chosen all-over black, loose trousers with a draw string, no jewellery, but flashy sandals and make up. She’d painted her toenails green. Helen did make up – a little, but not to travel in. She knew she had the right shoes for a long day. Then, those first conversations with Paul, who she’d never talked to outside a meeting before. ‘Keep it light, Helen’, she’d say, ‘Don’t say too much – but then don’t say too little.’ She had found herself – her independent womanly self, speaking with an edgy tone she didn’t always feel happy about. As she spoke to Paul about the coming evening’s football – he’d brought it up for goodness sake – she found herself being funny about the inconsequence of it all, then remembering the passion with which people she knew and loved followed the intricacies of this sport. She saved an own goal with some comment about the game’s social significance she’d picked up off some radio interview.

As the long journey had proceeded she’d been able occasionally (thankfully sometimes) to fall into observation-only mode. There was this sorting of images into significant, memorable, able to forget about, of no consequence at all. She’d been caught by the strange geometry of yellow cones that seemed stitched onto the rain-glistening road surface. There had been a buzzard she’d glimpsed for a moment, a reflection of Sally in the window next to her seat, that mother and her new born in the Ladies at the services, the tunnels of dripping greenery as the coach left the motorway for the winding minor roads, then the view of a grey tor on distant moorland followed instantly by the thought of walking there with her sketchbook, her camera and his loving company, with his admiring smile as he watched her move ahead of him on the path; she knew that behind her he was collecting her every movement to playback in his loneliness when they were apart.

Oh how she wished for his dear presence in this large half-cold bed, as the dark of night was being groped by dawn’s grey. There and there, and now the pre-dawn calls of local birds before that first real chorus of the dawn-proper began. She thought of them both on their last visit to this ancient countryside, being newly intimate, being breath-takingly loving, warm together for a whole night, a whole day, a whole night, a whole day . . . the movies in her mind rolled out scenes of the gardens they’d visited, the opening they’d attended, all that being together, holding hands, sitting close together, sitting across from each other at restaurant tables (knees touching), always quietly talking, always catching each other’s glances with smiles, and his gentle kisses and slight touches of the hand on the arm. She began to feel warm, warm and loved.

As she was drifting back into a shallow sleep she remembered his voice recite (in the Rose Walk at Hestercombe) that poem from the Chinese he loved . .

Who says
That it’s by my desire,
This separation, this living so far from you?
My dress still smells of the lavender you gave:
My hand still holds the letter you sent.
Round my waist I wear a double sash:
I dream that it binds us both with a same-heart knot.
Did you not know that people hide their love,
Like a flower that seems to precious to be picked?

The rolling waves of the motorway,
Stretching on to the horizon,
Yet still clawing at my mind.

You perpetuate my insanity,
Fueling the destruction of my flesh.

Yet when you are absent,
Rest will not come with silence.

I hadn't been there in ages, hadn't visited, I had no reason to
But then the Covid virus struck and Dublin where I was working was put into quarantine
I wasn't allowed to go up there anymore to work,
And I had no computer at home and no broadband/ WiFi at the time
So they sent me down to the Old Town
It was nice driving down the motorway, it was Autumn and the leaves they were all changing colour
The different shades of red, brown green and yellow
With the sun shining on the mountains and on the bay
It felt almost like I was going on my holidays,
The Old Town it had changed so much, there were all these new buildings,
Retail parks on the outskirts, hotels, new schools, civic buildings... coffee shops
It was lovely and clean and tidy
Like those living there were really proud of it,
The old town I'd known it was there also, in the background, a bit dusty now
There was the big old gothic church my Dad used take us to, to Mass some Sundays
There was the Port and the big ships along the Quay
There was the secondary school I was meant to go to... had we stayed...it looked old, a bit dilapidated now
I wondered was it still being used as a school,
In the Main Street there were still old names of shops that I recognized
The shoe shop where my Mom used buy us shoes
The chemist where my brother got his glasses... the Bakery
The cinema where we seen our first movie "The Magnificent Seven", it was all done up now... all different...
In the office things were... well...weird! ghostly!
A big modern office and some days I was the only one there, just me all on my own
Was like something out of a Sci-fi movie
Other days maybe two or three might come in to join me
All the others of course, they were all working from home,
Often I'd find my mind just filling with old memories and nostalgia...
I could hear the old ghosts calling, calling me to go back
I knew... I knew I had to go back there
Back to where it had all begun for me
The little seaside village where I was born.

So going home I took the coastal road not the motorway
Just the sight of the headland and the blue mountains sloping down to the sea
With the lighthouse there at the end
Just seeing them again gave me an old feeling of my father, my Dad
And then the village itself, the seafront... all the colourfully painted shops,
Sweet shops & novelty shops, the amusement arcade, pubs and hotels and B&B's  (Bed and Breakfasts)
After being away for nearly fifty years, it still looked...it still looked pretty much the same, was hard to believe
I stopped my car and went into a little supermarket shop to get a sandwich for the next day
As I looked around, I seen these two mature ladies there, they were around my own age
I thought to myself 'I might have gone to school with you once many years ago, one of you might even have been my wife had we stayed here and not moved away
I might have lived a more normal, a different life'
But then I thought 'Life is never that simple, is it'.
Outside I decided to go for a walk, to look around and reminisce.

There was the path, the pavement I used go to school on with my brothers
It was like returning to the scene of a crime
How I used to dread going to school sometimes
There was a teacher, a lady teacher that used scare me a lot, she terrified me so
I remember I got sick in class on several occasions
She put me outside once sitting on an upturned bin
I can still remember sitting there on that bin in the sun, feeling so lost and that I was a really bad boy, wishing I was home
I remember I used to get hives, itches on my skin
My Mom used keep me at home
She was afraid, she thought I'd give them to the other kids
I missed the addition and subtraction tables at school because of this
To this day I still don't know what 7 + 5 is, instead I bring it to 10, I know 5 is 3 + 2, so I say 7 + 3 is 10 and 2 is 12
And I know all the doubles, 7 + 6 is 6 + 6 is 12 and 1 is 13, funny that
How I used to dread going to school
Until that was... until one day I did well at something and I received some praise
Then things seemed to change after that, I wasn't as bothered anymore, I think then I realized I was doing better than some of the others in my class and that seemed to make a difference
I remembered sitting beside pretty little girls who used have lovely pink pencil cases with lots of fancy colourful things
Whereas me I barely had a pencil, a rubber (eraser) and a ruler
They were strange lovely creatures, the Girls with their lovely long hair and their cute little faces...
I remembered walking home on my own, with my little schoolbag on my back with all my books in it
It was such a beautiful place, the view with the beach and the sea and the faraway blue mountains
And yet, I used to worry about so many things
It's like even then it was all about...all about survival...
There was the big Chapel on the hill
Once before the Summer holidays they were looking for altar boys and someone put my name forward
Then on the first morning back to school after the Summer holidays
The teacher said you better get down to the church right away, like fast!! you're on the altar this morning !!!
I was terrified, I didn't know what I had to do, no one told me anything
So there I was on my own kneeling on this cold hard marble altar and it was hurting my knees something terrible
And the priest he's talking about God and the Devil and Evil or Hell or whatever
And all these people, the whole congregation their all staring up at us
And I'm petrified, and I started to get faint and nauseas
The priest had to stop the Mass
I can't remember if I got sick or passed out
I was so embarrassed and thought afterwards I was such a terrible bad person, I knew it'd be all around the school the story.

