Thursday 19 November 2009

I was putting this off

Yeah I have been working for some time on a longer piece, 'scalled Hunts. I've been putting off posting any of it for a while but then I decided not to just because I felt like it. This is sort of the introduction.

Hunts

His mouth hurts.
Call it toothache, for the moment. He presses at a molar with his tongue, gets nowhere. Realises he doesn’t know the date which annoys him for a second but then again they’ll probably mention it at some point. Reassured.
Day’s fairly bright. Hints in the cloud cover that later might be overcast, maybe some rain. He decided a while ago that symbolically speaking this would be perfect.
Cars honk, people shout, he’s exhaling. Smooth lids he blinks and turns roughly ninety degrees, lifts his eyes, face, starts walking. All this concrete. Now he’s halfway up the steps and it’s all pretty quiet but maybe tense. Betting tense. Thick dry shoes gripping flat dry stone it’s all just like it should be he is not slipping. Top of the steps now and is that door – what?
Moving. Steps quick brisk inside just to the side. It’s so full, these people shouting these people practically wrestling these people with problems – hate queues. Lucky though they’re all yelling and being dragged back from the desk, one receptionist free. Looks about ready to break someone’s spine.
He’s inhaling. Still quiet and tenses his leg to step. Not hard. Just a desk.
He steps forward, gives it his best winning smile and says “Hi, my name’s Stephen Jones. I’d like to confess to a murder.”
Receptionist glances up, sighs “Do I look like a priest?” for a second then shakes head, “Wait over there, someone’ll be right with you.”
“Thanks so much,” he says. Takes the space and wow, inside he’s smiling too. Call it a win, then. This time goes for an incisor.

Let me tell you a story-
That little phrase. That fucking- it’s like a code. Not a secret verbal shorthand no it’s like the just-right sequence of zero one zero zero one one that turns people into shadows, splits them at their very core and leaves a smoking radioactive crater. It’s exactly that deadly. It swims and floats through voices and language and sooner or later it gets punched into the right synapse then suddenly someone is dead. Don’t tell tales. Why? Because it is absolutely fucking murderous. (Yeah and nobody believes that.)
Oh, you poor bastard. Look what they do to us all.
I’m sorry sir I’ll try to make it quick.

“The thing is, sir, of all the people who come in here, confess to a murder or an abduction, whatever, maybe five percent of those even know anything about the crime in question. Maybe five.”
Ramon glanced sideways from his slouch. “What month we in?”
“May.”
Ramon nodded then settled back. His position in the seat was like this kind of perfect physical apathy except there were these sort of overtones to it so it wasn’t just like I truly don’t care it was more along the lines of look there are so many things I’d rather be doing right now and there are so many reasons for me to go and do any of those instead of sitting here listening to you talk so what could possibly keep me sitting here? What, about you, could even in the slightest interest me?
“I understand that, officer but I promise you I’m not wasting your time. I was the one who killed her. Am the one, I mean. It’s me.”
Cormac nodded. “Alright. How?”
“I strangled her. Threw her body in a dumpster. It was all, I was behind a Japanese restaurant, I’m not sure of the name, it was dark but I think there was a picture of a flower on the sign. I might be on the surveillance tapes, I’m not sure.”
“Yeah like only someone who killed her could possibly know these intimate details. This guy’s an asshole,” said Ramon mostly to himself, partly to Cormac.
“There’s probably a wound on her neck, I think her necklace might have stabbed in a little when I was strangling her. It got my hand too, you see? Just here.”
“Oh, you got a cut on your hand? Shit. Guess he must be the guy after all. Knocked that one out the park, huh?” Cormac glanced at Ramon then back away.
“Look, I – I don’t really know what you want to hear. I killed her. Okay? Isn’t that enough? I mean, surely – there’ll be some evidence on the body, right? Something, or at the scene, I don’t know. Shouldn’t it-”
“What, you mean like skin cells? DNA? Microfibres? All that kind of thing, yeah?” Ramon leaned forward but slow, kind of like toppling from one position to the other. Would almost be grudging but there was no energy in it, not enough to feel something like that. No room to care. “Fuck you. Forensics, the fuck you think this is?” Shook his head, sat back, looked at Cormac.
“The thing about that kind of, uh, physical evidence is that it’s a little more complicated than a lot of people think,” said Cormac. “There are a lot more factors involved than – well, essentially what it comes to in the end is that no, even if you did kill that girl there’s no guarantee that any evidence we can find will prove it. It may even disprove it.”
“Okay.”
“So I think,” said Cormac, “I think the best thing for everyone right now would be for you to tell us – tell us everything you can and we’ll-”
“Come on, man. He’s got shit,” said Ramon. Quiet but no kind of whisper. Cormac looked over and he shook his head. “Waste my fucking time.” Muttered.
“I’m sorry, sir. I’ll try to make it quick.” Now he blinks. “Okay, so basically – I guess my, uh – I guess for everything you have to start, well, quite a way back. There’s – okay, when I was younger-”

