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Bruce Adams Sep 2023
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.
Written 2016-2020.
Willoughby Aug 2018
Willoughby is the name. And if I can't express my unique and unconventional way of writing here on Hello Poetry as a shock poet,  I'll get angry and leave.  And believe me, you don't want me to get angry (I've been known to get so angry I wet myself).  Following is an example of my style. (WARNING:  If your eyes start to burn, turn away for a few seconds.  You'll be fine).

Reuters news service.  This just in...

PROJECTILE ***** MAN ARRESTED

Dateline:  New York City ---
   Charlie Jenkins, the projectile vomiter of New York is behind bars after 24 incidents of vomiting on people who had made him angry. From rude waitresses to aggressive beggars to mean hotdog venders, he didn't discriminate.

   He apparently could throw up at will and spew it Like a weapon on his unsuspecting victims.  When confronted he would claim that he was just sick with the flu and had no control over it and you can't get mad at someone who is sick can you?

   The judge had to search the laws to call it an assault at the courtroom yesterday and then was promptly vomited on by the man with the nickname known as Up-Chuck Charlie.

   Charlie was quoted as saying, " It's like a super power and there are a lot of jerks who deserve my kind of vengeance and if I punched them I'd go to jail, this way I leave them humiliated and soiled in ***** and get to walk away".  Sorry Charlie, not this time.

    Susan Clark from channel 2 news asked but why do such a disgusting thing, why? Charlie replied,"Why do I do it?  I do it for the same reason that a dog licks his own *****...because I can.
Shocked? Then my work here is done.
Keep looking for more Willoughby life rules to come!
Also stay tuned to meet a guy named Creepy Ray Ray, coming soon!
Ryan O'Leary Feb 2020
Carrier pigeons were
used in the early days
by Reuters international
but none of the birds
made it to antarctica due
to ice build up on their
wings and why it is that
Penguins never got to
contribute any of their
poetry to competitions
sponsored by Pen Reuters.
You have no need to feed me or fill me with lies,your eyes tell it all,how you wore a new dress and glass slippers,did you have a ball?
and since I'm here dear,how was the prince dear
was he all that you thought he would be?

Did you run ,did he see?
oh poverty,
you couldn't wait till the strike, until the clock struck midnight,you had to show,what the prince shouldn't know and now I must go, far away.

Cinderella for a day, so bright and so gay and now the dark night alights, takes away all the rights that she thought to acquire, Wire Reuters, the press,let them in on this mess,
I'll have a word with Perrault.
Chris D Aechtner Nov 2021
It's a downer to express the largest-scale tragedy of my lifetime

over and over again.

I've combed through 10,014 medical malpractice reports of young people who had been strong and without complication up until receiving the one-eyed technocratic snake bite that supposedly has nothing to do with their suspicious deaths,

I've gone through 25,117 autopsy reports (not every report: I scanned bunches of 250 reports in 10 groups of 25 reports or 25 groups of 10 reports at a time for very specific details, though I've read some of the reports 5 or more times) of elderly people who had survived world wars, epidemics, pandemics, and many outbreak and spikes, only to succumb within 72 hours of receiving whichever junk SGT inoculations that have nothing to do with their untimely deaths—

that occurred in North America
over a 2 week period.

I'm not supposed to talk about it.

I'm not supposed to express anything
other than expressions of agreement
that Delta variants and the unvaccinated
are killing the vaccinated

or express nothing at all.

I'm not supposed to express that I know the ingredients, and the processes involved to source ingredients, on chemical, molecular, cellular levels; that I know the MSDS and LCSS documentation, and patents, involved.

But, I do express it, just as I did again above.

When someone claims that their significant other didn't die from the shot that they had received within 24 hrs of dying,
I'm supposed to agree with the cheap, disloyal, dumbed-down, brainwashed, bootlicking, unscientific, pseudo-intellectual, spineless coward

who is hurting from losing a loved one.

I'm sorry.

I'm not supposed to express that we've known since 1991 that the synthetic chemical digitized mRNA, that isn't really mRNA, causes the host to spin-off variants of multi-drug-resistant and multi-vaccine-resistant super microorganisms—subtype variants of virions and bacteria that are often variants of variants of variants.

I'm supposed to stay zipped-up
or—encourage!—offer support
and congratulations to people
who are suiciding and committing
****** and euthanasia

without proper informed consent.

Be positive about it. Smile. Nod.