I walked on...our house was gone, knocked down, where there used to be three houses together attached, now there was only the end house
Our house used to be the middle house
It didn't look right now, the symmetry looked all wrong
It was like there was two missing teeth
Why did they have to knock it down ? I wondered. It saddened me a bit...

At another house I stopped, this used to have a shop, a small shop,  the shop was no longer there
This was my Best Friend's house, all the days we used to play football together in the back garden
Kicking the ball to each other
With our jumpers/ sweaters as goalposts
The first to score ten would win the game
I...I usually won
I always found you easy to read, it's like you only ran in straight lines,
I think you were a bit in awe of me for some reason
Maybe you wouldn't have been my friend if you'd beaten me
How did we become friends anyway, I wondered
I suppose coming home from school
We lived on the same road and were in the same class, we'd have met each other
I had two older brothers whereas you were the oldest
So our families would have had a different dynamic
I remember you had a delightfully silly younger brother
I remember your Mom, she was very pretty, she was a lot younger than my Mom
You used bring me in and give me a meal sometimes, we'd all sit and watch TV
There was a different feeling when I was in your house...a different atmosphere
But when your Dad would come home, he was a bit scary
And I knew it was then time for me to go home
You'd wonder afterwards what the lovely Mom saw in the scary Dad, adults they were a bit peculiar.

We were inseparable in those days, many mornings you'd hear the knock on the door
And the familiar greeting
"Hello Mrs B---, Is G---- in, is he coming out to play?"
We were always playing soccer up the garden
Or down on the beach, going out for miles to meet the tide, catching *****, looking under  stones to see what we might find
I remember we were very entrepreneurial
In the Summer we used collect returnable glass mineral bottles, Orange and Lemonade and Coca Cola
And we'd bring them back to the shop and get money back for them
And then we'd have a royal feast, we'd buy bottles of Orange and bags of crisps and ice cream pops and chocolate bars,
Remember all the different Ice pops there used to be, Choc Ices and Brunches and Orange splits, 99's... Ice cream cones
Chocolate bars, Smarties and Malteasers, Milky Bars and Milky Ways, Dairy Milk chocolate bars, fruit gums and Love hearts with little love messages written on them
We used hang around the amusement arcade, play the slot machines, maybe help some old lady collect her winnings, she might give us a tip
There was the bumper cars and the swingboats and music playing all the time on the jukeboxes
It was the seventies (the 70's) and glam rock was all the rage
Marc Bolan and T-Rex, and Slade and The Sweet and a million others
So many great songs, we couldn't wait to grow up and become one of those amazing creatures we saw on the telly
I'd never lived since as intensely as I did back then,
We'd stay out till late
We were like young hustlers going around,
It seemed the days they were never long enough, all the things we got up to,
We'd Caddy in the local golf course
And retrieve lost ***** from the ditches...
Heh! Remember... remember that time... the Brennan sisters, we were up one day near the school
There was building work going on
And there was this big high mound of clay
So we climbed to the top to take in the view
And then the two Brennan sisters came over
They lived nearby
They were in our class at school, we knew them only to see
They were smiling and laughing and giggling
They beckoned for us to come and follow them
We went wondering what was going on here
They led us back to their house, I think their parents must have been out
One of them came up to us and smiled
And then she pulled down her pants and showed it to us in all its wonderful glorious splendour
It was amazing... incredible... such a sight
Her beautiful...her splendid... her lovely... bare Bottom!
I remember thinking it was like a lovely ripe pear
One of Life's great mysteries had just been unveiled
And her there with this huge impish grin,
When we were going home we promised each other we'd not tell anyone, our parents, not even the priest in confession
About that great vision we'd just witnessed
It was the height of naughtiness
Yea! Those were the days...

I wondered, 'Whatever became of you Old Friend ?
I looked you up online but couldn't find your name anywhere, couldn't find anything about you
Were you even still alive ?
50 years was a long time, I'd barely made it this far myself, and I had a lot of scars to show for it
I thought rather amusingly that I should knock on your door
Maybe you were still living there,
But what was I hoping to find ? I wondered...
"Whose at the door ?", a woman's Voice inside might say,
"Just... just some crazy guy talking about 50 years ago" her dutiful husband would reply
That's probably how it would go
I felt like I was Rip Van Winkle awakening after being asleep for 100 years or in my case 50 years
What did I hope to find
What did I hope to see, an old man now just like myself
And I bet you'd tell me your opinions on the government and the economy
And how the village had changed over the years and how other old schoolmates of ours had got on in life
But No! that's not what I wanted to hear or see
I wanted to see you there again just like you were as a little kid
Your lovely youthful face smiling back at me
And you'd say, "I'll get the ball and we'll have a game, the first to ten wins"
This was what I was looking for, this was what I wanted to hear.

We were very close, were going to grow up together, go to the same schools...college
We'd always be friends
We'd meet all the trials of life together....
I hope Life worked out well for you, my friend
In a way...in a way I almost didn't want to know
If I learned you did well in Life I'd probably only get jealous
I'd start to think I was better than you and that I should have had those things you had
Life, this world it makes enemies of us all... eventually
It divides, is all about competing and comparing... and beating (I suppose).

I still remember that last night before I left forever
We were down on the beach, it was twilight, the tide was coming in... the waves slowly advancing
Just like in life I had no power to stop it, to change things,
I had no say, I didn't want to go and leave you Old Friend
No! I didn't want to go....

Thank you...thank you for being my friend, for being there
For all the time you gave me, I hope I didn't hurt you in any way.

I have a photograph, one solitary old black and white photo of the two of us
We're sitting on a barrel in our back garden on either side of my Dad whose in the middle
You look a bit uncertain, unsure of yourself, probably lost in the dynamic of my family,
I look at you and I think
"Whatever happened to you.... Beautiful Friend, whatever became of you"
And then I look at myself as well, and I think, I whisper
"Whatever became of me as well".

Balcony Life:

Sometimes I just watched outside, and it was a glorious day.
Children actually played. Groups sunbathed and basked in beer
Ice-cream vans were heard not far from here
Above a plane heading somewhere etched its mark
traced in nothing but just plain blue sky,
for miles, as far as the eyes could see.

Up the motorway, the sun ignites on speeding sunroofs
Toward the Campsie Fells set in a haze of bottle green
The white trickle of yesterdays snow cut like some dyslexic ancient symbol
A place for misspent youth and baking trays on icy days

A hot cheap brand coffee in a chipped petrol-token mug
Perched on weathered wrought iron painted brown like last year
Meant so much in that moment grasped and shaped like glass with glee
I remember that there is life in this here estate sometimes
Watching as you do,
from your own slice of life on your patch of balcony

THURSDAY MARKET

Motorway sign says:
"THIS SIGN IS NOT WORKING."

Sign coming into town says{
"THURSDAY MARKET."

Reality appears to be
broken.

And there they all are
long forgotten Thursdays

that nobody wants
no more.

So many used Thursdays to
choose from.

A much used Thursday
from 1963.

