Writings / Ramblings / Peregrinations
"Left for dead,
Alone in the attic.
Through the skylight,
A skeleton crew of one."
- The Clique
My suit - I only have the one - I keep for
Weddings, interviews and redundancies.
But Leonard Cohen used to have two suits: the
One he was wearing, and the other one,
Hand-washed, out at the back of his moving car -
Flapping freely there. Drying in the wind.
Mysterious Plague Doctor,
Who or what are you beneath those red glass lenses?
Your scent is that of rose petals, laudanum and myrrh:
Battling brutal mutant cats in league with Lucifer.
Gothtronic Boys
From my unseen vantage point, I can watch,
In the window of the sandwich shop, quick
Self-conscious glances of Goth reflections,
And Gothtronic boys making their hungry
Appraisals of Electro-Gothic girls.
Whitby, unblinking, receives the parade,
And the uncertain meanderings of,
Half-smiling, a solitary misfit:
His arms are too long for the sleeves of that
Victorian frock coat; his face is the
Wrong kind of pale; slightly to the left of
Imagined perfection, he always walks.
To you, unnoticed freak, I tip my hat.
Gothtronic boys; Electro-gothic girls;
Victoriana; mascara smudging;
Pocket-watch and cane; arms locked in the rain.
Gothtronic boys; Electro-gothic girls;
"That's one tea, and perhaps a paper, too?"
To you, unnoticed freak, I tip my hat.
Why aren't they mimicking ocean-dwelling
Matriarchs - calling their stranded young back
To freedom? Why aren't they using sound waves
To map catacombs; isolate fingers
Of disease; pinpoint, on the sea bed, the
Fuselage of a forgotten aircraft?
The Rebirth of Reynardine
No snare will pin me down, but there are those who tried;
They floundered behind me, blown off the mountainside.
At dusk, a bareback rider bestrides a flighty mare;
The summer's on her lips, and the woodland's in her hair.
The woodland's in her hair; the woodland's in her hair;
The summer's on her lips, and the woodland's in her hair.
Her lurcher tracks my scent; her skittish mount rears back;
The blackbird's call betrays me. "Take off your mask," she says.
There's something of the gypsy about that girl, I swear:
The taste of her body; the eloquence of her stare.
The eloquence of her stare; the eloquence of her stare;
The taste of her body; the eloquence of her stare.
When she and I were fox cubs in a tumbling tug-of-war,
Ancient oaks inhaled our laughter, and we their gentle sighs.
I want to drink the sunrise in - to feel her breath once more against my skin,
For Heaven is the dawn reflected in her eyes.
No song will pin me down, but there are those who tried:
Balladeers and minstrels, they call me Reynardine.
My tired yew tree limbs seek the coolness of the earth;
This covert's her cathedral of renewal and rebirth.
Renewal and rebirth; renewal and rebirth;
This covert's her cathedral of renewal and rebirth.
This Summer
Strawberry tea - the black kind which can take
Milk; champagne mornings; afternoon cakes too
Pretty to ignore - too pretty to eat.
This summer: a retreat for you, perhaps?
Notebooks; sketch pads; a green, feathery hat;
A seamstress' paraphernalia.
And, well, a garret (of sorts) by the sea.
This summer: inhale the dawn, and press your
Lips against pale flesh, as hard as you dare.
Set up shop if you want to; I don't mind -
Really, I don't. Stay as long as you like.
There are those who return to pick fruit, or
Barter for unbroken horses at the
Fayre. This summer, we will learn what they know.
Thickset horses tethered by the roadside; painted caravans; morning tea in tin mugs; a campfire's gentle plume. They're back.
Urban badger, I heard, then watched you hurry down Flowergate - the sloping street below my front room - and into a ginnel, unnoticed by the drunk. More of your kind, are there? That's why I went to the window: you called out.
Light Sleeper
I am tall ~ tall and
Thin; a half-
Shadow: semi-fictional and ..
Quite possibly part-
Extraterrestrial; the man who quietly said
"No."
I am a light sleeper, always
Listening ~ assimilating the language
Of the gulls, so that
One day, I will know where to find
The perfect feather
For my chimney-pot hat.
Jarvis on the radio: a voice like tobacco-infused velvet curtains in a neglected
and yet dignified Victorian music hall theatre.
A Three-line Sketch for Billy Mackenzie
Replaced in their affections: a pop-up
Creature, lying dormant in a book left
Unopened, awaits reanimation.
A slice of my novel, Heart Failure, a work in progress:
13. The Mischief of Mice
Typically, Slingsby had caught his mother on an off-day. Pudgy-faced and puffy-eyed, she slept in a heavily perfumed cocoon on a permanently unmade bed. Watchful Siamese cats surrounded their partly-agitated, mostly unresponsive matriarch. They occasionally nuzzled her hopefully, tossed a silken scarf into the languid breeze, or toppled empty green wine bottles like skittles.
A pang of jealously snuck out of the anaesthetising ambience, and underneath Slingsby's barbed wire defences. Those mangy animals got closer to this woman than he ever did.
Having mooched back down the stairs, her son began blending together mysterious powders from far-flung pockets of little-known wilderness, making a kind of posset as directed by a herbalist Liplock had unexpectedly found for him on the Interweb. He was willing to try anything, such was the desperation his sickness engendered.
Slingsby sought ascetic sanctuary in 'the sitting room'--the only area kept free of bric-a-brac, and reserved for visitors who seldom came--because the casual squalor of the kitchenette disturbed him so.
