Fool Moon
Tonight -
Between then
And now.

The face of the moon,
It’s haunted pallor,
Convinces of mysteries
That lurk between branches,
Between sections of sky
The trees hang leaves
That blow in the cellar
That opened too soon.

A hurricane’s eye.

A man lost at sea
Sees the same moon
As a group of people
Camping in the woods
And the group of people
See the same moon
As the man lost at sea.

And some people walk by.

The sheet of night
Blinks between branches
And clouds
The moon sends a smile,
With a reminder
This is where we met
When you last saw my face
While driving for miles

And now
Between branches
I wish you goodnight.

For Beatrice

I know you are perfect
Yet I know you not.
These moments
Meant so much to me,
These useless fleeting moments.
Behind your eyes
I cannot meet you
But in my mind
I can see you
Whispering softly
And smiling gladly
And I wish
I could be
How I think
You are
When
Love
meets
your
eye.

Gratitude from the barrel's end

Thankyou for my suffering
That hands me to the ground
Thankyou for the broken heart
That stops me getting round
To further hurting myself and others
And ending up endowed
With a reputation that cannot
Be forgiven.

Thankyou for
The damage in my soul
That makes me feel that
I can reach my goal
Thankyou for the time
That I spend alone.
Thankyou for the friends
That tolerate me still.
Thanks. That is all.

Distance, over time

Andromeda seems far away
But you seem further.

Ursa minor seems far away
but I must walk
there and back
before my life is done.

And if walking is not enough
I will sail to you
my stranger.

It may take years
and I may wither
in the interim
but you will know
when we arrive there
as the sun
meets the ground
one last time.

for Wendy Cope

Buses are like women
They're red
and they've got wheels
and it's awful
when you miss one.

wane

We are all born
under a star
mine died
in ninety five
and any light
that meets me now
is the echo
of it's last breaths
as it disappears
into the void.

Morning composition

Is it possible to precipitate
your own destiny? A sail
cannot be raised up when
there is no wind. The road
will wait for you but while
the sky is voiceless days
must be spent in the quiet
waiting of newspapers and
television shows. An eagle
too has a nest. The sun will
rise and set, the moon upon
her orbit show a changing
face. The tide will ebb and
flow before the boat may
leave the shore and a man
must live and work and
eat and breathe and talk
and sit before he finally
leaves his front door. What
love waits for you? That
of a tree meeting the dawn
in a silent forest. What
new hope? Just that of a
soft cloud that unfolds a
form of a solitary lion
leaping out from a grand
blue nothing. Hope, as
a stream in the desert to
the thirsty. And time
is the sad twitch of a
rusted heart that fears
the advent of its final
beat.

why

Something I didn't quite say
---------------------

I am sorry
about your scars


Exasperation
-----------

I cannot begin to write about
the party last night, so
how the hell am i going
to summarise the plight
of every human being and
offer succour from this
bleeding spiritual malaise?


Composition
----------

The mirror in front of me
is gilted with ornate corners.
Within its frame is a
quite splendid chandelier
underlined by a dark wood dado rail
and three photographs of matches
in various stages of ignition
cropped by my diminuitive stature
and the curve of my spine


False/Reactive
-------------

Funny, for someone
with such grandiouse literary
aspirations, I often feel like
I can neither read
nor write.

Moon
----

I bought some records
and a postcard
in Oxfam.

One postcard I didn't get
showed the phases
of the moon

It was mapped out
in a grid and
was so pleasing that

I smiled
and had to show
somebody.

Tonight the moon shines
but the clouds
obscure it

Once, many years ago
I met a man
by a cathedral

He was drunk
and staring
at the moon

I asked
if he was a poet

he said yes how did you know?


BS Elliot
-------

I haven't read the right things
to make impressive but offhand
references and classical allusions.

The fetishisation of the atom bomb
seems like a good phrase
but I can't imagine
what it would mean.

My emotions
do not have notable literary parallels.

I write
in a vacuum
but only a partial one
or that would be
interesting in itself
and may lead to innovation

I write
with the half knowledge
that things like this
are best kept to oneself.

The Quiet Ecstasies of Solitude

I had not seen anyone for four weeks except the postman when he had a special delivery and a Jehovah’s Witness who just apologised and trotted away when he looked into my eyes, which I think may have been glowing.
The special delivery was a food hamper from my mother. She sends one every four weeks because she knows I won’t eat otherwise. I listen to music constantly and smoke cigarettes and drink coffee. Sometimes I look at the ceiling and it moves and shapes form in the white and I can smell them. They glisten and they smell like plastic flowers. One time I read war and peace in one sitting while leaning against the washing machine and washing every item of clothing I had just to hear the hum and rumble and feel the vibrations down my back. Once I drank four litres of water and held it in for seven and a half hours and when I finally went for a piss the surge and electricity of it was so overwhelming that I wanted to cry and shout and laugh at the same time and with the whole bursting heart of me needed someone or something to thank for the pure bliss my body was giving me in this physical outpouring but there was nobody and I was alone so I wrote a letter to the water company explaining my story:

Dear Crystal Water,

After ingesting four litres of your colourless and odourless but oh so refreshing bottled water I had the most magnificent urinary event which my words could hardly bear testament to, however I feel an urgency almost as great as the urgency I fought for several hours to wet myself on the sofa watching the entire Star Wars trilogy and then surfing Ceefax looking at the following days television listings that I must write this letter even though I have no expectations of a reply on your part. It was really the most wondrous experience I have felt since I can remember. It was like a climax. I am sorry if this comes across as crude or otherwise unpleasant but I would actually recommend it for a method of transforming reality, because afterwards I was quite literally transfigured, in so far as my consciousness became a pure eruption of constant and vital being. I hope this makes sense. Anyway, thanks again for an excellent seven hours and ninety eight seconds.

Sincerely,

Adam J Plight


They didn’t reply of course.

Here

Hold this
a hand
an empty bowl

Here
use these
a tissue
the key to a door

Here
speak this
a poem
a refusal

Here
hold this
a pen
your tongue

Here
speak this
an anecdote
an apology

Here
we are

Sentence

With these words
may the time pass
gently, this sentence
is long and may
continue for some
time but inevitably,
eventually, will stutter
towards some kind of
an end, which frankly
will be a relief, yet
I havge noever so hesitated
to draw a full stop as here
in the post office queue with
metal arms as a maze
and enclosure -
waiting impatiently even
though the wait
be a necessity and
I don't know where you are
but if you wished the moment
to linger you would not have
got this far, and
feet tap and
hands clap on ringing bars
as people chatter about
reciepts and stammer
apologies and
this was intended as a
metaphor but has got
off track somewhat, though
things tend to don't they?
and once written
you cannot go back.

We did everything together

All my good times were with you
we never hit the charts but we were smart
and guitars and hearts, we broke a few.

Now that you don't see me anymore
my life has lost it's zest, it's hard to remember
and harder to ignore, those days were the best.

Now that we don't make our sweet songs together
now that we can't be in the same room
now we're jealous of each other

and everything we try to do
while we try our very best to move on
I still want to play all our old songs

and may I say it's hard to take
that what we built up had to break
the night our band split up

In Hope

It's dark in here
but I have a light for you
a blight appeared
in the creeping night
but something still
is true, we live,
we breathe and do,
but for the while we live
and the branches sing
in exaltant washes pleasing
to the gentle ear
that softly hears
a summer song
they sway their way
between the breeze and
fear abides then goes away
tears dry and sighs
allieviate and change
always change
nothing stays
but the remains
of the broken nows
that sit shattered
and hey,
yes, it is dark in here
but your words
can warm a soul
your deeds
fulfil a role
in easing the dread
in pleasing the eyes
in passing the time
until we are dead
and buried soundless
and without breath in us
so please,
believe
that your fight
is important and brave
and the tide of the night
forgot and forgave
so don't be dragged under
and please know
that you have a light
somewhere below
the ache and the mire
and go
be happy
be good
be you.

Ballad

An Example of Stoicism Among the Enemies of our War in the Arab World

Our men went off in quick grey planes
To fight a foolish war
Our men went off to inflict pain
On enemies and more

They battled with strange weaponry
And buried children live
And the enemy spoke stoically
Of blue skies on their side

“For bombs may fall and bullets fly
But if it is God’s will
That for my sins I will soon die
Then take me up the hill”

So by the tree my father sat
And looked across the plain
At wrecked houses and forgot that
He heard the screams of pain

Of citizens innocent as
Much as anyone who
Living within a living hell
Could be expected to

Our men came back battle-scarred from
Trying to protect home
And families watching TVs
Silently alone, spoke

Little in the word of thanks for
The men rushed to battle
Who viewed through a cracked door
Where bones break and rattle

Then came home to not very much
Came home to how are you
Came home to pints on cloudy nights
With nothing much to do

But remember the children’s faces
Seen slumped against the dust
And weep in unlikely places
For weep they really must

Because enemies have no faces
Enemies have no homes
And such far flung places
Can still be called by phone

And the world is surely smaller
Than anyone will know
When you walk among fallen
Tread soft upon the snow

Of days that time has overthrown
That melted and then froze
Night filled with cries of those unknown
Dawn creeping on tiptoes

A Song in the Eaves

In your mother’s house
The oven door is rusted shut
And everything is undercut
By a veil of sadness ponderous
and stitched into the family rug
are dirty footsteps, angry words
that crept in, flew in with the birds
that roost in rooftop hides beak-dug
pecked and furnished with hoarded twigs
to things that grew and things that hatched
and flapped and sang and fed on figs
the family had their eyes upon
and for that theft received a gift
unnoticed, unceremonious, but free -
a joyful song of spring, of sun, of leafy love
of things all one, the lofty dove,
the feral pigeon, the tiny wrens
and all that feed and live and die
and sing and breed, and their hatchlings
sing their songs again
from eaves of houses, leaves of trees
sing their song of spring sun and summer breeze.