Have it be whatever you want it to be.
Use mockingbird skills to make it real— abracadabra!—it's en vogue, all the rage
to parrot percentages of efficacy,
to virtue signal over standing with
trillion $ industries and special interest
against Earth and humanity.
Insert cash money and mirages
into the soul-******* jukebox, baby.

Rage With The Machine.
Rage For The Machine.

Yesterday's false-positive
is today's false-negative.

Thomson Reuters will fact check you
into a cancer case to vindicate delusions, stubbornness, and negative pride.

I'm not supposed to express that within the principles and disciplines of medical ethics and the Hippocratic Oath, it's ethically corrupt and illegal to use political and emotional coercion, especially while simultaneously dangling fear over the intended target, to enforce/push any drug treatment, regardless of situation.

I'm supposed to use dope and *****
and a movie
to switch tracks
from my passionate obsession.

I watched a movie that included
a medical health scam to entrap the people
in a fashion similar to when the Germans believed that they were receiving vaccines
that helped to defend against typhus.

If we ever find ourselves in opposite sides
and positions as we are currently,
please offer proper informed consent
to the people.
11 16 2021

I immensely enjoy flying under the radar here, so to speak, find it to be freeing and empowering.

I generally don't like trendy stuff, though, some of the trendy stuff are some of the brighter, oddly cut gems.

I spent too much time losing myself in the subjectivity of others, basically answering questions that people are too lazy to explore for themselves.
Regardless of the pieces being good or bad, every piece that I've written during 2021 happened because I purposely didn't reply to a question.

For every boring, inane, counterproductive question that I don't answer, I write a new piece.

Aside from a few good friends, I'm pondering whether or not I should block accounts of people who I know from other venues and platforms, so that I'm not asked an overwhelmingly amount of redundantly inane questions again, as I'm enjoying the anonymity and peacefulness that I find here.

Especially because of the current states of affairs,
I generally don't like most humans anymore, but deeply love the few whom I cherish, adore, and respect unconditionally.
WEB: The Mahmudiyah killings were the gang-**** and killing of 14-year-old Iraqi girl Abeer Qassim Hamza al-Janabi by United States Army soldiers on March 12, 2006, and the ****** of her family, in a house to the southwest of Yusufiyah, a village to the west of the town of Al-Mahmudiyah, Iraq. Charged with the crimes were five U.S. Army soldiers of the 502nd Infantry Regiment consisting of (I) SGT Paul E. Cortez, (II) SPC James P. Barker, (III) PFC Jesse V. Spielman, (IV) PFC Brian L. Howard, and (V) PFC Steven D. Green, whom the U.S. Army discharged before becoming aware of the crime. Abeer Qassim Hamza al-Janabi was ***** and murdered after her family consisting of her 34-year-old mother Fakhriyah Taha Muhsin, 45-year-old father Qasim Hamza Raheem, and six-year-old sister Hadeel Qasim Hamza were killed. Spielman and Green have been convicted and three others have pleaded guilty.**

World news
US soldier sentenced to 100 years for Iraq **** and ******
The Iraqi identity cards of Abeer Qassim Hamza al-Janabi, her mother, Fakhriya Taha al-Janabi (l) and her father Qasim Hamza al-Janabi
The Iraqi identity cards of Abeer Qassim Hamza al-Janabi, her mother, Fakhriya Taha al-Janabi (l) and her father Qasim Hamza al-Janabi. Photograph: Reuters

Ewen MacAskill in Washington and Michael Howard in Baghdad
Friday 23 February 2007 04.15 EST First published on Friday 23 February 2007 04.15 EST
A US soldier was sentenced to 100 years in prison yesterday for one of the worst known cases involving US troops in Iraq - the gang **** and ****** of a 14-year-old girl and the killing of her father, mother and sister.
The horrific slaying of Abeer Qassim al-Janabi and her family happened in Mahmoudiya, around 20 miles south of Baghdad, on March 12 last year.

In spite of the apparently long prison sentence, Sergeant Paul Cortez, 24, can expect to be released on parole in about ten years under a plea bargain deal. He pleaded guilty and agreed to testify in the cases of others alleged to have been involved.

He was given a dishonourable discharge from the army.

Cortez, who broke down in tears earlier this week as he described his role in the **** and murders, is the second soldier to plead guilty. He told the military court at Fort Campbell of the day he had gone with others to the girl's home and ***** her.

The killing was originally reported to be the work of insurgents, but the role of the soldiers emerged in June.