A forlorn Thursday
from 1863.

Thursdays come and
gone.

No one will want a Thursday
their dog died

or the wife
left them

or the Wi-fi
went off.

Rainy Thursdays
that nobody wanted

even as they were
happening.

But there's a big rush on
the Thursday to come.

Everyone wants to have
one.

We leave the Thursday
market

with the next Thursday
in the bag so to speak.

It's up to us
to make a good go of it.

It ticks away.
Time tickles.

Motorway sign says:
"THIS SIGN NOT WORKING."

one day your blood will run dry
your heart a shrivelled peach
and your skull will grin for eternity
if your lucky, that is

someone may come across your name
but it will only be just that
nothing more
a name among many.

centuries will come and go
and you become more and more dust
an overgrown patch of dirt
next to a motorway.

Motorway Lamppost
Buzzard with his Evil Face
Watches the Rushhour

The young boy looked puzzled
Sat slumped in the car
A day trip to Grandma's
Roadsign : Not far

To his curious child's question
No answer replied
This proud, Grey Englishman
Watched chevrons, sighed

Dedicated to the Steelers who do their hard work so well.

The Pier five superstructure
Looms above the turgid waves,
Gothic cranes do hover close
To service needs of orange knaves
Who swarm to manufacture,
Who work to make complete
This massive bridging edifice,
This mighty engineering feat.

Cathedral like in grey austerity
Freezing zephyrs howl and blow,
Through the maintenance shaft tunnels,
Through the bridge's bowels go.
The catacombs are echoing,
Stark light's reflection deep
In corridors of baleful concrete
Through which angled cause ways sweep.

A forest of reinforcing rods
Stand starkly high and straight,
Atop adjacent pylons
Which arise from deep mud's gate.
Hazard lights are flashing
Amber, green and blue
As north east gales bring pelting rain
To obliterate the view

The tattooed hands of black skinned steeler
Twitch the wire to make the loom,
Lattice works of reinforcing
Blackened mesh of iron entombed.
Hard to fathom steeler's chatter
Bending low to twitch by feel,
Working fast in noisy unison
Twitching reinforcing steel.
Pliers flash in rapid movement
Wrist's convulse in rapid slap
Unintelligible chatter flows
But the job is finished, just like that.

Skill saw screams in echoed silence
Booming blows of hammers pound,
Pipe work's resonance percussion
Tempered by a sad song's sound.
Great concussions pound the air
As towering cranes do drive,
Enormous pylons into mud
And bedrock's solid hide

The mighty form travellers moving
High above cold estuary waves,
Reaching forth for unbuilt mana
It's red extension arm enclaves
Providing for the next poured section,
Providing for the next steel work,
Reaching out for firm embrace
Where Pier four's form travellers lurk.

The pungency of solvents spread
Across the steel plate, made to last;
Barrier to adherence of
The sticky concrete's surface cast.
The form work archway's wooden shell
Adopts a high cathedral stance,
This bride in waiting nervous for
The concrete pumps lithe serpent dance.

An unyielding environment
A hard surfaced place to be
Where materials of venom
Are handled casually.
Where massive superstructures
Unforgiving in their stance
Lead the busy, ant like steelers
In their lofty, hard days prance.

To look across Pier Five's expanse
And view the surface cant,
And visualize the future motorway
With it's headlong traffic rant;
And look again at what is spread
Across it's surface now,
At the jumbled reinforcing steel,
The cables, tools and how,
Organizationally chaotic
The whole affair appears ???
Whilst in actuality, my friends,
This clockwork sequence has no peers.

With the roar of passing traffic
As the headlights flash on by,
And the Pier's massive cantilever
Looms impossibly to sky.
One must praise the skilled designers
And those engineers of skill
Who summount vast odds of nature
To scale this monumental hill.
As this mostrous concrete edifice
Claws inexorably from tide,
To loom in towering sillouhette
Where estuary mists abide.

Marshalg
onsite@Pier5
Manukau Harbour Crossing
29 June 2009

My office gave me a computer so I could work from home (during the Covid crisis)
They also gave me a work phone as my job entails taking calls from the public,
It's strange but I've been doin' this job for years
And I've always had this stammer... this funny stammer
Yet luckily I've always been able to get by
I've never let it bother me that much
But now though, since working from home I'd noticed my stammer was getting progressively worse
Maybe it was all the isolation, the lack of interaction with others
But I found myself struggling with words/sounds that had never bothered me before
It was beginning to become a real worry
What was I gonna do !!!
So I started to take a drink or two, a couple of glasses of wine along with a can (or two) of beer
And listen to some music on my own phone
Hoping it would relax me more
Sometimes it'd work, sometimes... sometimes not
But then one day... one day Lana del Rey came into my life
Yea! I discovered the songs and music of Lana del Rey
What a voice and the things she could do with it, it seemed so effortless
What an Enchantress
She'd transport me off to some other world faraway
So between work calls, in the gaps in-between
I'd have her songs on and be watching her videos on YouTube
I used lose myself in her world
Now I didn't care anymore about work or phone calls or whether I stammered or not
Suddenly I was Mr. Cool driving down a motorway in LA with my sunglasses on in my Chevy Malibu
Or maybe hanging out, chilling with Lana's crew
(maybe on a thirteenth beach somewhere)
And when she'd be singing something melancholy, something blue
I'd be there comforting her saying  "I know Lana, I understand, sure Me! I'm a King of Melancholy too".

Well one Friday I was feeling kinda happy and good about life
I'd survived another week in the job and had a long weekend to look forward to as I had Monday off
And yes! I'd had a few drinks as well and was away again lost in Lana land
I had her songs on and a video was playing
Suddenly I felt I needed to go for a ***
So I put Lana on hold saying "Excuse me Lana"
But then... just then my work phone rings, there's someone on the line,
I say to myself I better take this call
I'll get rid of him quick (famous last words)
I don't know if this guy was lonely or just liked the sound of my voice
But I just could not get him off the phone
Sometimes the phone calls they'd remind me  of the old Air Aces back in World War I
In their biplanes, shooting at one another, those dogfights in the sky
(They should have had us wearing bomber jackets)
But if this guy was an Air Ace, then he was the Red Baron
I couldn't shake him, just couldn't get him off my tail, could not get him off the phone
He's like... he's like feckin Columbo (the detective off the TV)
It's like he's finished, he's just going out the door
But then he turns around and comes back with another question
"Can I ask you...this...
Can I ask you...that...
Would you mind answering this question...
Just one more thing...
Just one more question....
One last question....
One final question...
You're very good, can I ask you....
Sorry for taking up all your time but can I ask you....
You're very knowledgeable, it's great to get someone you can talk to, so you're saying....
Is that the way it works, can I ask you..."
At this stage I'm bustin' to go to the loo
It's getting to emergency stations, my poor bladder
What am I going to do!!!
Should I excuse myself and tell him I've got to go to the loo
But that's not very professional, I'd never ever done that before
Anyway I'm thinking I have no other alternative
But then suddenly... suddenly I spy this empty bottle on my shelf
It's an unusual bottle with thick glass and it has this lovely wooden capped cork which can be easily pulled out and put back in again
(I kept it 'cos I thought it might come in handy if I had a corked bottle of wine
And the cork got messed up with the corkscrew
I could put any surplus wine in there)
So I'm looking at this bottle and... I have an idea
"Desperate situations call for desperate measures", I think
"You gotta do what you gotta do,
And of course, their always saying you should be creative and innovative in your work"
So I take down the bottle, tell Lana to avert her eyes
I take out the cork, unzip the fly of my pants
Get my Old Boy out and start peeing into the bottle
I'm mightily relieved and I'm thinking Ha! Ha!
Go on you ****** ask me another question, I don't care now....I'm free!!!
I'm proud of myself "What a Pro !" I'm thinking,
The next thing a whole lot of *** comes flying out of the bottle, like a bottle of champagne gushing out
Shooting out all over the place, all over my pants and my shirt
I'd miscalculated the amount of *** and the size of the bottle
I never knew I peed that much (well you learn something new everyday)
And the guy is still talking to me on the phone
And all I'm thinking is "Jaysus I'm after peeing all over myself"
And finally... finally, at long...looong... looooong last the guy, he gets off the phone, halleluia!!!
I'm left there completely deflated, soaked in my own ***
Broken and disconsolate, all my illusions shattered
No longer am I Mr.Cool driving down a motorway in LA
No longer am I either Mr. All-understanding Melancholy Guru Man
No! Now I'm just... just some guy whose after peeing all over himself
I look at my phone and there's Lana looking back at me, still on hold
I switch her on again, she's singing that lovely song "Love"
She does that lovely little shimmy with her shoulders for a second
Then she gives me that cute little wink and the lovely smile
I think to myself "Well, at least Lana still likes me"
But I feel guilty, I feel I got to explain, got to apologise
"Sorry Lana", I say, "I guess...I guess they don't make heroes like they used to".

