Simon King

"April is the cruellest month," he would shout out as he staggered across the dark avenues of a winter's night. "Breeding lilacs out of the dead land, mixing memory and desire..."
He would walk across the streets and recite poetry; this consoled him. The distinction between what inhabited on the outside of his head and what existed in the inside of it had long ago been fractured. He lived in his own little world and, consequently, came across as a lunatic to others. He repeated the verses again and again as he now swiftly paced across the streets. He would pass along the decays of the populace without turning his back. He maintained his gaze forward as he maniacally repeated "HURRY UP PLEASE ITS TIME... HURRY UP PLEASE ITS TIME... HURRY UP PLEASE ITS TIME" again and again as if he was a child's mechanical toy which was defunct. To those who happened to see him walk past, this didn't seem to be very poetic. To him, this phrase was as poetic as things could get.

He had always been a voracious reader - particularly of poetry. Throughout his teenage years he attempted to express some of his ideas and emotive feelings into verse, but always in vain. The more he submerged himself in his books and the more poetry he'd read, he would detach himself more and more from reality. This got to the extent of the disoriented state of mind we find him in now, where he repeatedly recites his favourite poetry aloud while walking across the streets.
Everyone scorned him when he was younger. His plump appearance hardly enamoured the girls who'd throw stones at him, nor would his tendency (even then) to occasionally mutter to himself gain him social status with the boys who would deny him the opportunity to partake in their games.
His first contact with poetry came with Rudyard Kipling at the age of nine. He favoured this literary form over that of prose. With poetry he would be instantly transported into realms where the metaphysical dwarfed the common place and the mundane. He would read the poems again and again, and the experience was always just as powerful. Consequently, all of the poems he read imprinted themselves into his mind and he would memorise them. His mind was a vast sprawl of literary gems and fantasies.
By the time he was seventeen, he was a deeply repressed individual. Everything he loved was contained within himself. He yearned for fulfilment of some sort. All the memorised poetry that was within his mind had now to be converted into a new conception - a new creation.
The obvious solution to this dilemma was to start writing poetry. But as hard as he tried, the words which appeared on paper were contrived, youthful pretensions. The outer world now was just a background as he now continued to dwell in his inner world without human contact of any sort. Without any conscious self-awareness, he would yell out all the poetry contained in his mind.
Years passed, and this proved to be life of a very tragic figure. He would walk aimlessly, continuously reciting the poetry stored in his mind.

"Of man's disobedience, and the fruit of that forbidden tree, whose mortal taste brought death into the world," he shouted as he walked into a crowded pub. The pub immediately went silent by this peculiar occurrence, but the people soon resumed talking again. He ordered a larger and sits down on a solitary table in the corner of the room. He keeps shouting out phrases from Paradise Lost, a book he has memorised a great amount from. He gets into a state of euphoria after purchasing more and more drinks. As he gets more and more drunk, and as he loses more and more lucidity, he becomes enthralled in his poetic bellowing. He also becomes very notorious in the pub, with many looks of bemusement from the people sitting nearby.
There are two characters sat looking at him with angry disdains. They are both renowned as thugs in the area the pub is situated in.
"What shall we do with him?" one of them questions.
"Let's take him outside..."
They both get up and walk towards the poetry reciter. They grab hold of him and take him out of the pub. The reciter doesn't show the slightest look of concern; he merely lets himself be taken by the two delinquents.

The thugs take him to a hidden alleyway, and they hold him onto the wall. The poetry reciter has drunk so much alcohol that he is dazed and has no real awareness that he is in trouble. One of the thugs takes a knife out, and prepares to stab him. "This might teach you to shut the fuck up..."
As they prepare to stab him, he bursts out with a torrent of words:

Time, a mirage of memory.
Echoing soundlessly across the decades,
prompting forward the armies of our salvation.

Dancing to the unlimited dreams of our countries,
delivering the premature reconciliations of our past;
we must stay strong and endure the impending atrocities that will arrive.

We must seek the cryptic symbols of our liberty.

The thugs are captivated by this poem. They are so astonished that they withdraw the knife. The reciter runs away.

His poem had been astonishing - so astonishing that it had saved him from death. He ran across the streets in exhilaration with the eventual realisation of the talent within him. As he kept running, he thought of all the books of verse he'd publish. Other poems permeated across his mind; now, all of a sudden, he was starting to conjure up his own creations. The poem he emotionally shouted out to the thugs was a flurry of spontaneous creativity that was brewing inside him for years and years. His repressed thoughts were now breaking free, taking the shape of new poems. He wasn't a mere enthusiast or dilettante, he was a poet.

As he keeps running, he arrives to the estuary of a river. He looks up and sees a beautiful moon in the darkness. This moon is so overwhelmingly moving that he tries to embrace it. He jumps forward towards it, but he falls down to the river. He drowns as he keeps trying to embrace the moon. All his poetic aspirations are not created or realised. He dies in a state of euphoria with a series of poetic images bombarding his mind.

July 2009