Yeah and they never even had a chance. However masked it was the sequence has locked itself right in, the input has been received and there’s nothing left but the getaway. Honest: anyone not running right now anyone not already out of the room and if at all possible on their way out of the country is well not to put too fine a point on it fucked. If only – they knew.
But he’ll try. With branches, with slips he’ll try. He will do everything he can to keep hidden beneath the waves and beneath his running tongue to keep hidden down there his story. Which, yes, they are letting him tell.

Wednesday 18 November 2009

Two Poems

These poems are two different poems.



Diet

One day I’ll give myself to you
muscle and mouth but
not yet.
                                    (you’re already half holding on anyway)
Every time I should tell you I
get this urge to lean into the
rushing and shake your hands and clasped fingers
                                    but I’d be pulled
                                    off balance; my fault.
My name’s not yet been dipped
in your fat not dipped not coaled and
as a result it’s uninsulated
though I think
                                    by some adopted.      
Will probably never really get the
rolling and the green right in my
joints
                                    but you keep
                                    november out okay.
I can see where I’d’ve looked for
treasure in your pebbled beds
and monsters in your darks
                                    and I could have
                                    raised (snapped) armies
No but it’s okay because I
first screamed I think in clean walls
but I know where
                                    I was made, wasted
                                    drenched, tripping, tumbling
                                    down slope (to damp) to road to
                                    get helped up



Messenger


then when you broke the window
when you smashed the window
when you shattered into sand the high window
                                                                                    we flinched
then when you dropped the plate
            when you threw the plate down
            when you hammered the china plate straight down onto the marble
                                                                                    we blinked
                                    We made ships from the
splinters you seeded.
                                    We glued mug rags into
statuettes of Buddha Ganesha and Set.
                                    We tickled into stacks the
dripped off corn sheets.
                                    We rubbed the scum of
work hours off your knuckles and lips.
                                    We wouldn’t
bother you because it wouldn’t have been
fair instead we
learned to sew
every day again we learned to sew
quiet fast so you couldn’t see the stitching we learned to sew
then when you broke the lock
            when you couldn’t find your keys and broke the lock
            when you half tore down the door the time you had to break the lock
                                                                                    we jumped
then when you woke up
            when you got woken up late on night
            when she woke you up hungry late and pitch black on night
                                                                                    we looked down and
it was in nights like those that we
learned to sew those dry split sweating nights that we
really and truly learned to sew hands clasped to every toga then
quiet fast so you never knew there’d been a stitch we
learned to sew
then when you couldn’t eat
            when you couldn’t force it down
            when you gagged
                                                                                    we ducked
then when you just needed to think
            when you just needed room to think
            when you just needed some quiet room to think
                                                                                    we shut up
                                    We coloured the lines in with
chalk from the bricks.
                                    We carved your meals with
scissors you dropped.
                                    We blackened the mirrors with
blowtorches in circles and squares.
                                    We scrubbed the hulls the
doors with water and wax.
                                    We were
always grateful we knew we
owed you all we had we didn’t
ever want you to think we
didn’t know so to
show we were so grateful we
learned to sew

Sunday 1 November 2009

Revelation

This story is a story.
I enjoy the refrain but I think the piece either needs fleshing out or condensing or shooting maybe.