Then I start to think 'This working from home is really fraught with danger, lucky there's no cameras on these computers or they'd be saying "I don't believe what I've just seen, what's that feckin' eejit doing now"

But then I think "Still, the customer went away happy, I didn't let it faze me too much, I saw it through... me and my funny stammer...what a Pro!
Maybe I was... maybe I am...a hero after all.

I can’t imagine how many times
I’ve cried
Driving my car
On a dark motorway
Over men who don’t care

Where is death today?
Busily hiding the bodies,
Or hunched beside a car loosening wheel bolts,
Placing a dark hand over a traffic light,
Squeezing the shotgun trigger,
Or strapped in a wheelchair
Disguised as a patient and wheeling rapidly around the hospital wards,
Removing the soap.

Or maybe cycling down the motorway
The large black cloak neatly bundled into the waistband
Right trouser leg tucked into a black sock
A bone poking out the toe
The Reaper strapped to the bicycle crossbar
Blade hanging to the rear  
But not obscuring the red reflector
Wearing Kevlar gloves when handling the scythe
And Vis a Vest neatly tied with a bow
At the very least a reflective armband.

Or possibly fixing a puncture on his way to my home...Bad form then
On arrival should I greet with “Come in, you look perished! ”
Discuss the weather as a distraction
I could offer new socks
Like every interview this might not go well.

Tiredness can **** is emblazoned across the motorways
and the self-indulgent anger of some can **** the spirit of others
but you wont see a sign across the motorways warning of that

Orange hazards blink in gloom
Autumn mist in early light,
Traffic cones direct the flow
Attenuators keep it tight.
Through the mist construction looms
A mighty swath comes into sight
A structure massive, incomplete
Sweeps past the Birdcage portal light.

Burrowed deep within the Park
Surmounted by its stark white beams,
The tunnel curves towards the Bridge
To emerge near the Victory screens.
Symmetry in huge largess
Biblical in size and form,
Built by puny hands of flesh
Man inspired, conceived and born.

Columns in the concrete mass
Loom as sentries, side by side,
Level in majestic sweep
Through the tunnel’s corner glide.
Massive beams locked overhead
Cap the roof’s gigantic clasp,
Reinforced by gridlocked steel
Bound within the concrete’s grasp.

Mounds of blue, congealed wet clay
Layered in an old sea bed,
Hauled away from ancient crib
By Fletcher excavators red.
Roaring diesel truck and tray
Loaded overburden high,
Water blasted ***** and span
Keeping highways clean and dry.

Monstrous cranes with hanging rig
Lower weights of ponderous steel,
Gently to the tunnel base
Led by Dogman’s coaxing feel.
Urgency in every move
Hard hats drill with diamond core,
Fixing massive panel slabs
To the looming concrete’s bore.

Well below incoming tide
Pounded by the drenching rain,
Four inch pumps snake to the sump
Ensuring flood control’s maintained.
Foremen bark and keep control
Hard hats share a secret smile,
Safety first for every man
Think before you lift that pile.

Gate girls smile at passers bye
Politely chiding those who stray,
Holding up a halting hand
With trucks inbound in hazards way.
Smoko at the Bowling Club
Murmur of a hundred souls,
Grubby in their hi vis vests
Munching on the caterers rolls.

Morale amongst the working men
Is high because they feel the cause,
A project that is so worthwhile
They KNOW that it  deserves applause.
Traffic roars above it all
Passing in a steady stream,
Brake lights on the viaduct
Cop cars flash and sirens scream.

This project has a consciousness
A Heart, a mind, a soul.
And an inspirational spirit
Which guides us to the goal.
To eliminate the bottleneck
In Auckland's traffic day
And to streamline the system
Of our vehicular motorway.

Politicians snarl right now
Champing at the huge expense,
But by next year’s finish date
Congratulations will commence.
The jewel in the crown they say
Is found within our park of green,
The Victoria Park Tunnel, friend,
Is a true magnificence, to be seen.


Marshalg
Victoria Park Tunnel
5 February 2011

This is one of Barry Hodges' most inspired memories.

  'Twas morning time in times of yore and I, bold Barry Hodges, stood outside my store, my giant vegetables on display for all to see, when lo and behold! a luxurious limousine drew up, and from the back there emerged a gorgeous form of voluptuous statuesque feminity.
  "My God!" I cried, it is that beauteous lady from *La Dolce Vita, the wondrous Anita - and I gazed with joyous on her divine body, imagining it sprawled lasciviously in my bed, legs open as wide as a major road junction on the M1 motorway.
  "Excuse me", said she in that Italo-Swedish voice guaranteed to make any man wet himself copiously, "But I am a-lookink for a shop a-called 6B, and yet all I can-a-see is a Barry Hodges' the Master Geengrocer's, complete with a giant cucumber or two, which I 'av to say remind me of somet'ing tasty."
"Dearest lady, said I, you have come to the right place: 6B is the trading name of my sister enterprise: Barry Bodgers' Boil Bursting Beauty Bureau which is located upstairs, Barry Bodgers at your service, my dearest, most delightful Fru Ekberg."
"Shhhhhhhhh! I am een deesguise, not even dear Federico knows I am-a-here." And thus, assuring her of my utmost discretion, and forming a bond by saying that I too, the famous Geordie seducer, Barry Hodges, had indulged in a slight nomenclatural change in order to separate the two sides of my business interests, and in order to do a spot of money laundering on the side.  "But," I enquired, "How is it that you have need of the rather specialised medical services we offer, you who are so radiant and bella-bella?" She lowered her eyes seductively and promised to reveal her terrible secret.