So when your days are fading
And your last words are said
When the plans that you were making
All fade inside your head
Remember the face of those you fed
Remember them, your undertaking;
They will walk the earth
Continue in your dragging steps
With your memory in their skin.
They will sing the song you sang,
Louder for you, longer, further,
They will make a nest
To hatch the dreams you laid
Seventy springs ago
And who they are
And what they know
They owe to you.
To your wings.
To your talons.
To the love in your beady eyes.
Remember this
As your bones
Meet the soil.

Greatest hit

I peel open the door and everything becomes real.
My heavy footsteps embarrass me,
Though only the grass notices.
I sit upright on a damp log bench
And feel the wind running through me,
Humming and uncoiling and draining away
With the waves of traffic and treelimbs
Filtering together. Every sound gone
Before it reaches me. The blue night
Holding every orange-haloed streetlight.

Feeling slightly seasick I
Drop my head between my knees,
My stomach turning forwards over itself
Bubbling in my throat but still nothing comes.
I sit up refreshed and stand slowly turning,
Pulled in every direction, so aware
Of the bristled conifer playground smells
And the weight of my own skull,
I look at the grass glistening dully
And feel like tasting it, tasting the soil underneath,
Though it's probably not a good idea.

The holly bush draws me sharply over -
How sharp it feels on my palms I think,
I lean my whole body into it, the tiny spikes
All over my arms and chest, and feel not it
But those little points of myself.
I step away happy and guilty, thinking
Of the people behind curtained windows
All laughing along with the canned laughter,
All weeping along to synthesized violin music.

The shadows grow denser and wider -
They seem to bulge out between branches
And the rocks in the wall, infinite empty volumes
That would swallow you up without a trace.
I close the door behind me quietly.

Inside again the hum of boilers
The ticking of clocks
Lightbulbs burn my eyes,
The overdue sickness welling up
As I climb the stairs to the
Dark landing and step step step
Across the bathroom pulling
On the light automatically, lean over
The sink and feel the oily acid combining inside

And scratching over my teeth then I am
Turning the tap and the water flows through by magic
Washing it all down the drain, and
I swill the lukewarm water in my mouth
And feel it rattling against the cheek walls,
Before letting it fall over my bottom lip and into the sink.
The taste is still in my mouth and I am sick three more times
and I still don't know if that's the last of it,
but I'm bored of it anyway, and lie face down on the bed
with my eyes sweating into the pillow and the curtains rattling.

A series of haiku on the theme of time

Have patience my friend
Repetition turns soothing
After a while.

The hours go slow
Though the days just go faster
Time is overturned.

Each morning broken
Just like the first and basted
With bright song and light.

And all our habits
Hold together surprises
With time’s grey glue.

Appreciate now
I have a feeling soon
They may run out.

Read out by classmate in chapel

The Death of a Celebrity

A great man
To those that profess to know him
A nuisance
To those that did.

Two old favourites

The Bus That Didn’t Show

I am sitting on a bench beside crumpled newspaper
Underneath orange sodium streetlight glow
Filling myself with coffee warmth from a battered thermos
And the sights and sounds of the city.

There is a guy wobbling his bicycle along the road –
A vacant smile smudged across his stubble,
And a learner driver squeaking her mirror
Before driving away cautiously.

I laugh out loud at the concrete left behind
It looks sort of funny sitting there on its own,
But also sad.

I go back to the crossword.

Leaf Collection Therapy

Brushing leaves I feel the rustle,
As each one meets the bristles,
And drags merrily across the patio.

I thank someone for this hour
Of time forgotten and the innocent
Piling of tree debris makes me forget that I am

Here. I am here brushing leaves
Into little piles
And not somewhere else.

Remember performing this emotionally at school

Eyes Like Stars

I remember an incident
When I was ten and a quarter –
A grown up told me knowingly
“These are the best days of your life.”

It seemed so stupid
Grownups have so much more freedom
Don’t have to go to school
Don’t have homework.

I looked up enviously and was surprised.
The eyes I connected with seemed somehow dull.
Frozen almost, and looking further in
A sadness bounced back at me
From those two distant mirrors.
They looked defeated –
Like when you realise it’s time to go home
But you want to stay at the playground with your friends.
It was like that.

Or that’s how I saw them,
But now I would attach a different analogy –
The memory of those eyes are indented
As stars etched in space –
Bright, sparkling but an ancient picture of energy
Outdated by distance, time.
The sparkle is an apparition from years before
The star may now be dead, a black hole.

I thought this was a great pun in 1997

Stream of Consciousness

Still here, and focused, cars drift behind fuzzily – their lights
so soothing on my back – cast a shadow up this tree in front of me – I am aware of my own hand on my shoulder – the arm drawn neatly across – I feel the breeze blowing through me as I stand poised and ready:

No lights now except the stars,

My own internal energies (good and bad) flow

In a beautiful, sighing, arching stream of piss,
Cutting through the darkness
And s p r a y i n g
over my shoes:-
And then for a moment I feel empty and whole at once,
As the last drops run warm down my leg.

poem once sent to competition - theme 'flood'

After

I was the first to emerge…
The first to witness the upturned cars lying on glistening tarmac,
Saluting the sky like rigid turtles,
And all the while I stood amazed in my own road
As I sucked the morning between my teeth.

And as the sun grew,
People trickled from their houses in ones and twos
To see the steam rising off the ground.
Every buoyant face saying;
Thank god we didn’t drown

I really believe in poetry

There is nothing in these words
Bland symbols of shapes spoken out
In the creeping now, how do I hope
To reach you when I cannot reach myself?
The ravine inside is endless and I am at the
Bottom of it. There is nothing in these words.
If I repeat myself does it form a structure?
How through these bland symbols do I hope
To defeat the moment and reach the beyond
When I can hardly hold on to it? The ravine
Is bottomless and I am backed into a corner
And there is nothing in these words.

Short story for Rosie and Dug

A Little Story About Two Splendid Folk

In the mouth of the river tyne, that sways through the North of England, there is a town, a grand little town. And in that town lives a most charming couple of characters, and they are called Rose and Duggy. They struggle through the cold, for it is said that the wind in The North can chill a man’s very soul. Yet they are strong, for in their breasts rest two hearts, pure and bold, that neither cold nor adversity can set into despair.
There are some fine folk there, some they have met and some they are yet to meet. But in The North (as in all places in the big wide world) some bastards lurk. They lurk everywhere, for when they see a decent soul they glow green with envy, and grind their teeth. Over time, these bastards try and grind people down, for bastards like nothing but to see a brave spirit broken. They would work on Rose and Duggy over time, as they would with many of their chums, making them feel bad, making them doubt in themselves and in people. People can be good, when in a mood for sharing and kindness people can be very good. But people can be mean and cruel and selfish, and when that sort of a mood they can be very mean, very cruel, and very selfish. The bastards have forgotten what it is to be kind and to see how good people can be, and they bully and they enslave until the humble folk are sad and don’t know what to do. The bastards will only be happy until we live in a world of bastards, where no-one can trust another person or love them because everyone is nasty and life is empty. One day, Rose and Duggy made a decision. They would make a house together, and it would be a fortress against the bastards, and it would be a haven from the noise and the business and confusion of modern life. It would be a happy place for them, where they can return from a day in the muddle, wearing the armour of hope, and sit and dream. And there they live, in this haven, and their dreams are rainbows that sing with the sunrise, and their dreams are bridges to the future, and their future is the song.

(mis)printed in this year's Ripple

Prelude – Poem for a competition (never sent)

If this poem does not win your competition I will have your legs broken.

If this poem does not win your competition I will commit suicide with a shot-gun in the whitest room of the Tate Modern.

If this poem does not win your competition I will spread sordid rumours about you having an affair with your secretary/school sweetheart/milkman.

If this poem does not win your competition I will begin a campaign of terror, firebombing every poetry publisher in the country, wounding thousands with shards of shrapnel that rip their flesh as the blast burns them and throws them to the ground.

If this poem does not win your competition I will skin a living dog and post its matted hide to you. I will beat a pensioner into a coma with a bag of bones and the collected works of TS Elliot.

If you do not declare this poem the greatest ever written, if I am not hailed as Britain’s New Young Hope, if this is not replicated in every tube train and anthology I will personally expose myself to a priest, then masturbate on the alter before burning the place down and screaming each unholy word I know at the top of my lungs until my voice disappears and I am dragged away to a police cell/psychiatric hospital by a couple of tit helmeted plods/men in white coats.

If this poem does not win your competition I will write an article about how Sylvia Plath is a greatly over-rated and unnecessary obtuse drama queen and her death was the best thing she ever did, and how even the fascist EzrabPound is better than her. I will then eat said article and several hours later shit it into a jiffy bag and mail it to The Guardian with the letters S.W.A.L.K. inscribed upon the back in my own blood.

However, if this poem does not win your competition I will not stop writing. I will enter a new poem, more passionate and exquisitely crafted every year, I will publish them in my own magazines if I have to. I will not stop until we run out of ink and typewriter ribbon, computers and pencils. I will not stop until the earth is a scorched wasteland inhabited solely by cockroaches that scuttle under a chemical sky.