In November, one of the soldiers, specialist James Barker, 24, was sentenced to 90 years in a military prison.

Another, specialist Steven Green, 21, who had been discharged from service with a "personality disorder" before his superiors knew about the crime, is accused of being the ringleader and will face a civilian court because he is no longer in the army.

Two others, private Jesse Spielman, 22, and Bryan Howard, 19, face courts martial in relation to the incident, though neither is accused of participating in the ****.

All five were members of the 101st Airborne Division, based at Fort Campbell, which straddles the Kentucky-Tennessee border.

Cortez, who is from Barstow, California, pleaded not guilty to separate charges of premeditated ******. He was found not guilty on these charges on Wednesday after prosecutors failed to convince a judge that he knew of what they said was Green's intent to ****** the whole family.

Cortez told the court about how the crime was thought up: "While we were playing cards Barker and Green started talking about having *** with an Iraqi female. Barker and Green had already known ... " he said, before breaking down in tears.

He continued after a minute: "Barker and Green had already known what house they wanted to go to ... knew only one male was in the house, and knew it would be an easy target."

At the home, Cortez said he and others took Janabi's father, mother and younger sister into a bedroom and kept her in the living room.

He then described Barker held her down while he undressed her and proceeded to **** her. 'After I was done, myself and Barker switched spots, he said.

He claimed that Green shot and killed the girl's parents and younger sister. "During the time me and Barker were ****** Abeer, I heard five or six gunshots that came from the bedroom. After Barker was done, Green came out of the bedroom and said that he had killed them all, that all of them were dead."

Cortez said he acted as a lookout while Green then ***** the girl.

He claimed Green then shot Janabi several times in the head, and the soldiers poured petrol over her body and set it alight to try to hide the evidence of their crime. Cortez burned his own clothes and Spielman allegedly threw the AK-47 used to **** the family in a canal. Specialist Christopher Till, testified that Cortez told him about the killings in June. "He seemed very remorseful," Till said.

In another development, Iraq's security forces were yesterday facing fresh allegations of brutal ****** assault after four soldiers were accused of ****** a 50-year-old Sunni Turkomen woman and attempting to **** her two daughters in the north-western city of Tal Afar earlier this month.

It is the second allegation of ****** assault against Iraqi forces to surface this week. On Monday, a 20-year-old Sunni woman alleged that she was ***** by three policemen after being detained during a search of her house in Baghdad.
Ryan O'Leary Sep 22
.          News Bullet In

         Magazine triggers
          fused explosion
         targeting assassin
The overall cost in human lives of American actions in the Philippines was horrific. One scholar has concluded concerning the American occupation that "In the fifteen years that followed the defeat of the Spanish in Manila Bay in 1898, more Filipinos were killed by U.S. forces than by the Spanish in 300 years of colonization. 1.5 million died out of a total population of 6 million."**

World news
US soldier sentenced to 100 years for Iraq **** and ******
The Iraqi identity cards of Abeer Qassim Hamza al-Janabi, her mother, Fakhriya Taha al-Janabi (l) and her father Qasim Hamza al-Janabi
The Iraqi identity cards of Abeer Qassim Hamza al-Janabi, her mother, Fakhriya Taha al-Janabi (l) and her father Qasim Hamza al-Janabi. Photograph: Reuters
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Ewen MacAskill in Washington and Michael Howard in Baghdad
Friday 23 February 2007 04.15 EST First published on Friday 23 February 2007 04.15 EST
A US soldier was sentenced to 100 years in prison yesterday for one of the worst known cases involving US troops in Iraq - the gang **** and ****** of a 14-year-old girl and the killing of her father, mother and sister.
The horrific slaying of Abeer Qassim al-Janabi and her family happened in Mahmoudiya, around 20 miles south of Baghdad, on March 12 last year.

In spite of the apparently long prison sentence, Sergeant Paul Cortez, 24, can expect to be released on parole in about ten years under a plea bargain deal. He pleaded guilty and agreed to testify in the cases of others alleged to have been involved.

He was given a dishonourable discharge from the army.

Cortez, who broke down in tears earlier this week as he described his role in the **** and murders, is the second soldier to plead guilty. He told the military court at Fort Campbell of the day he had gone with others to the girl's home and ***** her.

The killing was originally reported to be the work of insurgents, but the role of the soldiers emerged in June.

In November, one of the soldiers, specialist James Barker, 24, was sentenced to 90 years in a military prison.

