rubbing the lamp

It’s feels like I’m taking dictation from life at the moment - a lot of everything and nothing filling my notebook.  A few scraps in the meantime…

 

She sleeps in a knot.  Come morning she will untangle and stretch and enter another day that will confuse and tie her.  She’s a ribbon, a string, a fraying bootlace.  She sleeps like a boiled sweet - wrapped in a folded sheet, twisted at each end.

 ***

Wednesday market stall - mesmerised for a moment by a tumble of colour contained by glass.  Like something from a fairy tale - dreams of genies and potions.  Actually just a heap of cheap nail polish.

 ***

She’s like a cat in that new cardigan.  She’s moulting.  Leaving a hairy path behind her.  We know where she’s been and we follow.  The beads clatter around her thin wrists and we think it’s the sound of her bones.

his black heart

The stick man announced his arrival with a tumble of pencils.  In sentences of varying lengths he spat out broken bits of lead and brushed the shavings from his hair.  He danced a merry doodle and hummed the tune of ‘Is There Anybody There?’.

an anti-valentine

A little something to counter-balance all that love flooding the highstreet today.

This is how my heart was broken

It wasn’t so much stamped on as left underneath a cushion on a battered sofa until someone’s aunt sat down with a loud rude sound.

It wasn’t so much burned as found in the ash-tray the morning after - wearing a coat of grey dust and smelling of spilled beer.

It wasn’t so much smashed as left with a crazed glaze like old china, or a starburst like a bullet through a cartoon window.

It wasn’t so much chewed up and spat out as held beneath the tongue till body warmed and malleable then taken out and stuck beneath the desk for someone to find clinging to their trousers on another day.

It wasn’t so much broken as neglected, abandoned, defaced, deflated, lost.

hate crimes

Her hair offends me the most. To wear it so black and still appear cheerful. Almost a bowl-cut but a bowl-cut from the trendiest bowl. And those glasses that frame her eyes like they are a priceless pair hanging in the Tate Modern. Framed so I’ll notice them, or they’ll notice me.

I know these evil wishes can sprout legs and hurry back to bite me - but for now I’ll bless them and send them on their way, with an address, a map and a deadline.

I hope she spends her days dry and childless. I hope she is widowed young - the wrong side of forty five. I hope one leg develops a drag that sends her round in circles. I hope her hair curls.