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.

out for the count

It’s hard to get going on some of these cold mornings.  A few warm-up exercises are called for.  And recently I’ve been having fun with the photo prompts provided by Sarah Salway. 

 

She has unusual tastes, not ones catered for on match.com.  How can she explain the boy of her dreams would have legs like chimneys, hair the colour of roof tiles, could only sleep at forty five degrees, and would talk exclusively in smoke signals.  Falling should always feeling like falling.

 * * * 

As each home failed them they moved on, to somewhere smaller and apparently safer.  And each time they took a souvenir.  The door hinges that survived the fire.  The name plaque from their daughters bedroom door, found buried in the flood mud.  The last supporting beam the woodworm chewed through.    

 * * * 

He fell in love with her eyes.  Both of them.  The greenest green of jealousy.  Voodoo.  Leaves.  He dreamed bad dreams whenever she stayed.  And this morning he woke, her gone, no note.  Just a pair of contact lenses on the pillow.  Which he ate, just to recapture her taste.

a midnight snack

Late one night when no-one was looking I swallowed a hyphen.  The one from the middle of your silly surname.  I felt it scrape the walls of my throat on the way down.  I felt it sink into my stomach, weighing that sack lower in my body.  It was not easy or quick to digest.  I recalled my mother’s warnings about going to bed too soon after certain foods - all talk of things ‘laying on your chest’.  I dreamed of cream and chocolate sauces smearing the bed sheets.

When I woke I’d forgotten my sudden snack.  But in the morning mirror I noticed a dashed black line running down the length of my body, all the way from head to tail.  And when you got up you were no-one I recognised.  Just a someone broken in two.

fletcher's monkey

I have sticky attention.  It’s like double-sided tape.  I choose something to attach it to but the other side stays peeled and primed and ready to grab any bits of fluff and litter that pass my way.

I enjoyed the novel I just read, but a fleeting detail has stuck to my tape and now I can’t shake it.  A little red monkey drawn onto a lightbulb in a boarding school.  Everywhere I go that monkey is in my mind.  He has nothing to say for himself but still he lingers.

I wonder what keeps him here.  Is it his colour? or the unlikely place he hides? is it that he remained nameless? or that when we meet him he is the only friend of the girl far from home?  or perhaps it’s because he wears a fez?

Either way we are stuck together until my glue dries and he drops off.  And he’s got me wondering what other strangely attired beasts burn on bulbs that hide beneath demure shades.  What other primates flash sixty watt smiles.  He’s got me wanting to slip into other homes and draw snakes and tigers and jellyfish onto the light fixtures of strangers.  I want to know that someone somewhere is turning on a secret hummingbird at sundown.  

post christmas post

This is the scenery of inbetween days. The no-man’s landscape that stretches between Christmas and New Year.

New books form skyscrapers on coffee tables - little towers of fact and fiction. Cards that came late drape the curtain pole, white leaves with best wishes for veins. And the last arrival, hastily employed as a makeshift bookmark.

The table confetti from Christmas day has fallen to the floor. With every step she takes silver stars are carried to other rooms. To other carpets where new constellations form, forever drifting through acrylic skies.

the day of rest

On a Sunday they discuss soft herbs and nurture a mint plant as if it was their first grandchild.  They watch five sparrows circle a leaf stuck upright in a concrete crack and wonder who will be the first to pluck it out.  They take a little dose of Jeff Buckley and cheese on toast, and stand barefoot in hair clippings pulling pouting teenboy faces.  They score bonus points for awkward questions and enjoy the silence of a phone that doesn’t ring.  They catch each other’s tears and it doesn’t mean a thing.  They tell the mist not to mind if the rain is late, while laying biscuits side by side on a plate.  

through the square window

I’ve changed my mind about Christmas many times.  I loved it as a child, but we fell out sometime in my late teens, although the trust is slowly re-growing in recent years.  Now I enter into the festive spirit with the best of them, but like any good pantomime its always necessary to have a few boo’s and hisses among the laughter and the cheers.

