Cu & Ocimum basilicum

Two observations, from either end of an otherwise unremarkable day -

I am washing up. My fingers absorb the heat until they translate the feeling to one of coldness. I’ll never understand the mystery of nerves. I hear the rain growing more committed against the plastic roof. And then another sound, a different tinkle, more metallic, more tuneful. In another room she is counting coppers to give to the birds.

I hear her chopping basil and trying not to cry. There will be tears lying in wait behind her eyes. Her throat will catch, words are hooked there. Any that escape will waver a little in the air as if released from underwater. And from now when I smell basil, metallic and fresh, I will remember these words, both the said and the unsaid.

feng shui for the paranoid

a single unmade bed. in the corner of a room. always a corner. important to limit the ways they can come at you. a couple of inches out from the wall. you never know what could be crawling there. sheets only in white or mixed-wash grey. nothing too bold to stimulate vivid dreams. only checks or stripes on blankets or duvets. never spots or swirls. nothing to remind you of her.

a broken rainbow

[click to view detail]

it's the end of the world...

…as I know it. It’s three minutes of footsteps laid on wood. It’s metal suspended and sending me out over the sand, over the water, away from the land.

A place where old women slump, deckchairs moulding their spines into perfect curves. Heads eaten by floppy cloth sunhats. Arms at rest on polyester laps. Each a mess of veins, a blue knotted net thrown over their bones to stop them from blowing away.

A place where men line the pier sides. Arms crossed on the top bar of the railings. Never content to sit, they always pace or stand or lean. Silent and staring down to the water below. So blue today. Parallel bars of colour that deepen as they leave the sand behind.

And down below gulls dot the border water. Walking in and out of the fluffy ripples. Pecking and poking. And almost looking like they might grab the edge with their beaks and with a little teamwork fight the tide and drag the blue back up the beach.

all in all

(further impressions of my Friday night friend)

She loved men as if they were walls. Dressed in shades of height and presence, when they dreamed they dreamed of solidity and dimension. They promised welcome containment - offered boundaries to stop her drifting apart and away. She’d tried ones made of glass in the past but they always broke too soon. The best ones cast shade and gave her something to lean against. Always welcome to someone so prone to sunburn. Their mood could turn unstable with little warning but their conversation was something to graze her knuckles or her forehead against if the mood took her. The ones she fell for were usually well built and fairly logical - made up of little repetitive parts that she could count and measure, take apart and put back together at her leisure. Which was something, and better than nothing.

gathering dust

Just for one day I scare the skeletons away and reclaim the cupboards from no-mans-land. I sort through accumulated books and letters and cards. I dust off forgotten histories and polish flat packed promises.

I find his picture folded into a secret six - still tacky at the corners from where it used to cling to my wall. And I’ll never not be surprised at how quickly newspaper grows yellow and brittle with so little age. And on a paperback of the best known road trip I find a tea ring. The caffeine fingerprint of someone happy to deface. And then that battered Salinger - the one she left behind amid the heap of less obvious mess. Lost in her secretary chic and Friday night tangles, I wonder if she ever missed it?

I find French greetings and New York incoming flight numbers. Heavy goodbyes and fading Valentines. I read indistinct sentiment laid in bold black ink in a handwriting that used to be more familiar than my own. I discover teenage poems written ten years too late on airmail paper as if the words themselves carried too little weight. And a long gone song riddled with spelling mistakes and that is the least of its crimes.

just jack

Jack came out of the box. He cursed in fluent Russian and bit me on the nose. He said he is claustrophobic, asthmatic and scared of the dark. All of which I should have known. He said he’ll never forgive me. Swore he’d never let me go. Threatened to tie me up with second-hand parcel string. Stick on an obsolete stamp. And post me to a country that no longer exits.

when

When we’re aged angels. With these words written in the creases of our well-read faces. When our hair has fallen through too many shades of autumn and lies heaped beneath us, a knotted nest for our belated bones. When our gaze has cracked like china teacup sheen and all we see is sepia dreams. Of crosswords and washing machines. Then and only then.

baggage control

A Case of Mistaken Identity

I look in the mirror and don’t like what I see. My eyes chipped, a handful of overplayed marbles. My lips ragged from caging criticism. My brows tangled, a magic forest keeping the princess in her tower. My upwardly mobile nose, ever sniffing for the next suspicion. I look in the mirror and I don’t like what I see. I don’t know you, do you know me?