As I ushered her up the stairs to the studio, my eyes on her ****-cheeks wiggling like two delectable beach ***** in a sack, she told me the sad tale of the immense boil which kept recurring on the middle of her back and which no amount of corrective surgery could fix.
"Aha!" I exclaimed, "Only Barry Bodgers, the world's greatest boil-sucker, can effect the cure for which you long, and I shall operate on you personally, not entrusting such a task to even the best of my boil-bursting minions." I added to myself, "Also I want to give you a good old bonking while we're at at."

Once we attained the privacy of my consulting room, I instructed her to strip off utterly so I might examine her, and I can tell you, dear reader, that her **** **** was a joy to behold. I too divested myself of my clobber, knowing that boil-******* can get a bit messy at the best of times. Jesus wept!, but the mighty boil betwixt her graceful shoulders revealed when de-plastered was a true horror, with a yellow tip as big as a Grade One Belgian Turnip. I explained that I would **** it out whilst I rogered her from the rear and that, when she felt her ****** on the way, she should scream out to that effect and I would then bite the core of the boil right out in a blaze of mutual ******* glory, before applying a dose of my exclusive Boil Preventative Cream, namely a handful of our conjoined love-juices extracted from her gaping ***** by hand a few seconds earlier.
"Yes! Yes! Yes!" screamed the Swedish bombshell and with a mighty **** like an industrial Dyson FX334 on full power, I slurped and  razor-bit the boil, bursting it asunder, smothering my eager face in blood and putrid pus, thereby causing me to blow my *** as ne'er before. The green core of the boil emerged from its fleshly cavity with a deafening plop as we came together like a nuclear blast d'amour.

O, but only then, as my seminal outpourings soaked my jim-jams, did I awaken to discover yet another nocturnal emission. And, not unexpectedly, dear Nurse Nellie, having heard my cry of ecstasy, rushed in to my bedroom, head-shaking and tut-tutting as usual, as she knelt down and licked my tum-tum dry.
"Yum, yum" she murmured in her dulcet Northumbrian tones, "Ah've looked after three generation o' Hodges laddies, and I kin tell ye, your *****'s the tastiest of them all, ye bonnie wee man."
"Better than Grandad Charlie's?"
"Why aye, mon, yours is well creamier."

I lie here, supine
Listening to sirens
Heading out towards the motorway
Somewhere, someone's evening
Has turned bad,
In the streets outside the echo
Of teens on mopeds
Reverberates between the
Terraced houses, squeezing
All they can out of a 125 engine
While squeezing all the joy that is left
Out of everyone's sunday night,
Before we all head meekly to work
On monday morning
Weekend warriors, tamed by
The restraints of finances,
Needing to earn the freedom
Of another fix next friday.
I lie here on my side
A pillow blocking at least some
Of the cacophony,
More sirens head out towards
The motorway, someone's life
Has turned into a disaster
All I wanted was an early night.

I fall asleep in the late afternoon and wake up to the night kissing my eyelids, whispering the promise of bright streets and shadows, music and drunken laughter into my ears. Floating up from below are the sounds of clinking glasses and the hum of a thousand conversations, scooters and street-cleaning machines, skateboards and dogs and church bells; the city of masses occupied by ants. The breeze wafts in from the balcony and the marble floor is cool on my feet as I rise to go out.
The kitchen is full of Australians and the table is covered in small bags of white powder. There are bottles on the counter and someone is slicing up a lime. They are loud and happy and one of the boys empties a tiny bag out onto a plate, cuts it with his bank card and pushes it into thin lines like scratches. Someone makes us all drinks. Aussie spills powder on the floor and as I look up, he is crouched down, fifty-euro note up his nostril. We laugh, he is bent over on his knees, vacuuming the floor with his nose. I sit down to watch them, telling wild stories of wild nights, as they get more and more edgy their gestures become exaggerated and excited. I go to take a shower, Aussie wanders in and talks to me excitedly, laughing loudly. I laugh too, because he is fun, and attractive, and because he is so excited and happy and because he has a nice laugh, a loud one. I put on high-waisted denim shorts, rolled up at the bottom, and a half-corset. It is yellow with roses printed on it, and Aussie tells me I look like a pin-up doll. The girls come home and we all put on red lipstick and breathe in dust and dance around the kitchen with the boys and our drinks. There is white dust on everything, spilled everywhere. Everything is bright and exciting and electric and new, so we go out, piling into several taxis and speeding down the motorway to the beach. The line is not long and we get in for free, music pulsing through our eyes, our bodies, neon lighting up our hair and glancing off the pool inside. There are tall girls in rhinestone-crusted heels, long legs stretching from short short fluttery skirts, boys with gelled-back hair and printed shirts and their sweet-angry boy-smell. Eyes like saucers, skin like melting wax, sensual, ferocious. Aussie. Grab me by the waist, buy me a tall drink with a tall straw. Stroke my cheek, tell me I am beautiful. He disappears into the night, absolutely ******- *******, champagne, the rain of stars in his eyes, the reign of electric music in his limbs. Electric, wandering through the club like a lost prince, diving into the water like it was his home after all.

Harsh wind screaming
moaning
with the crisp bite of Autumn night

Dark shadows dancing
tossing
with the branches of bare grey Elms

The lanes are winding
uncurling
in the pale orange glow of headlights

Sudden hedgerows
green
edging the limits of the night

Power-cut darkness all around
silhouettes
strange in the headlight beam

No farm lights distant on the Tor
guiding
beacons of open field and place

Cottages shuddering their thatching
thrilled
chimneys smoking message-morse

Pub signs banging wildly
flapping
in a crazy dance
inside candles flickering
distorted
patterns in tiny panes of rounded glass

Old stone steeple steady
dull toned bell
catching
a ride on the wind to the copse

And still the lanes thread out
beam-born
a ribbon of pebbles and stone
stretching into the night
until they melt
into the flat black tarmac
of the motorway.

I smoked. There was a good hand in the sky. It looked like a peach draped over tatty buildings. Hemisphere broken open at the end of a fist, and then at the end of an arrow shattering the pieces of night surrounding it, as the moon clouds shot, devouring it.

I flicked my cigarette down on the floor of the fly over instead of flicking it into the avalanche of cars below. Who knows what something as miniscule as a flying tab **** might make a person think. It would not be a fly. It would be a tab ****. It would be something that distracted a driver on the motorway, which they traced back to my finger flicking it.

It would be rude and imprecise, a car loses control and then flips over for a second, then paints the carriageway with ten multiples of itself flying and screaming. The driver flys inside the car. And I continued to cross the fly over. Outside the bookies at 10pm there is a dog looking up at me, his head tilts like he is asking me something, as he starts to follow me, leash dragging.

"Oi! Oi! Where the **** are you going?" A mouth from the ****** says, "Oh me, just down here." I reply, "I was talkin to the ******* dog you ******* mug." The gentleman added. The small white staffy was still looking up at me. Well, one of us is going to have to answer him, his tail said. "Oh ******* then." The mouth says changing back again into the building. "I guess we're going down there then." Schrödinger says, or 'Schrö', as he allows me to call him.