Another, specialist Steven Green, 21, who had been discharged from service with a "personality disorder" before his superiors knew about the crime, is accused of being the ringleader and will face a civilian court because he is no longer in the army.

Two others, private Jesse Spielman, 22, and Bryan Howard, 19, face courts martial in relation to the incident, though neither is accused of participating in the ****.

Advertisement

All five were members of the 101st Airborne Division, based at Fort Campbell, which straddles the Kentucky-Tennessee border.

Cortez, who is from Barstow, California, pleaded not guilty to separate charges of premeditated ******. He was found not guilty on these charges on Wednesday after prosecutors failed to convince a judge that he knew of what they said was Green's intent to ****** the whole family.

Cortez told the court about how the crime was thought up: "While we were playing cards Barker and Green started talking about having *** with an Iraqi female. Barker and Green had already known ... " he said, before breaking down in tears.

He continued after a minute: "Barker and Green had already known what house they wanted to go to ... knew only one male was in the house, and knew it would be an easy target."

At the home, Cortez said he and others took Janabi's father, mother and younger sister into a bedroom and kept her in the living room.

He then described Barker held her down while he undressed her and proceeded to **** her. 'After I was done, myself and Barker switched spots, he said.

He claimed that Green shot and killed the girl's parents and younger sister. "During the time me and Barker were ****** Abeer, I heard five or six gunshots that came from the bedroom. After Barker was done, Green came out of the bedroom and said that he had killed them all, that all of them were dead."

Cortez said he acted as a lookout while Green then ***** the girl.

He claimed Green then shot Janabi several times in the head, and the soldiers poured petrol over her body and set it alight to try to hide the evidence of their crime. Cortez burned his own clothes and Spielman allegedly threw the AK-47 used to **** the family in a canal. Specialist Christopher Till, testified that Cortez told him about the killings in June. "He seemed very remorseful," Till said.

In another development, Iraq's security forces were yesterday facing fresh allegations of brutal ****** assault after four soldiers were accused of ****** a 50-year-old Sunni Turkomen woman and attempting to **** her two daughters in the north-western city of Tal Afar earlier this month.

It is the second allegation of ****** assault against Iraqi forces to surface this week. On Monday, a 20-year-old Sunni woman alleged that she was ***** by three policemen after being detained during a search of her house in Baghdad.
███▬▬▬►

**WEB/THE BLACK SPHERE: It turns out that black babies are cheaper than monkeys. Don’t believe me, just read this report by Reuters. This is why black babies are being used as lab rats to test a bio-weapons grade anthrax vaccine. In the time of a black president {ahem}, a presidential ethics panel (you read that right) is the panel who concluded that black babies could be used for the testing. Believe it or not, this is being done for the kids. We need a pediatric anthrax vaccine. Here is a what panel chairman Amy Gutmann, president of the University of Pennsylvania, had to say: “Balancing the need to protect children against the need to know, for instance, the safe dose of the vaccine, made this one of the most difficult ethical reviews a bioethics board has ever conducted because kids could one day die by the millions from anthrax. So what? NO BLACK CHILDREN are dying from anthrax, and who knows the future implications of testing on black children?"
███▬▬▬►
WEB/THE BLACK SPHERE: It turns out that black babies are cheaper than monkeys. Don’t believe me, just read this report by Reuters. This is why black babies are being used as lab rats to test a bio-weapons grade anthrax vaccine. In the time of a black president {ahem}, a presidential ethics panel (you read that right) is the panel who concluded that black babies could be used for the testing. Believe it or not, this is being done for the kids. We need a pediatric anthrax vaccine. Here is a what panel chairman Amy Gutmann, president of the University of Pennsylvania, had to say: “Balancing the need to protect children against the need to know, for instance, the safe dose of the vaccine, made this one of the most difficult ethical reviews a bioethics board has ever conducted because kids could one day die by the millions from anthrax. So what? NO BLACK CHILDREN are dying from anthrax, and who knows the future implications of testing on black children?"
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Can you get Hepatitis C by getting a tattoo or piercing?
Transmission of Hepatitis C (and other infectious diseases) is possible when poor infection-control practices are used during tattooing or piercing.

Who is at risk for Hepatitis C?
People who received body piercing or tattoos done with non-sterile instruments.

Fox News: Researchers are hoping that people will do some research about where to get a tattoo, after a study found a link between body art and hepatitis C.