So these days I find myself opening an alternative advent calendar, and finding things like this inside - 

behind the 5th

the work’s Christmas party - fours hours spent fighting off his brandy breath / her glittery dress

behind the 7th

the battles with Sellotape - the finger nail cruising for the end of the tape - the tacky curses at the last to use it - the polish fingerprint lifted from the edge of the dining table and transferred to the parcel - and the hair, always the hair, caught beneath, coming your way, from here to there

behind the 10th

the mother talks of frozen meats - of creatures carefully sliced and interleaved with paper this time last year - the pink, the white and the darkened brown - intended sandwiches and Sunday suppers rediscovered twelve months on and given a bin burial just in time for the next ones to come along

bargain hunting

This is yesterday and my squeaky steps carry me along polished wooden pathways that lead me through an old fashioned department store.

I linger near the lift watching an old woman try on a new coat.  Her husband and an eager assistant stand by, ready to offer advice and casual compliments.  They seem oblivious to the fact that the coat is far larger than the woman.  

That her knees sag under its weight and as the fabric skims the floor her feet are lost.  The fur collar has devoured her head and husband is still not alarmed.  She is utterly eaten by whatever fake fur beast this coat used to be.  

But still she basks under their gaze and the heat of these lights - all aglow from the giant red tag reading ‘£100 off marked price’.

two become one

Most of my daydreams contain a grain of truth, nestled alongside a seed of doubt.

Sunday morning, a call from the middle of the Adriatic.  My parents, a struggle to interpret at the best of times, now victims of telephonic time slip.  Our words bouncing there and back via Norway.  The last scrap of sense surrendered - they answer my questions before I’ve asked them.

And later, from the foot of the mighty mountains he calls, seducing me with details of snow irrigation and new world wines of cash machines and high altitude climbs.  And when we say goodbye I ask him to give my regards to the condors.

long distance daydream

My worry takes the form of a daydream.  I see him weaving through a virtual city, rumpled print-outs creased in his hand.  Sweat making maps on his back, as the capital struggles to welcome him.  His bag dragging lower with every corner turned - the rattle of the travelling pharmacy packed within.  Something for pain, for digestion, for sleep or it’s lack, something for blisters.  But nothing for getting lost.  

And all the while the shadow of the angel moves with him.  She’s lost her way too.  Cast herself further south than she ever intended.  Blown down on a fair wind, with the litter gathered in doorways.  Waving good-morning in coffee bars and goodnight in strip clubs.  The vowels still muddle in my mouth and I wake wondering how many South American countries I can name with one breath.

the sound and the fury

They begin an hour after darkness descends.  Only sounds to start with.  Most seem to come from behind me, but some feel deep, too deep, like they are exploding beneath my feet.  Each sounds subtly different. Some remind me of my father breaking thick cardboard boxes apart across his raised knee.  Some sound like my hard drive searching for a file, or a driver missing a gear.  

fireworks whistle

and whine - last week’s ghosts

still lost and roaming

I don’t jump until the first flash.  Twenty to six and vivid pink thrown against my eyes.  Another reflects in the gloss painted parts of this room - as the door, the frame and the skirting boards white wink at me.  I feel like the world has turned upside down and someone is hurling light beakers onto the black floor.  Clocks of mercury shatter seconds before I hear the crash.

through fireworks

a shout - urgent,

excited or angry

And for an hour or two these annual effects punctuate my reading - dropping exclamation marks into an otherwise calm paragraph.  I am centrally heated but surrounded by war cries and danger and the smell of regret.

re-inventing the smile

He tells me the story of the family photo.  All the tricks of the trade that bring four generations together in one ten by eight inch space.  United forever in two dimensions.  Some focused, some less so.  Some smile in today’s technicolor, while others grin through a 1970’s sheen.  The living and the dead and those still hanging somewhere in between.  Ghosts with shared chromosomes.  A new hierarchy - centre stage claimed by those who have spread the gene pool farthest and widest.  And the three extra pounds to grease the palm of the virtual wizard who can remove the scar from her face.  The fun we had with those face paints, pulled from a cracker - all gathered together some thirty Christmases ago.