short

I’ll Meet You In The Undertow

Sunlight leaks through the cracks in the blinds, the light pouring through in dusty beams. It’s 7:30 and Mark’s alarm clock is singing a grating pop song. Mark rolls over in bed pulling the pillow over his head. He reaches an arm over and hits snooze.
Silence. Not asleep and not awake he feels his dream slipping away from him, a dream where he was somewhere green, peaceful. A park? He was walking with somebody. A woman. But her face has blurred and disappeared into the mist. He just sees a hand held out, open. Then it fades. He tries to cling onto the feeling, a sensation that he is completely free and happy. He doesn’t feel this very often, but in sleep he goes someplace, a place he wishes he could stay but knows he cannot. His breathing gets heavier, deeper. He drifts off again.
7:35. Rise and shine you’re listening to Buzz FM. It’s a beautiful day. We’ll be with you until 9, taking you to work. Now here’s Sharon with the news…
Snooze.
7:40 And that was the news. Now over to…
Snooze. And every time he hits that button he feels himself slipping further away from where he wants to be. Like a balloon slipping from a child’s hand he floats up and up, into consciousness. Into a world where he has to think his own thoughts, live among other people, work and socialise and fuel his body with food, caffeine, nicotine. A world where he doesn’t know his place but has to try and fit himself in to a baffling and colossal machine. What purpose has he here? What does it mean? How long will he feel this useless and disorientated? Another week? month? year? forever?
7:45. Right time to get up. I’m going to get up. Just open my eyes and pull the duvet back… it feels cold outside the bed, it’s warmer here… come on need to have a shower. When did you last shower? Thursday? I should have had one yesterday it was the weekend. Monday morning, back to the grind. Right.
One foot slips out from under the duvet and towards the carpet, the other follows. A hand pressed on the mattress sheets creasing out. The other hand behind pushing up, body rising, sitting on the bed now, now upright. Okay. Let’s go.
Everything else happens in a blur of routine, dressing gown on, quick steps down the stairs one two three four five six seven thinking about coffee coffee no time to make a pot, bit of instant in a mug. Now in the kitchen a jet of water shooting into the kettle clicked into place, presses the button. Mug. Spoon. Nescafe Gold Blend. Shouldn’t really buy it but it’s what I’m used to and I like it. Twists the lid off, a special treat today, a new foil to break through. Crack. Tear. Wake up and smell the coffee. Opens the fridge and gets the milk, gives it a smell, think it’s still okay, I’m putting it in boiled water anyway so it’ll be fine it’s not going to kill me what if it did? it's not going to don’t be silly. The kettle now coming to life, the water inside rolling and hissing. Toast. Two slices in the toaster. A plate from the cupboard. Kettle’s boiled. Poured into a cup swirling black and specked with froth, milk and two sugars, stir it up, clink clink the spoon against the side of the mug. Pop. The toast is done, two slices of wholegrain and a good slab of butter smeared across almost tearing the bread but not quite. Bit of jam on one, the other as it is. Plate in the left hand, coffee in the right, a little slosh up and over the top onto the kitchen floor as he strides into the living room, sitting down on the sofa, laying the toast and coffee on the table. A sip of coffee. Mm. Eyes up a pack of Benson & Hedges on the table, pauses, snatches the pack up open and draws one out placing it softly between his lips. Sparking the lighter, a quite fizz and crackle as it lights. He inhales. Exhales.
Look at the time! Shit. He stubs out the cigarette, gulps a last mouthful of coffee, charges towards the shower. Turns it on, a hand in cold, warmer now. The dressing gown falls to the floor and he looks at his flabby body in the mirror. How did I get like this? He dismisses the thought, steps in under the hot water. A squirt of shower gel, rubbing the foam across arms, chest, legs. Singing as he rubs the loofah down his back, elbow above his head, somewhere over the rainbow way up high, there’s a land that I dreamed of once in a lullaby. He stops, disappointed with his voice even in the forgiving reverb of the cubicle. Mark stands on one foot and goes between the toes, rinsing and resting them haltingly on the floor being careful not to slip over. He finds himself getting lost in the warmth, closing his eyes. No time for this, I’ll wash my hair tomorrow.
He gets out to the gentle kiss of a warm towel, fluffy pile of cotton against his face. He wraps it around himself and picks up the razor, running it under the cold tap. A squirt of shaving foam on the cheeks, scraping away a few days growth. He rinses, slaps on his aftershave with a soft sting, a new scent he picked out from Boots. Smells good.
Later, fully clothed he is in the car to work. Fed up of Buzz FM he pushes a tape in, a mixture from long ago. As he hears those firsts chords he is back in a different time. He thinks of his mates at sixth form, hanging out on the steps, passing a joint under the sun, the sky reflected blue in a puddle. Sharing dreams, ideas. The optimism of youth. A foot on the brakes, sudden. The car in front stopped for a woman pushing a pram on a zebra crossing. I must pay more attention. He turns the music off and drives on, pulling the sun visor down. Checks the speedometer. 30 mph exactly.
Ten minutes of nothing, the same route he has driven every day. He sees a suited man with a briefcase on one side, a school-kid cycling a bike takes a left towards the town centre. He carries on. His office is situated in an industrial park on the outskirts. A few trees, a meagre patch of grass. His building rising up grey. He pulls into the carpark, reversing with the expertise of routine. He paces the tarmac towards the front door, adjusting his tie and smelling his breath. Did I brush my teeth today?










Hi Rebecca you alright? Yeah fine thank you. Yes it was good thanks, very restful, how was yours? Oh that sounds nice, how is he? Good, I’m glad. See you at coffee time.
Mark sits in his cubicle, shuffles his papers around. Turns on the computer. Emails. One from his brother Tom, he’s buying a new lawnmower. The rest is junk. Penis enlargements, Viagra. Where do they get his details? He deletes them.
“How’s it going with the Marlbrook account? Any progress?”
“Getting there sir.”
“Good. Keep it up. I want the it done by the end of the week.”
Mark opens the spreadsheet and a sea of numbers flash up. For a moment he is swimming in them, his eyes gliding across the surface seeing what he’s done so far, and what needs to be done. Then he starts drowning, the number drift out of focus in front of his eyes. He takes a deep breath, opens the book and starts slowly typing in the information. He stares at the screen, realising he doesn’t know what he’s doing. What is his job again? He has been doing it for years, so why does he feel like a child lost in the supermarket, the aisles closing in under blazing striplights? He stands up and makes his way to the toilet. A stick man on the door tells him he’s in the right place. He notes the crudely scratched smiley face on the sign and smiles back, opening the door.
The toilet is empty. Good. Mark locks himself in the cubicle, feels like screaming. Instead he gives himself a talk. Come on man pull yourself together. You are perfectly capable of crunching numbers in a stupid office. This isn’t beyond you. Soon there will be a promotion. A new car. You’ll be out of the cubicle and into your own space, executive toys on the table, a pinstripe jacket hanging on the back of a plush swivel chair. You are intelligent, capable. He tries to remember the mantra from that tape that he bought in a moment of intended self-improvement, but can’t even remember the name of the cassette. The Will to Work? Something like that. Useless. He flushes, redundantly, but feels somehow purged. He steps out, splashes his face in the tap and strides out and along the corridor, a rag of toilet paper briefly dragged under his half-shiny shoes.
Outside. Fresh air. Yes. What am I doing? I’m meant to be at work. They don’t pay me to go off for a walk. Will they notice I’m not there? Eventually. I don’t care I’m not going back in there. I’m going to get an ice cream.
Leaving his car he walks along the road. It’s a long way into the town, but he sets a decent pace. Mark loosens his tie, opens the top button. It feels good. His shirts are getting a bit tight on the neck but Mark refuses to buy a new one. He looks at the clouds above and it makes him think about his duvet, but he doesn’t want to go back to bed.
Just then Mark hears the merry tinkle of an ice cream van tolling from the estate nearby. He turns the corner walking towards the sound. In the distance he sees the blue and white van. It feels like a sign.
“Alright mate, what can I do for you?”
“One 99 flake please.”
“Sauce?”
“Yeah strawberry. Thanks.”
“That’s £1.20 to you.”
“How much is it to everyone else?”
“What?”
“Never mind. Here you are.”

He ambles along the road, looking at the empty driveways and blank windows. Everyone’s at work. An old man is tending to his flowers. He waters them and pulls a stray weed up with a practiced tug. He turns around and Mark smiles.
“Morning!”

The old man smiles to himself and continues watering. The droplets pour out from the sprinkler in slender arcs. Mark does a little jump and kicks his heels together, chuckling to himself. He carries on walking normally pausing to light a cigarette. He looks at the little mole on his wrist, the one he first noticed last week. He sits on the kerb, the cigarette burnt half down. A hand slides into his pocket drawing out his mobile phone. The battery is getting low. He looks through the menu, skipping down through name after name, pausing over Helena. He reads the letters sounding the name out to himself. It sounds strange, alien. So many times he has thought of calling her, how long has it been now? A long time. With uncharacteristic bravery he presses the green button. The phone rings in his ear. No answer. He puts the phone back in his pocket and walks down the street, sees a footpath and follows it, not knowing where he is going. He takes on a kind of inertia, not speed but a determination and weight to every step which is at odds with how lost he feels.
Walking now by trees, now down another street, he continues. Over a bridge. He is now walking into headlong traffic on the right hand side of the road, cars swerving around him. His eyes scratch along the shrubbery and settle on a stile which he hurdles with ease. The path now muddy he looks at his shoes, the mud caking them, soiling the night black patina. He continues, the road sounds disappearing now, taken over by the rabid gargling of a river, banks full to bursting. Mark realises it has been raining. No matter. He looks at the water, the surface, static yet vital. He walks forward, left foot first, then the right, his feet now submerged, water pours into his shoes and he likes it. Another step, a bit deeper. The bottom is slippery. Deeper and deeper, until completely submerged he lies back and lets the river carry him away, and in the flow of the water he remembers the dream of the open hand.

this was meant to be for mills and boon:

The Sun May Yet Break Through
Kaede Kita

In the cold winter a grey cloud of gloom had settled over Philippa. She had felt down before, but never this bad. Stressed at work and lonely at home, her only solace was her friends. Yet she seemed to spend the whole time complaining and they must have been getting a little fed up of it. Her back hurt constantly and her thoughts were heavy with self-criticism, sadness and frustration. She hoped this feeling wouldn’t last much longer. In the depths she wondered who could lift her from this pain? It seemed impossible.
What happened to those good times, laughing and joking? Where did those summers go, full of colour and light? The springtime of her youth seemed an age ago. Even her dog was moping. Bruno would not eat his food and spent much of his time whimpering and scraping at the front door. Philippa eyed the door too. From her position slumped on the armchair with the radio chattering she looked at the lock and half hoped to hear the distant yet familiar sound of a key sliding in and turning the lock.
This was the same front door Calvin had walked out of and never returned. No real explanation had been offered, just complaints and excuses. Philippa suspected there was another woman, but he had been keeping her at such a distance she barely cared anymore. They used to speak into the small hours. He would bring her gifts of bouquets of flowers and beautiful bracelets, whisk her away to Italy for a romantic weekend. That was early on, in the first flushes of romance. Then came the years of awkward silences over dinner fuelled by piling resentments that collapsed into screaming arguments over nothing much. Then soon after came the retaliatory headaches at bedtime and whispered phone conversations in the study. She heard he’d moved to Canada.
The phone rang. Startled by the abrupt chiming Phillipa knocked over her Chianti and it bled over the pink carpet. For a moment she hovered wondering if there was anything she could do about the rapidly increasing stain then slumped down with a frown. She gritted her teeth and picked up the phone with a deep breath.
“Hello?”
“Hi Phillipa.”
“Sarah. Hi. How are you?”
“I’m fine thanks. I was actually calling to ask you the same thing.
“Not bad, why do you ask?”
“You didn’t come out yesterday.”
“Well I was pretty tired from work. I’m sorry. I’m sure you didn’t miss me.”
“Of course we did! We rarely see you these days.”
“Well you know, since Calvin left it’s been hard…”
“It’s been going on longer than that and you know it. I’m coming to see you.”
“Don’t come now. The house is a mess. It’s hard to keep it clean these days.”
“Well, if you don’t want me to come tonight I’ll come tomorrow.”
“Okay Sarah.”
“And I don’t want to hear another word about Calvin. Okay? Tomorrow.”
“Thank you Sarah. I do wonder why you bother with me.”
“Well, you’re my best friend. So sort out the house. I’m cooking.”
“I better go Sarah.”
“I’ll see you tomorrow. We’re going to sort out your life.”
“Ha. That’s a big task for one evening.”
“We’re going to try. I’m fed up of your moping. I want to see you happy.”
“I’ve got something on the stove. I better go.”
“Okay. Goodnight Pip. Lots of love.”

After he walked out she burnt his clothes. A big pile of work shirts and cotton underpants blazing in the garden behind the shed. The flames climbed and danced in the cobwebbed shed window. When they had ran out of rooms in the house they made love in that shed, as they had in the autumn leaves under the willow tree and the blanket of soft dusk light. Her mind drifted to the feel of his firm hand on her thigh, his warm breath on her neck. How he would speak her name to her, so softly that it was just for her, but with such weight that she knew she was the only one who existed for him. The memory was almost too much to bear. It didn’t even make any difference that he was dull and balding, she loved him completely and the thought of his name occupied her. The image of his smiling stubbled face made her glow inside, a warm fuzz that brought a wistful tear to her eye. She had loved Calvin since the moment they met but now he was gone forever.
Burning his clothes was supposed to make her feel better about him leaving but it didn’t make any difference. Maybe she was already over it, had even been waiting for it. When he had finally stepped out into the night with a hurriedly packed suitcase of clothes she had washed and a box of stupid superhero comics Philippa felt something akin to relief. A strange, sad and slightly bitter relief. She could do anything she wanted now. All those hours devoted to him and neglecting herself were over. She was free. Yet as much as she tried she could not view the situation in a positive light. Their past was written on the walls of the home she had inherited from her dear mother. That home had been theirs. Cooking for one was never as fun and the domino set that clacked on rainy days was only good for making fragile castles now that stacked up precariously upon each other and inevitably collapsed in a noisy heap. Most of all she missed having someone in her bed to snuggle up to. Another human being to be close to. Now she nuzzled the pillow that his head had dreamt upon and cursed the day she met him.
Yet Calvin was only the final straw. She hated her job. Drudging day by day to the dull orders of a dopey manager. Photocopying and typing. Philippa hated the fluorescent lights that glared above and the computer screen that stared at her impassively day after tedious day. She hated the chatter of her colleagues but joined in enough so as not to get ostracised. She lived for her lunch hour where she would walk to the park and eat the takeaway sandwiches she bought from the shop across the road. Phillipa liked that shop with its soft pink walls and smiling staff. They always had a smile for her and a friendly word, and their sandwiches were the best in town. She could carry them to her spot and watch the swans arch their graceful curved necks against the mirror of the water that reflected the blue sky and sparkled with tiny specks of sun. These moments of peace were becoming too fleeting, and dulled by the fog of misery. Even the chattering of the ducks that used to make her smile inside seemed to grate on her. Something had to change.


Dr James Fischer had been called in early again. He was the consultant psychiatrist at Hope Hospital. Like many who have dedicated their lives to the understanding and healing of the human soul he was rather eccentric, but he was a kind man and very popular with nurses and patients alike. He flipped his brown hair away from over the rim of his spectacles and stepped into the staffroom.
“Good morning all. How are we?”
The usual smiling chorus of “fine thank you doctor” echoed back to him. Cleeve Ward was not by nature the most joyful of places but Doctor Fischer and his team made a point of maintaining a healthy optimism and even a certain playfulness. The suffering of his patients mattered to him dearly but he did not believe it helped to be glum himself.
“What’s the problem this morning?”
“Mr Jones still won’t eat. He says somebody stole his silver ring.”
“I’ll have a word with him, hang on.”

Dr Fischer strolled out. He was a tallish man and had a confidence in his step but a skiing injury had left him with a broken left shoulder that had not reset properly. As a result his head was always at a slight angle, which lent him a quizzical air that was enhanced when he arched his eyebrow. The injury was not in fact his fault, but incurred while trying to aid a novice back onto their skis after a minor fall. While the novice moaned and falteringly pressed his boots back into his bindings a snowboarder rushed down at an excessive rate and was not able to stop. Dr Fischer had taken the force of the blow and ended up being taken down strapped to the back of a snowmobile. He always had time for everyone and cared a great deal for his patients but the constant stress of his work left his brow permanently furrowed and his consumption of strong instant coffee must have bordered on toxic the way he slurped cup after cup between appointments. Psychiatrists retire ten years younger than most other doctors, and the way he rushed about people were saying he’d be retired before his fortieth birthday. He rapped three times on Mr Jones’ private room.
“GO AWAY!”
“Mr Jones, it’s Doctor Fischer. The nurse says you won’t eat anything.”
“Someone’s had me ring. That ring belonged my brother.”
“Well we can help you look for it. But first you must eat.”
“I’m not eating a thing ‘til I’ve got that ring. Not for nobody.”
James Fischer allowed himself a slight sigh. This is what he’d been pulled out of bed for. The man must eat but he was hardly underweight. Yet he understood how demoralising it could be for patients in the ward and Mr Jones had been with them for over a month. After such a time personal belongings became your connection to the outside world and regardless of how harshly it was treating you that was not something to lose. When Mr Jones’ wife had passed away there had been nobody to look after him any more and he was left a broken man. Eventually through continued fear for Mr Jones’ safety on the farm his care-worker had recommended an inpatient stay. Day by day he was getting stronger, and nothing delighted James Fischer more than a glimmer of mischief in a once broken patient’s eye, even if they were sometimes a lot of bother.
“Would you like me to send that new nurse in? She’ll be very cross.”
“Don’t be sending her in. She’s worse than my wife was.”
“You miss her don’t you?”
“Not that nurse I don’t. She never gives me a moment’s peace.”
“She’s just looking out for you. If you’re not hungry you can go to the gym.”
“Come off it lad. Just bring me my breakfast.”

It was a funny old place the ward. In the office they had one of those stickers, you don’t have to be crazy to work here but it helps. James had first thought it insensitive but as the years had gone on the gulf between staff and patients was less apparent. Even odder, it had started to feel like home. He had more family here than anywhere else, certainly not where he lived, a bed-sit he shared only with some cacti plants and an aging Labrador that had to be walked at night usually. Basil’s habits were as odd and ingrained as James Fischer’s own and he usually led the walk, expressing his intent for a stroll by nudging the front door at precisely the moment that James put the TV on. Cacti were the only plants he could keep alive. Though despite his lack of free time it was not through standard neglect that they withered but through a compensatory over-watering that bordered on obsessive. Looking after other people took most of his time and energy but it was what he loved to do. What other job could be so fulfilling he often wondered when he was dragged away from another dinner party to counsel a despairing patient. They didn’t call them patients any longer. Service user was the politically correct term. But James preferred patient, because as he always said, healing takes time.



“It’s just taking so long, Sarah. Why do I still feel so awful?”
“I don’t know Pip. You were always one of the melancholy ones.”
“This is different.”
“I know.”
“I’m not just moping you know, sometimes I just… just…”

Phillipa burst into tears. Great, heaving squalling tears. Like an ocean had been building up behind her eyes but had just broken the flood barriers. Sarah put her arms around her, cradled her sobbing friend. Sometimes it’s all you can do. When the crying stopped Phillipa started speaking, first falteringly, then a great torrent, the thoughts that had been plaguing her pouring out in sweeping surges like the tears that ran down her face.

“Do you ever wonder what it’s all about? I mean what are we alive for? I don’t know. I mean, nobody every really loved me. Not my parents. I was just a burden to them like I am to all of you. I’m useless, pathetic. And I feel ugly. Men don’t look at me anymore. Never. I feel like a big fat waste of space. I used to be beautiful but something changed. And now I just think all the time, how long? How long must I put up with all this? This weight, always on my shoulders, this knot in my stomach. The hurt so deep inside I can’t even tell you where it is. I’m so sad Sarah, I’m hurting. All those men over the years just used me and threw me out like a rag. I feel tainted. And work. It’s awful. I hate that too. There’s nothing in my life, just you, and it’s not fair on you Sarah I know it. It’s just not fair. I’m pathetic.”
“Don’t talk like that.”
“Why not? It’s how I feel. Do you know what Sarah? I wish I’d never been born. It makes me so sick just looking out in the road. At all the stupid people. They don’t have to suffer like me, just plodding about, drinking cardboard coffee. Going out and getting drunk and being blindly cruel to each other then forgetting about it and doing it again to someone else. Life is just a stupid waste of time. And I’m not playing anymore. All the pain, the wars, it’s horrible. But I don’t care. I just want to get to sleep at night without these awful nightmares. Those half-lit hours alone burying my head under the pillow, willing sleep to take me, hoping not to wake up again. I feel like screaming, I really do.”
“I don’t know why you’re saying this. You’re going to make me cry too.”
“It’s alright for you. You’ve got Mike and the kids. You have an important job. People respect you. It’s always been like that, even at school. All the boys loved you. I’m going to be left on the shelf. And you’ll all forget about me. Just get out Sarah I’m moaning too much. I’m sorry, really I am. This is why I don’t come out. I’m no fun anymore, just this horrible person. I must make you sick.”
“Stop it.”
“I’m tired Sarah.”
“You’re okay. You’re just in a slump. Things will get better.”
“What if they don’t?”
“You battle on. Bravely. Until they do.”
“What if this gets worse? I can’t go on like this. I can’t see a future.”
“I don’t know what to say.”