The new study found that people with the virus were almost four times more likely to report having a tattoo, even when other major risk factors were taken into account, co-author Dr. Fritz Francois of New York University Langone Medical Center told Reuters Health.
Mateuš Conrad Mar 2020
i have died a thousand times
and that's only before...
i get a chance to fall asleep;

i've been taking twitter accounts
and instagram entries polaroids...
reading Milton doesn't ease
the headaches...

this burden of the wriggling
earthworm that's about
to be pulled out from nibbling
on the clay: london proud...

         sheffield... the artic monkey's:
n'est ce pas?
that field felt grift...
smoking baron and the ashes to
lick up lick to keep...

         my furore!
my hunger my guise my everyday
lost case of slumber...
the death grieving the date of
the lost review...

          bygones be left as bygones
of Navarone...
  crown of pandemic proportions...
still waiting for
ol' lizzie to drop it to a down
of pressure on the ol' ticker...
she'll die and hail!
robert the bruce!
            my ivory of white winding through...

each night i die...
i die because i fall to sleep
and there's no dream
for my sort of licking the altar
of open and salting the wounds...
let them breathe they'd be prone
to implore me of to keep...

if there's no darker loot of black
then perhaps it
will sound more impeding
in: altvaterdeutsche...

schwarz! schwarz!
                   came the lone roman ******:

švarц!
            wo alle straßen enden...
der schlamm ist knöcheltief...
            
schlamm ist eisen:
          wenn skulptur ist:
gegeben "die aufwachen" prompt...

             *******: inselwohnsitzleute!
east of warsaw... or west of kiev?!

fetish peoples unite under the rubric
of the scaling prop-up latex
of *** games that...
wir wurden einst kinder...
         wir benutzt zu spielen...
                  verstecken und suchen!

gamma goblin of the "vierte *****"...
or just a fetish for an old version
of english... this... my exhauasted anglo-sax...
reuters... back toward
the ***** of a fake father i too have...

grenadiers of the horseoperamärц!
lernenzuerst:
                kind-deutsche-unger­ade-leere...

for all the english that is given,
why wouldn't i want to escape into
a prehistoric german...
       old saxon the would-be eager
tourist of exhibitions...

      i would, i somehow still persist
to: versuchen...
                     grief from
a tongue... neither...
otherwise a ****** vater otherwise
a ****** mutter...
             zähne auf eisen...
                      zunge auf austern!
sing-along
in alt ***** german or...
            that subtle brotherhood barrier
of neighbouring love...

very far from "home"...
      home... home... what is home?

god i hope every single word spoken
in german will make me out
to be an unrepenting
                         sturmführer...
trägt schwarz... trägt weiß...
trägt grau...

                           the least opposition...
salz bestreut auf zu öffnen
atmen wunden...
                      
easier for the croat...
or the serb...
                              easier: never mind...
new continent h'america...
and but the breadcrumbs of history...
this 20th century locum
of all that had to happen...

                            if a harry can get away
with donning khaki...
i would love to appear
in schwarz... weiß... und grau...
                   prompt galore!
            brechenöffnen - nach vorne!

      as ever... limitations of residue for
all that ever was:
self-help bollocking of a tickling        
of forever "future" events....
Updated 6 Mar 2017, 6:09pm

The site of a mass grave of hundreds of children who died in the former Catholic-run Bons Secours home.
PHOTO: The remains of babies ranging from newborn to three years old, were found in the sewers of one of the country's mother and baby homes. (Reuters)
RELATED STORY: Almost 800 Irish children dumped in septic tank mass grave. RELATED STORY: Archbishop calls for inquiry into deaths of 796 children. RELATED STORY: 'Baby convicts' from Northern Ireland sent to Australia deserve compensation: inquiry
MAP: Ireland
Ireland will widen an inquiry into former church-run homes for unmarried mothers if needed, Prime Minister Enda Kenny has said, calling the discovery of long-dead babies in the sewers at one home "truly appalling".

The remains of babies ranging from newborn to three years old were found in the sewers of one of the country's mother and baby homes following a "shocking" excavation, government-appointed investigators announced on Friday.

The Government ordered the inquiry in 2014 after a local historian's research suggested up to 800 children may lie in an unmarked grave at the home in the western town of Tuam.
Drab Sep 11
CNN

Cable – How I send info to someone these days.
News  - Very old today, and repetitive
Network  - How we all find out about what we already know.

FOX

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On
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Reuters

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