I light another cigarette as more arrows are fired from the sky, more like wet arrows now. "Well you'll need to pick up my leash mate; I don't want to look like a ******." Shrö says, "Ah sorry dude," I say picking it up as we continue to walk.

"Most of the people who talk to me are a little mad." The small staffy says. But why am I called Schrödinger? The staffy asks me. Ah come on, you don't get it? Well I do apologise but I am not that sharp on my quantum theory philosophy, and I am also a dog. Oh yes, I concede to him in my flat.  "Do you mind opening the door to your balcony pilgrim?" He asks me next.

"Sorry sir?" I ask him, "Well it either goes on your floor or I do it outside." He says. I open the door as he asks, and then lean against the frame as he takes a ****, and I watch him. He scrapes his hind legs on the concrete as if forgetting that it is concrete and not soil. You remind me a lot of love, I mention to him, smoking.

“You know what pilgrim? I think I prefer the name Otto Gross.” The staffy says looking up at the mixing night and I hatch open a new can pouring some into his bowl on the balcony. Cheers love. He says. He puts his two front paws on the meter high wall where my balcony overlooks a junk yard, and begins to speak.

“There is my lover! As screamed across sense and filled with conjoined gait, of my eye and hand, I am jealous of the city she walks in, by me, as I am half departed, myself, near a fox that gathers in ball, by me and is a better *****, than me, here, so I learn, from vermin, how to hide, how to fight, and how to re-appear. How to have humour, like theirs, and there unplanned joy-“

Woah “*******”, I’m spewing, a poet dog! A pile of dosh in the equilibrium! I rush back into my flat and grab a pencil and paper, shake a bit, take a sip, keep on listening, then nearly fall **** forwards returning to the balcony scribbling. And there’s a ****** dog talking.

“I trit-trot across roads with my last owner, winning jobs only within tasks of cemetery light, inside and on, the wall; so curled so, as I sleep outside, so sojourned within, grey dusk, car rivers- I spit! Not so far as giants can, just a piece of spittle, just shadow puppets dancing, just marionettes laughing-”
Schrödinger sang on my balcony beginning to howl, making the lid of the box open.

“To ******* the rain. To share within it, its fire, its knowable drench, of skin like hymn, that is so far penetrating, and mingled past flesh, opened and quakeless to the onslaught of lightening swans! The quickening fury, of several slow days, and lives, devouring the metronome of salutes, upon heart buildings coming down like tetrahedrons drawn by many hands, of dusk filth opening to the arrays of data goods and gods, and produced from the pockets of gibbous mooned skies, and I whisper to the tsunami: mood unhung, bellowing away from the dog fights, and unpainted streets, I seem: To be praying...”

Monday may come soon I doubted, watching the staffy speak.

“Planets growing teeth, in the stars and the junk-yarded iris, succour comes, and so do the sad journeying flies, flying in the mouth of many gales, as extremities to the planet’s engine, affordable, losses, condensed in- and danced solarlessly -in, dances of mortuary, and wedding sung precipice, the edge of a gale, happy to blow my face, away, just gust gust gust! And yes. I do pray a little, and past holocaust of saccharine tune, our shame is forgotten in the simple, rhythms, of a cup- a hand, a castle flock of gulls, landing in water.”

A dog wags its tail because it has just shat, his owner gone, bag ready below ****, I feel streets clean with loving owners hostile to the madness, of the furious dozen dozen flies- lobotomised drool, ready and alive enough, to laugh, and if you are knifeless, maybe a lil knackered, from work - - we might haul up: eternity, my love, and have a lil more, humour! In our sheets and face and sky, an take a **** holiday, right where you are stood or sat, walking, or resting.

And there are no gods, but the ones that let you see them creasing their soft cheeks and aging beside you, together, letting time die, parapets soak in the weather, and say: ‘hey’, here are my bones, there has been a lot of twisting done, but all they need, is yours.

There's a passage in a story by John Buchan where a minor character explains how a good mystery story is created: take at least three random subjects or events and connect them together. Here goes.
 
A toothbrush
Covent Garden
Wildflowers*
 
Interesting to let the mind float free and subjects appear unbidden, thought Marcus. The moon had risen and out at sea its reflections caressed the swelling waves. Calm the night after such a day of being about.
 
Gregory had phoned him, early. Marcus had been lying in bed. Sylvia had just returned from the bathroom and had folded herself into his arms. Their collective feet had conversed amicably as early morning feet do. She was still tingling a little from the passion they had shared, stretching herself languorously like a cat coming into the warm after a cold night out.
 
'Marcus,' said Gregory, 'it's today.' And that was all. The line went dead, but that was all he needed to know.
 
He extricated himself from Sylvia who was intent either on sleep or further love-making. She was incorrigible, but so so desirable.
 
I'll just take a toothbrush he thought as he swiftly shaved. He picked a new pink one still in its packet and put it in his bag with the papers, a map, his camera . . .
 
He thought about Ripley as he steered the car onto the motorway. That character fascinated him and he wondered if its inventor Patricia Highsmith had ever known such a man; a nice good-looking man, but selfish and nasty. Marcus wondered if he was selfish and nasty. He reckoned he was.
 
When he reached Covent Garden, parking illegally in Jermine street, he wasted no time in walking directly to Turino's. There, amongst the tourists and the out of town shoppers was Greg.
 
'I have this little package for you. Don't open it until you reach Southwold. Park in front of the Lion Hotel. Do nothing until she appears, which she will do after her lunch with the doctor. Then follow her. We think she'll go to Ben's. If she does we want the pictures . . . and as explicit as possible. Leave the package.'
 
It's at least two and a half hours to this village on the Suffolk coast. Until Ipswich he scarcely regarded the early summer colours, the plaintive skies, fields stretching to woods, the occasional grandeur of parkland.
 
He stopped for coffee at a services and called Sylvia.
 
'Hi Sylvia it's me.'
'Where are you? I was hoping we'd spend the morning together.'
'Well Greg called . . . I'm on my way to the seaside.'
'Oh . . . no time for Sylvia today?'
'Not today'
'Tonight?'
'if all goes to plan'
' You journalists, you're all the same . .'
 
But he wasn't. He was different. He didn't just write, he could investigate, uncover things, hack into mobile phones, get the compromising images.
 
Yes, she was going to Ben's . North, on the Norwich road. No hesitation. She drove fast. He had to have his wits about him. When she turned off the main road to the mill he carried on, then doubled back and two miles further on parked within sight of the building.
 
Her red car was there the courtyard. He decided on getting in from the garden so left the road for an adjoining field. Waist high in a profusion of grasses and wildflowers Marcus made his way painstakingly towards a collection of outbuildings, the indoor swimming pool, garages, an office.
 
The pictures were good. Both of them, together. The architect and the broker. Lovers, conspirators, thieves. They deserved everything coming to them.
 
He had entered the mill briefly. There were voices upstairs, a little laughter and then silence. He left the package on the kitchen table propped up against a vase.
 
They'd been following her movements for months after he'd taken his suspicions to Fred. Yes, he'd been so lucky. A wine bar conversation, an aggrieved employee, a few leaked documents and it all came together. And now this . . . the ****** stuff the paper loved.
 