This was the first time Phillipa had said any of this out loud. For a long time she had felt the weight of her loneliness, but it was more recently that the light of hope was dimming. She felt ashamed of herself for feeling this way. The moments ground by, the clock ticked haltingly. Through the blinds light slanted in catching the dust that hung in the air. Sarah caught Phillipa picking at a scab on her arm. First it looked like an oven burn, but at second glance it was too thin. A long cut that couldn’t have happened by accident.

“Pip, don’t take this the wrong way, but I think you should talk to someone.”
“Who?”
“I don’t know. I’m here for you, but I don’t know how to help. We’re going to make things okay though. I know you can get over this. We’ll beat it together.”
“How?”
“Somehow.”


“Good morning Vicki.”
“Good morning Doctor.”
“Could you tell me what I’m meant to be doing today?”
“Of course. Did you sleep last night? You look exhausted.”
“What, more than usual?”
“About the same.”

Vicki was James’ secretary. Organised and with a jolly temperament she was the glue that held his team together. Without her he would be lost, as she was fond of reminding him, and for which he gratefully acknowledged even more often. James was an excellent psychiatrist, the best that Hope Hospital had, perhaps ever. His patients all loved him and he led them through their problems with sensitivity, understanding and intelligence. Somehow organising his own life seemed to be another matter. He was almost neglectful of himself, forgetting to eat for hours on end. When it came to when appointments were and attending meetings Vicki was a lifesaver. Beyond all that, she doted on him. They always carried themselves professionally but her affection for him was obvious. Not that his scattiness didn’t irritate her ever, but she put it down to his mind being occupied with the many patients on the ward. Sometimes she wished he could just forget about it for a few days and take a holiday, but they needed him. And in a way, she felt, he needed them.

I'm thinking for some reason this would make a comic.

The Carnality of Boredom
by David Marshall Mahoney

Through the window a bird and a plane in the sky. In the reflection on the glass is a man’s face. His face is my face. I look at my hands. I am cooking. What am I cooking? Here it is, the knife in my hand, the meat seeping red onto the chopping board. The light in the room burns yellow and flickers. I slice off a strip and look at the non-stick pan smoking on the hob. I slice off another strip slowly and the fibres come apart. I dip my finger in the meat juices and put it to my lips. It’s the 20th of January. Was that the doorbell? Nobody there. The blood on my tongue excites me. Why does blood excite me? Is this a taboo? Steak tartar is considered classy, sushi chic. I want the meat between my teeth. I want to rip it apart. I close the blinds.
The clock. The time. Something to do? I am squeezing the meat in my hand. It smells fresh but it’s dead. This lived once. I am alive. I am alive now. What does it mean to be alive? I am cooking. The meat is in my mouth raw between my teeth and butterflies and beetles shout in my ribcage. You only live once. Yes please some more please the rest of the meat in my mouth laughing ha ha. How many times have I lived before? What was I cooking where was I remember his face just before a brick and the blood in my mouth I am cooking a stir-fry the vegetables are all prepared there are tears in my eyes and my canines rip through the steak in my fist. It is Saturday I usually have something on a Saturday what is it? I feel slightly sick and my hands are trembling.
The telephone rings. It is a man’s voice. He speaks into my ear. He says my name. The telephone speaks my name into my ear. It is hollow. There is nothing around my name. I am naked in a black lake under a blank sky holding a cordless telephone and Angela has gone missing and my stomach hurls gore onto the cedar flooring.







Hello Thomas take a seat. How have you been this week?
Fine thank you how are you?
Very well thanks Thomas. Do you remember where we were last week?
We were here. In these very room.
Yes. And do you remember what we were talking about?
I was talking about my dream where I penetrated a dwarf with gargantuan breasts while watching Carry on Doctor with the sound turned off on a pile of money and bones.
Did you keep a thought diary this week?
Yes but it’s just full of shopping lists and phone numbers of people I want to have sex with at some point.
I’m going to try a new tack this week Thomas.


Testing. Testing. One, two. This quick broke fuck jests over the latest drink. This is the sound of my voice. This is a recording. Where is the thing? Ah -

0 – Dream ( 22nd January)

The boring shore laps splash sounds and the sand rakes under painted toes. The sun burns hot in the sky blush blue. Now he thinks. She is eating an ice cream. Her eyes are hung low the lids heavy. Is this the best day I have ever had? I can see everything stretching us out as the sun cuts silhouettes around our bodies. The cotton cardigan rests on her shoulders and the belt swings around in loops at her waist. In a straw bag the remains of our picnic. Time flies and lays its eggs. We walk and the silence strangles new thoughts with hesitation, the sun sets and the footsteps sink heavier into the heavy sand shards of glass against a salt lake ripped by wind and the moon’s draw and she won’t look at me. Perhaps she is shy or bored but I feel okay. And so we walk into the future dragging our rucksacks. We climb forwards one step in front of the other, side by side, but eyes fixed forwards endlessly as it all passes by our ears and between us and down the nape of our necks into the hungry ground and the sun is swallowed in our eyes the moon climbs up and down and the earth spins as we walk tiny and nothing and grand in the flashing shape or light that dwells but not really and there in this all there is something, and here where the tree root soil is a stage set I sit down and sleep and as my eyes close on one side they open on the other and I rub them awake and scrawl this down.


1. Getting ready
Masturbating in the bathtub I started thinking about the origins of life, how we were drawn out of the amniotic fluid of the great oceans, and before, the primordial chemical forms that somehow fused and became living. With my free left hand I narrate my thoughts into the dictaphone my psychiatrist lent to me for the purpose of unearthing material to work upon in our largely unhelpful but diverting sessions. A trail of white interrupts my thought process temporarily then I continue to its end and wipe myself off with a beige flannel before draining the bath and turning on the shower. I feel a trace of amused guilt that is usually absent from these post-climax moments which I put down to everything being documented on a tiny cassette. The water swirls and coalesces with my wasted genes and I dive my head under.
Water is pretty good really isn’t it? We are made of ninety percent water. Or is that cucumbers? Either way, without water we would just be stacks of lifeless dust. Water, water everywhere. More than you could shake a maltreated cock at.
Mine’s been maltreated alright. Before I started injecting I put it in some dirty women, such was their blessing - and a couple of men too. Unsheathed of course, as our dear Mother Nature intended, the foul old harlot, rest her soul. I discovered quite early that fucking amoral and spiritually vacant strangers made me feel a little better about utter pointlessness of human endeavour. To pump away into an overused but grateful orifice was for a long time one of my favourite activities. I would watch my dick slide in and out of whatever hole it was and pretend I was watching it all on television. It’s very satisfying. They don’t teach you that in sex education. It’s all fallopian tubes and penile erections in the context of implicit death and damnation.
What is that seam that goes down the valley of your bollocks and across the furry wastes of your perineum to your arsehole? I used to think that was where we were sewn up prior to being dumped from the ether onto this revolving lump of rock via the velvet theatre curtains of our mothers. An unlikely idea. All rational evidence points to our bodies being formed in a joyous bundle of self-replicating cells in the womb. Yet stark biology and natural selection does not explain this useless hem of skin. I don’t know what evolutionary advantage it represents. Perhaps there are developmental farts within mutation where if something is neither helpful nor harmful to survival it continues anyway. If we were indeed created at any point it was with the potential for self-sufficiency, at least where it comes to reproducing. Breeding seems to be one of the few things that most of us appear to be able to do with ease. Spreading little half clones of our flawed genetics around as if each accident needed repeating. Any involvement in our conception outside of the drunken board meeting of daddy’s little swimmers with mummy’s ovum can only be to do with the small intangible part of who we are that can’t be explained by meat and electricity. Unfortunately that is also the most noticeable part in self-conscious animals with the potential for verbal communication and abstract thought, so people put disproportionate significance on the mystery of our divinity. The immutable biological and physical laws that govern the operation of our physical bodies are just as miraculous, and also as mysterious to the abundant and ignorant masses. Yet they don’t consider the marvellous fashion in which our lungs bring oxygen into the crimson piped networks of our bloodstream, how that is carried to our organs, which independently yet interconnectedly regulate each aspect of the elegant but definable processes that facilitate the miracle of eating, drinking, pissing and shitting. We are obsessed by thought, the synaptic hiccup that most mistake for a soul, and the intricacies of the rest of us are never considered. I’m beginning to forget that the dictaphone is here. I forget who I am meant to be talking to, I am just narrating my thoughts out loud in a vast space of lights and nothing.
What to say, what to say. Moments of relief and blurting and lapses of utter self-consciousness, embarrassment and futility. Which is the lapse? What matters? Who am I? What is important? What do I think? I think endlessly, a cement mixer of opposites that seem to be true. I try and slaughter my thoughts. They assail me when my back is turned. I am useless and stained.
Do I believe in God? In a word, yes. Certainly. Yet what does it mean to believe? Of what importance is it? I lay no significance on the conditioned prejudices of an individual. I don’t think it matters. What is God? A more interesting question when one gets past the semantics of it. One in each other’s image. Eyes groping blindly at themselves in the reflected mirrors of their opposite’s damp meniscus. I just don’t know but I need him inside me to balance the void. I feel bad narrating these crude thoughts. Base as I am I try and draw the line at blasphemy. However, for the purpose of self-exploration I am removing my filters.
One day I understood good and evil. Long had I perceived intellectually the necessity of opposites for the comprehension of a single attribute as part of a continuum of discrete points linking the diverse and intangible perceptual states we call life. Yet one day I felt absolutely the very real force with which the existence and recalled experience of pain not only contextualises pleasure, but actually supplies it with being. Were one to cease to exist, the other would also – just as opposite magnets hold each other apart and can resist the spiral eddies and plughole swirl of the all consuming void, their very opposition is the breath of their existence.
As much as these thoughts are amusing me I doubt their usefulness and pause to divvy up a line with my favourite razorblade. Before snorting it I cut myself a little in the spirit of yin and yang and then as my haemoglobin cordial drips from my wrist into the ironic Axminster I hoover up the white crystals. As the cocaine-laced blood pumps through my pleasure centres I pour malt vinegar into the wound and then dress it with gauze.
I’m sure I have better thoughts, which at the end of their entanglement actually arrive at a destination different to their genesis. The majority of the thoughts I am aware of sink back into the cobweb recesses, or chase tails in circles never reaching a conclusion, but perhaps shift and morph each time. I feel that my thoughts are ugly, rambling, irrelevant. Worse I fear they are untrue. Not only that but I am not sure my pathetic brain is capable of conceiving in even the vaguest fashion the truth I seek so urgently. Nor is this of any use to me or anybody else. Instead of ruminating on the nature of existence and the intricacies of the human condition I should be narrating how I feel about things. Actual events. Things that happened. I have no idea how to do this. Perhaps I ought to be attempting to exhume buried experiences from the crypt of repressed memory, trying to breath life into the rotted corpse of my childhood and ask it for answers. I should be opening dusty chests in my mental attic. But what do I expect to find? Battered leather belts and stained linen? Therapy is balls. If there is any past trauma it is a drop in the ocean of pain I navigate each and every day. I might find something that scarred me, that carved me into the gnarled and fractured figure that I see in the mirror every morning, but fuck it. What does it matter? I am not going to change. Digging up the past is so much archaeology. Burn it down and build something new. Bring in the blanket bombing and the bulldozers. I could talk and talk to no end, I could weep the great lakes and the reservoirs would not be depleted. They are infinite. Pain, like love is infinite. And I will carry my yesterdays on my back like a lightly packed day-sack for a hike towards a distant and cloud covered summit, for fate cannot throw anything at me that I have not already considered in waking dreams. As much as I have seen the glimpses of the infinite I have perceived absolute nothingness and neither is an accurate representation of the true nature of this junk shop puzzle we call life. I could talk for a thousand hours and learn nothing, I could listen to a sage for a lifetime and never understand, so I am going to snort the dregs of this wrap and find a body to charm and violate. And whoever it is will be grateful that they had a night out that ended with more than a kebab and a nauseating and overpriced journey home in a black taxi driven by a sober and decent but unfulfilled immigrant who is cradling the fading memory of a dream of better things.

