katseyeview

What do I want to be when I grow up? Someone who has made a difference to mental health care and helped to change the many false perceptions that exist about it and the people who use and need its services.

It would be great if this site could serve as an interactive portal between writers and mental health service users and professionals.  

Please make use of the guest book and leave your email address if you would like any further discussion. I am happy to try and help with any mental health related queries by 'listening' and/or helping to direct anyone to the appropriate services.

I would also love to read anybody's prose/poetry/articles that have a particular slant towards mental health issues, especially when they focus on the positive aspects of living with or coping with eg. depression or dementia - and yes, there are positives!   

My belief is that we are all people with problems to a greater or lesser extent, and through sharing our experiences we can learn that during our darkest times, we are not alone and that there's NO SHAME in human pain.

Let's kick stigma's ass!  

'Madness need not be all breakdown. It may also be break-through. It is potential liberation and renewal...'  (R.D. Laing)

 

 

*DRUM ROLL* 

TA DA...

SOME VINTAGE TALENT!

(Most of these authors can be found at www.ukauthors.com as well as perhaps having their own sites)

 

***A SHOWCASE***

 - published with their kind permission:

 

OF MICE AND MEN

What cacophonous voices they have,
these men who speak common profundity.
Their articulation reads full well on paper
but bears not the mark of veracity.

Ah, but you say they have suffered,
And I ask of what affliction?
For all art has a price; only vanity
would seek it free of ascription.

Give me a whisper from the heart engaged,
whose lament upon the page reflects
true life, real living - times of loss
or winning, moments free of regret.

If these small voices shall be as mice,
to live and die without great legacy,
they will still have played their part
in their performance of life's tragedy.

Amid the din of boisterous voices,
I listen for echoes of fading sincerity.

(Jolen Casper) http://writers.wikia.com/wiki/Jolen_Casper

 

SPEND IT LIKE BECKHAM

When I’m in Kalafornya,
jest fink what I could do
wiv all that lovely money
from The Bank Of Malibu!
I’ll buy meself a mansion
and mix it wiv the stars
and every week, most probably,
I’ll buy a few flash cars.
’n then I’ll buy anuvver one,
or maybe even more:
and now and then I’ll kick a ball
and champion the poor.
It’s the challenge that I’m after,
it isn’t fer the dosh:
I’ve discussed it wiv the family;
been spoken to by Posh.
Accordin’ to Viktoreeya,
fings should turn out well:
’ave you seen ’er recently?
She’s such a lovely gel!
She’s gone beyond the FA Cup
and now she’s Double D,
she says it’s her new diet:
that’s good enough fer me.
There’s just one thing that bovvers,
though it’s not the cash I seek:
will a million dollars
be enough for every week?

(pencilcase)

LO!  HOW THE POWERLESS ARE FALLING

Peterloo, the Jarrow marchers,
typhoid, Tyburn, People’s Charters,
endless jibing from the rich once
knit us in united stitch. We
stood in the indicted air and
tens of thousands gathered where our
folk were browsing for a chance to
wake from Empire’s smacked-out trance on
gassed and shellfired poppy fields, on
muddy ground, with blood-strewn shields. But
failure found us, we were captured
in the end by Margaret Thatcher.
Now the trend’s to fast unravel
all that stitching as our gravel
voices bitching ‘gainst our brothers
rise in spite towards all others:
Cries of “Come! Give me a mauling!”
Lo! How the powerless are falling –
Stop the powerless from falling!
With our hour missed, forgotten,
with our spirit twisted, rotten,
passive, unresisting tongues sing
“All for one and all for one!” and
“All for sun and stars and mirrors,
images of ladykillers,
masks and dreams of shadiness!” as
though there’s less to life than this, as
though we’re blessed, our choices wide and
bursting at each hemmed-in side. Well,
curse the drink (until it passes)
of the malfunctioning classes!
Curse the unction of our leaders,
curse those trashy-ration-feeders!
Send their machinations sprawling
Lo! How the powerless are falling –
Stop the powerless from falling!
Guide your rowdiness toward the
present system of reward, the
pleasant advert “Just do nowt, let
off your clean lacklustre spout, let’s
just do Kleenex-cluster culture,
just make sure you don’t revolt, yer
plebs, don’t cure society, here,
have some blank propriety! Have
sterile, wanky magazines all
seeping out their margarine, have
sleeping bags on Top Shop doorsteps,
pubeless mites explored with forceps,
have the right to publish prose that
chokes with knockers, status quos and
blokey jocks in palaces, a
kingdom which embarrasses!” Oh,
somewhere rich and strong and southern
sits Britannia in her coven,
mitts both empty, nude except for
holographic crown and sceptre,
heart all traffic, gridlocked, calling:
Lo! How the powerless are falling –
Stop the powerless from falling!
Stop the dourness entwined
around the signposts of our minds, the
mind, that blind host to the crap
distracting as a dripping tap.
React with flatulent contempt for
all the labyrinths they’ve dreamt to
strand us babbling on a moor, to
leave us drowning on a shore, to
keep us down and neon-scented,
nylon-flavoured, regimented.
Just be brave and circumspect and
rise above, beware, deflect the
lies we’re fed on plastic plates and
they will just evaporate. We’ll
blow the dust from off our eyes so
then we’ll see and recognise our
enemy, foul enemy that
wrecks, that sheds our remedy.
Reject. Don’t tread in meek defeat but
dodge the huge air-bubbled feet and
podgy head of Liberal power
thatched with trash. Don’t hide, don’t cower,
catch the creeping system stalling!
Lo! How the powerless are falling –
Stop the powerless from falling!
Spit and frown at this oblique
repression of our human streak,
suppression of our natural drives, like
how our ancestors contrived when
down to London Town they marched, their
backbones girder-like though arched, for
Jack and John and Joseph’s rights and
not to join the terrace fights or
spot the coin or bunch of five – Think
how those swindled sods all thrived, the
bowed and stooping working folk who
overthrew the normal yoke when
Peterloo, the Jarrow marchers,
typhoid, Tyburn, People’s Charters,
endless jibing from the rich once
knit us in united stitch. We
stood in the indicted air and
tens of thousands gathered where our
folk were browsing for a chance to
wake from Empire’s smacked-out trance on
gassed and shellfired poppy fields, on
muddy ground, with blood-strewn shields. But
failure found us, we were captured
in the end by Margaret Thatcher.
Now the trend’s to fast unravel
all that stitching as our gravel
voices bitching ‘gainst our brothers
rise in spite towards all others:
Cries of “Come! Give me a mauling!”
Lo! How the powerless are falling –
Stop the powerless from falling!

(Paul MacJoyce) you can check out more of Paul's work on his UKAuthors' page: http://ukauthors.com/modules.php?name=Your_Account&op=userinfo&uname=Macjoyce 




INVISIBLY THROUGH THE ETHER

All around us, moving invisibly through the ether,
snaking through encrusted cables on the ocean floor,
bubbling up in coffee shops and banking halls,
in the hubbub of the school playground,
the present is shaping unnamed paths
to a meet a future no-one has planned.

Women are evolving faster than men,
learning to renew, refine, and combine their forces
in ways not to men’s advantage.

Women are making value judgements
with values not of their fathers’ choosing.

Marching to a prayer book of their own devising,
they will find answers to questions men never asked.

Coming into their maturity, they will rally
to their own standard, leaving men behind,
bewildered boys who never grew up to be wise.

(John Shaw)

 

SEATING ARRANGEMENTS

They sit where they always sit.
Habit is all.
They have each their proper place,
The old ladies, ranged around the room
In that great circle, staring straight ahead.
Sunlight slides over them, time scours
Their faces into anonymity
Minutes and hours accumulate in drifts,
Condensing into weeks, months.  Years.
While from the corner ever sounds
The television's inane yammering.
If they could move
If even one could choose a different chair
Give the kaleidoscope a sudden shake
Might they then waken, look around
Recognise each other, and themselves,
Even start to squabble, and remember
That they were human once?
 But no.
They sit where they always sit.

(Moya Green) http://www.freewebs.com/jabezpigstock/ 

 

NOW LEVEL

a reservoir of memories
something still chills
not wise to swim inside
but i'll surface for you
current mind less muddy
revealing its bank
crusty, hexagonal shapes
instantly up to my waist
not a heavenly state
my shoes...rest in peace
my rescuer, God Bless you!

(scotch)

 

INNER THINGS

October; when the last horse chestnuts fell,
some still in their spiny green coats.
You called me prickly, when I sulked last night.
I fell out with this year, you know:

I found grey hair, I put on weight,
the house; ten months for sale,
remained unsold; My lover nearly died,
whilst an acquaintance longed for death;
planned it meticulously;

No one could stop her.

On my doorstep, yellow begonias
still hang in vibrant bloom,
the last tomatoes, passionate red
in their ardour, cling to a withered bush.
Mushrooms, showing their rigour
overnight, soon multiply.
A thorny rosebush lets me pick
overripe rose hips for the jam I love,
pricks my finger, mixing blood and sap
With all the anguish of a juicy tale,
the story of my life; I wear my many spines,
some blunted, the seams split,

To use an image; just an image, dear.)

Beneath a chestnut tree I find
an oiled, brown nut; I carry it,
a perfect inner thing, within myself,
a shiny thing, to light me through the months.
You have less need for all those inner things,

for you protect so many of your shells.

(Yutka) http://driftingdraftwood.blogspot.com/

SHROPSHIRE MAN

At the ward’s end,
past the visitor’s lounge,
is my father’s
last resting place. Visiting hours reveal
grimacing memories;
frowning thoughts
warring behind a coma’s
veil, clutching youth
                                 in the mind’s eye.
The eyes flicker;
his lights of reason fade, like the glow
of a village paling in a fog;
darkness lapping over him,
slowing ripples
on a lake.


Once, close to the end
he came back briefly
like an old discarded friend,
eager to speak of failed marriages,
lost riches, youthful lusts
now molded with age.
Bewildered,
he studied us,
wary of our presence,
and asked of Jerry and Connie,
partners, friends in law -
childlike cries, knuckles white,
frosted eyes glared
as I told him of their passing
long ago.


And in that instant I saw a face
I’d never known; my father
no longer Shropshire born
or a Shrewsbury Town supporter,
boyhood trainspotter, zealot
of the ‘Golden Age of Steam.’
His memory was trampled; its numbers
spinning off like leaves in a December gale,
violated by a son foreign to him -
my daring a life abroad,
denying the servitude
he’d set for me; for us both -
my causing us to breathe
our own separate worlds.
He twisted his mouth,
fighting the darkness for each word,
cursing me, snarling at the harshness
of colleagues’ deaths
I’d forced upon him.


Ten years later,
I still see the stranger -
faculties dissolved,
reason feebled
as he journeyed away from us,
back to seaping mists,
as far from Shropshire
as anywhere…

(Steve Sloane)

 

IN EYES WHOSE PANES

In eyes whose panes obscure a curtained depth
of shadows hid in secret lampless room
I see a growing resonance of death
the damp, decay, and stillness of the tomb.

The silent, prowling panther of the night
is threading through the sunbeams’ golden bars.
My eyes engage the swiftly-fading light
to wrest it from the secret, sullen stars

In supplication; fearing worse than life
– a resolution seeking for control.
I sniff the air. Then, slicing like a knife,
A damp, dead stillness enters in my soul.

(John Griffiths) www.e-griff.com

MY BEST POEM EVER!

I wrote a little poem once
and put it on the web.
Some people said they liked it
so I got quite a thrill.

But then some clever person
said I couldn’t rhyme.
I didn’t give an answer
’cos I couldn’t spare the effort.

I’m satisfied with tum-te-tum
I haven’t studied metre.
But I can hear exactly when it’s right
I guess I just have a natural talent for it.

I haven’t even tried to do
enjambment, or a ‘form’.
I don’t know all the ins and outs
or what should be the norm.

And then I sit and ponder hard
with furrows in my brow:
I need a word to go here
- should I use ‘enow’?

I haven't time for fancy words
or literal illusions.
If I try, then my brain hurts
and I’m all in confusion.

I’m just a simple ditty-smith,
and happy to be so.
So all you pundits bugger off!
’cos I don’t want to know.

If ignorance is bliss, then I’m
as blissful as can be.
I’m full of pep and vim and verbs
and happy to be me.

(John Griffiths) www.e-griff.com

 

SITUATION VACANT

She always wore
high heels and fishnet stockings
but I never imagined
that she was a whore.
(She was arrested
for soliciting, I gather.)
I believed that she was
the recruiting officer
for some Church or another
who was making
an employment proposition
when she asked if I wanted
the missionary position.

(Luigi Pagano)

 

The following four poems are by a very fine Scottish author who I had the pleasure of meeting on a writing holiday in Arrieta, Lanzarote in 2002:

 

EXCORIATION

Let me take you to the edge,
to where desperation
corrodes the cusp of reason
and dissolves hope.

Let me show you the farthest reaches
where the knife blade of contempt,
cuts through harrowed sentience to
expose the excruciated heart.

Let me give you ears to hear
the stridency of failure
beating its grinding clangour
with bells of defeat.

Let me walk you to
the cold, hollow place,
where the winds of desolation
scour the withering mind.

Let me plunge you deep into
relentless black pools
of the darkening soul,
peeled, scraped and grated
into unending rawness.

Let my pen be your guide
to the place of aloneness,
the place of endurance,
where the searing ink
bleeds pain onto the margin
of a crumpled, unread sheet.

Let me share my true self with you.

(Lillian MacLeod)

 

RETURN TO SENDER

Bundles of brittle thoughts
tied with hard edged ribbon,
carried on a veiled tray;
a tray of desperation.

Parcels of prickly memories
bound up with twisted string,
carried in bulging bags;
bags of regret.

Sackfuls of sad experiences
wrapped in non-descript paper,
vainly marked "unwanted,
return to sender."

(Lillian MacLeod)

 

THRENODY

Sing me a sad song
and I will echo through
all the lyrics of rejection;
the plangent melody of loneliness
will lament in response.

Sing me a song of heartbreak and
and I will counter your melody with
threnodies of my own;
harmonies of endless longing
will call a chorus to your tune.

Sing me a sorrowing song and
I will chant in darkening tones
of the world's indifference;
I will raise my voice at
the far boundaries of desolation
and my song will be drowned by
silence.

Sing, just sing me a sad song
and I will sing you my life.

(Lillian MacLeod)

 

WORDS THAT FREEZE

If I could only say what I should say
To those who have the ears which ought to hear;
If life's restrictions did not hold such sway
Or childhood's legacy (a poisoned spear);
If thoughts, in thoughtful speech, could find a way
Of sounding out the inside, quiet but clear;

If mouth and sentences could utter stark
Reflections of each grinding empty year,
Of feelings long held hidden, deep and dark,
Of yearning, aching, loneliness, of fear,
Defeat and loss, that leave their cruel mark,
Let loose in words that freeze, that burn, that sear;

Is there contentment left for me to gain
If I could only voice that howl of pain?

(Lillian MacLeod)

WHEN WE SHOT THE LAST TIGER

A fabled hunter

from Milan

or Montreal

or somewhere,

held its head aloft

and screamed in

bloody triumph.

 

A cameraman

from Berlin

or Budapest

or somewhere,

caught it on film

and said it was

a defining moment.

 

A clever artist

from Cairo

or Canberra

or somewhere,

preserved its skin

and claimed it was

cutting-edge art.

 

An entrepreneur

from Beijing

or Bangalore

or somewhere,

ground its bones

and sold them as

a love potion.

 

A wealthy lady

from Marseilles

or Manchester

or somewhere,

wept for its death

and said it was

a beautiful creature.

 

A wannabe hunter

from New York

or New Delhi

or somewhere,

marvelled at the shot

and hoped they'd show

him killing the last lion.

 

(Michael James Treacy) www.freewebs.com/michaeljamestreacy/index.htm

 

IT WAS NOT BECAUSE...

It was not,
because they had a religion.
It was not,
because they believed
in anything but life.

Oh, G-d.

No, she did not believe
in G-d.
So many of them didn’t.
It was just, because they were,
we are unclean,
because they belonged,
we belong to
the wrong Race.
A race that should be
destroyed,
erased from the face of the
earth,
no longer exist.

Oh G-d.

Even today,
afraid to pronounce the word,
people talk about them,
about me,
as ‘people of the Jewish Faith’,
and yet,
I am a Jew
and so were they,
just Jews with,
or without a Faith.

Oh G-d.

At the time, Adolf made it
quite clear:
religion had nothing
to do with it,
still has nothing
to do with it;
it’s the race that counted,
counts.

The birth of a State
killed a nation,
politics and religion
turned my Jewish brothers
and my Arab cousins
into ruthless murderers,
and made me turn away
in total impotence.
I don’t believe in their beliefs of:
Stay, stay, stay,
or rather:
Out, out, out.
(As so many would prefer
to see.)

Oh, G-d,
tell me …
why the Hell
should
would
could I
ever
believe
in You?

(Deborah Rey) this poem is also published in Flutter, An Online Poetry Magazine & in The Blue House Ezine

 

A BADGE TOO FAR

“Change his clothes and wash his head
Remove bananas from his bed.
Pick his teeth up from the floor
Scrape his dinner from the drawer”



Laid on bed with mournful stare
Not knowing what, or why or where
Just the same as yesterday
I’m sure he’d like to fade away.

Things were different in the war
Fighting on an Eastern shore
No memories of that time now
No memories, of when or how.

Wash his face and shave his chin
Find his teeth and put them in
Hold his hand and say I care
All we get back is that stare.

I talk to him about times of fun--
When we walked beneath an Indian sun
Sometimes a nod as I hold his hand
Does he really understand?

No memory of family past
Of eleven he was the last
Royal telegram for sixty years--
But for his wife he sheds no tears

I am his only child you see
And my dad doesn’t know it’s me
I talk to him but does he hear?
Does he know his daughter’s near?

His veterans badge arrived today
For the six years he was away
I’ll go to him---and pin it on
Remembering times, when he was strong.

The citation—
(With the Compliments of the
Under Secretary of State for Defence
And Minister for Veterans.

This HM Armed Forces Veteran’s Badge
Is presented to you in recognition of
your service to your country.)

Ministry of Defence Whitehall.

(Gerald Findlay) http://prosit.mysite.wanadoo-members.co.uk/

 

SHATTERED DREAMS

She was the nicest person
one could meet
and worked in a shop,
in Church Street,
which specialised
in gastronomic fare:
mature cheeses, clotted cream,
pasties and pies.
With her fair hair
and beautiful blue eyes,
she was my goddess
and I could not but dream
of her for days on end.
I was transfixed
by her angelic feature
and longed to get to know
that lovely creature.
Imagine my dismay
when I was told by a friend
that she was gay.
But, objectively, my loss
was someone else’s gain.
So, good luck to her
was all that I could say.

(Luigi Pagano)

 

SOMEONE TOLD ME ABOUT NORMAL ONCE

I would like to understand the jokes that people tell
And to laugh when they are funny.
I would like to smile in response
And to feel happy as I do it.
I would like to understand emotions
And to know how people are feeling.
I would like to feel comfortable around people
And to feel lonely when they are not there.
I would like to have a stable relationship
And to know that I can trust them.
I would like to read expressions
And to know what they might say.
I would like to look someone in the eye
And to show them the life in mine.
I would like to speak out with confidence
And to tell people about my ideas.

I would like to be treated normally
And not to be judged by what people see.
I would like to be given a chance
And not to be criticised because I do it differently.
I would like people to help me out
And not to make a fuss if it seems silly.