three's a crowd

[it seems I missed the third anniversary of this blog - sometimes its hard to believe that I’m still finding things to say that people actually want to read - I’ve got a few bits ready to go that are just lacking a picture, but in the meantime three observations from recent days]

Royal Road, relatively innocent at any other time, suddenly shifts pitch to a threatening tone.  A man runs round the corner, thin arms gangly triangles at his sides.  Fumbles mobile to his ear, doesn’t speak, only breathes.  He looks at us.  We look at him.  Try to communicate that we have seen him but would be willing to forget him too if he prefers.  A hasty diagonal takes him across the road where he joins a gender vague friend on a corner wall.  Without greeting or goodbye the friend stands and walks away.  And a few yards further along three men get into a topless car the colour of long stewed tea.  All events apparently unrelated but feeling somehow significant, somehow weighty with the flavour of danger.

- - - - - 

Our old knives have marks bitten deep into their plastic handles, paler blue breaking through.  Like they’ve been fighting in the dark, chewing at each other with serrated silver teeth.  Their knife nature unstoppable even when the kitchen drawer is closed.

- - - - - 

A crow chases a bread crust down a roof.  It bounces tile to tile and he follows.  Black after white across the red.  Like a strangely slanted game of chess.

where theres a will

Cocooned in faded brown sleeves.  She looks down at her arms, spindled and bent and moving very little, and wonders if she could pass for a tree.  If she stood still in the park would people overlook her.  Would the little white dog cock its leg in her direction.  Would that girl with the faraway smile come and sit beneath her as she ties and unties knots in that piece of blue string she always carries.  She looks at that string like most girls look at a best friend - only more unique, more treasured.  Not like something she’ll have lost and forgotten by the time she’s wearing faded brown sleeves.

the calm before the storm

Two collared doves rest.  One on the arm, one on the back of the flaking bench.  Like two balls of pale clay they seem to melt a little in the late afternoon sun.  They retract their legs and lower slowly - wrapping wood in soft balled feather.  Their white rimmed eyes blink slower blinks, their beaks mutter soundlessly.  The privilege of watching animals sleep.

A small cyclone of black fur panic.  A cat trapped in our conservatory.  It throws itself to the four corners trying to find escape.  Windows appear the correct shape but don’t work the same in this house.  They are closed.  A double glazed cage surrounds cat and drives it crazy.  Clinging with front paws and climbing claws cat abandons floor and heads higher.  Shimmies sideways along the top of the door - a four legged spider.  Black face gets lightly draped in cobwebs.  Foolish home-owner has now noticed cat and is beckoning and rubbing empty fingers together and repeating clickety sounds of ‘kittykittykitty’.  Foolish person disappears and reappears outside looking in at cat.  Person is where cat wants to be.  Cat investigates, tentatively exits conservatory, through kitchen, through hall where daylight smell gets stronger, into lounge where fool is pointing at open doorway.  Cat pauses then exits as if rebounding on invisible elastic.  A shriek of teeth and feet across the lawn, flying over the low wall without the slightest jump, up the tree, barely shifting the leaves.  And gone.

[It felt improper to photograph the doves as they slept, but I took the above with their permission, moments after they awoke.  The cat declined the offer to pose for me.]

our favourite stranger, revisited

Brimful of love with endless time on his hands he ponders mornings and tilts his head to better view an afternoon. He makes friends with all the little things most of us overlook.  Greets fruit and vegetables like he’s known them all his life and is relieved to see holes in their travelling bags and boxes through which to enjoy the view.  And he mourns every empty shell he finds - already missing the departed resident he never got to meet.

the fall

She brings home a handful of windfalls. Smaller than shop bought apples but far more sincere. Their skins a darker green - almost mossy, almost velvet. If apples were thunderclouds they would be this green. If apples were the eyes of a girl who never forgives ...

She slices them into uneven fans and scatters them on a square white dish. They are a funny colour and I eye her offering with a little suspicion. They look more like pieces of potato. But they taste like the summer that never arrived. Like listening to stories while sat on heaps of your mother’s skirt under the tree we never grew.

I bite into their uneven landings - the flavour of a tumble that follows a long cling. I taste their bruises and learn that sometimes bruises taste good.