2. A Night on the Tiles
The gram is gone and I’m out the front door checking my keys in my pocket as the door slams. The city air is cool are quiet and I can hear the strum of streetlights, photon canaries singing in the dark air. I am horny. At least I know the bouncer at the club or I would just be scouring the alleys like the pathetic old Johns you see traipsing the night streets with a gutful of the past and a distant star in their eyes. I am burning bright with the mad sick love of Jupiter, dislocated and alien but with a wallet full of twenties, six ecstasy tablets and a strip of three condoms in their sweet wrappers. It’s that kind of a night.
Hi Mac alright how is it going? Okay thanks Mr Peterson how are you this evening? Oh fine thankyou just looking for a couple of drinks, tolerable music and some excitement.
He gestures inside with a reverence lacking in the irony that would make it either amusing or relevant. My teeth bite down as I put my foot across the threshold and swing my unfilled arms. I step into the bang and bustle and head for the bar. The sweating hoard parts and I cut through the sea of blind idiots who are dressed to impress but still cannot mask their ordinariness. Draining regiments of optics meet the blurry scalpel of my gaze and I resolve on whisky. An air of class and its splendid soul-numbing qualities make it superior to me at this instant than vodka, gin or brandy, all of which would send me somewhere I don’t want to go. As fucked up as I like to get I like to know where I am and where I’m going even if I have no idea where I’ve been. If I needed to I could follow my footsteps backwards, but those lifeless tread marks are burnt in the fire of the unending moment and everything is ever forward ever now and I am thinking about the Chelsea game and whether the new captain is going to pull it together for the semi-finals and if I will to get my end away tonight.
Hi are you with anyone tonight?
Um my friends just left I was just finishing my drink.
A wise move. The waste of good liquor is both bad financing and an abomination of the spirit. I see yours is on its last legs. May I buy you another?
You want to buy me a drink?
Yes, I would. What would you like?
Malibu and Pinapple.
Tropical. I like it. Coming right up.
I sway back to the bar tipping the whisky to my chapped lips. The music is bellowing apocalyptically into my gut as I watch the coloured lights play out on the ceiling and meet strangers’ eyes in the mirror behind the display of peanuts and other unsatisfying packaged excuses for nutrition. I order a Malibu and Pinapple and put my wallet on the bar, avoiding the puddles of spilt drinks that darken and glisten. I am buzzing and swirling in the nightclub heave. What am I doing here? Static worms drip and roll down my back as I wait to be served. Sweet cheer of nothing the effervescent come of now everything bleak visions of televised evangelism and evenings spent in the swamp of solitude. The bar is a war zone shoving and grappling towards the next thing, my drink is laid firm on the bar and I hand over a twenty. It is returned in pieces and I swing back drunk into the crowd the coke wearing off a bit now and faces blank and hungry and the beat goes on whole smile with no teeth or heart grinning dumb in the face of the infinite as muscular nobodies inflict themselves on sunflower virgins. Dark treatise sweat pouring down the walls the floor a mess of dropped plastic pints, tissues and hairpins. The carpet smells like vomit and the air like stale tears.
I arrive back at the doe-eyed blonde who has waited for me and I know I’m in.
Here you are.
Thank you. What is your name?
Thomas. Peterson. And yours fair maiden?
Ha ha I’m Michelle.
Hello Michelle, pleased to make your acquaintance. What drags you out on a drizzly Tuesday?
Well I came out with some friends after work but like I said they went home. I’m sort of celebrating though I have a promotion and my uncle got the all-clear today, sorry you didn’t need to know that I am being to personal aren’t I?
You’re fine. Do you like dancing Michelle?
Yes I love dancing.
Well this is my favourite song I think you ought to dance with me.
Okay.

And we danced. And in the bogus rhythms I felt my heart twitching in my chest and a new vague buzz. I feel nauseous but I hold myself together. Of course this is not my favourite song. If I have heard it before it made no impression upon me to lift it above the other dross that qualifies for music in most people’s eyes. I put my arms around her waist, smaller than it looked, and her eyes pour into mine, blue like raspberryade in the cruel uv streaked lighting that shows her through a blanket of foundation and concealer, lined and numbed by time but with a gentle curiosity flickering in her widening pupils. I fear for what I may do to her, but more so I want her, in her innocence, in her veiled obscenity. I whisper something and she laughs, from the gut up in firework rivulets big blend of nothing magic grasping at the moment, whole shards of dead longing and purple moon. Slow down. I find a chink in her armour and we kiss, mouths teetering on each other then touching pecking mawing sticking in the clamp jaw grasp whole moment hours of seconds aflame as tongues touch and quiver taste of something the jar breaks in my chest and butterflies squirt from a latex chrysalis before my eyes, well up and fall and fade into the carpet. Slow. Her dress is cinched at the waist and she cuts a fine figure and I imagine her bound with scarves to my bed gasping and yearning. Down. That’s better. I glance over her shoulder. A mirror’s edge. Light grazing a limp hand holding a bottled beer something on my mind mild terror argh get off calm down you’re in the club you can hold it together it’s Thursday night is it yes I think I need to get out yes but calmly.
I suggest an exit and she follows, her brittle hand in the map of my palm. I nod goodnight to Mac and step past the taxis. We walk.
And in steps gelled together to the beat of something we stagger across the bitumen alleys of the pavement. The forced swing of arms, I hold my head up and ignore the thoughts creeping in - fuck the gram is gone, what do I have to drink at home? it’s okay I have some rum, I could make a Mojito or something, that might be cool, did I get the duck out of the freezer? and what’s on tv tomorrow? I wonder if my rug has come in I should call Ahmed in the morning dear march grease spirals in the bath where mirrors and spot bulbs sing and skin against skin somehow we are back at my place yes and unclothed and she has me in her mouth I am more drunk than I realise as she does something with her teeth and I am hard and actually quite liking the dumb little bird I have hauled into my lair tonight, maybe even enough to make my special breakfast oh yes you filthy sack of guts and shit I want you.
At points I am lost in the ecstatic thrashing of our flesh and her groans of pleasure as I enter her and wait a moment outside as I feel the draw and silent whisper in her head of more and please and now and yes, and then in drifts and falls, and now in what and if and guessing at the could be and glimpses of better, but the lead sinking ship of here and the bursting sick shit of this and that and all and the separateness of things and the lonely gripe of my twisted branches reaching against my edges knotted and rotten but lit with the dimming breath of hope and life against it all but this is it oh this is it fucking great and she’s sucking the life out of me into her cunt with every motion and I’m giving it to her and then the past swimming in unseen and I am not there and images and scraping gut file rasp the tear itch of balls cock arse pussy tit face blank empty brain of pure motion swirling dimensional glitch want and mind gone and sucked into the black again and I try and pull myself from the depths but the lifeguard sits on his aluminium castle with his whistle swaying as he watches the mothers talk the chlorine tears down their tendon necks sun damaged and sexy and he is glad he didn’t go to law school a whiff of her sex and I am an aging child in armbands alone and lost in the big endless waters and I don’t understand leave me alone clawing at her breast I want to go home why did you take me here and what is it all for I wish you could love me parted lips but I can see I am a tumour or a noose around your neck when you pat me on the head I feel the distant echo of your dreams dying in the mist dread no toy marshmallow hungry where please I’m sinking the squeaking mattress and they can’t see me the net pull me out my body is here my head above water but this piss salt in my mouth and I am under and the night forest voices call I could be holding her ass grasping pushing myself deeper in walking again to the owl who sings for me when the lights are out and all snore under duvet muffle my teddies with their coal eyes the winter is so long when will I be back with my friends who never see when I show and never let off and just to stop and rest but it goes on and on the record skipping each had a wooden each had a wooden there’s fluff on the needle dear what are you asking me to sort it I’m just saying not in front of the boy don’t humiliate me you’re like my mother fuck off what are you saying you dumb bastard dumb you shit bitch Thomas? I’ll hit you if you do I’m leaving you this time you’ll see mummy please mummy I am silent my tongues are dry and tied and the slugs will be in the garden I stood on one yesterday in my sock and I couldn’t tell anyone my body alone because the heavens wept please sing to me again she’s screaming in pleasure Oh god Thomas is this pleasure please fix the record why is there a dent in the wall crayon red and rust brown with the eyes gasp and the eyes grunt oh please why can’t you see me I just want to have my friends like it was on my birthday and we sang and watch cartoons a spasm ah ah ah of epileptic tremor time running in parallel birthday cake and pubic hair and I’m more there than here and I was happy.