But I wouldn't like to be anyone else!

(Eleanor Bryant) www.writethereality.co.uk

 

ISOLATION

An empty doorway,
The door was never there.
Tiny brick room,
Never painted.
I hear the voices
And see the faces,
Constant ringing
Amid echoing vibrations.
Ever in silence
Though constant noise.
Watch faces go past,
But no where to wander,
My nameless brick cell.
Why am I here?

(Eleanor Bryant) www.writethereality.co.uk

 

DANCING WITH DOLLS

Clutching nothing, tight to gowned bosom,
a choreographed mangle of jitters and jive.
Her porcelain features, hidden by tresses,
that barely show that she is alive.

Somnolent sways, listening to dialogue,
from static, red-painted lips.
Inside herself rhythms and melodies,
as she moves robotic, slender hips.

Finally and unhurriedly, she comes to a halt,
Feeble minded folk who gawp and grin.
Mocking, flocking they swarm for the fun,
A damaged angel, a broken mind her sin.

(Simon Murphy) http://www.murphysmadhouse.co.uk

 

STUDIO 1

1

You are blatant ripples of curiosity
in your tentacle search for my nakedness.
My sex is laying down soundproof tracks.
I am wearing my body hard across my shyness
while I listen to your music; your vocals
are looping ribbons around my façade.
I cast each pore in a coat of disinterest
and watch you examine my skin; you want to touch
with the same impulse I have for petals of silk.
When you retract like we do from everything waxed
my honey staccato voice may be clipped
but sampled from a clandestine pouring of lyrical milk.
As we are here to make a song, I lay down a riff.
My curled finger wags from the fret, cutting the feedback from the suite.
It’s a wrap but we stay editing, calm metallic buttons adjusting the pitch.
We are on strings, bringing down the volume on a sliced up quartet.
I am cello, bass notes, raw and tinned; the drummer
tucked out of sight behind this shaking kit, the noise
static, to stop you hear the doubling up in a single take
of the echo of desire in my ear. It’s a wrap.
I would wear your voice in consonance,
or listen for the split second
of its absence, fading to black.

2

I am not there, you know, a recorded voice
looping around a sagging shed in the garden,
ribboning over coffee cups and penicillin, your dust,
those spiders, and an 8-Track full of dreams.
My song lives somewhere else, love,
as a soundtrack strumming
to something very simple
in the yellow of a clean kitchen;
kids snug, tucked up; and me humming,
packing lunches without the desire
to retrace one step, or purely edit a life into bytes.
Each day passes in the exact way
it was meant to, some hidden, living the illusive
first-take that I could never make with you.

3

He is an artist and I fell in love with his composition.
His complete oblivion to me, made me feel like a girl again,
twirling a baton handed down by the wrong hand.
The faster I run, the heavier it is on my back,
carrying a vaulting bar as I am sprinting down the track.
He mixes me up, and in a hop, skip and a jump,
I could be flying through the dusty shelves, falling
for his metronome hands that slide
the metal bars to just the right height.
I am all expectations, with an easy stride,
moving nonchalantly to the next set of lights.
I am a lion’s song with him, and he is a circle of flames.
When my voice soars, he wraps a blanket around his frame.

4

One more dance in the extra curricular time of our lives
and I am happily bereft without you here next to me,
knowing that these words do not mean I love you any
less, than if you were humming each morning downstairs,
a dressing gown, with ‘Hers’, in ribbon around your neck.
My day is spent in waiting, and throughout the ordinary tick tock
you blossom from the radio in furtive ballads, you are my soft,
wilful intent, that sees me through the sludge, our erotic notes
becoming fugitive, kept, wrapped in the tin box that I call ‘Love’.
There is nothing unrequited, we are recording the curve
and I am happily bereft, with exactly what it is I deserve.

(littleditty)

 

AN ACCIDENTAL MEETING BENEATH THE SEA

Still golden haired
at somewhere near
my silver age
she sat, not out of choice,
but allocation, next to me.

The Eurostar entails
such meetings;
a rendez-vous
with God knows who.
The tickets are resolved
for those who journey
under the sea, alone.

I’d been in Paris
chasing heroes,
the cobbles of Montmartre
rubbing on my shoes.
The Moulin Rouge
now in my camera
I looked at her
from more of a Louvre
point of view.

She, travelling to London,
told me that she lived
in La Rochelle,
was looking forward
to a brief re-union with friends
across the channel.

Her autumnal beauty
accompanied me
en-dessous de la manche
as she briefly slept
in the tunnel’s dark,
cheered my journey’s end
with hers beginning;
the ticket allocations
sometimes leave their mark.

(John Webber) http://www.barenibs.com 

 

YOU WERE A LOUD, CRAZY BASTARD WITH A GOOD, GOOD HEART

You’d grab a toxic rope by
the tail, scaly bag of poison,
all a-hissy fitting,
spitting blood, an angry coil
aching to make you a bit
part in it’s fangoria,
you, barely containing your
lizard brained passion, all “enough
to kill twenty men” this and
“shut down the nervous system” that,
spilling what amounts to love
all over my telly; first
you made me a cringe dweller,
then you won me over
with that sheer, bare faced joy you
fairly sweated and then, then
you go and get yourself killed
leaving me to deal with all
the critters you left behind.

(Dazza)

 

STRATEGY

The lake is large again
with shores
empty of all but me. And
I am frozen here, without
a guide. A speck.

In such a solitary place
quiet can allow strategy,
strategy for what in the hell to do
next.
Where do I go from here
on this sea of strands?
This uncharted quadrant
didn’t beckon me,
but still engulfs

my remains.

A rising wisp
speaks in mama’s voice;
a grain struggles
to be land.

(L. Ward Abel) http://www.universecanoe.com

 

THEY SAY I DON'T THINK SO

They say
You are what you eat
But I've a nut allergy
So I don't think so

They say
Time is a healer
But my watch has stopped
So I don't think so

They say
The best things in life are free
But my iPod cost two hundred
So I don't think so

They say
Never judge a book by it's cover
But it was the Karma Sutra
So I don't think so

They say
It takes one to know one
But I'm not a 'cock headed pig'
So I don't think so

They say
Two wrongs don't make a right
But I killed both my exes
So I don't think so

They say
A trouble shared is a trouble halved
But my therapist had a break down
So I don't think so

They say
It's better to be safe than sorry
But the condom broke anyway
So I don't think so

They say
The best things come in small packages
But his brain was even smaller
So I don't think so

They say
Life's a bitch
And I think they hit the nail on the tail
I really think so

(Lucy Kavanagh)  http://www.lu-lu.net

 

IN THE STEPS OF STOUT CORTEZ

In me are all the roads and paths and ways
Where men walk through the trauma of their days.
I know the deep, dark caves and sunlit peaks
Where pain-filled groans contend with joyous shrieks;
I know that tunnel where no hope shines a light,
Where walls and roofs grow narrower and tight,
And the train behind prevents you turning back,
And the darkness up ahead has blocked the track;
I know the dreadful logic of the pain
That argues that the children should be slain;
And I have yearned to enter endless night
Where no dawn brings the moving, doing light;
Yet - I have sat upon a hill in Greece,
Seen rising suns through rosy fingered fleece
And felt my soul conjoined with ancient bards;
And stood upon that peak in Darien
Watching, high above the clouds, the glowing sun
Set upon the last land of the West,
Still bright with light though darkness bathes the rest,
Then sink beyond the Peaceful Ocean's rim
To light far lands beyond that long salt swim,
And fire a green flash from parting day
As Time from World to World marks this one way.

(David Turner)

CROWD CONTROL

The ruler slammed down on his desk
Raising clouds of chalk dust
And for a moment he stopped
Poking his neighbour in the ribs
With a freshly sharpened pencil.
"I'll get my dad on you", he snarled
"I'll bring him down the school,
We'll have you!
You can't do nuffin to us,
You'll get the sack!"

"You do that", I replied
"He is just the person I want to see."
It was a pointless piece of bravado.
No good telling him his son was a bully and
Disrupting the education of twenty nine children.
After all he had made him one, was one himself.
And anyway he thought his son of no importance
Except when his own ego was at stake
And there was aggro to be had.
His son might be a bully
But he was a more important bully
Than the other twenty nine victims.

(David Turner)

 

TICKLED TO DEATH

From villages and factories,
and desperate to enlist,
they lied about their age, so they
could join up with their pals,
not wanting to miss out on this:
the war to end all wars, for good.
What would they tell their children
if they didn’t do their bit?
It wouldn’t last for long,
and so they got their skates on,
queued with mates to volunteer,
to do God’s work and get a taste of glory,
and of honour, in a uniform excitement,
cajoled by braid and splendour,
their die cast in the dizzy spell
of overseas adventure.

There was no time for reason
in a patriotic war,
when faced with such a demon,
deserving of a bloody nose:
they’d give the Hun what for!

But first, the fun of training
and bayoneting dummies,
the running around in fields
and feigning death, like schoolboys,
giggling through mock-agony
in sure and certain knowledge
of a rapid resurrection
that, moments after falling,
saw them standing to attention.

The mud-reality
sank in later.
Surreal, at first, when comrades died
and stayed dead too: nothing like
that exercise, two weeks before.
They fell for it.
The lieutenant pips, the smiles on lips,
sucked in and whistling their way to war,
singing it’s hard to part, I know:
those lads were tickled to death to go.

(pencilcase)

 

DISCHARGED PATIENT

Pale. A leaf, dried still in the snow.
I hug you, half a man now. Shook,
lines dug further into your smoky face.
You busy the place with packing and
a useless conversation of visitors,
of your new mobile phone,
a gift from the son that couldn’t come
the week you had your operation.
Still hasn’t come, he must be very busy.
You’ll walk you said, no help with
those million steps out to the truthful sun.
Nurses gather in a flutter, no such thing,
a chair glides under you, scoops you up
for a play-ride into a changed life.

Always man of men about the town,
cigarette aloft, so elegant, sharp as a pin.
All those sparkling women,
prowlers for the jewel in the pride.
Now we take this ride, knowing,
silent, but for one wheel’s tiny squeak,
those days have flown away.
The dark red dissector has spoken how
you will now live a token life,
afraid to laugh too hard, to breathe too deep.
With a nervous heave out of the chair,
you swish your tailored jacket, raise your form
and bravely cough the splutter of the strong.

(Sonja Broderick)  http://www.freewebs.com/sonjabroderick/

 

BENEATH A XENOPHOBIC SKY

Bruises map a vicious evening
with the clarity denied
an unruly mob of brain cells
that refuse to subdivide…

Delicate, the proposition
that will see me glassed tonight
by a thug who wears a label
that makes everything alright.
A fellowship for ‘louts in waiting’
Let the levity begin.
Delicate, the proposition
that will breach the skin I’m in…
We all knew he was a wanker
by the volume of his voice,
a vociferous sound level
that meant we had no other choice
but to listen to his racist
uneducated points of view
on a variety of topics
about the red, white, black and blue.
He thinks he flies the flag for Britain,
a thought completely lost on me
because the language that he uses
seems quite contradictory
in that it preaches condescension,
a language only spoken by
those conceived of twisted fuckers
beneath a xenophobic sky.

(Sunken)  http://www.apocalypsehotel.co.uk

 

I SAW SOMETHING OF YOU TODAY

I saw something of you today
As I walked upon the sand
Gritty in my toes
Dry and grating in my eyes
Whip-stinging harsh in the breeze

I saw something of you today
Whilst I watched paper flags dance
Choreographed, in time
To the tune the wind blew
Changing direction, changing tempo

I saw something of you today
The cold back and forth of the ocean
The white waves, clean and tempting
Drawing me in, always out of reach
Then crashing back all unexpected anger
Drowning me in salty tears

I saw something of you today
The perfect shell that used to hold
A beating heart; some small life
Some vital spark. Empty.
Worn smooth and hard.
Inflexible.

I saw something of you today
The beach hut selling hot food
For thieving seagulls.
A hard wood violation
A sizzling penetration
Burned lips, tear-filled eyes

I saw something of you today.
A salt-rimed line that said you’d been there
Those plaintive cries, the aching moans
That filled the sky.
The way the sun kept hiding
Behind clouds.
The way that scum blighted
Virgin foam.
The way the sea promised it would be
There.
But never stayed.

I saw something of you today.

(S.P Oldham)   http://www.freewebs.com/spoldham/

 

HERE WITH YOU AND SOMEWHERE ELSE

I am not a mere homely, tainted woman
But a Warrior, seeming more than flesh and bone
My strength, potential, inner truths are boundless
I stand for all my sex, yet stand alone

And you are not some tired and mellow male
You are as was Goliath in his day
Your muscle tone, your iron-grip intelligence
Belie the creasing brow and hair of grey

Together, we are all of man and woman
Our need suffocates and crushes as it frees
Conjoined, the earth is giving, taking, rushing
Older, stronger still, than even we can see

Together, we crest the daunting mountain
Each of us astride the same wild horse
Together ride the tumult of the river
Until, like her, we’ve reached the limit of our course

Then we drift upon her gentle, warming shoreline
Or eddy for a while along her banks
Whilst green and silky fingers brush our bodies
And our silence and the river give up thanks

And only then do you turn from me and murmur
Something tired and soft, about ‘love you.’
And I curl up, smug and satisfied and sated
And build my strength, lest the battle starts anew.

(S.P Oldham)

 

BALANCING ON THIS LINGUISTIC TIGHTROPE

Look at me!
Balancing
On this linguistic tightrope
Head held high
Arms outstretched
Curled toes

Are you watching?
Over here!
I'm centre stage
Centre of attention
Self centred egomaniac
My skills taught
By failures
Who dish out knowledge
Like coffee soft centres
Eradicating their fantasies
Sacrificing their dreams
Of being The Next Big Thing
My step falters
As I question
My role in this circus
From the heart?
In my blood?
No.
I kid myself
It's centre stage I crave
Drumrolled introductions
Applause and encores
More, more, more
They always demand more
Credit to my mentors
Who massaged my ego
Their crumby words
Brushed off in my direction
Their protégé
But only if I succeed
Structurally perfect
My flawless composition
But I'm no superstar
Nothing special
Here to entertain you
To be adored
By fresh audiences
Acts of repetition
Demand fleeceable eyes
No private shows
Emotions locked in cages
Alongside tigers and bears
Secure?
No.
Savagely ripped apart
Scarring the very core of me

Are you still watching?
I'm centre stage, you know
See how they love me
But keep your distance
Or you might detect
Yet another charlatan

(Jo Copsey)  www.jocopsey.co.uk

 

TO BREATHE AGAIN 

Billowing black snakes across the sky
whispering and jabbering gleefully.
Faces within plumes are grinning
at the sheer destruction wrought.
A living entity intent on choking
life away from those who fight it.

Tendrils reaching, probing, feeling
a way in, replacing air with blackness.
Ignoring the cough trying to expel it
wrapping itself around throat and lungs.
Squeezing joyously it feels life draining,
minds hazing, eyes closing, breath slowing.

White steam, as water douses fire, chases up
into the sky, dark faces whisper their screams.
Massive clouds reduce the darkness, chasing
it away, providing clean air to inhale.
The black smoke sulks, slinks away, then cheers,
as it spots glowing red tips in so many mouths.

(Clare Hill)  http://www.clarehill.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk - an article by Clare on creative writing and mental health can be found on the 'Links' page
 

GRANDMOTHER

I stand on the patch of earth
that used to be your garden.
How surprised I am to find
myself staring down into
the smiling face of Heartsease;
in its beauty, I see you.
I slip down into the past
where my life had been simple,
running your errands without
complaint, just because you asked.
I taste again the spice
of your Sunday bread pudding
and even the castor oil
you bade me drink when I was ill.
In my imaginings
I can picture the cottage,
you framed in the low doorway;
even smell the candle wax,
see the flickering flame and
hear the sputtering sizzle
of the hot grease as it hit the
marble topped wash stand by the bed.
Above all your gentle voice
singing me to sleep at night.
I am a grandmother now;
I want to be loved as you were.
Will I be remembered
when my own grandchildren
are grandparents ? I wonder…
I catch a familiar sound
disturbing my reverie, oh…
I thought I heard you calling.

(Bradene)  http://www.freewebs.com/valsvault/
    

 

BACCHUS

He wore vine leaves in his hair
and the juice of a thousand grapes
ran through his veins.
He roared and drank rivers,
laughed and chased nymphettes
through the night.
The nose on his dilated face was fiery
as indeed, was his thirst for life.
He looked Divine for a second
as he clamped shut his damp eyes.
I looked at him,
drifting somewhere
between improbable dimensions
pointing out to my girlfriends
this delectable specimen of a man.

(mynci)  http://www.poetee.co.uk

 

NATHANIEL, THE GAY COCKER SPANIEL

They say that my cocker spaniel –
may be a ‘Doris Day’
just because he sniffs around –
every waif and gay!
And just because he’s stylish –
and has a trendy diamond lead,
they assume that he requires –
certain ‘special needs’
It’s not that I am troubled –
by Nathaniel’s taste in dogs.
There’s nothing wrong –
with frequenting the city centre bogs?
It’s just that his ‘activities’ –
are the butt of all their jokes.
My cocker seems more comfortable –
in the company of blokes.
His dodgy reputation –
is viewed in dim street light,
as he tries to penetrate –
any mongrel within sight.
I guess I should accept –
that the sound of tiny paws –
will never be apparent –
on these laminated floors.
Gay straight or…. ambidextrous?
Love is not a crime.
Nathaniel the cocker spaniel,
my insatiable canine.

(Sunken)  http://www.apocalypsehotel.co.uk

 

ON A VISIT TO CORLEONE

We, who did not know her,
stood, respecting her death.
You removed your hat
as you had been taught
from distant childhood swipes at caps
by anxious maternal fingers.

I watched as people standing by
traced cruciform patterns
with their fingers.
Respect or gratitude?
It was not their wife or mother
passing strangers to the music
of an out of tune band.

Behind the ones who carried her,
two small children
dressed in unseasonal black
carried a picture
in a heavy frame.
Their tear stained faces upturned,
bravely defying loss.

A man in a black suit
and collarless shirt
crisp and white
despite the sun that made him sweat
the tears that ran from eye to neck
unstaunched.

I felt like an intruder
not meant to be there,
not meant to witness their grief.
Something like a robber
or a voyeur
wanting to take pictures
that would look clever
in black and white.

(chrissy)  http://www.black-butterfly.co.uk/

 

 

WHIT’S IN THE PAPER?

 

Sunday is a day of rest

That’s the day that I like best

Grub in bed – tea and toast

A guid auld read o’ the Sunday Post

 

Oor Wullie’s on his bucket seat

Thinkin’ whit tae dae

No doubt his Maw and Paw

Will want tae hae their say

 

The Broons are there

Haein’ their denner

Maw’s tryin’ tae feed them

Fur a tenner

 

Heather pens the gossip pages

About stars, celebs and their ages

Fashion trends and botox jags

Shoe size, dress size, designer tags

 

Lorraine Kelly has a column

She gie’s us a’ the news

On Rosie’s view of Harry Potter

She thinks he’s jist a dirty rotter

 

Today it’s news but no fur lang

The morn’s anither day

You’ve heard a’ aboot their various capers

By Tuesday there a’ chippie papers!

 

(Kirstin Rhodes) - she wrote this in her second year of high school.   She is also my lovely sister! 