He decided not to go back to Sylvia tonight but walk by the sea, let the gentle whoosh of water on the pebbled strand sooth his ruffled conscience. He had done his job. There would be other intrusions. Investigations, revelations. Mr Nice but nasty like The Talented Mr Ripley, he thought.

I wheel it out, my green and black bicycle
The roads shiny and quiet, the grey skies overcast
I start slow, breathing in the clean morning air
The fragrance of wet leaves and mulch, moss and old trees

I hear the morning song of the birds
And see the blossoms heralding spring
I nod to the old woman walking her spaniel
And notice the beating of my own heart

The rucksack a comforting weight
My breath even and warm in the wintry air
My derriere sore from yesterday’s excesses
The road, glorious, wide, welcoming and endless

Crossing the road, I am struck by the symmetry
Of a lone tree, leafless, bare, proud, naked
And the beauty of an old, stone church
And the wheels of the cycle keep spinning

The roar of traffic on the motorway always a shock
As I adjust, I breathe in the manure
From green fields so vast, flanked by white
And pause to see the muddy, turbulent stream

As I rack up the miles
My heartbeat is a sledgehammer
My legs are on fire
And I feel alive

and like dante i’d write the geometric of heaven
likened to his hell,
although instead of the ix roundabouts
i’d write of the x winding paths,
harry potter en route 9 & 3/4
buddha between motorway 4.5 and 5.5
and jesus on the crossroads junction between 2.9 and 3.1.
of course i slow down sometimes, i figure,
write a boorish poem dependent on sloth,
write a prosaic poem in vain hope of mirroring equal speed
of the reader,
never write: poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world...
instead write: poets mediate all mediums of art the easiest,
and sometimes do more than the ostriches could
and attack philosophy.
but then there’s this memory i have of myself
sitting in a room with rodin’s kiss marble statue at tate modern,
sketching the statue from all the vivaldi angles,
just before the statue was given an s & m makeover
by cornelia parker, wrapping the statue in the next best thing
to leather gimp masks... petrifying sexuality like
that can scar the hardest metallurgy product, including my eyes,
the ******* rope will not make the hellish couple cling tighter...
but a mantis or a black widow overshadowing the couple
probably would to make the male petrified to stick to
providing for high heels handbags and feminism;
i know the modern word rope = ***** in pink,
but come on... the contortions are not even exfoliating under
the ropes...
i guess i never learnt the art of “pure” and “animalistic”
expression everyone is into... verbiage and all kinds of vegetables
for me it would seem...
moving in between different art forms with an eel slippery ease...
giving due admiration for composer, visualizer, synchroniser,
post stamp / card artist, metal techno indie rapper, busker
and prose exerciser - it’s not that we leave our footmarks
almost idly, almost too infrequently, almost too lightly,
it’s because we are changing lanes on the motorway of sounds & colours,
while people like tolstoy and stephen king are stuck in
the traffic of prose, while people like beethoven and mozart
are stuck in the traffic of music -
but never you mind that quote from picasso...
that quote: all children are artists; the problem is how to remain
an artist once you grow up...
well... there’s an answer to that... retain a childish element
in your art... like picasso did in his work although womanising like
a strong alpha gorilla balancing both testicles in the abyss
of the crotch and a coconut on its head...
perfect cubes with triangles and squares on rectangular canvases...
or start talking like salvador d. about the paranoid expression
using sniffs of ammoniac substances to remember the stench of cows’ **** in the surreal.

Stained asphalt
flickering sodium lights
pavement art
ambulance chasing
motorway drone
crushed cans and ripped pizza boxes
kebab debris
scared cats
gum scarred concrete
burnt out ******* bins congealed plastic
dripping
overflowing bottle banks
used condoms hung on a line
fox ****
streetscene collapse
bottles arranged along a wall one two three
one lone shoe
in the road
sealed up letter boxes one with a message
written in black felt pen on brown parcel tape
‘If you are bothering to read this
you a *******’
kicked in door
steel shuttered shops
burnt out wheelie bin one lump of plastic
very impressive
smoking employees behind the Co-op
one knows Barb thumbs up
I return the thumb
walking
a woman shouting at a priest: ‘But all he wants to be is
a woman’
torn pages from a ***** mag ****** up arses
***** in mouths
piles of brochures newspapers flyers dumped in a doorway
a few quid scammed can’t get the delivery help
these days
someone parking a Audi nice and shiny
looks up and down the street
wary
kids slumped smoking skunk outside the library
a derelict sat on a wall grinning *** in mouth
tells me I have a happy face and offers his bottle to me
I take it and have a slug
trudging
dog crapping in middle of wide clean pavement
someone walking past muttering
‘never in Peru’
I stand opposite my flat and think of bombs
and a cacophony of alternative universes
and small candles shaped like eggs
a bald headed postman drives up to the letter box
techno blasting from his little red van
Molly Upstairs shouts something unintelligible
before throwing a small package down
the postie watches it descend from the sky
and catches it
without a smile
these are the days of unwholesome atmospheres
but it’s all I have so I don’t mind
it’s better than being kept in a box
with the lid
sealed tight.

Each time I attempt to conclude
this equation,
I arrive at the same intersection of doubt,
as if fate sees me coming.

1) Highway ****** Crash
2) The Evasive Goings-on in The Puppy Court
3) A Picture of Susan Howe in a Man's Grey Overcoat

These sequences of event all appeared to me in dreams. The same dream, repeated, over a succession of winter nights. The first few sober, the last an alert blur, wherein the images seemed to make the most sense.

All I can be assured of is this:
because the police officer in the dream was a police officer
Not a garda síochana or police inspector
the dream was definitely set in one of the Midwest United States
where I've never been, yet oddly interests me more than Canada,
where the same applies. It was definitely  freezing
(perhaps the blanket had been pulled off me in sleep?)
and the police officer definitely spoke English and said
"Highway" Hence: American.

The first night the dream arrived
It was that time of year when the night sky
subtly tricks you into believing that
morning is imminently about to break.

Those nights
A reminder that nature
was the first coy tease of suspended disbelief
the first pay-per-view special that took its time
getting going and then ended all too soon.

Two trucks had split in two a mid-size saloon-
That was the first of the dream's episodes-
But a voice arrived like a roll call of ice before an avalanche
-whispering that it was "a setup"-
which I presumed meant "collusion."
So I had a ******, at hand, in my dream-
speaking to the mustachioed Midwestern police detective afterwards-
as mutually understanding as if we had been in the same all-boys Catholic secondary school.
He had the suspects-so we then presided unto-

"THE PUPPY COURT"

Which was-yes, a court whose racial make-up consisted of young Dogs-
(This being a dream ; Dreams which are often the dictionary definition of Surreal and often don't mean anything)
The more I consider it, the Puppies were also most likely Puppets
Acted out by humans who had fists shoved up their *****.
Perhaps this court was a speculative court-it was, most certainly,
A "Kangaroo" court
With no justice being presided over, as such.
Heckles sounded throughout most of the exhibits,
A sternly yapping Yorkshire Terrier banged the gavel to no avail-
He was consistently rudely interrupted by a cocksure Golden Retriever-
who seemed to have as his boyos most of the bench and the jurors.
I never did find out who was responsible
for the horrific collision that spelled the end for the saloon driver,
as at this point I would usually exit the court in disgust
and for some reason found myself reading a poem in front of
an audience of one-
the acclaimed Irish-American L=A=N==G=U=A=G=E (that's how they spell it..) poet Susan Howe.

