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.

Jane Doe

This is a sort of prose-poetry piece based on the cover artwork for this album. It's not my single favourite album, or for that matter even my single favourite "heavy" album but of the three Converge albums I've heard (the other two being You Fail Me and No Heroes) it definitely is, and comes very close to being complete. Apart from a couple of sly refs I couldn't quite avoid though this piece doesn't really have much to do with the music, just the front cover. Probably not finished.

Jane Doe

She looked empty to me but proud too with her head mounted on a sun staring down monochrome. Years after I first saw her realised she reminded me of a face I’d seen in the interim (not the person just one picture of her face) no other real comparisons to be drawn there though. I think she’s still alive stuck among spines reigning somewhere between different thoughts.


1. There’s no peace here. Ruptures swirl the air with
questions the clock yelps and however much we drizzle
gold on our skins we’re still caught not knowing. Ever since
she was first dredged from the unlettered deeps there’ve
been no straight lines any more. Nothing’s flat now. Every
surface I see is scored down with who is she (always the
same answer even though we never once saw her burn)


2. They say she’s going to make us pure like feathers we
can’t see will flashburn the stare from our eyes and her
curled-up tongue’ll sandpaper our teeth to white/they say
she’ll destroy us from the very heart split the atom of our
homes count our seconds down ruin us till we find our
final solace only in her (I’m not sure how they plan to find
her) Maybe she’ll bite through the cords let them spiral away.


3. When we found her first (I lost the pictures) she
couldn’t speak. Dust of clocks wormed in her mouth
and the hands nodded in the milk of her eyes. Little
by little though moments started to click off her tongue
and she murmured how she’d run, and run. The dust
tickled into shape she coughed out the last and the clock
took its place sweating light behind her raised head.


The shades trickling over her face looked tangled in sadness I thought but no remorse, I don’t think she’ll ever look backwards if she even knows how. Sometimes I wonder about sticking her up on my wall; thing is, I know she won’t smile.


4. Every day now she types more earthquake lacerations
into the floating streets (maps here change every hour get
snatched from the air collected and bound) Paving stones
ask their way to level with pedestrians’ eyes then split and
grate dust and gravel onto their feet and they scream her
name they grab and burn every watch that drifts past and
specks of glass write away their skin and bone to clean.


5. Whenever I look out my window I see someone else
jumping out to try and touch her or just to show
they care. Sometimes they throw her baubles with new
names for her to try (mostly she doesn’t notice)
Sometimes they throw her dark matter to clench her
with them twinkling into a singularity. Either way they all
end up sinking always struggling the whole way down.


I can’t count the days/when she combs her eyes across my chest I know that soon, soon I’ll smash her into swallows and gulls (that’s all she is, you know, just a crunch of pinion feathers and beaks) because deep down that’s what she wants.


6. I know she’s not the mouth of our end her skin’s no sea
pure to drink but now when the clock hands wasp my ears
I can’t help it I have to blame her (not like she’d even care
if she knew) not for causing any of this that was us/just because
she could have been more made her name love time the cold
life the dream belief I/but she left it up to us weak lost in
hours of thought and all we could think to call her was Jane Doe

I'm not good at titles

This is called cool face because yeah

was walking between trees
hung with metrehigh thin canvas
prints of leni and veidts the man
who laughs a silent classic

thoughts on the topic interrupted
by mobile phone buzzing
hornet in my pocket digging
us both back into a world with
sound the phone was shivering
my time away aging me years in
moments

so turned it off stared into
sideways eyes where was
he smiling under the knife
with his shades could easily
find him in a rorschach test
but wouldnt reflect well on
me probably

fog stuck in conversation
with branches made the
only movement in the day
my untimely aging
somewhat uncomfortable with
that

but on the plus side nothing
dripped down no rain no
birds if theyd come theyd
have brought rolledup pictures
but not veidt maybe something
by hopper fitting if theyd been
pigeons but in the end they
didnt come

would find it harder to do
this kind of thing in his
preferred background anyway
maybe best to find my
way out turn my phone
back on that way can
connect up find out
where im going