 

 

MY FATHER'S HANDS

Painting at last, I have become my father.
Surely those are his spotted hands
Twisting my screwdriver, levering up the lid
We hum his favourites in time
Stirring the heavy white magic
As I stroll along the Bois Boulong
With an independent air…
(Le Bois de Boulogne where I strolled twice, he never)
You can hear the girls declare . . .

In my ear his didactic baritone
At the dinner table: It’s not the painting, son
It’s the preparation
Become a stock joke, four kids against one
Even Mum gaily joining in
As he ate red-faced
Piling his fork against us

And later, four teens protesting
Some edict, he’d shush us:
Keep your voices down
The neighbours will hear!

But now, slashing white paint in the cracks
To smother the green scales of my house
Preparing to sell up and leave this hated neighbourhood
I am my own man.

Two coats will do. He always said three. He
Cleaned his brushes with turpentine.
I toss mine, buy new
Saving time the way he saved money
But keeping it to myself.
He was a man who desired
Less to be loved than respected.
Me, I'd be happy with love.

White-painting, I am me.
But as, panting, I clean off the paint by
Stabbing my screwdriver deep in the
Hard earth, again and again and again
I am my father’s son.

When he died he had crawled into bed
With a strange woman at the home
Where I’d made my one visit
I brought him a Mars bar
He knew me and hugged me hard
But was adrift in the Forties
“Have you ever been bashed, son?
I have.” The last thing I did for him
Was wipe his bottom which had become
So thin it was bone.

(Simon Leigh)

 

 

FORTY YEARS ON

Thinking just now of sun-haired Jilly
who gave me a ride to the station
from Uni, 40 years ago today
--It's fun being flirty
In an Austin A30--
blotted her lipstick off
fitted her wide mouth on mine
and pressed
directly against my brain
kissing again and again
(missing train after train) then
lowered her head so naturally
arching her lovely neck
the first time, and sensation spread,
diver into a still pool, ripples

widening, unhurried,
and while my body floated
light as any canoe, unseen
magical fish broke through
and leapt, emerging to sunlight
to a rainbow smile

Golden Jilly, pleased as a pussycat,
kissed me with
the faintest taste
of schoolroom paste
on her tongue, satisfied
and the summer rain began

And how, as I cradled her head
in my hands, stroking her perfect eyebrows
the rain now tapping like time
(reflections slid her face)
another missed train thundering below us
realised I held the most valuable,
fragile thing in all the world
and knew I just had to
write a poem
hence this.

(Simon Leigh) - his 4th novel 'Wild Women' is available now from www.ukapress.com  ISBN: 1-904781-28-4 

Click on the cover to order from Amazon!

 

 

 WAS GIBT'S NEUES

(oder… in 12 Stunden um die Welt)

 

Was gibt’s Neues, fragst Du mich

und ich möchte schreien.

 

Was gibt’s Neues, fragst Du mich

als würde ich es für mich behalten können,

wäre da jemand an meiner Seite,

wäre ich in freudiger Erwartung,

wäre ich glücklich…

 

Was gibt’s Neues, fragst Du mich

seit wir uns das letzte Mal gesprochen haben,

vor nicht einmal 12 Stunden,

als hätte ich die Welt bereist,

ein rauschendes Fest gefeiert,

die Nacht durchzecht…

 

Was gibt’s Neues, fragst Du mich

und führst mit eben dieser Frage mir

mein leeres Leben vor.

(Bergie) - is a fine poet and a good friend of mine in Germany.   Even those of you who perhaps don't have much knowledge of German, can surely recognise the wonderful rhythm and pace. 

 

SLOW SUICIDE

Slow suicide is painless.
But cuts all concerned.
Slowly slicing.
Revealing self hatred.
Deliberate incisions.
Bleeding day,
upon night, upon day.

Slow suicide is lawful.
Invisible to the blind eye.
A determination to waste.
Acceptably! Subtly.
Loved ones never feel the stigma,
of sudden self destruction.
Obviously. Dramatically.
One moment, night or day.

Slow suicide is painless, yet still ends prematurely, in the same deadly way.
Slow suicide is acceptable in this, our careful, carefree, careless, society. 

(tai)

 

INTO THE HEART WITH LOVE!

First moment’s bleat,
Throb.
Swell, shudder, heave.
Sob.
Feed receptors deceitful,
Odd!

Slow, quick, entrance
Bard!
Poetic muse, descending.
Hard!
Appease! Refuse to
Thaw!

Closed possibly forever
More.
Then, pierce. Breach
Core.
Rekindle loves, even (angelic)
Score!

(tai)  www.howardsart.co.uk

 

 

MOTHER'S MILK

Those summer storm clouds
hang in shades of old-man grey,
as the first giant splashes
come to earth as liquid arrows,
unmercifully pierce the earth;
changing the smell
of once rock hard ground.

Now the thirsty
can have their fill, fill
pitchers from swollen
muddy water holes,
suck life into once dry stems.

For the long wait is over,
she has put her hand in her pocket,
taken her place at the bar
and shouted in torrents,
that all lifesaving drinks....

will be on her.

(Dargo77)

 

 

THE SCULPTURE OF THE NIGHT

Observe the shadows saturate
As the dark shades out the light
Giving texture and fine fabric to
The sculpture of the night.
Step within the landscape
Refined in tactile tone
A lonesome place of palette knives
An artist's dream to hone.
Sculpt and cut and carve away
With skills unknown before
Create with newfound fervour
A masterpiece and more.
Reach for life's perfection
Don't give up the fight
The shadows are integral and
As important as the light.

(Zydha Hart)

 

 

IT'S LIKE KILLING A WHALE

It’s like killing a whale for its oil
or an elephant for its tusk.

It’s like killing a stag for its crown
or a tiger for its head.

It does not concern the preservation
of a romantic, rustic lifestyle
or the management and care
of the countryside
or the need to cull
pernicious vermin.

It concerns oversize men,
driving oversize dogs
to kill an undersize fox
for its life.

(Michael James Treacy)  www.freewebs.com/michaeljamestreacy/index.htm

 

 

A GLASS EGG

we do not belong until we are loved
stones pitched headlong down an ancient well
deeper than any plummeting holy heart
fresh forgotten collecting greenish fur
the ambushing dark comes to comfort
and we obey ourselves
this is the story of one such stone
cold set apart and frightened nightly
in the pit of grinding rocks and grating pebbles
polished hard with waspish wax
until this stone was smooth as a glass egg
but this egg could not float or lay still
it rolled round its own simple point
until it wore itself down to plain sand

(dogfrog)  www.dogfrog.co.uk

 

 

NIGHT SONG OF THE MAGDALENE

Mary entered
like a silken paraclete

and spoke in tongues
(Comment allez-vous?)
with lips
as red as early apples.

While music burned
and night
bled into day

her eyes said
I have my pride
and don’t need pity.

In a room grown
cold as an epiphany,
her hands made
trembling love
to the ghost
of a cigarette.

Then she paused.

As if waiting
for the first stone
to be thrown.

(John Thomson) - his poetry collection 'Glasgow Kisses' is available now from www.ukapress.com  ISBN: 1-904781-56-X.   Click on the image to order!

 

                  

 

                      

BLACK DOGS GUARD THE GODS

There are
somnolent servants of God,

deciding which side of narrow tracks
transgressing minds
will lie.

Asleep for some,
for reasons to the Almighty known,
their dreams echoing sufferers on
solo rides
through private landscapes.

Awake for most,
they serve their Master well,
pouncing like falling Winter fog,
to prevent
divine revelation

For, without their blunt encumbrance,
the most depression-prone
would be the mightiest geniuses;

Armageddon,
but a day away.

(Gothicman)

 

 

EINE BESONDERE ZEIT (A SPECIAL TIME)

Ich werde nicht weinen, oder warten auf Dich

I won't cry or wait for you

Dort gibt es andere Dinge in Zukunft fuer mich

I have better things to do

Aber ich werde erinnern an eine besondere Zeit

But I'll remember a special time

Als die Lust zu einfach war, aber die Liebe sehr weit

When lust was easy, but love a crime

 

(Omma Velada)  www.ommavelada.co.uk

 

 

 

 

TRAPPED SOUL

 

I'm trapped within
This useless outer shell.
My mind races ahead,
While my body gets an uphill struggle.

Joints weaken
And organs fail.
My mind says 'come on',
But my body says 'no'.

My hair turns grey
And my skin is sagging.
I'm sure you said something,
But I couldn't quite tell.

My body has had enough,
Its time has come.
My heart is failing,
Though it is no longer my own.

The shell is no more,
But at last I'm free.
I can go where I want
For you cannot stop me.

 

(Eleanor Bryant)  www.writethereality.co.uk

   

 

BECAUSE OF YOU...

Because of you…I’ve renamed all my days.


Monday is now hate day. And when I wake, the first thing I think of is you. I am consumed with hate for you and for the things you have or I think you have done. On this hate day I talk to myself and let out my frustration through stifled agonised screams…I say the word why a lot and I punch vacant air, slap walls and pound wooden doorframes…I hope sincerely these aren’t a substitute for your face.

Tuesday is forgiveness day and on forgiveness day I chide myself for thinking all the negative things I thought about you on hate day, I smile incredulously and laugh out loud and say to myself, ‘No, no one could be capable of doing the things that have been running rampant through my fucked up mind.’ And on this day I worry about what will become of you and of course I regret all the things I have said and done and again of course I don’t forgive myself… only you.

Wednesday is missing day, this is the day when I wonder what I have done, and ponder the devastation of life without even that little bit of you. Even though I’m not entirely convinced you did not do what you are accused of…my God how I’m still going to miss you.

Thursday is why day, and indeed why did it all come down to this…why? On this day I retrace all the steps leading up to this...yes this is a kind of bedlam, there were a thousand warning signs along the way, and a thousand alarm bells…all ignored…why? Well because it was you.

Friday is what if day? And I know deep down I’m deluding myself with this dream, but for a while it seemed so good, so real and what if is a recurring theme in my head on this day. What didn’t I do or say…did I miss the chance of having something really special…and again…and again… what if…what if…what if?

Saturday is empty day, numbness has taken over, listless and apathetic my body tries to come to terms with this perpetual tumult and reacts by giving in. Motionless in body but frenetic in mind…thoughts throughout the week come together and spiral and twist in my mind, truths, lies, accusations and illusions merge and meld and in the end not one is different from the other.

And because of this…

Sunday is paranoia day, a day when my mind lapses into narcoleptic trance whenever I think of you, and during these spells of stupor I hear cruel whispers and the mocking laughter no one wants or can bear to hear. All the negative doubts return and I can’t make out what is and isn’t you.

And of course because of this Monday is…

All because of you.

(Alan Ingram)  alan.ingram@ntlworld.com

 

 

THE ONLY COCKTAIL BAR ON MARS

In the only cocktail bar on Mars
we raised a glass to planet earth,
not as it is, a burned out shell,
but as it was, a Sunday child,
turned out in all its shining best,
with parks and gardens, grass and fields,
and all the stuff we used to have.
Someone said, ‘Before I die
I’d love to see a tree alive.’
We drank the toast, and no-one spoke,
for fear grown men should cry.

(John Shaw) For details of John's CD, Space Flights Without Reservation, email him on johnashaw@onetel.com. Cost inclusive post £7.50 UK, $15 US. By cheque or Paypal.   It comes highly recommended and sales will help to fund the continuation of an exercise group for people with Parkinson's Disease.

 

 

PATENT LEATHER SHOES

We marched in
The Brooklyn Day Parade,
for the 'borough of churches',
tiny fairy-girls of all the
Sunday School classes,
of all the parishes,
bursting like colourful pollen
from dandelion denominations.

Ribbons and pastel chiffons,
crinoline petticoats
crisply hooped,
we twirled like
turned down flowers.
Tiny blossoms, plucked
in our budding for the altar
of God and Country.

White cotton gloves
matching white anklette socks,
a paper 'Jesus Loves Me' banner
pinned to my pristine breast,
I marched in a line of lambs,
beneath the whip-cracking flags
of Nation and Faith,
white doved hand saluting.

When the parade ended, I smiled
for the camera, hugging my
chubby, pink, fleece with
coquettish daintiness. Knees joined,
toes touching, lowering ladylike
lashes to patent leather shoes,
my reflection beamed back;
all the proof to never need ask,
if I was good and beautiful.

(Adele C. Geraghty) - Adele's first poetry collection 'Skywriting In The Minor Key' will be published this summer by Between These Shores Press.   http://members.tripod.com/deepoceanfish2-ivil/betweentheseshores/

 

 

NAILING DOWN THE ESSENCE (POMPENAZZI 3)

At the races, I turned my binoculars away from the track shortly after my horse crashed at the third fence and caught sight of Pompenazzi. He looked furious, fairly jumping up and down. I could almost hear him gnashing his teeth. It was he who had given me the tip. I strode over to him.
“Pietro,” I said, “one thing always troubles me about you. How you are without doubt a true master of philosophy, rather than a mere dabbler like myself, and yet how you NEVER get the girl!”
He sighed and the sigh moved through a sea of hats which all contained peacock feathers or odd bits of coloured grass.
“You’ll never understand, Marcus, but then, that’s one of your charms. However, let me see if I cannot dress it up in a fancy analogy for you. A philosopher is a lover of wisdom, not a possessor: boy seeks girl rather than boy gets girl.”

(Anthony Kane Evans) - you will find a bit more of Anthony here:

http://www.theshoremag.com/56_slouched.html  and here:  http://www.muse-apprentice-guild.com/spring_2005/fiction/anthony_kane_evans.html

 

 

LYING AT THE GATE (AUSCHWITZ)

 

“Lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch'intrate.”
Dante Alighieri


I stand at the gate in front of Auschwitz.

My knees begin to wobble; then they begin to buckle.

Soon, I have no legs to stand on and I am sitting on them.

I go to raise my fist, but my muscles are too weak to lift my arm.

I try to look up, but I am blinded by blackness.

I want to speak, but I have lost my voice.

Finally, my body collapses,

Like a bag of bones.

Two Polish people come to my rescue.

They carry me off in a stretcher. “Too much heat!” they say in Polish.

As they are carrying me off, a sound comes out of the earth:

“Here at the burial site of God,

We, the children of the earth, forgive;

We forgive the unforgiveable;

We forgive the unforgiven;

We forgive ourselves;

We, of all people.”

Vergebend Macht Frei

(Glenn Petrant)  http://users.vianet.ca/gpetrant/?N=D

 

 

LOADED

Did it start in the canteen - the idea for it,
with that rabble of voices like locusts
sawing their wings in some arid place,
and you, alone, as you often were
and always felt yourself to be?

You, them, out of step where it hurt.
Eagerly you watched Hitler in
old black and white films, in your raw heart
joined the ranks of his soldiers,
took up that standard and felt part of something.

At some point consequences stopped mattering.
There was just the need to be free of it,
this thing you were carrying that had got too heavy,
that no one ever offered to help you with,
or even saw.

One day, during the fall, rucksack on shoulder,
you walked down that avenue for the last time,
leaden with it, ready to let it go,
crushing the scarlet leaves under your boots,
almost joyful.

(chant)   http://www.paprkut.co.uk

 

 

bEd

As you sleep
I keep the secret of a pure
perfection warm in the hollow
at my throat, under blankets
under wraps, I imitate dreams
with a carefully constructed sigh,
and the bird wing flutter of my eyelids.

The time and situation is too late
for a confession if I had the inclination
which I don’t and anyway, I’d rather see
the dawn rising and the realisation slide
across your face, as you draw back
the curtain and see snow
for the first time.

(bektron)

 

 

A SILVER CUP I WISH TO SHINE

I have a silver cup I wish to shine, do you have a Chamois’

Grandad always enquires of me in the same way

and as usual my heart breaks as I refuse

first time he’d asked I gave one to him

and wondered which cup he referred to

I then watched amazed as he grabbed the cloth from my hand

clasping it to his chest, curling his body around it, to protect it

to deflect away the imagined snatches of jealous hands

with a look of blissful contentment

he reverently placed a corner in his mouth

and began to suck slowly, meditatively

deliberately,

and the picture of rapture that was his face

disarmed me completely

that was why I thought I might do it again

provide the Chamois cloth he desperately craves

but it’s no good for him, they say, will only degrade him

will make it worse, so I politely refuse

my once proud Grandad

mind befuddled, confused, strange to the both of us

and he smiles so sweetly,

and says in the voice he’s always had

‘Oh well, no matter, I may call tomorrow, to see if one has come in’

(bo_duke99) 

 

FRANCO-AMERICAN LIBERTY

There is a considerable difference between French liberty and Saxon liberty within the confines of the United States of America. Some call that difference "the revolution within the revolution." I became acutely aware of the widening chasm between the two at the outset of the First Bush War on Iraq. That caused me to revert from my dim-witted Reaganite attitude, to active independent dissent. Fortunately for me and and my similars, independent dissent is tolerated in this Great Nation of Ours, the Sole Superpower of Civilization upon whom a physical attack is an attack on Civilization per se.

Yes, a dissenter might be beaten up or murdered by super-patriotic Americans every once in awhile, but that is the exception to modern American toleration. There are other ways of dealing with social rebellion. Firing or keeping the lone wolf unemployed or otherwise interfering with his life is the standard operating procedure nowadays, the domestic equivalent of foreign embargoes and international sanctions.

Of course literal dissent is effectually censored by the privately-owned free press, which is, as a matter of course, devoted to the governmental protection of its multi-media conglomeration. That is to say, the mass media of the masses is out to save its own masses, particularly its fat mass. Thus has professional journalism become analogous to organized prostitution.

Truly independent street walkers are few and far between. Most street walkers are hustling for the free sidewalk rags, which in reality want to be mainstream, despite their counter-cultural pretensions. Indeed, if the dissenting party is not a celebrity or a defecting member of the power elite, or if no infamous crime has been committed coincidental to his or her dissenting manifesto, truly independent dissent, no matter how truthful it might be, will not see the light of day in the Establishment Press or in the counter-cultural imitators. It might be posted on the Internet: such a release is tantamount to micturating in a virtually infinite ocean for all the effect it will have on reality. In fact, the naked truth has become so irrelevant to prestige in the United States, where mediated image is everything, that it is considered downright insulting in most social precincts.

I was having a Bass Ale at Wilsons on the Upper West Side of Manhattan as bombs and missiles rained down on Baghdad at the outset of the First Bush War on Iraq. Wilsons was a popular night club and restaurant frequented by Jewish-American princesses, slick meat-market cruisers, Yuppies, celebrities, a liberal number of ex-Hippies, and a few aliens such as myself. Coke was the drug of choice and there was plenty of that to go around; the brokerage employees were outraged by the mandatory testing rules, and had trouble staying awake for 16 hour days as overtime-exempt 'independent contractors" after testing was mandated; but there were ways to get around the rules. All eyes were trained on Wilsons' jumbo television screens on the first bombing night. The spectacular air attack was a rare exception to the usual sports events displayed. Almost all the viewers, including a large group of suited security-industry workers from the World Trade Center offices downtown, cheered in concert with each brilliant burst and resounding thud, as if the home team had just made a touchdown.

"Level that (expletive-deleted) hell hole!" yelled one of the security workers.

"Turn it into a parking lot!" shouted another.

"They ought to nuke it and get it over with!" yelled yet another.

"Hey, buddy, what do you think of President Bush (Senior) now?" asked the man to my right, then took a long pull off his Budweiser - the orthodox beer among Yuppies.

"Do you really want to know?"

"Sure, what do you think of him?"

"I think he's a monster with a long career of sponsoring human rights violations, and he's a mass murderer as well. He and his two boys, Junior and Jeb, should be serving life sentences with Reagan."