Too fucking right the earth will shake.

Cold day shaded into warm night. Weird how it sometimes does that, or at least it strikes Mike as weird but also lucky since he’s brought Emma up to the reservoir for well you can guess for what and the temperature factors into his chances, as it were. So it’s with not so much a sense as a kind of twinge of relief somewhere above the libido that he notices the night air’s warm but the breeze swooping down onto the water is cool enough to make it something better than just comfortable. Get in. Takes a rug from the boot and – because the details matter – a bottle of something a driver really shouldn’t be drinking as well and the two of them walk a little distance down the slope, get closer to the water.

Twenty minutes on and Mike has drunk, well, a little more than Emma but she’s a lightweight so it’s okay and they are both having a fucking fantastic time of it, she’s laughing at everything he says and he’s feeling all sort of content (yeah he’s not all flickers of want) and they haven’t even mentioned clothes yet. Not bad.

Too fucking right the earth will shake.

Skid over to the other side and in a little hut Nick who tends the area as much as realistically possible is well aware that with his nerves and his back and his general sort of vague sense of horror every time he sees his old skin in a mirror that it’s probably not the best idea to drop acid but, well, when it was good it was good and it’s his birthday anyway and Jim and Harry and Vic all chipped in and seriously, this place is more home than home these days so if he’s going to get good vibes anywhere it’s here. He’s maybe a little worried about forgetting how to swim or thinking the reservoir’s like clear glass with a city of mermaids at the bottom or something – don’t laugh, he’s seen it happen – but life is, well, what is life without a little risk? And it’s not like he’d be missing much anyway. So – bottoms up, as it were.

Too fucking right the earth will shake.

Further down on Nick’s side Peter is, as ever, pretty unclear on the specific, you know, point of exactly why he’s still taking pictures. They’re shit, they always are and as soon as he gets back to his studio he’s going to have to accept this but still try and get something decent from the screen to the canvas. Good luck. What is actually going to happen, as he knows, is that he’s going to mix painkillers with red wine and knock himself out for the night, twisted up in self-loathing and a little satisfaction down somewhere he’s not entirely willing to admit exists that he is, in fact, a tortured romantic soul killing himself to achieve art. What a hero. At this point, however, he’s still adjusting shutter speed, shifting position slightly, trying to synch the ripples up with the tree or the road or something, looking for a line of some sort. Boy’s got to have a hobby.

And – of all the fucking luck. Of all the possible times to come up here (and for none of them is it the first time) they had to pick the one time that, it just so happens, to the minute two thousand years ago, at this very spot, a murderer who carried a second sun in his eyes was chained down in the natural basin, covered in the soil he came from, the waters of the surrounding rivers sent crashing down on his head to keep him forever silenced even, this is the thing, even as he was screaming at the top of his lungs – in fact more like laughing – that when the sons of the sons of the sons of his killers were forgotten, their dust mingled with chalk and mould, when their names were cast onto winds that carried them far beyond graves and when, finally when the stars had swung onto their fatal line with the second sun dimmed but still burning in his eyes – he, archfiend, prophet, he would return. Carve his path out through whatever tombs they had built upon him and return. And yes; the names are forgotten, the bodies have long crumbled, the stars have lined up and he is making his way – out.

The water ripples in the centre and the stars shivering on the surface are swallowed by a brighter light from below and as it happens Peter has his eyes on the moon and Mike has his eyes on Emma and Nick has his eyes on some very pretty colours and none of them are looking at the middle of the reservoir where shedding his chains he rises and stands. The years have barely changed a thing; the names are still there just under his skin rippling as he moves, his eyes are still white and thin where he has seen and taken the burning light, his teeth are still cracked and grinding he is still a knife of a man. One thing different: the horns, his goring bone corona, he’s not the only one who can see them now. Trembles in the air and growls something and if anybody in the vicinity spoke conversational Latin of the kind used exactly 2000 years ago then they would hear him say: too fucking right the earth will shake.