A Case of Lost Property

I forgot to pick up my smile. I’d taken it off when I sat down to rest. I had a lot on my mind, if not on my face. It was starting to rain. I’d lost my shopping list, or it had lost me. Someone found the smile under the bench. A dog walking an old man. He handed it in to the police station. They noted it looked well used and a little worn. I never claimed it.

my favourite things

Repetition comforts me. It always has. As a child I would gain hours of pleasure sorting beads or Lego bricks into piles according to colour and type. Then mixing them up and starting again. Far more fun than anything I might actually make from them. I’m the same now I’m nearly grown up. I think about some things over and over again. There are certain memory lanes that I never tire of visiting. And there are certain themes that reappear regularly in my writing. Because each time, I think I’ve spotted a new angle, a slant to the light that will throw sharper shadows and show me something I missed before.

After the rain I was pleased to see that our garden had made the most of the downpour. Each leaf had sorted the raindrops in its own unique way. Each greened backdrop displayed a different raindrop style. The ravenous arum encouraging every drop to slide toward its centre taking our gaze with it. The vibrant little fir who set up ladders for playful raindrops to tumble down. The nurturing sedum, cupping her hands to gather remote drops into pure glass chunks. And not forgetting the dark velvet garrya letting the shyest raindrops sit quiet in the shade.

- NOTICE -

in parenthesis

When I’m writing I put brackets around words I might omit. Those that might later disappear, or fall from the page. Those that add little to meaning, but take up precious ink in the process. Sometimes they prove themselves worthy and get to stay but mostly they fall by the wayside onto unfertile verges. I think it’s true that less is more.

And these days I wonder if I should bracket my spoken word too? Perhaps I should take a vow of silence. Perhaps I’d make more sense if I communicate in broken sign language and obscure charades. Perhaps people would listen more carefully, or take me more seriously.

artificial thistles

Some days she feels she’s filled with thistles. A prickly mouthful of mispronounced words. Meaning comes last, sensation first.

Some days he’s looks like broken glass and smells like barbed wire. A bloody perimeter, and no-one gets in.

Some days she’s packed full of autumns. Boots tramping brittle leaves. Bonfires flicker and snap and crack.

Some days he’s a walking spelling mistake. Well intended but poorly translated.

Some days I taste like pins but sing a song of threadless needles.

the final countdown

Time flies. Day follows day. Each the same shape. Each the same taste. My days are numbered. So are yours. But I won’t bow down to calendar convention. I choose to rename and reclaim my days. (I’m humming ‘My Way’). I recreate days of meaning and mayhem. Each stand a little taller this way.

one is company

Recent sunshine has lured me to the seafront. Surrounded by my pens and papers I am content to while away a quiet afternoon. Others would not have it so. On my next seaside afternoon I intend to erect the following sign beside me…

outward bound

Books. I don’t just read them, I think about them too. I fantasise and criticise and fall a little in or out of love each time. I wonder what it means that the bedroom is where the bookshelves live whereas the study is wall to wall music. One wakes me up and while the other keeps me warm at night. Sleeping soundly beneath a blanket of words and waking to a concentration of sound.

I think about the books I part with, sent on their way, to travel to another pair of waiting hands, who welcome them, and give them a roof over their papery heads. I wonder what they leave behind once they’re gone. Not so many new words these days, not so many new ideas. But perhaps a few new questions and a clearer idea about the kind of book I don’t want to write.

And with them they take my fingerprints and my dust. Perhaps a hair caught between their pages, a scent of certain soap or sunlight from time spent on table or lawn. Maybe the footprints of a money spider that passed by. Or the aftertaste of a dream from where the book lay by the bed on a darker than average night. A nail mark on a page where I gripped too tight or a tiny tear on one turned too fast. Or a heavy breath sunk into a sentence that I had to stop and read again. And again.

If books could speak, the stories they would tell.

losing faith

She’s stopped praying. Stopped holding her hands together and closing her eyes. Stopped bruising her knees for you. She's loathed to waste precious breath on anything other than blue balloons. For every wasted wish she ties another knot in her hair. She saves graces in the cutlery drawer. She’s making a stainless steel nest, so she’ll never have to fly again. She’s polishing tomorrow and trying to keep out of the rain.

confessions #6 & #7

a post easter post

I eat bitter diamonds laced with lime and shot through with vodka too. They look like they have been stolen from the back of a clever snake. They look like the eyes of evil queens. They taste like they should be toxic. They taste like they should cast a spell. Those who know me know I like it this way.

crawling out from under the weather

Lines scribbled on the twentieth of two days later -

It’s only when things go wrong that you notice your body. The rest of the time you are unconscious of your component parts and how they work.

But now my ribcage feels like a cage. A rusty one. With bars that brown and flake and threaten to crack. That bend and bow and moan as I lean against them trying to escape my monster cellmate.

And my lungs feel like dry bellows. Riddled with holes and drying glue and useless. A collapsed accordion in the hands of a tone deaf musician. I whistle the introduction and he wheezes his way through a lament to lost days.