"Why you (expletive deleted) S.O.B.!" the man yelled, clenched his fist and waved it in my face. "If I were not a civil rights lawyer, I'd bash your (expletive deleted) head in with a baseball bat right now. If you don't like your country, move the hell to, to... to (expletive deleted) France!"

He was really fuming, his face turning beet red. I turned away and ignored him, focusing on my mug of ale. I kept my peace, but I wanted to say he would be a traitor to the principles this Great Nation of Ours was founded on if it were not for his freedom to express his opinion, and for me to express mine, without being physically assaulted with baseball bats and the like. At least according to some of the founding fathers, several of whom were fond of the principles forged by the French Revolution; and who, by the way, were not afraid to say so in their own country, and to stay and fight for same. But I kept my peace that night. I left Wilsons thinking that fighting for civil and human rights had become a losing battle in America since Kennedy was murdered by the right-wingers, and Johnson messed up.

Not too many people were in favor of free speech that night, not if it was opposed to the First Bush War on Iraq. The tenants of buildings along Broadway between 72nd and 86th Streets showered a small group of anti-war protestors with excrement, urine, eggs - a few bottles were also hurled down from above, objects that could seriously injure or kill a marcher below. The scene reminded me of a story I had read about a few Germanic tribes way back when. When the Christian overlords were overthrown from time to time, the 'barbarians' would revert to their primitive religion, parade about the village with an effigy of their tribal god. Anyone who failed to salute the patriotic god was executed on the spot - he was not given the choice of exile instead.

More than a decade later, on 9/11, I thought of those guys from the World Trade Center, how they had screamed bloody murder for the total destruction of Baghdad from the comfortable bar at Wilsons. I wondered if they stilled worked in the towers when the planes hit, and if so, whether or not they had survived the shocking and awesome attack. To many dissenters against the ravages of neo-liberal globalism and neofascist neoconservatism, Manhattan's Twin Peaks symbolized the military-industrial complex's binary ethic under the Zurvanist god of war and money, an ethic which really presented no choice but to either buy or buy, and to war or otherwise compete for money ad infinitum.

The extremely unwise U.S. president claimed that the towers were not a legitimate military target, compared the momentous incident to the Japanese attack on Peal Harbor, then gave the Purple Cross or its civilian equivalent to the victims of the "cowardly attack".

Not that I wanted the real towers to fall. Nor did I want those who had screamed for the First Bush War on Iraq to die. But I did wonder if the one-god's justice balances out those sort of ungodly death wishes, just as natural disasters in one part of the world are balanced by natural disasters in other parts. Little did I know, when I was a hungry, unemployed young man watching the foundations being laid for the World Trade Center, that I would eventually stand on the top of one of them with my second wife, and, some time later, watch them burn and fall from afar.

9/11 brought to mind the scene described in Revelations: the merchants stood offshore, watched the city burn and wept for their lost fortunes. I was told by a friend of mine, a Moody Bible school grad, that Revelations was inapplicable because the president was not a Jew, and that the apocalyptic event has to take place in Israel some time after the Temple is rebuilt.

"But," I said, "the president is a frustrated Old Testament Jew, not a loving Christian-Jew, and he might be the false messiah who appears before the Temple is built. The Quranic version as to place and combatants might be the truer version." That really got my friend going, and, after cursing Muhammad, he pulled out his Bible and started citing scripture.

France, as a place for American dissidents to take up exile, came up again when I objected to the rush to the Second Bush War on Iraq, which was planned before the second Bush took office. The third Bush is now training for the presidency, presenting himself in several cameo appearances overseas as the world's most compassionate observer of natural disasters. President Bush overestimated the greed of his constituents while quietly enjoying his gentleman's ranch; when he saw that his stinginess fell far short of the charitable public mood, he seized the opportunity, as Condaleeza Rice said in her confirmation hearings, to present a compassionate image to the world. Shortly after Governor Jeb Bush returned to Florida from his Asian tour, he announced his new budget, devised, he said, to conform to true conservatism, to protect "our" future: state health care benefits to poor working folk would be eliminated; however, the budget proposed is actually larger than the existing budget, for more welfare must be provided to the affluent and rich. Once Jeb Bush is elected president, no doubt he would include Iran in the war on terrorism, the war to free the world from its plural prejudices whether the world likes it or not. Take heed: once Iraq's Shias are empowered by the second Bush blitz for "democracy", the ayatollas will rejoice at Qum and Nijaf.

Yet again and again have I been called a traitor for honestly speaking my mind. One superpatriot and friend, a heroic policeman who has a low tolerance for ambiguity and who tends to wax enthusiastically about America's "superior northern European culture", kindly recommended that I take up permanent residence in France. This time I thought seriously about doing so despite the rumor that Americans are charged double in France until they learn the language - I love my mother tongue so much that I have difficulty learning foreign languages, although I do like their musical qualities.

I was not so angry with the president himself this time, but I was terribly disappointed by the unwisdom of the people who supported such an extremely unwise man and therefore the forces of darkness and corporate board tribalism pulling his strings behind the scenes. A number of the supporters were my friends, and they still are, their support of the worst president in United States history being the only mark against them. Part of being a friend is overlooking faults in your friends, is it not? But what if those faults will eventually ruin them and their families? One should say something, right?

To make matters worse, a man shouted me down the other day even though I had done or said nothing at all. "You (expletive deleted) traitor!" Someone standing next to me in a coffee shop had called the president a "Texas jackass". His remark was attributed to me by the rude young man - he works for a bank. A friend of mine who witnessed the episode jokingly told me that the government was setting up jackass courts to deal with people like me.

I thought seriously of renouncing my citizenship shortly thereafter. I wondered if some other country would take me in; or, if not, whether I might be held without benefit of due process at some undisclosed location, perhaps offshore in Cuba, where George and Fidel tend to violate the human rights of all those who are not for their versions of full democracy for the power elite. Bush, with 550 prisoners, outscores Castro in absolute numbers of political prisoners held in Cuba. At least Castro gives dissidents mock trials in kangaroo courts. By the way, editors at the Miami Herald have come down against the regressive U.S. repression at Guantanamo, and have urged "the public" to do something about it, but the public loves its brutal strong man and cares only about its own mass, particularly the flabby side.

I even thought of defecting to Cuba, where, notwithstanding its defects, it is not dishonorable to be dirt poor, and where the duty to work comes with the right to a job instead of the right to sleep in doorways and be generally despised by the incredibly stupid affluent people who, even after the Great Asian Tsunami, comfort their unconsciously bad conscience by telling themselves poor and homeless people want to be poor and homeless, as well as mentally and physically ill.

I would be a voluntary exile in Cuba, I supposed. But I decided against it because I figured my chances of becoming a Yummie were quite slim given the language barrier. Surely my fondness for critical philosophy and free speech would land me in a Cuban prison in short order - an excellent place to compose a libertarian manifesto.

"Fight or flight", that is the crucial question after the question, "To be or not to be", is answered, of course in favor of Being instead of Nothingness. Why go into voluntary exile? I asked myself. Why run? Why not stay and fight? Perhaps I could write an incoherent manifesto and study nuclear bomb-making instructions on the Internet. No, that is not my style. I should at least study Gandhi, Tolstoy, and Thoreau again, and be a one-man homeless protestor if I and my protest is not co-opted by the Mainstream - smart godfathers and Columbian drug kingpins try to hire rebels instead of killing them. After all, given the pace of imperial globalization, wherever an exile winds up, he shall soon find the same fate he ran away from, just as the Arab found Death waiting for him at the next oasis.

Nevertheless, I am still thinking about exiling myself to France. A Frenchwoman has told me all about the sociable life in France, and I am tempted to defect. I may visit the embassy and see if I can get some sort of sanctuary, perchance in a monastery with an Internet hookup. My second choice is Germany; a choice that does not seem so ironic when one understands that, due to some old race-mixing and migrations, there are more Saxons in some parts of France than there are in Saxony. Still, there is a considerable difference between French liberty and Saxon liberty in the United States. Some call that difference "the revolution within the revolution." Quebec is another option I shall consider: I understand Franco-American Canadians are marrying defectors to save them from Anglo-Saxon Americans.

(David Arthur Walters)  http://miamimirror.blogspot.com

 

 

EDITH LOST HER LAST NAME IN A HOUSE FIRE

Disturbance at Grange House.

I didn’t want to know about their lives before the screws loosened and the marbles they had lost rolled under a fridge that was way too heavy to shift. No, I loved them now as they were, nutty and gently lost looking for my hand. I knew snippets of info; Douglas had arm wrestled David Niven; Frankie Little could Cha-Cha-Cha and Edith’s last name was lost in a fire, that was plenty. Any more would dissipate the magic vibe of becoming child-like again, the grown up stuff they did once no longer fitted in. If I knew what they got up to as adults it would make me realise that they were sick and maybe didn’t like being Peter Panned. This would hurt and destroy the never-never of my visits. I might feel pity. It would kill me to feel pity for my zany friends. I reckon pity is right up there with the lousiest feelings you can have. It damages by implying that it’s all over for the pitied. It gives me the creeps. Useless, bastard thing! So I keep it all here and now like they are with their flash in the pan thoughts and hundreds of surprise packaged moments.

I visit the pre-school for the once gifted, stiff and faintly musty slipper-wearing child-likes as often as I can. It makes me buzz knowing when I’m there my net need-worth soars and I am of use on new levels. Not the bull-shit level of the day to day strung out as a flunkie doing stuff that destroys whole souls. To make someone’s day, five of them, now that’s useful, that’s service, that’s amore. To get Doug to have a tinkle on the piano; to hear Edith’s cheeky chuckle; to go for a shuffle through the home with Frank Little and both get lost. All this before the Horlicks session and a visit from an N.H.S magician.

Of course I was there to see Merv. He’d taken a knock on the head years before which damaged his brain’s vascularity and slowly demented him. He was only 63 when it really kicked in and pretty soon he needed to leave home and take care here. I could use words like cruel and unfair to describe his plight but the one we think should hear it is blissfully unaware of everything including itself. The force that is God is like electricity. It can power a blender to make angel delight or blow your big toe off while you’re trying to get a piece of stuck bread out from the toaster with a knife. It’s not good, it’s not bad. Use it in conjunction with free-will for whatever. This is the cop out clause that pisses us sentient, dual minded folk right off! We just don’t want to know.

Merv and his mates had started to leave their bodies and head heaven-side and I could see the divine in their eyes. They were my avatars, Edith was Mary, Douglas was Mohammed, Frankie was the Nazarene, Horace was Buddah and Merv was a lesser known Messiah called Schimmler Bubba who famously could run a fridge with his tongue. I had a long way to go but felt the dogma-free zeal all apprentices of supreme beings must feel. That was it. More than being of service to them which was great was just being near them all and snuggling up inside their odd-balled auras.

I would come away from Grange House as light as meringue and feeling mellow. I’d always have bits of bread and pineapple stuck to the bum of my trousers. Half of Merv’s food would leave with me this way. Little scratch and sniff limpets left on a seat and making a break for it.

I would only be minutes down the road before my next visit was in the planning. I had found my Mecca, my Mount Sinai, my holy guacamole. I could dip myself anytime right up to my neck like a bloody great corn chip. There was no down time, no long pilgrimage. I could be there in ten minutes handing out Minstrels and reminding people to chew.

Some times I imagined the walls at Grange House covered with crutches and walking sticks left there by people who had received a healing just by brushing up against Horace or holding Edith’s hand. Wheel-chairs stacked up to the roof in a back room and the visitor’s book full of testimonials; cancers cured, tumours zapped, lepers given the all clear.

Despite their demi-god status the gurus of Grange house were always found wanting in the physical world. Their souls wanted to cut a track out but their bodies only let go slowly. For Merv (the body), letting go was forgetting how to eat. Or maybe it was more to do with the food lacking lustre than anything else. He would just stuff wads of bread and egg into his mouth until his cheeks were stretched giving him a hamstered grin. Then he’d sit with bulging jowls until someone found the time to remind him about his teeth, his perfectly healthy teeth. Merv’s molars I suspected would be the last part of him to give up to the ghost of his soul. Apart from some arthritis most all of him was in good shape, still very much mortally coiled and a long way from the frail trails that Horace and Edith wandered along.

The real oldies were more bandy and bent and hard of seeing. This vulnerability just added to their effect on me spiritually. I guess my pigeon-holed ideas about venerable masters had morphed out of my time with Yoda as a kid. Being wrinkled and gnarly and moving weirdly were pre-requisites. In fact Edith, god bless her had more of an E.T air about her. The way she walked and talked, her little spacey way. She was pretty much blind and spent a long time sat with her head propped up by her hands. She didn’t blink enough and her eyes dried into a fixed and hazy daze. She’d test the depth of her tea with her dip-stick pinky and needed someone to guide her when she went for a wander. Like many here she had standard responses to people based on the tone of their voices, not what they had said. I’d talk and sing to her for hours to see if I could eek out more of an existence for her. Slowly some neural path-ways re-opened. Edith’s body-electric made sparks that jumped across small deserts in her mind and they became her own thoughts. She spoke to me and listened and spoke some more until we’d built a tiny, blue rinsed rapport. I guess some bits of our brains don’t die off but more nod off until given a poke.


On one visit I was taken aside by someone in charge and gently told that I was a bit too much for the oldies. “We run a peaceful, quiet home ”, “Too much stimulus can be traumatic for a lot of the people here”. No more balloon volleyball, no more piano with Doug and dancing with Janet was out of the question. I had to tone it down. I had to just let them sit and drift in and out of a dribbly day-dream. I understood, the staff were terrific but there weren’t enough of them for anything more than feeding and bum-wiping. It was a tough job and having a bunch of normally sedate, pliable people wanting a little more would make things unworkable. My days of service were numbered or severely knocked back and it made me feel rotten. I respected the care-workers and the need for the people here to be inanimate meat puppets for the place to run smoothly. All they could do was keep them clean and fed and comfortably numb. I was just a pain in the arse who dropped by now and again, reeked some havoc and then left the girls with the upside-down watches to calm things down.

(Dazza)

 

 

EATIN THE RAINBO

‘What’s wrong with them britches, Will?  Are you spectin it to flood er something, they’s kinda short ain’t they?’

     ‘Don’t pay him any mind, Will, as soon as this day ends and everybody goes home we’ll get the catalog down and order you some clothes.   I didn’t realize you had grown that much, good gracious me, you’ll be taller than your Pap before we know it.’

     ‘Hit’s these danged underpants that’s a ridin up on me.   I keep a pullin em down and digging em out of my butt, sorry Annie, I didn’t mean to be talkin thataway in front of you, they’s jist aggrevatin the devil outa me, I’m thankin bout takin em off.’

     ‘Why don’t you do that, Will.   No one will know and you’ll be comfortable.   This is going to be a long day for us and I want everybody to be happy and enjoy this wonderful meal.’

     ‘Annie, this here table looks too purty to eat offen and they’s way too many forks aside the plates, do you want me to take some of em up?’

     ‘That’s the way it’s supposed to be, Will.   It’s the proper way to set a table, I’ll explain later.   It’s time to start arranging things, our guests will be here real soon and I want everything to be just right.’

     Guests, that’s a good en, Dory and Miss Bates a comin to eat, and thangs gotta be done proper fer em.   It looks real nice the way Annie’s got it fixed, I hope she don’t get her feelin’s hurt when they come chargin in here a hollerin whore’s the food.   I aim to eat till I bust er somethin like at.   Maybe they’ll jist watch what Annie does and copy her, that’s what I aim to do.   I hear a car horn a honkin and gravel flyin, hit must be them guests a comin now.   Yep that’s em alright, still a honkin, I reckon that means I gotta go un-load the car.   Annie jist grabbed me fer a hug and planted a kiss on my forehead.   I don’t hardly know what to make of that.

     I opened the front door to hear Dory a hollerin at me to come and get the food outa the car, cause her fingernails was still kinda damp and she didn’t want to haveta paint em agin.   I don’t reckon I ever seen Dory in a pair of high heeled shoes afore.   She danged near fell down tryin to walk acrost the front porch I couden help but laugh at er;  she give me one of them I hate your guts looks and went on in the house.   Miss Bates grinned at me and stood there in my way, till I said how good she looked and how glad I was that she come over to eat with us.

     When we got ready to set down and eat, Miss Bates brung out her brownie camera and took a hole lotsa pictures of the table, afore we messed it all up.   Annie asked us to join hands in a prayer of Thanksgivin fer all the food we was bout to eat.   I thank if the angels couda they’d come and et with us, that’s how purty hit was.   That big old turkey was crispy brown, the tater sallet and deviled eggs was yeller, they was purple cranberries, green peas, black sweet taters on the outside and orange on the inside, dark brown corn bread, black coffee, white milk, and all kinda colors of sody pop.   Pap said if hit tasted as good as it smelt it woud take me and Annie to pull him up outa his cheer when he was done eatin.

     ‘Pass your plate, Will, what can I get for you?’

     ‘All’s I want is jist a little bit of ever color on the table Annie, sides I gotta save room fer punkin pie and coconut cake.’

 

(uppercase)

 

 

 

 

 

THE CLOCK

 

It isn’t a very big room; the only thing in it apart from a small table and a chair is a clock on the wall. The clock says one minute passed three. I have until four o’clock.

My instructions are to write everything down that comes into my mind during this hour. I take that to mean that after four I won’t be able to write. I have to tell you (should anyone get to read this) that I have no idea what will happpen at four.

There is no way of looking out of the room, but I wouldn’t want to look out anyway.
I have seen enough of out there. I have just had a quick look round to see if there is anything alive in here, couldn’t see anything. It would have been nice to find a spider or fly or something, anything for company.

I wonder how the clock works—funny thing time, I wonder how time keeping started? One of those things I always intended to look up but never did. I suppose it started with daybreak, then sun down, that’s two divisions. Then sun overhead, mid-day. That’s three. Well I suppose after that it was easy to fill in. What was I saying? Oh yes the clock. It looks fairly normal, interestingly though it’s analogue, not many of that type still about. Minute hand, hour hand, second hand, temperature gauge. I don’t think it is mechanical, no winding point or pendulum thingies. I am tempted to have a closer look.

I used to have a proper mechanical watch, stainless steel it was, Omega Constellation automatic, dead accurate, never had to wind it. That was a proper watch, I had to give that it long since though, they needed all the metal. What did we get in return? These bloody awful plastic things, well okay--they were accurate, but no personality or character. Tell time anywhere in the world, temperature of wearer, blood pressure, pulse rate, and even weight. All info back into the main frame for continuous monitoring. Did it work? Probably. Did it do any good? No not one bit. What was I saying again? Oh yes have a closer look at the clock, can’t though, been warned not to touch it. Bet it’s not battery driven, where would they get the batteries?

Three fifteen now, it’s difficult to write like this without any preparation, but I have to keep going. Anybody who reads this will know what has gone on---maybe no one will read it, doesn’t matter any way. I think I have just been told to write to take my mind of the clock. You are probably wondering if I am frightened. No I am not. I have got passed that. I just don’t care anymore. Why did they pick me though? Okay I am a scientist of sorts, and I was one of those who tried to tell them, would they listen? Of course not, did they ever? We all know now that they were just doing what all the rest have done—look after themselves. The fools, well they are in the same mess now, I suppose that is one consolation, for all the good that will do.