Settling gingerly on his late father's unforgiving chair, he took a gulp of the peculiarly malty, peculiarly fizzy potion.
#
As his head lolled against a threadbare armrest, Slingsby glimpsed a lofty cylindrical jar. It was crammed with glistening confectionary, probably put aside for the neighbour's snivelling progeny, and therefore left untouched.
He stood on the dreaded pouffe--his seat long ago whenever beige-coloured interrogators descended for sherry, choice titbits of suburban scandal, and compulsory fun--and lifted off the weighty glass lid.
The largest pink sugar mouse twitched. Something was very wrong here. She and her brethren were soon snuffling, squirming, and rapidly emerging from their decade of dormancy.
Slingsby peered at them. They nosed a gust of warm air, then--one by one--scampered past forgotten childhood annuals, and leapt from the bookcase to the abandoned bureau. He could picture his father hunched there, painstakingly crafting never-published letters of complaint.
Rallied by their sister, the huddle nominated a frail, shivering compatriot, whom they coerced into taking up the gauntlet.
Terrified, he set about his task, systematically attempting to prise himself between numerous inlaid wooden pieces which together formed an ostentatious scene glorifying the days of the Raj.
Marvelling, Slingsby crept closer until a shrill collective gasp needled his bad ear, penetrating the mire.
A
"Perfect for a tiny paw," the female observed.
"Perfect for his tiny paw!" cried her siblings imploringly. "Absolutely perfect!"
"Heavens to Betsy," the small, unwilling volunteer said quietly. "Heavens to Murgatroyd."
Looks of utmost reproachfulness burrowed like wasps in an orchard. Unable to shrug them off, he angrily dusted himself down, took hold of tarnished metal, and activated the internal mechanism.
There were sustained creaks, a contrabass moan, and a growl circulating inside woodworm ridden bowels, as if the bureau was imitating the wreck of a tall ship.
Initially gut-resonating, those uneasy noises gradually subsided and eventually dissolved completely, causing the mischief of mice to cock their heads. Slingsby craned his increasingly stringy neck. He heard their frantic breaths, and his own skittish heart. Nothing else, though. Not a sausage.
Emanating from a hidden music box added in 1914, and brought back to life by the unintentionally gallant mouse, a new sound broke forth at a point when the room was almost overflowing with silence.
After much puzzling, Slingsby finally deciphered his patriotic father's favourite hymn. Difficult to place, the fragmentary rendition of
A clunking fist made no impression whatsoever on the steadfast bureau, serving only to scatter fearful shadow-skulkers in all directions. If anything, the distorted warble became more erratic--demented but indomitable nonetheless.
Deserted by his kinsmen, the misshapen loner dodged a powerful springing open of deathly-dark burr walnut. The antique released a heavy sigh, and parted longitudinally.
Allowing the tips of his fingers to linger, Slingsby briefly caressed a tooled green leather writing surface.
Plundering the uncharted, furthermost recesses of the secret compartment, he retrieved a cache of ragged homemade cards neatly tied with ribbon--a half-remembered array of cotton wool snowmen and Easter chicks from another lifetime.
Pausing, Slingsby espied a drab sheaf of tightly wedged formal papers--probably balance sheets from his father's doomed enterprise days. Uprooting them disdainfully as though they were a clump of nettles, the loan shark unearthed far more than he would have thought possible.
A cursory glance snagged on a single word: adoption. The spark of truth ignited his failing heart. He read feverishly. Fury engulfed him, and a sharp, endless whistling began.
#
Slingsby's stare quickly became fiery orange. The mutilated remains of a wizened heirloom--in this case, a chair--make first-rate kindling.
A train of mice followed him through tall grasses to the shabby house and back again. He slung a set of readily combustible family photographs onto the pyre, watching them blister and melt incandescently.
The charred wings of a cheery, silver foil angel caught an updraft. She rose freely, venturing into the cool twilight.
Now licking the rim of a petrol-doused metal dustbin (Slingsby had never got the hang of patience), hungry flames savaged a generous horde of keepsakes.
He singed his eyebrows but, enjoying the sensation of cheek-tightening heat, persevered unflinchingly like a snake sloughing off its skin.
Big Sister and her brethren clambered from a rickety fence, along a washing line, around a pegged pair of grey knickers fraying gently in the breeze, to the highest limbs of a scorched horse-chestnut tree. They sang gleefully, flinging themselves down--entering the non-discriminatory glow of the glorious fire. Their spirit-wisps mingled. Thick, sugary smoke chugged outward, and enshrouded Slingsby before dancing away.
He topped-off his bonfire with a sprinkling of faded boxes. These were games of the fun-for-all-the-family ilk: Operation; Frustration; Bucka-fucking-roo. Their demise was a painful, messy one. They burnt more slowly, and plastic pieces screamed for mercy.
A pale lady with chaotic hair appeared at her bedroom window--a disquieting, spectral presence in a diaphanous nightie.
He chose to ignore such a strange, delusional creature, and focus instead on the bubbling, gummy residue which remained, still squeaking to itself in the restless foundations of a formidable blaze.
#
The corroded internal mechanism finally disintegrated beyond repair. Shut forcibly, the bureau's secret compartment had been sealed forever.
Inside, the littlest mouse, a snug reckling, sank into an everlasting sleep that was deep and heavenly. Safe from prying, kaleidoscopic, saucer eyes, he happily dreamt of a crystalline world full of mousey wonderment, and a never-ending supply of pink cheese.