At some point it must have finished because she is asleep with a sweet distant smile on her face and I unstuck my eyes from the ceiling. The white noise danced from the distance of the big bang in the silence yet without that even of before time what must I endure just to feel okay really what have I done are my list of sins enough that only a needle could file them away for a moment? I go to the bathroom and fix myself in the crease where my thigh rubs red against the other all day as I walk on and slips with her juices which I grease my finger with. Slow. The drag of iron behind me all the time, the weight and the pain oh pain but what would I be without it? There’s nothing left. Down.
The blood and smack mingle delete erase flop sack drift eddies I slump and the tiles are cold but I am warm and bare.
The exposed lightbulb is a ball of glowing fuzz.
I can’t focus.
Come back.
I’m going away this time.
Please don’t leave me.
I’m sorry, I am leaving. I’m not coming back.
What did I do wrong?
I would stay if I could.
I thought you loved me.
It’s not your fault. I need you to know that.
You were the only one.
Look at me.
I am a lifeless shell.
You’re a good boy.
Just tell me what’s happening.
Keep going.
I can’t focus. My pointing finger feels dead.
Drift blank tape shift waste bar crepe malevolent fire of hell waiting for me only a matter of time the list goes on but I am paralysed to contain it and it builds and it doesn’t stop and I am set on my tracks could I go back if I wanted? I did this to myself it was me all along they were wrong I dragged them down with me each one of them in turn and they left and I had scarred them and they all aged all of them leeched by the flakes of my pain they could see and I tried to hold back I did but there is nothing anyone can do as I drown breathing in my armbands and as the ring was put on my finger and her with the benzodiazepines and the bleach and the bottle of green schnapps, and the accusations and trouble but I tried and I’m stained bottle cut grain rust wire barb tongue slips and psychotropic nightmare binges to escape but where to there is no here and there no now or before or after just the flux with no centre just this voice with no chord. There’s something missing. Who am I that I speak? I sweat and breathe and I hold the voices down under the surface but they rise up I can not hold them all they are me something I’ve forgotten how can I hold myself when I am another who sits in the corner with a paper donkey tail on my grey trousers I was just whistling I was just asking just leave it out she kissed me and I didn’t know why what was it about the grass green like that? Where do the butterflies go at night? I saw them pinned to the wall. What are the birds when they are not singing? The dreams that are never remembered and the questions never answered. A last gasp of my leukaemia brother who they always preferred and the secret in the hospital they thought I didn’t understand but I could see the ghosts.
I didn’t check the lottery numbers.
I have work in the morning.
I don’t care if they finally fire me.
I can see that old lady through the milk of her cataracts as the ebb and hand pulled from below. They just disappeared and I saw them every day. I thought there would be magic. Is the tunnel just for her? I wanted to go too.
The train in the mountains could have taken me there but it was a waste of money.
If only I hadn’t sent my dad onto the roof for the kite.
Things were different after the fall. He brought the aerial down with him and it slowed the descent as he swung and the wire broke but his foot went through the window and he hit his head. I can see the blood thick and dark. I am crying a little or would be had I the energy I am bored and sick and numb and the ceiling is whispering my name.
Get a fucking grip. Where are you? What do you mean? Well you’re on the floor. Is this thinking? What was I doing before? How are you? What? All these questions. Let’s come to an arrangement. I’m sick of this and my bowels are burning. Guests under the floorboards. Ribbons. The sky swept with clouds and sped up.
You are on the bathroom floor.
Rabid vacuum in the castle. Rest and recuperate. Productivity. The poetry of the bomb.
Get up.
Masked acceptance of the inability to articulate even the simplest truth.
Splash your face.
It is all for nothing. I was wrong. I see it now.
Look at your eyes. They are blank.
Bring me the peace I seek. Guide me back I am lost.
You are covered in fluid and vomit. There is a needle hanging limp between your legs and that is the closest thing you know to intimacy.
I need you.
You are gone.
Where am I?
You have soiled yourself again.
I’m trying the best I can.
You are pathetic.
I did the marathon. I’ve climbed mountains.
You will never be happy.
I loved once.
It’s not enough.
Who’s face is it above me? How can translucent eyes contain so much?
You have nothing. You are nothing.
It will get better.
It’s too late.
It isn’t. I will try harder.
The vapour swirls and smudges on the mirror move apart from. What is behind there? Another wall or the room again? Which side should I part my hair on? I’m going bald. How do you age with dignity when you never matured beyond adolescence? I must carry myself like a soldier. The deaths of thousands are as that of insects in a humming kebab shop after a night out. Shoulders back. I can’t understand perspective from the floor. I am coming back into myself. Chest out. The dictaphone is screaming at the end of it’s tether. Was I talking this whole time? I get up and dust off the early hours. I want to throw this female out the window. I want the teak door to oblivion with no questions and no trace. It’s all gone wrong. My favourite song is the impotent wailing of a ghost who now yearns only to be freed from the body that once held potential and now carries the pail of a nation’s forgotten tears. They get on with it but what do we do? I wash my face with the flannel. I could go back to bed. Reclaim the duvet from under this happy corpse with her pert breasts and her dignity. My scars have no story just as my past has no body. Nothing before has happened yet but viewing everything in stuttering reverse we can do nothing about it just watch in expectant horror and deny.
I forget.
The shade.
A broken thumb.
Where did it all go?
Someone. Something.
Very much so I quite agree.
A veil over everything. Glimmers.
Is this hope or a new sickness. Is this
The creeping smile of joy or another dull voice
Crying bald extractions filth investment when distance
Probes the auction last January I saw sin. Freedom as a reproductive entity how can I know special fraternity well I never interested me obsequious gaff weekend flight right rain bow tie dye skull smash pain and her and hole quiet ground weight smell provide me always fracture quality product place geography teach me how to get by show me the door how long must I wait how long will this go on I want to go home I think what is this about hovercraft skimming the great lake with half a tank and a ripped skyline bleached blue against alabaster balloons fur trimmed moustache masculinity cunning hunger build up fight trial error tax error or responsibility wane sea shore bliss forgotten hope all negated in the ethereal crush fraction broken halt there young man breathe into this what?? Who was it who used to sit next to me on the sofa? Was this a phantasm? I remember the same hands caressing me and slapping my face. I remember a mouth in a thousand shapes. I still find hairs on the carpet but I cannot see a face and I don’t know what it means. Whose arms dented my sides?
There’s nothing here. There’s nothing left. The fallen sit around me and I am a ghost growing in the dark where they hide the information I tried to get in but they stopped me with some foolish lie but I know their tricks those bastard gullet fuselage dust and scratch eyeballs how with bustle and no sorry I can’t make it.
3. The Morning After
I wake up with the light gushing through the paisley weave of my curtains. Beams hang in the air and my head is full of dust and debris. I don’t remember much but I don’t feel dreadful so it must have been okay. The girl next to me is snoring. I think I might make her breakfast but my body is a sodden potato sack. My brain is dust and spiders. I lie for a minute looking at the indoor rainbows streaming through the prism of the crystal apple on my windowsill that focuses and refracts the day in smeared weightless beams and imagine peeling them off and eating them. What does light taste like? I don’t know but it feels like acupuncture. I rewind the dictaphone and start recording from the beginning.
Nullifying myself is one of the more successful ways in which I try to relieve my boredom. Another is excitement. I know that one doesn’t work. Excite is no more an antidote to boredom than it’s opposite. You can be bored and excited. You can be engaged or even content when nothing is happening, admittedly rarely. My breathing exercises help. Sometimes I sit for an hour cross-legged on a cushion watching the buttercup glow of my wallpaper and feeling light stream in and the dense grey fog lifting up from my shoulders. Usually I start thinking about her. Who I wanted but couldn’t have. Who I loved sincerely and desired but not to own, to share and protect and live beside. So long ago now we laughed on the riverbank, her hair glittering sheen and her eyes all smiles. I let her see too much and she left. I was eighteen and not ready to see what love was. Now I’m 38 and it’s nowhere but it’s breath has marked me.
I used to dream about her in parks. I used to think about her and I together. Imagined saving her. I thought about myself dying in front of her. I thought of us alone on other sides of the world but the traces of our love binding us together forever. I watched that fade. I watched my thoughts distort. I thought about wishing her harm. I resented her. I thought I was wrong. I choked under waves of fondness, sucked into the depths of sick nostalgia. She was a perfect accident that happened to me. Where is she now? It’s been so long since I considered her, since I watched her float out of my life. Since my heart caved in.
Boredom is a veil that clouds all joy. Boredom is frustrated love with nowhere to go. I am a jumble of failures built into a tower towards a dying star. The branches in my thoughts are screaming for light but they are wilting and breaking in the cold absence. I am hungry but my appetite cannot be filled. Yet I glow radioactive with the faint glimmer of a thousand specks of warmth in wet soil. Inside I am withered and reaching out. Outside I am rust, foam and spines. I am dislocated from my body. If I went back in the pain would be too much. Her heart and mine are from the same cosmic forge and I messed it up. You never get your time again. Nothing will ever mean as much. I will never know anyone again. I have nothing more to give. I watched my love wilt in the face of disappointment. If I was heroic I would have persisted. I thought grand gestures were corny and I thought it would be weakness to stick around when I knew the moment had gone. I would have followed her anywhere. Instead I chased figures in the darkness and clawed at flesh with brittle hands. There were Hollywood gestures of snow machines on pale June mornings. They never existed. I thought they were stupid. I could have sent her a letter. I didn’t want to abase myself in front of her. I thought I couldn’t stand more rejection. I could have taken a thousand rejections forever. I thought I was better than that. My dignity was a joke. My reticence was a failure. What is love? We revere this emotion above all others. I am immersed in the belief in it. The cult of love. All people reaching for this other to complete them. Yet the odds are stacked against it. The whole thing is a sham. Does fate guide you to your perfect partner? Can the wind lead you to your other? We bumble around useless and without a map and we lay all of our hopes and lies upon whoever will hold our hand on the way. Love is a grand word. It is heroic. It paints our desires in a romantic rose wash when they are blood red. It makes a connoisseur of the consumed and ravenous. Love is nothing but the sexual urge elevated to spirituality. It exists only as an absence filled. I can see this. I know it is just my genes wanting to reproduce with an appropriate mate. Yet, I feel this one woman was the one for me. I stand alone in this knowledge that I found true love and lost it. All others who make this claim were deluded but I can tell when destiny slaps you in the face. You may think these thoughts are proud in an odd way. They are because I know I am better than everyone else. In my refined squalor I am above the deluded masses who scuttle in a story of lies that reinforce themselves in their puny daily exchanges. It is cowardice that keeps a man good. When fate fucks you, and she will, look the bitch in her eyes and tell her it was all a joke. Tell her you only wanted to get in her pants. You never loved her. And walk into the day knowing death will bring nothing good to you and you will have to walk through life’s hills and valleys with only your own logic and instinct to guide you. It is enough. Help from above is glorified talking to yourself and I know this because I am complete and the night and day and the fires and the ether all burn and flow within me and I know that nobody can stop me and my inevitable damnation is a license to live however the hell I choose and I’m only half sorry. The ten commandments were too much to ask. I had to steal, I had to screw. It just worked out that way. The seven deadly sins were the easiest collection I ever made. I carry them out every day, in my thoughts and deeds. I’m not sorry.
Pride is no sin it is just a distorted logic that tells you what is below you and why. I listen to the buzz in my head but it is a broken radio. The voices are garbled and layered. All in different languages. My breast knows when to cross the road, which way to turn, who to talk to. I see people. When I look in someone’s eyes I can see who they are. I have made people rethink everything, and fixed them in the process, but I cannot be fixed. The mirror is cracked and the pieces are missing. Through the holes comes a violent insight that kills the more subtle sensitivities. My love is a wasteland populated by insects and burning cars bright against corrugated iron and barbed wire. The remains of it a stored in a tiny fish, starved and poisoned in a plastic bowl. It swims in circles. I can never trust anyone. There is no point.
I hoist myself up and out and stretch down to my toes and up to the ceiling. I have a slight erection. The girl is still snoring and I can’t remember her name and am not interested in finding out, but I’m going to make her the best breakfast she’s ever eating. A feast of swine so satisfying and you can feel the corruption entering your very muscle fibres. Like human meat they say. Intelligent filthy animals, sex mad and hysterical. I once held a warm pig’s heart and squeezed it between my fingers.
I pad through the open plan living area towards the kitchen. I wash my hands and remove ingredients from fridge and larder. I pull up a heavy saucepan and heat oil in it adding everything we would possibly want. All in one pan. As the bacon spits and sizzles and the mushrooms flop my thoughts drift towards one thing and then another but never stop on anyone. They fizz and twitch and I yearn for silence so stir the pan while breathing evenly. I am stirring I can feel my arm moving and smell the meat cooking and it is alien and good. There is a palm on my shoulder, a dry breath on my neck. I’m not turning round. I flick on the light under the cooker and look at the robin through the window and imagine ringing his little neck. I wonder if the post has arrived and slip the handle of a teaspoon gently into my ear pulling out smears of wax. The television is on with the sound of and people are marching for some cause. They will be ignored. Deliberate change is impossible. Things cannot be guided into an image of how they should be, just maintained or altered. Nothing ever works out how you want. Everything is at all times unsatisfactory. The beans bubble sweet and I stir them with an over-designed spatula. The albumen has reconfigured itself in the transformative heat and is now white and cratered and I stare into the yellow sun of the yolk and everything burns away and I remember.
I dreamt I was waking up in my bed. The air was warm but damp and I could see my breath. It was full of tiny fireflies. I rose and my feet touched the carpet which was made of the sticky hide of cattle. The ceiling was a dome and my hands appeared before my eyes and the lines were a tube map where the circle line hummed with insects and crawled with the scuttling of rodents. I look out of my window and all I see is an endless grey sea specked with wooden ships. I am very high above the ground and somehow this is my home but it is the top of a grand and ageless castle on the edge of a cliff. Cannonballs are crashing into the walls and bursting into flame and the whole place is shaking. Down the side of the cliff are a thousand twisted bodies, each with pecked out eyes and pigeons swoop and soar like vultures, large and graceful and malevolent. Each is wearing a watch on its gnarled talon that glints in the sterile daylight and there is a quiet ticking in my brain or it might be a drop of water from the ceiling. It has become apparent I am dreaming and I realise I can control what I am doing, so I walk to the girl in the bed and brush her hair from her eyes. I see a serenity in her features that tells me she is dead and rainbows fill my vision as my eyes cloud and well and I pull a golden sword from the wall and step down the spiral staircase where I have to climb over more bodies. Everything is silent, I seem to be the only living thing and the walls are carpeted with moss. I peer out of a cross-shaped opening and see whole forests burning and fields swarmed by giant slugs that guzzle and writhe. Their wet surface glistens and even from here I can smell them and the vile gag of it is intoxicating and I start hallucinating and what I can see is my house is the castle but they flicker and overlap and the dead girl in the bed was last night’s conquest and the forests are the city and the sky has so many stars in it that it burns bright and blinds me and I feel my whole being filling up as I plunge the sword into my chest.
I wake up with the kitchen tiles cold on my ribs and the air full of smoke. The smoke alarm is ringing and there is blood in my mouth. I hear feet running down the stairs. My mind is stuttering and I feel like I’m being eaten by worms. There is a woman moving me and I don’t recognise her. She keeps asking if I am okay but I don’t know what she means I am just watching her breasts under a large white tshirt swaying and pressing out between the cotton, swollen and hypnotic. I want to touch them but I can’t move. I try and speak but my mouth is swollen and slick with spit. I can’t tell if I am in hell or if my house is on fire.