WW1 was to the war to end all wars, that was until WW2 came along. Did they learn anything? No, not a thing. United states of Europe-- what a joke. Still it’s too late now. Three thirty, only half an hour, expect I can keep writing something. We told them that underground nuclear power stations were needed and plenty of them. We told them fossil fuels were running out. What did they do? Left it too late. Well that’s true to form. We told them about unchecked immigration, about lack of water, about pollution. The consequences were so predictable to all but those who could have stopped it. Well it’s too late now.

I had everything back then. In fact I always said I achieved far more than I deserved. Life was kind to me. It’s all gone now—the lot. The only way I stopped going mad was to train myself not to think about it.

Three forty not long to go. I wonder what’s going to happen at four? Why didn’t they tell me?

It’s quite exciting really; things can only get better. I hate to think about those poor souls still out there. I wonder if this was meant to happen—I mean was it pre-ordained. Strange that it happened all over the world at the same time.
We really have been so stupid, the trouble has always been that those in power, always thought that they were right, and mostly as we now know, they were all wrong.

It seems without doubt now, that we were the only world in all the universe that had life. What did we do? We killed the bloody lot, well nearly. Not much left now.
I expected it though, the writing was on the wall many years ago and nobody took note. The governments tried to give the people what they wanted—and look where it got us.

Don’t know what to write now—running out of words; still don’t think any body will read this anyway, Tra la la la la.

Three fifty, I wish I could have one last look out, still probably not. Better just try to remember the good things. My goodness, I had more than my share of them. Yes I have been pretty fortunate really, had lots of things, plenty of money, nice house, nice car, nice family—all gone now. Tra la la la la. Am I getting a bit nervous now? No, not possible.

Quite looking forward to four, nothing else to look forward to. Hope you can get to read this rubbish, been a long time since I wrote with a pen. I am going to keep writing right up till four, it will keep my mind of things, tra la la la la. Just trying to remember the good times now. If only those idiots had listened, things could have been so different. Well it’s nearly time, just a couple of minutes; longest hour I have ever experienced.

Three fifty nine, I wonder what is powering the clock? Not a bad looking clock really I have seen worse—tra la la la la, It’s three fifty nine fifty five now, last cou----------------------------------It isn’t a very big room; the only thing in it apart from a small table and a chair is a clock on the wall. The clock says one minute passed three. I have until four o’clock.

My instructions are to write everything down that came into my mind during this hour. I take that to mean that after four I won’t be able to write. I have to tell you (should anyone get to read this) that I have no idea what will happpen at four. 

(Gerald Finlay)  http://prosit.mysite.wanadoo-members.co.uk/

 

 

A PRESENCE (A TRUE STORY)

We were young and stupid back then. Loved spending the weekends partying while my parents looked after our daughter. Every weekend was the same, drop Tabitha off at my parents on the Friday teatime, get dressed, go out get pissed, maybe have a smoke, spend Saturday recovering, pop along and see Tabitha for a few hours, go back home, get dressed, go out get pissed, maybe have a smoke, spend Sunday recovering, then pick Tabitha back up at teatime. She was only a baby, a few months old.

Then I fell pregnant again. My parents decided to stop the weekend visits with Tabitha. They told us we had to become responsible adults now that our family was growing. I was annoyed at them. I didn’t want to turn out like them stuck in a house all day full of kids. I wanted to have fun.

We didn’t want to be boring spending the weekends in the house, so every Saturday night we had a few friends round for a drink. The bump started to grow, alcohol knocked me sick, and I got tired of our friends messing the house up every Saturday night. So, that stopped. That was when we started to turn into responsible adults. Well sort of.

My partner’s parents started to visit more. They didn’t like me that much I was too wild for their son. However, they put up with me. They came one day with a beautiful cot for the bump. It was gleaming white with built in toys, sliding balls, spinning mirrors. It was amazing. The cot was chunky with delicate spirals carved into the wood. The mattress was thick. It was the perfect cot. I smiled and thanked them, the difference this time in the smile was that I did mean it, it wasn’t one of those fake let us be nice to each other smiles.

A couple of weeks passed and my partner’s mother died. He was devastated. I didn’t know what to do to make him smile, so I bought him a game system, the Nintendo with Mario’s. A few weeks passed and he started to pick up a bit, the game system kept his mind occupied.

 One morning we got up and he wanted to put his Mum’s cot up for Tabitha to use. He didn’t see the point of such a lovely new cot gathering dust in the corner. Her cot was a second hand one. So, we put it up and dressed it with all of Tabitha’s pink lacy bedding. It looked superb.

That night we put Tabitha to bed in the cot in our bedroom, went downstairs, and played on Mario’s. We were hooked on that game. At two o’clock in the morning, Tabitha screamed. My partner ran upstairs, settled her down with a bottle of milk, and came back downstairs. At two-thirty, we decided it was time to go to bed.

The following night we did the same - fought over Mario’s, Tabitha screamed, my partner settled her, and then we went to bed.

The same happened the next night.

The same happened for about a month.

By the time we were going to bed the bedroom was freezing, well, the winter months were settling in. So, I put the heating on for a bit through the night, but the room was still freezing. So, the heating was left on all night. The house was roasting apart from our bedroom. We blamed the radiator and bought an electric heater. Back then we had the heating on and the electric heater; the room was still cold but not as cold as it used to be.

And Tabitha was still screaming at two in the morning.

A few more weeks passed, the gas and electric bill grew and grew.

Tabitha continued to wake at the same time.

One night my back ached a lot. The bump was taking over my body. I had a hot bath and nagged the hubby to come to bed with me early that night. It was about midnight.

I climbed into bed shivering. I asked my partner to leave the bathroom light, which I did every night. I hated sleeping in the dark. Strange things happen in the dark. My partner left the bathroom light on, pushed the bedroom door halfway, and checked the radiator. It was boiling. He checked the electric heater, that too was boiling, but the room was freezing. It had been freezing before but not as bad as it was that night. He stroked Tabitha’s head, she was fast asleep in the cot beside the doorway, and then he climbed into bed. We snuggled up close to warm up and fell asleep.

Two o’clock Tabitha screamed. We woke up. I turned over facing away from the cot. My partner got up to sort out Tabitha. I felt him climb back into bed and all went quiet for a few seconds. I opened my eyes and sighed. I noticed my breath formed a little cloud and floated away. My nose was numb with the cold. My body shivered. I jumped as Tabitha screamed again. I asked my partner if he could lift her out of the cot and put her into bed with us, as she must be freezing too poor little sod. The screaming continued.

My partner sat quiet.

I was getting irritated because I was tired, cold and pregnant. I yelled at my partner, 'Are you getting her or what?'

He stuttered his words quietly to me, 'She’s… in my arms… Claire… turn around… look…’

I wanted to bite his head off. I was too cold to move. My anger was raging. I turned around ready to give him what for. My mouth hung open. He sat on top off his pillows holding Tabitha in his arms, she was sound asleep, but the screaming of a young baby rattled through our ears. His hand shook as he pointed to the cot. The cold air in the bedroom stung at my face. I looked at the cot. Instantly my body shook and tears trickled from my eyes burning my cheeks as they slid down.

In the cot was a shadow of a baby standing up holding on to the sides. We couldn’t see a face or what it was wearing. It just looked like a shadow, that’s the only way I can possibly explain it. The screaming echoed. We froze for what felt like an eternity, but it was only a matter of seconds. I grabbed Tabitha out of my partner’s arms and ran out of the bedroom. I wanted to scream but couldn’t. I fell down the stairs, sliding on my backside. I flung the front door open and ran along the street to my parent’s house in my nightie and socks with Tabitha in my arms still sleeping.

I banged on the front door. My Dad opened it and I collapsed through the door. My partner came in seconds after me in his boxer shorts, coat, and trainers.

My partner explained what had happened. My Dad shook his head and asked us if we had been drinking. We told him the truth and said no. Then he asked us what drugs did we take. We answered truthfully and said none. My Dad didn’t believe us; he still thinks we were tripping on something. I wish we were!

I refused to go home until the cot had been destroyed, burned. So, my partner and brother went along, pulled the cot apart, took it outside ready to burn. They piled it up, shoved some newspapers in the cracks, and lit the papers. The papers burned and died, but the cot did not have a mark on it, not a singe. So, they got more paper and gathered up other pieces of wood, shoved them in the cracks of the piled up cot and lit it. The flames spread instantly. After half an hour, the flames died down, but the cot was still there. My Dad reckons it had a good fireproof paint on it. But, I knew differently. It didn’t want to be destroyed.

After a few hours and many attempts, they decided to buy some lighter fluid, four cans. They soaked the cot in the lighter fluid; got pieces of wood from the neighbours, built the wood around the cot and lit it. The flames leapt up high. The fire burned strongly for six hours.

I went home at ten o’clock that night. My partner put the old cot back together and we lay Tabitha down to sleep. That night we left the landing light on. By midnight, we couldn’t breathe with the heat. So, the electric heater was turned off. At one o’clock in the morning the sweat was dripping off us, so, the heating was turned off and we all slept peacefully.

The next morning we went out and looked at the ashes from the cot. I couldn’t believe my eyes. The plastic toy balls lay on top of the pile of ash gleaming, not a dirty mark on them. My partner got the spade and buried them with the ash.

We eventually found out that my partner’s Mother had bought the cot from the Red Cross charity where she voluntarily worked. A young couple had given the cot to the charity as their daughter had died of a cot death in it.

I’ve never bought a second hand cot since then.

(Claire)   http://www.simplyclaire.co.uk

 

NEIGHBOURS

I thought Derek and Liana might ask me over to see the new baby but they never did. I wouldn’t have known which sex it was except that I heard them talking in the garden when Derek’s mother came around. It seems the baby was a girl. I never knew its name. Probably some strange pop-star thing like Mistletoe or Popsicle. People don’t give their children ordinary names any more.

I’m not complaining, you understand. Derek was a decent enough bloke most of the time. Always wished me the time of day in the street or the Post Office and stopped for a little chat. Used to let me borrow his strimmer to do the edges of the lawn. Been a bit down lately, mind you. Quiet, not as chatty as usual. But then I suppose a new baby’s a big responsibility. Takes a bit of adjusting to.

I never felt that Liana liked me very much. She never said hello when Derek and I were having a chat over the garden fence. Just her personality maybe. Shyness or something. Not everybody wants to socialise I suppose.

I noticed that the new baby cried a lot. I suppose all babies do, but there’s something not quite right when it goes on for hours on end. When the weather’s hot like this I sleep with my bedroom window open, and they did too, just across the side-alley, so I got a fair idea of everything that went on. If I lay quietly and listened I could almost hear what they were saying to one another sometimes.

It wasn’t really any of my business but I noticed that on the first two nights after she came back from hospital, the baby started to cry shortly after midnight and didn’t stop until Derek got up and tried to comfort it about an hour later. I always thought that young babies like that needed to be fed every four hours or something. Breast-fed, presumably. It seemed strange that it was Derek attending to it and not Liana. I could hear him saying things to Liana, trying to get her to wake up and feed the baby I suppose, a bit of an edge to his voice, but I couldn’t make out the actual words. It could have been this post-natal depression thing that you read about, couldn’t it?

The night before last was different. First the baby started to cry, then Liana, and I heard Derek raise his voice to her too, which I’d never heard him do before. It took a long time for the baby to stop crying that night.

It’s hard to know what you should do in a situation like that, isn’t it? Other people’s relationships, other people’s babies, other people’s lives. It’s not as if we were best buddies. Not as if he was hitting her, or they were mistreating the baby. Just a little domestic tiff, really. Everyday human misery. Best not to get involved, most people would say.

I was able to make out a few of the things that Derek said to her when he had his voice raised. It was about her expecting him to look after her bastard. That made me sit up and listen hard. Obviously Derek didn’t believe that the baby was his. Intriguing to say the least. I tried to remember if Liana had been having any male visitors while Derek was at work, or anything suspicious like that. I couldn’t think of anything but then presumably she would have hidden it from the neighbours. The chances are I wouldn’t have noticed anyway. Whatever you may think I’m not one of these old codgers who’s obsessed with watching the neighbours and listening to gossip.

Strange to think of her having an affair, or even a life of her own that I knew nothing about. Whatever this other life contained, it didn’t seem to make her very happy. Dead miserable lately. I wonder how Derek put up with her when I think back.

Of course we shouldn’t judge. People aren’t unhappy because they want to be, there are always reasons. None of my business, really.

Funny thing, I met Derek by accident yesterday morning, putting out his bin at the same time that I was taking the dog out for his walk, and he looked straight at me and opened his mouth and stood there for a moment as if he was going to say something. Oh yes, he reached out with his hand too, as if he was going to touch me… I’d forgotten about that. And then he just turned and went in again. Maybe he was embarrassed about the shouting match they’d had the night before.

And last night was when it happened. You’ll have seen it on the TV news. I suppose he just snapped, all at once. The funny thing was, I didn’t even hear the row. The night was a little bit colder and I had my window closed. They probably had theirs shut as well. It was the single gunshot that woke me up. He strangled the other two they said, and then… well, it was all on the news.

I suppose all the details will come out now, who the father of the baby was and so on. This street is going to be famous for a while.

Goes to show, doesn’t it? He seemed like such an ordinary, pleasant man. Just like the rest of us.

There wasn’t really anything I could have done, was there? I mean, the police probably wouldn’t even have come out for a married couple having a little go at one another. Hardly national news, is it? But I can’t help wondering if there was some way I could have stopped it from happening. I half blame myself, even though I know I shouldn’t.

The house will probably go up for sale now. I wonder what the new neighbours are going to be like?

(David Gardiner)  http://www.davidgardiner.net/index.html

 

 

PHEASANT’S REVOLT

“I wasn’t always like this, you know,” Old Will ruminated, nodding toward the traffic streaming in and out of Brighton.
“Just look at ‘em in there fancy cars getting nowhere fast. The number of trees that’ve been murdered down in the wood ‘cos some silly beggar couldn’t take the bend. Back in the old days it were a dusty lane winding like a lazy snake up to the Old Boat and the Pudding Basin. Only traffic was the occasional pony and trap carrying nobs to the Big House.”
Will loved telling tales about Coldean, the Old Boat where farmers would shelter from storms sweeping in off the Downs or Pudding Basin Wood where no sane man would wander at night.
Whenever I had a natter with him I wondered if he’d always been old because he never mentioned his younger days.
His life seemed to begin the day he was put in charge of the Stanmer shoot.
Stanmer lies on the northern edge of the Brighton conurbation split by the A23 with the Universities of Brighton and Sussex on the perimeter.
The House squats like an intruder in a perfect landscape of lush pasture that dwindles gently into the Great Wood where Sarsen Stones, relics of the Ice Age, lurk in the undergrowth.
It was a steaming August afternoon and I had a thirst to slake .The old man was perched at the trestle table outside The Hikers Rest, swirling the remnants of his beer, lost in thought. A bunch of bright red roses wrapped in cellophane lay at his side, wilting in the oppressive heat.
The sad look on his weather beaten face stopped me asking if the flowers were for me and I went into the welcome coolness of the bar to order two more pints. I sat opposite him and waited.
“ I’m sorry, lad. Have you been here long?”
I didn’t answer and wondered if I should leave him to wherever his memories had taken him.
“Will.Will”I said gently touching his arm.” These roses look as if they could do with a bit of water.”
He stared at them for a moment as if wondering how they got there and a faint smile played on his lips.
“Come on I want to show you something.”
We walked deep into Coldean wood before emerging from the coolness of the sun dappled trees, into the stifling heat which hung over the park like an oppressive cloak.
“This is where I met her, you know.” Will said oblivious to the rivulets of sweat trickling from his brow.
“Mary?” I asked
He gazed at the flowers, feeling the softness of the petals between his fingers.
“August 12th 1946..”he began as we walked along the edge of the wood toward the tiny Norman church that lies just to the east of the house.
“…. I’d just been demobbed and living with my parents in Falmer, next to where the Universities are now.
My old dad told me they were looking for beaters at the Hall for the annual pheasant shoot and I went over the road to see what was what. I’d just spent four years fighting all over Europe but knocking on that door to ask for a job was more terrifying than anything Mr.Hitler could throw at me.” Will chuckled as warm memories lapped gently over him
“… I tapped on the huge wooden door and that was when I first saw her….”
His voice faltered a little before regaining composure
“….I can still see her ..tall, dark hair cascading in curls down to her lovely waist and a smile that would have melted the coldest of hearts. I felt as if someone had punched me in the stomach and the strength drained from my body. Anyways she must have liked the look of me because she let me in to see the head gamekeeper who gave me a job.”
We had reached the church and sat on a bench by an ancient wall watching families playing cricket, flying kites and enjoying the tropical heat.
“ ..as the days went on I tried to get to know Mary better but she seemed distant and I began to fret that I’d never get to know her. I must have made an impression on someone because I was put in charge of the beaters, going round the shoot to get the birds to fly. That’s when I found out the reason for Mary’s coolness toward me.
It was a day like to day, baking hot and I was in the shade of the house watching the pheasants flying overhead and hearing the crack of rifles as the toffs enjoyed their sport. I noticed the door of the church was open ready for the service of thanksgiving that always followed a successful shoot. A bird peeled away from the flock and zoomed into the safety of the church. I heard the side door of the house open and saw Mary scurry over to the church. Moments later she came out, looked around to see if any was watching and ran up to the Great Wood at the back of the house. When she returned she had a smile on her beautiful face and she looked at me with her deep brown eyes “” Well that’s one they won’t kill”” She told me that in the five years she had worked at the house this was the part she hated most seeing these lovely birds being murdered in the name of sport.
Mary had been watching from a first floor window, seen the bird dive into the church and rescued it before releasing it into the woods.
“Here Will Reilly you dare tell the gamekeeper what you saw and I’ll knock your block off”
“ I promise not to if you’ll marry me”
“Don’t be daft. I hardly know you.” She replied with a twinkle in her eye.
“Six months later we were wed in this church .. and that’s where she rests. Forty three years we had together “his voice heavy with emotion as he rose stiffly from the bench .”Just a year today she passed on”
I watched him as he placed the flowers and turned to leave him with his memories.
When I reached the woods I turned and he was still kneeling at the graveside, head bowed.
I heard a squawk of protest from a creature I’d disturbed and a bird shot out of the undergrowth. I recognised it as a golden pheasant and saw it curl gracefully toward Will.
The old man had seen it too and smiled as it swooped in salute.

(thehaven)  http://www.freewebs.com/shadowisland/

 

 

THE BONSAI LIBERATION FUND

‘... Just have to increase the strength of the painkillers, ’ she mimicked the specialist, as she slowly and with difficulty pushed her rollator towards the hospital’s main entrance.
‘... Nothing else I can do for you now, ’ she imitated his pedantic voice. ‘You should have come to see me much earlier.... I did, you ass! Ten years ago and you told me I shouldn’t be so coquettish! After all, a woman my age.... Fèh!‘ 
Her husband was waiting for her in the car. He helped her into her seat and folded the rollator.
‘And?’
He looked at her with eyes that knew how she felt.
‘The usual story. Stronger painkillers, calcium to keep my bones from really falling apart, must be careful not to brake any more of them. Ah, you know, same damn thing he always says.’
‘Yeah, ’said her man. ‘That’s why I’d better not come along, when you see him. I’d beat the osteo-arthritis out of him.’
She smiled and rubbed her hand. One finger was swollen and red and the joint was beginning to grow completely the wrong way. Ugly! Ugly! Ugly! Like a bonsai tree....
‘I’m beginning to feel like a bonsai tree,’ she said.
He laughed.
‘You’re beginning to look like one, my wife,’ he joked and together they grinned.
That’s how it all started.