Yes, she was indeed wearing a Man's gray Overcoat
Resembling herself in the picture I held in my hand
Next to my own text
And as I looked toward her
The room's low lighting seem to reflect
the sparse "Black and White" filter of the photograph
and she was also wearing what looked like
the same Man's gray (Houndstooth maybe?
She Looked ALL filtered through "Black and White")

So the intention seemed to be that I was reading,
or perhaps presenting, maybe even pitching?
to Susan Howe. ("And how!"-might have been the before-or-after gag I might have used to anyone who new how it was going to go or how it happened-what gamey fun, these puns be...)
Susan looked on with penitence, as if prematurely unimpressed...
I look down to the poem I was expecting myself to read, and realised...
why the ******* did I choose that?

It was a poem I had written several years ago (well, if several means seven, lets say six)
Its subject was a young Canadian (possible Motorway Crash Link? Perhaps I misremembered her as midwestern?..) Muslim student whom I had shared a class on Hellenistic philosophy with back in the first or second year of my undergrad in Dublin (oh the hedonistic, sunsplashed, affordable Dublin of those days) and whom I had shared a flirtatious rapport with, innocent enough of course but always backdropped by a underscored leitmotif that instilled the threat of a problematic outcome across religious and possibly less so cultural divides

(Breath)

Nevertheless, she laughed at my jokes and self-deprecation and would squeeze my arm tightly when particularly amused , would hug me enthusiastically at the end of every class and although I never saw the full profile of her under that headscarf her ****** features Vogue beach fashion shoot stunning and after the module ended I never saw her again oh but how rare and strangely puritanical the lust...

Regardless, the poem began as such:

A Stir in Yemen/ must have been the catalyst for the smokey condensation/ in your gaze/ the mocha swirl in your pupils/ and the vex in your smile/ alluding to double meanings/innuendo that treads together like an Ernst canvas/ a blessed triptych/thrillingly

This poem was typed onto a model of Nokia phone which I have been made aware has since gone out of fashion, like it's producer.

Max Ernst-the surrealist painter, of course. A manual in style for most of us.

In response to my reading, Susan Howe merely nodded silently, seemingly all knowingly, as if she had thought the poem written for her or contained an interpretation that I had unintended (or, if asked by the real-life Susan Howe, would pretend to have intended all along.)

And there the Dream Triptych always ended.

As I said at the beginning I dreamt it twice more that same week, once intoxicated. It always followed the same sequence, and I don't read books on dreams so I have no idea what it meant, why it had three distinct parts or whether if most likely it was all a bit of nonsense. But at least it was INTERESTING.

Make the rest up for yourself.

Watching the motorway
from the cafe'.
resting my feet of clay.
Under a sky of clouds,
that some may say,
have silver linings.
But all I can see is the grey.

The morning sun inaudibly arising,
Yo-yo weather, blue skies and rainclouds,
The familiar view of the long awaited landscape, evoking memories of many a week spent here before,
The warm feeling of - ‘home’
Shadows cast by clouds hovering eerily above a ‘witch’s house’, high on a mountain top,
Two hundred foot drops and winding peaks,
Dancing streams and wide lakes, the deepest shade of blue
Pedestrian cows crossing a motorway bridge,
The timelessness of the ever nearing estuary, lying in wait,
Our second home – the tin house with two doors,
Our place of wild strawberries and happiness and peace.
The estuary sand and the shallow-deep waters, as inviting as ever, gleaming as I walk on by,
The delicate beauty of fresh scented flowers, on a fine summer’s day,
Endless winding roads, following the sun trail, leading to a place far away,
Sheep on the beach, curious and shorn as the evening sun fades peacefully and the serein falls,
Evening serenity and the swell of the incoming tide,
The mystery of the island in the distance, far, far away.
Blankets and dreamscapes and tea in brown mugs,
And dinner cooked on an open fire,
The lights shining in Portmerion at night,
The noceur of the night sky, the silver-white orb, dancing gracefully amongst the stars.

I once stood in the middle of a motorway at 3am
just for fun,
I told myself, just for fun -
But I don't think it was, now I'm okay
I still sway, dream of far away but I get my exams done,
so I don't let my mother down again
so I don't hide inside from remaining friends.
I keep myself planted, smile slanted, half frown -
and I don't make a sound until I mean to,
until I breeze through,
until I need to,
this is the studied truth of the newly grounded.

I'm not into rushing things these days,
I mean I still do but less so in less ways
and my mind's all curly wurly and I have resting ***** face
and skin like a coffin -
I still can't get up early, still feel displaced
a little too often -
but this is my city now and I don't want to leave or get out,
because this time I am okay
and I'm dealing
and my anxiety still leaves me reeling
but I'm not panicking as much or screaming
and my pillows are the only ones who don't believe me.

Still,
everything is temporary, in constant flux
fresh cut grass and students in class
sunsets and sunrises
church bells and waist sizes
metal and petrol and monster trucks,
and it's all beautiful,
that's the most important thing you'll ever find out -
it's better to shine bright without background doubt
than to disappear into the darkness,
the dark mess,
I mean, I still want to run and shout but now
it's more writing my thoughts down and actually seeing the day
and not 3am standing in a motorway
telling myself, just for fun.

This is not the barrel of a gun, hard and cold
it's not the answer it's not made of gold
it's not a solution, it's the end of it all
and I don't know if we rot or acsend,
but it wasn't just for fun,
it was leaving the motor running,
it was something I was running away from -

Life,
it isn't easy, it's not like saying 'it's okay'
when it's not yourself you're telling
and when it's you, it can't be told or shown
you have to push hardest when you're alone
because finally, once clear of fear's icy gripping hands
I came to understand
that life is beautiful, even when it's sad,
it's the best thing I never knew I had,
so I started living,
just for fun.

I'm not done, you see?
I'm not done.

Dennis was a citizen
A denizen, a resident
Of somewhere near a motorway
A hideaway most opulent
Ensnared amid the railway
And trail ways for motorcars
A haven from the modern day
The takeaways and trendy bars

But shattered in the summer morn
His rest was torn by hammering
Invading what was once inert
So to his curtains clamouring
He banished each to either side
He threw them wide with knuckles white
And saw in front of his abode
Across the road, a building site

A certainty within his mind
Did slowly wind his purpose tight
And with a grim determined jaw
Across the floor he took to flight
Descending stairs without a care
His morning hair resembling
A dandelion set to seed
In need of disassembling

He strode across his dining room
And snatched a broom which lay by chance
Against the table by the door
And held before him like a lance
He mounted his beloved bike
A cycle like no other made
And on a builder set his sight
With all his might and unafraid

He charged his foe at quite a rush
And with his brush, the builder smote
And leaping from his trusty steed
He did proceed to stop and gloat
Before resuming in his spate
The builders mate did turn and run
To raise the dragon, JCB
It roared with glee and wheels spun

So Dennis, though his ears resound
With just the pound of noble heart
Did firmly stand and face the beast
His brow was creased and feet apart
He struck the creature savagely
And stubbornly with just his head
And that, according to the news
Was what the paramedics said

The End