Bonsai ... bonsai ... the word and the picture that went with it didn’t leave her and that’s how she decided to start a fund. A fund for the liberation of bonsai trees: the Bonsai Liberation Fund.
The BLF had two members and a dog and the three of them took care of everything.
Her man bordered off a piece of their garden, turned the ground, put in some good earth and planted a hedge of bamboo. Grows fast, bamboo does, and by the time she’d bought her first bonsai trees, the stalks were high enough to keep anybody from seeing what was behind the hedge. None of their business and we all know how it is with Liberation Funds ... before even reading the word Bonsai, people would start screaming!
She bought first one, then two, then fifteen little bonsai trees that - just for laughs -all were between sixty and seventy years old. She also was between sixty and seventy, that’s why.
He dug out two small ponds and build a slender, rounded, narrow, Japanese-style bridge, to go from one to the other.
She bought a few Japanese azaleas and asked her grandson to go to the river and bring her loads and loads of those beautifully rounded, grey and white, water-polished stones.
He spread white gravel on the path that curved around and through the garden and decorated it with a symmetric pattern. The old wooden rake he used actually was for hay, but the effect was stunning.
She sat on one of the many elegant benches he'd made for her and told him where to put the statue of Buddha, where to put the rain bells and the stone Chinese lanterns; she indicated where to plant the azaleas and where to put the hand painted sign that said: Bonsai Liberation Fund in Japanese writing. She would have preferred Chinese letters, but wasn’t totally sure of herself there, so she opted for the Japanese she was totally familiar with.

‘You know something, ’she said, after looking around and approving with a fat cat smile. ‘You know something? I like feeling like a bonsai and when I’m sitting here, I don’t even mind that I look like one.’
‘ Yo, Mama-San, ’ he laughed. ‘Then, it’s time to give those trees of yours a chance to breath, eh? ’
Before anybody could say sayonara, all the little bonsais had been put into the ground and after adding a little this, arranging a little that, dusting Buddha’s head and putting down a made-in-China house for the toad, he too sat on the little bench and together they overlooked their Japanese garden.
The leaves of the bamboos whispered in the wind and the water on the little fountain wall murmured sweet words to attract the birds. Come ... come ... have a bath, have some seeds, a piece of apple....
The dog slept. He couldn’t care less about being a member of that Fund and even less about their garden ... he wasn’t even allowed to pee on those little trees! So, how the heck was he going to mark this as his territory? Humans! Bah!

The year has gone by quickly and spring’s warm sunshine allows her to sit on one of the little benches and observe the state of her Fund, or rather the state of those that benefit from it.
Ever seen a sixty-five-year-old bonsai oak spread its wings to the sky? Ever watched the splendour of an acacia bonsai, when the branches are allowed to branch out? Ever seen what a bonsai tree does, when you don’t prune its branches and tie them down in any darn twisted manner you wish, or clip the left side of its roots?
You know what Liberated Bonsai Trees look like?
They look happy, they look healthy, they look contented and even though their trunks will always remain crooked and malformed, their leaves rustle in the wind and sing along with the murmuring water of the waterfall.
They’re crooked, but they’re free. Like the woman sitting on that little bench. Yes, that one, with the funny hands and funny feet. The one who can hardly walk, but always has a smile on her face. That’s what they look like.

(Deborah Rey)

 

SAINT VALENTINE'S DAY

I grew up in the St. Bartholomew Orphanage of Stuttgart. Since February 13th, 1945 I have been known as Josef Arbeit. Tomorrow I must undergo a very serious brain operation which, may or may not be successful. Even if it is, it may seriously compromise my ability to remember the childhood of my life. To set the record straight I cannot leave this world under my adopted name, therefore, to whom it may concern, I want to leave this statement.

<><><>

Every Saturday afternoon Mama and me would go to the cemetery. She would take me to visit the grave of my brother.

His name was Max Keppler, and so was mine.

Papa would not go with us. Papa never had time to go. He was a cabinet maker and I can't remember a day when Papa did not have work to do. He even worked on Sundays. He would go to Mass in his Sunday clothes with Mama and me, then when we came home, he would change into his overalls and go back to work. It is not a physically hard job to be a cabinet maker, but the hours are long -- and the pay is small.

Papa finally told me that the grave in the cemetery was not mine but my brother's. If he had lived, Max Keppler would have been my older brother but he died in his second year. "He looked much like you," Papa said, "and maybe that's why Mama named you Max. Ach! Mama -- she has never been the same since he died," Papa said. "Something inside ... I don't know." He would look at me and shrug his broad shoulders. "I thought you would take his place."

Mama always insisted I go with her to the graveyard. She would dress me in my best Sunday clothes and make a bouquet for me to carry. When we got there she would take the bouquet from me and arrange it in a holder and set it in the ground near the headstone. Then she would open her purse and take out a glass she had brought with her. She would give it to me and tell me to get water from the fountain near the gate house. After that there would be nothing more for me to do, she would kneel and pray for a long time while I stood alone and read the names of the dead on the other head stones. It was as if I was not there. When her prayers were said she would stand and walk away without taking my hand or telling me to come with her. If I wasn't paying attention she would leave and go home without me -- leaving me there, with the dead.

Until Papa explained it to me, I was sure I was buried in the Dresden Cemetery. Why would Mama walk away and leave me there? Why would she not let me pray with her? The stone said, "Max," did it not? Children grow used to things as they are and I got used to going to the cemetery with Mama. When Papa told me the name on the stone was my brother's I didn't feel so bad.

Many times I wished I could stay home on Saturday and watch Papa working with his tools and sometimes building things of my own with his left over pieces. It was fun being with Papa, much more fun than going to the cemetery with Mama. Papa would sing as he worked; he would talk to himself, muttering measurements. He would make little sketches on the wall of his shop -- I would wait for his face to light up when he solved a problem in his head. He would say, "Ah Ja, Ja! That's the way it will go!" He would smile at me then spit in the corner for good luck.

Mama walked through our house as though she were waiting for something to happen. She cooked and cleaned, but it often seemed as though she were doing these things the way a servant would do them. She saw to it that I had clean things to wear; that I ate what was put in front of me. She even cared for me when I was sick, but she always looked past me, as though I were farther off. She never smiled and she took no interest in the news of the war.

Papa talked about the war day and night. He kept a map on the kitchen wall of the three fronts and he told me of the terrible things that would happen if Germany lost. He was a veteran of the first war and wore part of his uniform when he went out at night as an air raid warden. He told me many times not to worry, that the war would never come to Dresden. He said they would never bomb a cabinet maker.

But there were many soldiers in our town, Papa and I stood on the street and watched them march eastward into Russia. How young and straight they were; We cheered and the soldiers waved back at us and at the university girls who were always ready to cheer them on. It was sad to watch them come back again when the war turned bad. Papa could not bear to see them in defeat -- they looked like old men -- unshaven -- older even than Papa. They wore filthy bandages, their uniforms were dirty and torn, some of them had no rifles. They even begged at our door for food.

Papa seemed to be sad all the time. He sat in the parlor instead of working in his shop; he would read his afternoon paper and then move his map pins on the kitchen wall. Mama was the same as always. She would take her ration stamps to the food store each morning, stop at the grave of my brother and then come home. I would spend the day in school and when I came home Papa and Mama would still be sitting in the living room.

"What's new out there?" Papa would ask me.

"There are soldiers in the park, Papa."

"Soon," Papa said, "soon there will be no one between us and the Russians." He looked at Mama and spoke more to himself than her. "I think we should prepare ourselves, Mama. We are in the war now."

Mama sat rocking and looking out the window. She rarely spoke any more.

"Our history teacher told us there would be bombing, Papa."

"What does he know?" Papa grumbled. "The war will soon be over ... there will be a settlement, you'll see." He stood up and stepped between Mama and the living room window. "It is Saint Valentine's Day tomorrow ... remember Mama?" When Mama found her view of the street obstructed she realized it was time to begin supper. She got up and walked to the kitchen leaving Papa standing by the living room window. He stared out at the empty street and shook his head, "Ach, that Mama," he murmured, "it is like we were not here, Max."

It was during the middle of supper that the sirens began. Papa stood and went to the closet for his coat with the yellow stripes, then he put on his helmet and returned to the table. "Come on you two," he shouted. "Have you forgotten what you must do? The shelter is in the cathedral basement." He looked at Mama nervously, then turned to me. "Max, you must watch over your mother. You know where the cathedral is -- take her there, mach schnell! I will come for you when it is over." He got a coat for Mama and the three of us left together.

We said goodbye to Papa in the street and Mama and me started for the cathedral. I turned and waved to Papa at the corner just as the first bright bombs fell on the outskirts of the town. I never saw Papa again.

I found a place on the end of a bench for Mama to sit. Next to her was an old blind man who kept shouting, "What's happening? Please, will somebody tell me what's happening." Nobody knew, Dresden was not a target, Papa said -- it was probably a mistake.

The bombs kept falling. They fell in great bunches, like coal being unloaded into a chute. They would stop for a moment, only to fall again. Sometimes closer, sometimes farther off. I wondered what it must be like to be outside and I asked a man who wore a warden's uniform like Papa if it would be over soon. He shook his head as though he didn't understand me.

I think I grew up on that Valentine's Eve. I was a little boy until the first bombs fell, but the raw power of the war, the strength of it was far beyond the capacity of man or woman to endure. It was a force a simple human could not stand up to, let alone a little boy.

There was no clearing signal. The men in the basement decided for themselves that the bombing was over. They came to Mama and me and told us we could stay there in the basement of the cathedral if we wanted because there was nothing outside but fire and smoke and a howling wind. But Mama wanted to go home. "The city is gone," one man cried, "Dresden is burning!" ... and so it was. Mama and me picked our way through the littered street to find our house had burned to the ground. It was like being in a strange town. She turned to me and took my hand.

We found our way to the cemetery. The smoke was thick and from time to time there would be the crash of a falling wall. Dust and ashes would fill the air and it seemed to me the fire would last forever. Even the trees had burned, they stood like skeletons at the curbside clutching at the sky. There was a poisonous smell of gasoline everywhere.

The stones were toppled in the cemetery. Even the old elaborate monuments and statues had fallen over and it was impossible for Mama to find the grave of my brother. She kneeled to pray where she thought he was, leaving me standing there wondering what happened to Papa. Finally men came and told us to leave the cemetery and go back to a shelter; they looked at mama carefully and then at me. Mama was on her knees rocking, her eyes were shut tight but above the noise of the fire and wind her shrill voice could be heard praying. The men asked me who we were and where we lived. I told them our names and where we lived and asked them if they had seen my father.

Mama died that afternoon on a bench in the basement of the First Lutheran Church of Dresden. A man I did not know asked me if the woman on the bench was my mother. "I saw you come in together," he said. "Your mother is dead. Do you realize what I say to you, young man? I said your mother is dead."

There were thirty three children who sat alone in the basement of the First Lutheran Church on that St. Valentine's Day. We did not know we were orphans and were too young to cry.

(Harry Buschman)

 

SIEVE

all starts with the word sieve


the flour into the bowl, beat in the eggs and add the nutmeg, orange zest and brandy. My grandchildren always badger me to make it for Christmas, but I don’t really feel up to it this year. Not after Ed’s stroke. He won’t be out of hospital until February, and with Geoff and Anna only coming for Boxing Day, the house will feel like a lonely place

and chips?’ Ed asks, squinting into the sunshine. He’s keen to finish the day out with a treat - he spoils Geoff, casting me in the role of grown-up, but I’m not biting today.
‘Sounds nice,’ I say, and then point out to sea, where Geoff is paddling. A large black wave is rolling up to him. He hasn’t seen it.
Ed throws his arms over his head as a warning. Geoff waves back with both hands, facing us, keeping his elbows stiff. Ed gets to his feet and signals again, larger movements.
The wave comes and swallows Geoff. Ed runs to the sea, arms pumping. I’ve never seen him move so fast before. He puts his hands in the sea and scoops up our son, who flails like a crab in his grasp. Ed tucks him under his arm and carries him up the beach. I find the camera and take a Polaroid. Then I turn it over and write on the back. “Geoff and Ed at the seaside.” Underneath, still smiling, I write the date and time

to face the fact that I can’t get along with her, even though she’s carrying my first grandchild. She thinks the baby wins points; I can tell by the way she sticks out her stomach and smiles. Anna thinks she’s got my son now. She sits on my sofa, drinking my coffee, and I really want to tell her, you don’t have him until you have a ring on your finger; don’t you know I could look after the baby, and you don’t have to be here at all. Nobody ever asked me whether I wanted her in my life

of me work out why my feet are so cold. And then I remember. Ed is not here. I usually curve myself around him into the shape of compatibility, and follow each sleepy movement in the choreographed pattern we have been following for years. I find myself stretching out and pulling back from the new space next to me, lying like a starfish on a beach, limbs spread and flapping. I miss him, but I also like knowing the bed is mine for tonight. My bed is, just this once, a selfish place. I imagine a different life in the darkness, knowing I’ll be changed back to wife and mother by the light of day

at the beach once a month and I get to sink my toes down into the wet sand. I watch the path of one wave. The swell is taller than a man standing upright, and it broods, darker than the sea it has risen from. The crash as it slaps down with an unforgiving hand is loud; I feel it reverberate around me. I put my feet in the water and it sucks at me, trying to take me into it, trying to beat away the wrinkles and smooth my body back to the soft pink curves I see inside shells, back to when I was a young

woman at the door. I don’t recognise her, or the room I’m in. It’s not furnished with anything of good quality. It’s not familiar to me. It must be a hotel. Ed must be in the bathroom. That’s right - we’re in Eastbourne. It’s our honeymoon. A long weekend away. Ed is in the bathroom.
She is large, wearing a navy blue cardigan that reaches down to the stretched knees of her leggings, and she is holding a paper cup in one hand and two white pills in the other. She tells me to take them. She tells me to take them, or she will phone my son.
‘I don’t have a son,’ I say. ‘You’ve got the wrong room.’
The woman gives me a stare. I call for Ed but he doesn’t reply. I feel weak, shrivelled. I hold out my hand - it is blue and greasy, veins like liquorice laces, hard, ridged nails. The woman puts the pills into it and I swallow them down along with the water, realising that this is a dream. Only a dream. Only a dream could turn me old

and stale so I throw it out and open a fresh packet. I hardly ever make proper coffee now, but Geoff and Anna have just pulled up outside and I know they prefer this to instant. They let themselves in with their key and stroll into the kitchen as if they already own it.
‘Where are the kids?’ Geoff asks. I don’t even get a good morning, or a thank you for babysitting. I tell him to mind his manners in front of his mother.
Anna goes upstairs, calling out for my grandchildren, and then her voice rises up a notch as she shouts for Geoff. He runs upstairs at her command. He is not like his father - he has been house-trained.
Anna comes back downstairs. She is pulling her serious face. ‘You left them alone in the bath,’ she says. ‘The water was stone cold. How could you? Don’t you know how dangerous that is?’
‘I raised Geoff, didn’t I?’ I snap. ‘I just had to do something in the kitchen. It was silly. It won’t happen again.’
‘No,’ she says, ‘It won’t.’
Geoffrey comes downstairs with the two children, still wet, wrapped up in towels. He has tucked one under each arm. It reminds me of something - I can’t say what. They all get back in their car and leave.
I forgot to put the whistle on the kettle and it has boiled dry. I don’t know what’s wrong with me nowadays; I’ve got a head like a

 

(Aliya Whiteley) http://www.aliyawhiteley.com/

 

FLOATING

I first encountered Lenny at the bottom of “Dead man's hill”. I am not sure where that name came from, but I think it was a route taken to bury folks who were killed on the nearby dam construction, many years ago.

It was a glorious day and I was leisurely strolling along, taking in the beautiful scenery and listening to the birds, when I became aware of someone walking down a track towards the one I was on. He seemed to have a strange gait, as if limping. Where the tracks joined we met.

Lenny introduced himself to me; it was clear from the start that Lenny had a problem. He was a very friendly guy of about forty. He would probably be described in a polite way as being slow, not physically you understand, but clearly his way of walking was connected to his problem.
He spoke very clearly and slowly and tried to avoid any long words, which if attempted usually came out wrong. Lenny was heading for Loftgill; he apparently lived there. By coincidence that was where I was spending the next few nights, using it as a starting off point for my walks on the moors.

It was time for lunch, I asked Lenny if he wanted to stop and eat with me and he seemed happy to do so. We picked a nice spot overlooking the dam at the end of the large reservoir, and sat down together on the heather. I shared my flask of soup with Lenny, and he insisted I shared his chicken sandwiches.

“You are nice, not many people talk to me in the village, they think I am silly because I do not talk like them, I have to think before I talk you see. I go to our church, they let me give the books out before the service; but not many people talk to me there either. They look at me because I walk funny, but I bet I can walk further than them.”

“I bet you can Lenny, you are obviously a very fit man. I also go to church and not many people talk to me either, so don’t let that worry you” I replied.
“Have you lived in Loftgill long Lenny, do you have family there?”
“I have lived there all my life I think, but I do not remember things very well. I live on my own, but some people help me. I have a friend, she is Samantha, she is helping with my book.”

“Are you writing a book then Lenny?” I enquired.
“No I cannot write much; I can write my name though, Sam is helping me to read a book.”
“Oh that is excellent Lenny, reading is super, you are lucky having someone to help you, what is the book about?”
“It is about floating”
“Floating oh! that sounds interesting,” I replied trying to imagine what floating was.

Lenny helped me to finish my flask of coffee, and we set off over the moors to Loftgill.

After a nice bath and a relaxing half-hour with the morning paper, I made my way down to the bar for a little drink before my evening meal.
Lenny had gone off to his home, and I had arranged to meet him in the morning to go on one of his favourite walks. I found that I got on very well with Lenny, and his slight problem, was certainly no problem to me.

Whilst I was at the bar I heard someone say “Hello Samantha” I turned around to see a lady walking out of the hotel past a couple who were sat beside the door. Could this be Lenny’s Samantha, I thought.
“Excuse me for butting in, but I just heard that lady call you Samantha, are you by any chance the Samantha that knows Lenny?”
“I certainly am the same, ” said the lady smiling.
“I hope you don’t think me rude, but could I speak to you for a few minutes?” I explained briefly about meeting Lenny on the moor.
“No problem sit down and join us, this is my husband Alec.” I introduced myself, and called the waiter over to order some drinks before I sat down.

“Lenny said you were helping him with a book about floating” Samantha laughed, “Oh he has told you about that has he, and you would like to know where I fit in?”
"Well I am just curious,” I said.
“Okay" let me explain. "About six months ago Lenny came into the Library where I work, well actually I am the only one who works there” she grinned. “ He went to the children’s section where he always picks his books from, he doesn’t read very well and he likes lots of pictures. What do you think he picked, the only book in the children’s section that had been put back in the wrong place, a book about levitation.”

“Levitation—Floating oh I am beginning to see” I said.
“Yes,” said Samantha smiling again “Lenny can’t say levitation, but he saw some pictures in the book, and said the people were floating. There was no way I could get the book from him, so I let him take it out. Unfortunately it didn’t end there. As expected Lenny couldn’t read the book, and returned to ask if I would help. Well as you can imagine we are not too busy here, so I decided to help him read it. I used the library’s computer, and activated the character recognition programme. I then altered all the words Lenny couldn’t read to easy words, and scanned it out for him. It took me about three weeks to do it all, but Lenny can read it now. He tells everyone about his “floating” book.”

“ What exactly is wrong with Lenny then?” I enquired.
“We’re not sure,” said Alec. “I have known him the longest. I think it was some congenital problem to start with, then some family problem. He seems to have been here forever. I am the church organist, and he often comes to sit with me when I am practising, he loves music.”

Shortly afterwards I left Samantha and Alec, and went through to the dining room.

That night when in bed, my mind went back many years to my days in the Royal Air Force. There was this guy called Corporal Walls, he served behind the bar in our mess. Walls was a big guy, probably about 15 stone. I don’t know how it started, but someone told us it was possible to lift a large person with two fingers. Of course everyone scoffed, but the smiles were quickly wiped of our faces. I thought it was a trick until it came to my turn to try it.

Corporal Walls was seated in his chair, one of my friends stood at one side of the chair, I stood at the other. He was instructed to put both hands on his head, I then put my hands on his, then my friend put his hands on mine. Walls was then told to pull down as hard as he could, and we had to push down as hard as we could.
This lasted about thirty seconds. We had previously been told that when we were given the signal, we should remove our hands. The corporal would place his hands on his shoulders, with his elbows down, we should then place our index fingers under his elbows, one at each side of course. We were then told to lift---
Walls came out of the chair without any effort, we held him there for at least ten seconds then slowly lowered him, with just two fingers down into his chair.
Nobody believed it until they tried it, then they all believed it ----

I awoke nice and early the next morning looking forward to my day on the moors with Lenny

Lenny was waiting for me outside my hotel at nine on the dot.
He wanted to take me to the old lead mines. I had been there previously some years before, but I didn’t tell him this. I knew though that we were in for a difficult hike, the lead mines where at least four miles of hard climbing.

I asked Lenny what he did the previous evening, he replied that he had been floating.
“Do you mean that you were reading your book? Samantha told me how she had helped you, I met her last night at my hotel.”
“Yes I was reading my book, Sam did it so I could read the words, Sam is nice, I can float now.”
“What do you mean you can float now Lenny?” I enquired.
“Well ever since Sam made the words so that I could read them I have been trying to float, it looks so nice, I did it last night. What are you having for lunch?”
Well whatever Lenny did last night, it certainly hadn’t affected him much, and lunch seemed more important now than anything else did.

We eventually arrived at the lead mines and sat down to have a drink and take in the glorious views.

“Lenny, when you said you were floating last night, what did you do?”
“Oh that, do you want me to show you?”
“Well yes, I would be interested to see”
“Okay then, I will try “
Lenny sat down on one of the slabs left over from the mines, crossed his legs and arms, and closed his eyes.
After about five minutes nothing had happened, and I felt sure he was in some kind of dream imagining himself to be floating.
Then the most extraordinary thing happened, he started to lift from the ground, only very slightly at first. I thought he was lifting himself, but after a few seconds there was light beneath him. He rose to about eight inches from the ground, then opened his eyes. Then he smiled and slowly returned to the ground.
“ I told you I could float” I was speechless and open mouthed, what I had just witnessed was impossible; but I had just seen it!

Two days later Lenny died in his sleep. He had a heart condition that the doctors knew about. It seems that he had done well to last so long.

I dare not say anything to anyone about what I had seen, even Samantha and Alec.

The funeral was organised a couple of days later so I was able to go.
I asked Alec if any particular music had been picked, to play in church. Apparently it hadn’t, it had been left to him. “Would you play something for me Alec, I think Lenny would have liked it?”
“Yes no problem” Alec replied, “as long as I know it."
“It’s that pop song of a few years ago, “He’s ain’t heavy—he’s my brother.”
“Oh that no problem, I love it. I have the music at home on my keyboard, I will be delighted to play it.”

Lenny had told me he hadn’t many friends, but the church was packed to the door on the day of the funeral. As the coffin was carried in Alec started to play “He ain’t heavy” like I have never heard it before, I swear there wasn’t a dry eye in the church.

Everyone in the village had contributed to get Lenny a lovely spot in the churchyard looking out over the moors.

That was one walking holiday that ended on a sad note, I did finish the holiday but could not get Lenny, and what I had seen out of my mind.

Addendum.

After my holiday I went into our university library, and did some reading on levitation.
There have been cases of levitation documented, but these have all been associated with spiritualism, and have only been documented in religious references.
However I did read an article by an eminent scientist who stated—

“ Levitation could never be performed by anyone studying it. It could never be performed by anyone doubting it. An academic could never perform it. There is no doubt in my mind however that given the right circumstances and instruction that levitation could be performed by a child."

Some months later I returned to Loftgill and told Samantha and Alec the full story,
As expected it soon got round the village. Lenny now has celebrity status.

So if you are ever in North Yorkshire why not call in at Loftgill churchyard and pay your respects to Lenny. If you have trouble finding Loftgill just ask for the “floating village” that’s how it is now affectionately called--and everyone knows it.

(Gerald Findlay) http://prosit.mysite.wanadoo-members.co.uk/

 

THE RAINBOW MAN

Children have many worlds through which they are free to roam. It is an ability that rapidly fades with age in most of us, for it is feared and discouraged by the adult world. Yet occasionally if it is properly nurtured and exercised, this faculty can survive in a person for as long as life itself.

My childhood was spent in a little market town named Ballyrowan on the border between Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic. It was also a smuggling town and a recruitment and training centre for the IRA, but none of that mattered to me. Ballyrowan was simply my world, the only place of which I had any direct knowledge. It had a river where you could swim in the summer and woods where you could play chasing games and cowboys and Indians, a graveyard where you could play ghosts and vampires in the winter evenings and lots of derelict and abandoned farmhouses on the outskirts where you could play king of the castle or knights and dragons or "house" if you were a girl. There were a few adults around, including my father and mother, but they didn't count for very much and we only interacted with them when we needed something or when they had demands to make of us, such as going to school or going to bed or looking after little brothers. They weren't of any real significance in our lives. All, that is, except one, the old man we called the Rainbow Man.

It was no great mystery how he got that name, because he was to all outward appearances a walking rainbow. He had an obsessive love of brightly coloured pieces of cloth, the brighter the better, and gaudy costume jewellery of all kinds, and knowing this people would give him their unwanted garishly coloured curtains or chair covers or scraps of fabric, or the play-jewellery that their children had outgrown; partly out of kindness and partly out of curiosity to see what use the Rainbow Man would find for them. For the Rainbow Man was an artist, and his canvas was himself. He would find ways to wrap gaily coloured pieces of old fabric around his head to simulate a Maharajah's turban, and ways to turn discarded beach-towels and chair coverings into elegant kilts and togas and flowing caftans. Nothing was wasted. A thin left-over strip of some lurid purple artificial fibre would find a role as a belt or a scarf or a headband or an accessory worn around the ankle or the wrist. Every day the Rainbow Man would wander the streets and surrounding lanes of Ballyrowan wearing a new ensemble, each one more dazzling and inventive than the last.

Families driving through the town would alert their children in advance to look out for him, and if they were lucky enough to spot him the youngest child would be handed a threepenny bit or a sixpence to give to him. Offerings of this kind he always accepted with a polite "God bless you", and nobody saw any harm in it, the notion of slightly deranged adult males posing a threat to children having yet to enter the public consciousness.

The Rainbow Man was a local tourist attraction, like the monument to William Allingham in the town square or the carving of the Fiddler of Dooney on the Sligo Road.

As children we were able to get to know the Rainbow Man a lot better than the adults, and to listen in to the complex one-sided conversations that he carried on with his ever-present invisible companions.

"Oh, youse won't be laughing tomorrow, when they crown me king," he would tell them, or "Only one of youse is coming with me when I go to Mars" or "I know youse have got my son's head in a bucket, but I don't care, what did that boy ever do for me?" and so on. The mere contingencies of reality were never allowed to impinge on the conversations between the Rainbow Man and his voices.

As we followed him around we joined in these conversations with enthusiasm, either inventing our own unseen respondents or attempting to contribute something to the Rainbow Man's dialogues. Occasionally he would acknowledge our presence also, and he was never lacking in courtesy even to the youngest of us, but usually he was too preoccupied with some more ethereal exchange of his own to pay us very much heed.

With the passage of time and under the influence of his fine example we developed our own techniques of communication with the unseen world, and tried to create voices with particular interests and attributes and consistent personalities. The people I spoke to included St. Francis of Assisi whose life we had been learning about at school, a robot space traveller from a remote galaxy, and a beautiful fairy princess who could sprinkle me with star dust that enabled me to fly like Peter Pan and Wendy.

The fashion for children to carry on conversations with their invisible companions spread rapidly through the nine and ten year old age group in Ballyrowan.

Fathers and particularly mothers started to become alarmed and the phenomenon became talked about in the local Women's Institute and obscure sub-committees of the Roman Catholic Church. Inevitably, the Rainbow Man became ostracised, no longer to be accepted or encouraged by respectable society in Ballyrowan. Unwittingly, our mimicry of the Rainbow Man's interesting affliction had sewn the seeds of his destruction. Madness in a (literally) colourful vagrant might be viewed as quaint, but if it was of a contagious kind that infected the children of the town then it had to be viewed as an evil.

Alarmed mothers forbade their offspring to talk to the Rainbow Man, or to themselves, or to have anything more to do with him. The flow of threepenny bits and sixpences diminished to a trickle, as did the gifts of cloth and baubles from previously well-meaning members of the adult community. Of course there were children who still managed to smuggle scraps of food to the Rainbow Man, rather in the manner of Red Cross parcels for political prisoners, and sometimes they even managed to get him what he seemed to hunger for even more, his beloved scraps of brightly coloured cloth. But with the odds so heavily stacked against them those responsible for these kindly acts of insubordination were quickly brought into line.

The Rainbow Man was seen less and less in the streets of Ballyrowan. When he was he seemed subdued and less colourful, his retinue of children missing, his dazzling attire slowly fading to pastel due to non-renewal and the slow accumulation of dust and grime. He spoke more quietly to his voices and walked more slowly, unable to comprehend the reasons for the sudden change in his fortunes.

Then came the inevitable. Late one Saturday night, down a narrow alley by the side of the local cinema, two old men who had gone down to have a pee discovered the body of the Rainbow Man, small and crumpled and faded to a neutral grey. From the loudspeakers behind the screen powerful and distinct voices filled the night air, but the Rainbow Man was no longer able to hear them.

But those who have never lived are in the end the hardest of all to kill, and in the minds of that uniquely privileged generation of Ballyrowan's children at least some of the voices lived on and grew stronger with every passing year, until they moved out to populate the pages of a hundred novels and a thousand stories, and thus became immortal.

(David Gardiner) http://www.davidgardiner.net/index.html - The Rainbow Man is the title story from The Rainbow Man: And Other Stories available to purchase from Amazon by clicking on the book cover: 

 

MERRY CHRISTMAS ANITA SANCHEZ

I giggled. Lance ‘Sir Lancelot’ Tansy always made me giggle. And blush. He had the foulest mouth. And witty, too; he could quip a cutting remark in the nicest possible way. You’d never think that, in a matter of months, he could be dead.

‘And she had the biggest, fattest bum,’ he’d said once. ‘Never mind parking a bicycle wheel in it – you could park a bus. Sideways!’

Well, that’s not exactly what he said, but you wouldn’t want me to repeat it. Honest. Of course I giggled. And blushed. Wouldn’t you? And I told him to stop it. I did. Really, truly. ‘Stop it, Sir Lancelot,’ I giggled. And blushed.

He liked being called Sir Lancelot. Made him feel special. And he called me Nita, though I hated it. But I let him. Sir Lancelot could have called me anything and I’d let him.

‘You’re a bad influence,’ I told him. ‘You shouldn’t go corrupting me, should you? What would the others think, eh?’

And he wheezed, and he stopped breathing, but he started again a second later. And I was holding my own breath while his wasn’t working. Sympathy, I think. Something like that.

The Aides for AIDS kid had gone home at eight. Sir Lancelot didn’t take to him anyway. ‘Spotty teenager,’ he’d say, though his words were always peppered with expletives.

‘He’s only trying to help, Sir Lancelot,’ I told him.

‘He was agitated,’ Sir Lancelot said. ‘Didn’t you see him? Couldn’t wait to get his spotty arse outta here.’

I slapped Sir Lancelot’s wrist. ‘Give him a break,’ I said. ‘It’s Christmas night.’

‘Should’ve been a Jew,’ Sir Lancelot said. ‘Jews don’t celebrate Christmas.’ His eyes fluttered, taking in the ceiling. He shifted his weight. ‘Scratch my back, Nita.’ He got up on his elbow.

I obliged. ‘Here?’ I scratched and realised that the paint on my nails needed reapplying. Except I wasn’t supposed to wear any in here.

‘Lower,’ Sir Lancelot said. I went lower. ‘No, lower. Down a bit. Bit more.’

I pulled my hand away. ‘Cheeky devil!’ I giggled. And blushed.

Sir Lancelot cackled. He never laughed – he cackled. There was always a rattle of phlegm, too. ‘Sound like a cowbell,’ he told me once. He had been bad that day.

There were always bad days. Everyone in here had them. Few and far between, for some. Even the nurses had their bad days. Well, what would you expect?

I checked the time on my breast pocket-watch.

‘Going somewhere?’ Sir Lancelot asked. ‘Not in that dress, you’re not. The wind’ll rush up and take your breath away. Put some proper clothes on! It’ll be the death of you!’

I giggled. ‘You’ll be the death of me.’ And I blushed.

Sir Lancelot lapsed into momentary silence and licked desiccated lips with a desiccated tongue. ‘Where’s Tony?’ he asked.

‘You know where Tony is,’ I said. Tony had been Sir Lancelot’s roommate here. He’d only been here three months. And the bed in the opposite corner of the room was stripped and naked. Had been all week.

Sir Lancelot gave a sort of whisper-sigh. ‘Happens to the lot of us,’ he said. Not the best of us; just the lot of us.

I checked my watch again.

‘Going somewhere?’ he said again.

‘Finish my rounds,’ I told him. ‘Can’t keep me here all night, you know.’

‘Why can’t I be selfish, Nita?’ he asked. ‘Why can’t I be selfish for once?’

‘The neighbours’ll talk,’ I offered.

‘The neighbours,’ Sir Lancelot said, thumbing the wall behind his head, ‘don’t give a toss. Him next door’ll be gone before I will.’ And I thought he was right; I thought maybe Lance Tansy was right about that.

He reached for my hand and I let him take it. ‘Listen,’ he said. ‘Listen carefully.’ His hearing was still good. It was great, actually.

I listened. ‘What?’

‘Shhh! Open the window. Listen!’

‘I can’t open the window,’ I told him. ‘It’s freezing out there.’

‘Do as you’re told,’ he said. ‘Listen!’ And there was excitement in his eyes and in his voice. So I opened the window. Just a crack.

The wind was harsh. But carried on it were voices from the chapel below us.

‘Fall on your knees,
Oh, hear the angel voices
O night divine,
O night when Christ was born…’

Sir Lancelot clapped his hands and grinned and cackled. ‘O Holy Night,’ he said. ‘My favourite.’ And he let his head rest back on his pillows and he listened. ‘Did you hear the angel voices?’

And after a minute, I closed the window again.

Sir Lancelot’s fingers flickered over his cheeks. ‘When did I shave last?’ he asked. ‘I can’t remember.’

‘I shaved you this morning,’ I said.

‘I’ve got AIDS,’ Sir Lancelot said. And he whisper-sighed again.

‘I know,’ I said. I noticed the corner of his mouth twitch. I wasn’t sure if it was a smile or a grimace.

He closed his eyes and I watched him breathe. His lips worked in silence. Christmas carols playing out in his head, I though.

I patted his leg. ‘I’ll be back to see you soon, Sir Lancelot,’ I said.

And I walked out of his room, my plimsolls squeaking on the tiled floor as I went down the corridor.

And there was a slap-drag behind me. Slap-drag. Slap-drag. I knew what it was. Sir Lancelot was weaker in one leg. His right foot slapped the floor; his left foot dragged.

Slap-drag. Slap-drag.

And I kept walking. ‘Go back to bed, Lance,’ I said.

Slap-drag.

‘Come here, Nita.’

I turned. ‘Sir Lance—’

He took me by the throat. He lifted me up. He lifted me up. Right off the floor. And he said, ‘I’ve got AIDS, Nita. I’ve got AIDS.’ And the ceiling light reflected off the object in his hand as it flashed in front of my face.

‘Put…me…down,’ I gasped. I was struggling for breath. I could feel my cheeks swelling. But he didn’t put me down. He didn’t.

He jabbed the needle in my arm. ‘I’ve got it,’ he whispered. ‘Now you’ve got what I’ve got. Now you’ve got it.’

And my fingers stretched to the buzzer on the wall. And he put me down. And I slumped to the floor, gasping for air. ‘Why?’ I asked. ‘Why, Lance?’

And the two other Christmas Night nurses dashed from the nurses’ station. And Sir Lancelot – sweet, placid, witty Sir Lancelot – slap-dragged his way back to his room.

I pulled the needle from my arm and dropped it to the tiles. One of the nurses screamed.

But it was all right; I knew I wasn’t infected. I knew even before the results came back saying the needle was sterile, saying it hadn’t been used. I knew. Somehow. I just did.

I was just having a bad day. We were all having a bad day.

(Peter J Merrigan) www.pjmerrigan.com

 

THE COLD SIDE

I could hear her moving through the bedroom, though it was difficult to see. She drew the curtains closed and the bright lights refracting from the street below became muted in the darkness. I stared at the ceiling as my eyes adjusted. As the blurry shapes around the darkened room took form I could hear her whispering something, a low and angry voice, unintelligible. I fluffed my pillow, turning it over to find the cold side.

- So, you think you’re going to leave me?

I didn’t answer. Having discussed the issue in heated argument throughout the evening, I was emotionally drained and wanted desperately to sleep. Maybe, I thought, she would come to bed and we could sleep it away. Sleeping away my troubles. I’ve been sleeping away my troubles for many years now. Still, I knew in my soul that this trouble wasn’t going away with a nights sleep. In truth, I dreaded waking up in the morning. It would start all over again.

- We’ve been arguing all evening, can I get some sleep? We’ll talk more tomorrow.

- I’ll take you for everything you’ve got.

A threat. I’ve heard this threat before. It usually came at 3AM in the morning. Tonight was no different. Hours of arguments, over God-knows-what, and always dragging on into the wee hours of the night. I’m amazed the neighbors haven’t complained.

- You can go back to your mother, you momma’s boy.

- Why do you always drag my mother into our arguments?

She hated my mother. Mom always treated her kindly, respectfully, but there was never closeness between them. Mom always kept to a distance, seeming to know something but pretending to know nothing.

- Your fucking kids can’t stand me. What have I ever done to them?

Grunting, she ground her elbow into my ribs as she climbed into bed. I scooted further to the side. It didn’t help. She followed, flopping her body closer, nudging her elbow deeper into my side, as if I were in the way. I would be in the way no matter where I laid.

- You wanna give me some room?

- I’m all the way over, any further and I’ll fall off the bed.

I have never understood her problem with my children. Her son was a fixture at our home. Seems that every little thing that came up, he was there asking for something. “Can I borrow money, can I borrow your tools, can I borrow your car, can you watch the kids, can you pay for my traffic ticket”…always something. I always helped; he never paid a penny back. Nothing was ever returned. I never complained.

- You can have everything. I don’t care any more. I just want to sleep.

She turned her body and ground her knee into my thigh.

- Maybe I should go to a hotel; you’re not going to let this rest are you?

- So where do you think you’ll go? I’ll find you, I always do.

The last time we argued, I left the house and spent the night at a hotel. I didn’t tell her where I was going, she tracked me down anyway. Calling every hotel in town until she found the one where I was hiding. The phone began its ringing at 1:30 in the morning and she wouldn’t stop until I answered it.

- When you come back, like you always do, the doors will be locked. All your shit will be ripped to shreds and on the lawn.

Another threat. Every time we argue she threatens me with something. I threw the covers back and crawled out of the bed. It was 3:30 AM, we’d been arguing since noon the previous day. I closed the bedroom door behind me as I walked to the kitchen. I could hear her through the wall, but I couldn’t make out what she was saying. As I stood at the kitchen counter, I noticed her prescription medication bottles were neatly arranged on the counter. I counted them…twelve in total. Pain killers mostly, some are prescription narcotics; others are for her psychiatric disorders. She managed to convince her doctor and her psychiatrist that she needed them to survive. They dole them out with few questions. How a person could take so many drugs and continue to function was beyond me. I’m certain it was contributing to the constant arguing, her rage growing with each passing day, her anger at me, my family, her friends-she had no friends left, all had long since abandoned relationships with her. I remember the first psychotic medications she took, years ago. Bi-polar disorder was the first diagnosis. Some type of Acid thing, I can’t recall the name. She hallucinated for two days, talking to the paintings on the walls, crawling around on her hands and knees. She hated me then just as she does now, it was my fault then just as it is now. I’m the one that asked for help. The police forced her to the hospital where she was committed to the psychiatric ward for diagnosis. I visited her every day, took her blankets and pillows from home, something familiar to ease the trauma.

- She has a chemical imbalance in her brain. - he said.

All Psychiatrists say the same thing. They aren’t able to explain what is wrong with her, much less cure it. It’s a common practice to pontificate about some “best guess” diagnosis. Bi-polar disorder, multiple-personality disorder, traumatic stress disorder, blah, blah, blah…everything has a name. Nothing can cure it. They give out medications instead. There are twelve plastic bottles lined up on the counter. Years of psychiatrists and countless medications; she’s not getting better. I can’t live like this.

- Turn the fucking lights off and be quiet. You’re making too much noise. I’m trying to sleep.

I sigh and chuckle to myself. Not loud enough to be heard though. It would set her off, best to keep it to myself. If she’s finally going to sleep, I should stay away from the bedroom. I’ll sleep on the couch. It will be better in the morning.

On the wall, the lights reflecting from the street below are luminescent, exposing the picture frames and knick-knack shelves. Photos of her children stare back at me through the foggy faint darkness. There are no photos of my kids though. Each time I put one out, it gets replaced. I have a box in the closet where they are kept. I wonder if she will shred them and throw them on the lawn too. I hate sofa pillows. They are so uncomfortable. This tiny blanket isn’t very warm.

- If you’re going to sleep on the couch and not with me, I’m going to sit up and keep you awake.

She turns the light on; I shut my eyes trying hold out the sudden rush of light. She sits in the leather recliner and turns the television on. I look at the clock; it’s 3:47 AM. She turns the volume up on the TV set. Jerry Springer. Two women fighting over a toothless redneck.

- I thought you were going to sleep?

- Fuck you. Nobody’s sleeping tonight.

- If you’re going to watch TV, I’m going back to the bedroom.

- Fuck you.

- Can you please turn the television down?

- Fuck you.

I turn the bedroom light off and crawl into bed. I can hear the fighting on the television through the wall. She turns the TV up louder. I lie in bed and stare at the wall, listening to the fighting on the television. She’s not going to let me sleep. I stare at the ceiling. The women on television are still fighting. She turns the television volume up again. The thunderous sound of Jerry Springer is reverberating through the neighborhood at 3:50 AM. I’m thinking the police will show up, knocking on the door at any moment.

At 4:00 AM, the television goes silent. Silence. I begin to doze - I’m so tired. I can hear the bedroom door open. I hear her walk to the side of the bed. My eyes are closed - I’m so tired.

- I’m going to let you sleep now.

My eyes opened as she slit my throat with a carving knife from the kitchen. I can’t speak. I see her face above mine. I feel the warm flow of blood around my neck as I lay motionless on the bed. The last thing I remember was hearing…

- Here, let me turn your pillow to the cold side for you.

 

 

Part II
 

Finishing my explanation to Roberts, I can see the impatience growing on the Doctors face from across the room. The Doctor, I can’t remember his name, pulled Roberts by the sleeve of his sport coat, gaining his attention.


- I think you should let him rest now. He’s been through a lot.


- Is he going to make it?


- His wound is severe, but I think he’ll survive. If the lesion had been an inch higher, he wouldn’t be talking to you now.


In low whispering voices they continue talking to one another, but I can hear them clearly. My throat is hurting, my voice gravely. I gaze at the tube running from my neck, across my chest off the side of the bed and to somewhere unknown. I must be connected to the pump that’s running next to that other thing - a small blue machine with red numbers counting upwards, sitting beside my bed with rubber hoses attached and leading to my arm. God I feel bad. I can’t move.


- How long until I can go home?


- A week, maybe less. Depends.


- Depends on what?


- Depends on how well you are healing, complications, and other things.


Roberts moved away from me as the Doctor approached my bed.


- Try not to move around so much.


- Can I talk to him again tomorrow? Roberts asked.


- Up to him.


- Yea, I’ll try.


- Good, I’ll drop by tomorrow mid-morning. I don’t have much more. You get some rest.

Roberts turned and left the room. The Doctor was scribbling on a clipboard and a Nurse enters the room. I watch as she punches a needle into the tube hanging from the blue machine.


- This may burn.


- What is it?


- Antibiotic. We’ll be doing this every four hours.


I close my eyes as she squeezes down on the syringe. I feel the slow rush of heat within my arm inching closer to my chest.

From the conversation I overheard; the wound, made with a dirty kitchen knife from a dishwashing machine, where it had been sitting unwashed for over a week, went through my outer neck and partially through my larynx, about eight centimeters below my glottis. The carotid artery was unharmed. The damage, though serious, wasn’t in itself a lethal trauma. The more serious threat was the blood that accumulated in my lungs. If the police had found me a few minutes later, I would have drowned in my own sanguine fluid. The goal now was to prevent infection. The intravenous contraption now being manipulated by the attending Nurse was serving two functions. One was to feed me while my neck and throat healed; the second was to inject a regular dosage of antibiotic.


- Am I going to die?


- I hate to disappoint you...but not today.


Finished with their work, the Doctor and Nurse leave me. I’m alone in the room. Through the closed door, I can hear a television but can’t make out what program it is. People talking-the nurses perhaps, doctors, patients, who knows. Who cares? I’m so sleepy...


- What time is it?


- Can I go to sleep now?


- What day is it?


- What show is that on TV?


I stare at the plastic rings above me - holding a white cloth curtain from a metal rod attached to the ceiling. One ring is missing. My arm is warm.


- What show is that on the television?


I’m sleepy...I close my eyes.


*


I feel the pressure of the Doctor’s fingertips pressing on my neck. Probing each inch of my throat, his head wiggles in disapproval.


- How are you feeling?


- It doesn’t hurt.


- The bleeding has stopped and there doesn’t appear to be any infection. After five days, there will be some scabbing. Your blood-work is fine. We’re going to leave these sutures in for a while longer.


- It doesn’t hurt.


- Yes, most curious. How’s your strength?


- I’m a little weak, okay I guess.


- Roberts is here again. He wants to talk to you. Do you feel up to it?


- Sure.


I’m tired of talking to Roberts. I want him to go away. Each time I’ve seen him, he’s wearing the same sport coat. His breath smells like coffee and cigarettes - and he has nose hairs that sprout in strange directions. He’s probably trying to blame me for what happened. Poking around for more evidence, use my words against me. Typical of the police. Always making something out of nothing. I can’t take a man seriously when his nose hairs wiggle at me.


- Good morning Mr. Toole. You don’t mind talking do you? It’s routine, the paperwork...you understand I’m sure.


- Maybe it’s your routine. Not mine. I’m ready to get out of here.


Gathering the loose hose dangling from my arm, I stand beside my bed. I reach for the machine it connects to, dragging it with me across the room towards the mirror. The wheels wobble as I push the device; my tube is dragging on the floor and gets caught beneath a wheel. The sudden tug on my arm hurts.


- You’ll rip that out. You want me to call a nurse?


- No, I’m fine.


I stop in front of the mirror and raise my chin. The bandage is fresh. I run the tip of my finger across it.


- You said something about her turning the volume up on the television. Were you shouting?


- No. I was trying to go to sleep. She wouldn’t allow it.


- Why would she keep you up when you were trying to sleep?


- I dunno. Maybe she wanted to get inside my head. Why did she do all the other things she did? She was crazy I guess.


- Do you think you’re crazy?


Gazing at my neck in the mirror, I peel the edge of the bandage away from my throat, revealing the fresh pink slit and a track of black suture running laterally across my neck. I poke at the wound with my finger. Lifting my finger, the skin is white and then turns pink.


- No.


On the back of the dangling bandage, I see, absorbed into the gauze, a thin line of fresh blood. Pressing the sliced skin with my finger, a drop of serum oozes from the wound, enveloping one of the sutures. It disappears as I dab it with the gauze.


- I don’t think my wound is healing right.


- That looks nasty. You’re lucky to be alive.


- I get to have some solid food tonight. I’m sick of green Jell-O.


- It’s not going to heal if you keep poking at it.


In the mirror I see Roberts staring at me, as if I were shaving. We lock eyes for a moment and I turn my attention back to my neck.


- How long were you married to your wife?


- Eight years give or take.


- Did you often fight?


- All the time.


- How did these fights generally start?


- Most typically, by my breathing.


- Come again?


Raising my chin upwards, I grasp a protruding suture end between my finger and thumb. Tugging, I pluck it from my neck. I lift it to my eyes for examination then drop it in the cold steel basin.


- Look, she was sick in her head. She was angry all the time about something. If I were there, she’d be angry with me.


- Did it ever get physical?


- She tried to kill me twice.


I pluck a second suture from my neck and drop it in the sink.


- How?


- Threw a brass candleholder at my face the first time. The second time, she smashed a telephone over my head.


- Did you hit her?


- Oh, we exchanged blows on a few occasions.


- Such as?


- Well, once she tried to gouge my eyes out with her fingernails. I had to slap her off.


I tug a third suture out and drop it in the basin.


- Did you beat her?


- No, never. I defended myself though. I like having eyes.


- If she was so violent, why did you stick it out with her?


- She was sick. It felt like a duty or something. I couldn’t leave her to fend for herself. She had nobody. Well her son I guess, but he wasn’t much use. He’s got the same problems she does. Runs in the family or something.

With a blank expression, Roberts continues staring at me as I remove each stitch from my wound. The basin is littered with blood soaked pieces of black string. I can feel the smoothness of the wound with my fingers, the pink slit now opened like a sliced steak. Strange, it’s not bleeding. I can open and close the wound with my fingers. I see the white meat below the surface. I tug on a flap of skin, it snaps back when I let go. No blood, strange indeed.


- How many times was she hospitalized?


- Twice. Both times, non-voluntary. They gave her some pills and sent her home after a few days.


- Did the medications help her any?


- Not that I could tell. It only got worse and worse up to the end.


I turn and look at Roberts. He’s standing there, hands in his pockets, as if nothing is happening. Doesn’t he see the gash in my neck hanging wide open? Surely, the pink flesh undulating beneath my chin has attracted his attention. He stood and watched without saying a word as I culled at least thirty sutures from my throat.


- You don’t like lime Jell-O eah?


- Naaa, it sucks. I’m sure they’ll bring me more at lunch. Stick around, you can have it.


- No thanks...I’ll pass.


- Is it cold in here or is it just me? I ask.


- You may want to put some clothes on.


I realize now that the whole time I’ve been talking to Roberts, I’ve been walking about the room naked from the waist down. 

(Radiodenver) http://www.give-zine.com

 

THE VISITORS

When you find yourself automatically turning on the T.V for the Six O’clock News, when you become aware once again of the dull throb in the left side of your head, when you stretch your right hand down to rub your aching right thigh, when you decide it’s time to shuffle towards the kitchen and see what’s in the fridge, when you scrape off the morning’s coagulated porridge from the saucepan and empty it down the lavatory, when you slowly eat your solitary micro waved meal, when you return to your sofa and continue to watch the television, when you find yourself drifting off to sleep, when you come to with a start – then suddenly you feel, as before, there is someone standing behind your sofa.

The visitors are here again. Although you are not sure if they are dressed the same as before you think you recognise the taller of the two men. He has a moustache and dark hair. As you get up from your sofa, the men turn to face you and edge round the furniture as if to make themselves at home. The smaller of the two, the one with the shaved head, crosses the room to sit in the chair opposite. You are agitated as on the previous occasion and find that you cannot focus on the intruders sufficiently. The smaller of the two seems to be speaking but his words are unintelligible. You look to see where the moustached man is and cannot quite make out a figure in the darkness of the hallway.
You decide to address them directly,
“I’m alright you know. You don’t need to check up on me. I have two sons who visit me. And the Nurse comes once a week.”
The bald man is speaking again in a low voice. You can’t make out all the words as they seem to fade out as soon as they are spoken.
“Trying to . . door locked. . .safety.”
You have had enough of the situation and at last you shout,
“Get out, get out!”
You see quite clearly now the bald man walking past you heading toward the open door that leads into the hallway; he is speaking and this time you can understand him all too well.
“We will be keeping an eye on you.”
You feel vaguely threatened by this statement and are about to reply when the men disappear through the front door leaving an ominous silence behind.

You sit down with a loud expulsion of breath on the sofa and notice your right hand is shaking. ‘Why me, why me,’ you wonder. “What would Albert think about me talking to strange men?”
You get up with some effort and walk slowly towards the kitchen to put on the kettle.
Filling the kettle you wonder again, “How do they get inside my flat?”
You drink the hot cocoa and wonder if the men are from the council and that you either let them in or that they had a key. You see that your hand has stopped shaking now. “Maybe they are here to help me after all.”


You retire to bed earlier than usual. It is half past ten. You notice that you haven’t put the pile of washing in the washer. You make a point of telling yourself to do this tomorrow. You carry the pile into the hallway to act as a reminder.

It is six o’clock the following evening. You have had your meal of mackerel and mashed potatoes. You are watching the Six O’clock News. The daily body count from Iraq doesn’t register with you; the latest plan for improving the Health Service somehow gets mixed up with the statistics about prison beds. You press the remote; eager to find something less confusing. You are watching a nature programme about badgers when you hear the doorbell. You get up and see two men in the hallway. You wonder if they are friends. You can’t remember seeing them before. One has a moustache and dark hair; the other is short and bald. . .

(Eric Nicholson)

 

A DRINK WITH MY FATHER

 

            “You ready, John?” my father bellowed from the front door, impatient to be away. In the living room I shut tight both eyes, cast my head to the ceiling and let out a sigh. The jacket landing in my lap startled me and I opened my eyes to meet my mother’s staring back at me. She gave my shoulder a squeeze and simply smiled. She knew I couldn’t be bothered with this, but her eyes seemed to say Go on, get it over with, it’ll be all right. I stood, tugged on my jacket and walked into the hallway to see him waiting, rubbing eager hands together, a glint of anticipation in his eyes and a grin that burst from ear to ear. I knew this was something he’d looked forward to, planned even … for him, a red-letter day.

            “Right, Dad, let’s go,” I said.

 The Social Club was a mere ten minutes walk away and the distance was nothing on that balmy July evening. I remember thinking as we walked and talked about nothing in particular, that grown as I was, I‘d never be as big and strong as him. He was a bull of a man, barrel-chested and physically imposing. He’d a strong jaw line, thick eyebrows and a full head of still dark hair, of which he was fiercely proud. We didn’t look much alike, although I’d concede we had the same bow-legged gait. His though was a stride that ate up the ground. After every four or five steps I’d be falling behind and I’d throw in an extra stride to get back alongside him. He wasn’t striding ahead on purpose though, quite the opposite in fact; I could sense a pride in him as he walked with me, the youngest of his six children and the only boy to boot. He’d waited long for this day.

            Once inside I stood at the bar alongside my father as he acknowledged the greetings from his friends. He winked and made the briefest of nods, ensuring they

realised I was with him. Again, a broad smile rose within him and made its escape as he placed the order.

I turned to gaze around the room and take in the surroundings. In front of me lay a scattering of tables frequented by loud, laugh-‘til-it-hurts, working men. A jukebox in one corner played The Theme from MASH, although it was barely audible over the din. One group sat in noisy debate setting the world to rights. Their raised voices and wild gesticulations subsided only whilst thirsts were momentarily slaked, before the next opinion was aired to shrieks of incredulous disapproval, and so it would go on. Another group sat in virtual silence, their game of dominoes worthy of only their utmost concentration and necessitating an adult-learned social skill to block out the surrounding commotion. In the far corner, a darts match was in progress – the language more colourful than the very segments of the dartboard in use. Nearer the bar, against the adjacent wall, two men fed coins into a one-armed bandit and cursed as it steadfastly refused to produce a winning line. From each disparate group, thin lines of cigarette smoke rose. They reached out like skeletal fingers to join the stale and stagnant haze that sat beneath the yellowed ceiling tiles. We were barely a minute in this place and already I could feel smoke clinging to my clothes and hair and nipping at my eyes – but it did parch the throat.

A gentle slap on my shoulder brought me back to the matter at hand.

“There you are, son, your first legal pint… bought for you by yer auld man.”

I turned to watch as the barman set the amber liquid down on a beer mat before me. The bubbles inside the glass racing, from bottom to top, to form a quarter inch frothy head. The outside of the glass misted. It was as good as a promise that the contents would quench my building thirst. But still, I held back. My father had emphasized the word ‘legal’ and it hit home.

At eighteen was it all downhill from now on? Wasn’t half the fun of having a drink with your friends the thrill of actually being underage? Now that I could drink legally would that take the edge off it? Either way, I decided, there was certainly nothing I could do about getting older. I grasped the glass and felt the hairs on the back of my right hand tingle all the way up my forearm. The coldness jarred, like the car seat on a frosty January morning, you expect it to be cold… yet it’s still somehow a surprise. I looked at the auld man. He was in his element, swapping stories and wisecracks with a wide circle of friends, his enjoyment of the banter and camaraderie as evident as the laughter lines on his face. Without knowing it, he’d answered the questions I’d posed inside my head.

“Well…cheers, Dad,” I said, raising my glass to him and allowing the chilled lager to pass my lips and clear the second-hand smoke from my throat.

“Good health, son,” he said, propping his left elbow on the bar to look back toward the tables. I swear I saw a sly wink pass between him and his cronies, but he maintained a poker players’ veneer. “Of course, you do realise that now my duty’s done; yours is to see that yer auld man’s not short of a drink from here on in.”

I stood transfixed; but my mind was racing, surely he didn’t expect me to pay for his beers from now on? A slow realization dawned; the chatter from the nearby tables had diminished. I glanced across at a sea of faces turned in my direction. He was joking of course and I’d been set up. The silence was broken by the raucous laughter of his mates at the stunned expression etched upon my face. They’d been following his every word, anxious to see how far my jaw would drop.

 

 I didn’t realise it at the time…but his red-letter day was mine too; and what wouldn’t I give to be able to spend some time with him now, buy him a drink… and set the world to rights.

 

(John Holding) 

 

***GONE FISHING!***