I think he’s coming round.

Can you hear me?

Voices in the void. I am lying on my back. There is something in my arm. My throat is raw from vomiting. I can hear bleeping. My legs are lead and my belly sears skinned flesh raw and bandaged. I prise open my eyes. Green light and white ceiling. A window that doesn’t open. Blurry faces wearing paper masks. I ask where I am. I am in hospital. They say I hit my head. They say I have second degree burns from a domestic accident. They ask if I remember anything. My mind rewinds through the dream, the night before. I keep thinking about breakfast. I don’t think I ate it. I remember nothing. They ask if I know my name. I don’t want to try. I think this is what it feels like to be happy. I am laughing. Did they give me drugs? I imagine they tested me and knew what I’d taken so probably not. I wonder if I am in trouble but it doesn’t really bother me. The sky is blue outside and birds whirl. The trees sway in Mexican waves and cars drive around following arrows. I ask if I can go to sleep. They say I should sit up and eat. I don’t think I want to.
There was something I was meant to be doing today.
How did I get here? Does anyone know I’m here? When can I go home? My body aches like I was beaten with a pillowcase full of doorknobs. I taste dried blood. I can’t remember if I am repeating myself. Am I talking out loud? The faces are still in the room talking to each other. Writing in clipboards. I want my dictaphone. I want to talk about my dream. I am limp and lifeless. The sheets are too tight. There is music on. Hospital radio. I know this song. Who is it? How did I get here? What happened? Can I smoke a cigarette? I think I need the toilet. The bed is moist and cold. Sweat or piss. Regret hangs over like a murderer’s shadow. I don’t understand. What is going to happen? Am I in trouble? Where is my phone? Who would I call? Everything feels different but this is an assumption, as I still can’t remember everything. I wonder if I’ll get a sponge bath. My brain is full of stinging cotton as I try and fantasize about a nurse lathering soap into my body with soft hands. I can’t see anything. Her breasts are pushing against her uniform and the upside-down watch swings. She has no face as she touches me. I am not allowed to tell anyone. This is all in beige. She climbs onto the bed, a finger pressed to her lips, red-stained fleshy canoes. She pulls the sleep back and starts riding me. She doesn’t talk but I can hear her thoughts. Black wires come out of the blank rubber of her face and enter my pupils. I feel her clench as she pumps up and down against my dick, pivoting at the hip. I am paralyzed. I can see her ribs like an x-ray. I can see myself through her pelvis and there are piranhas in her womb and they are snapping at me. I am helpless. I can’t tell if I am enjoying this thought anymore. It is real. I am watching from above now. I see my sunken eyes draining and watch her arse bounce around as she fucks me. I think I am dying. I see a tunnel but it is endless. There is no light but luminous forms dart around like floaters on my eyes or fireflies I cannot distinguish her and me and the room and my thoughts and this new place I am going to the end must be near maybe I will find out what I have been wondering I am going to come oh sweet oh heaven oh imminent damnation her fingernails scraping down my chest ripping like brambles her legs wrapped around tight and I don’t remember breathing this whole time and it’s black and white not beige and it’s getting blacker and fading and slow and slower drip time and if fade not smile my our we they she he if what speak day go lost sabre tiger prawn cocktail party drink teat warm beach sun flash…
Like coming up for air a gasp and here I am. The same faces in focus now. A needle drawn out of my arm. More familiar to me than a handshake. The room is about ten foot squared. The bed has a metal frame. The people in the masks speak to me. I am going to be okay. I tell them that the sheets are dirty and ask if I can have a shower. They say I probably can’t stand up yet but someone will come and clean me up. My brain has clicked back into gear. I ask how long I am going to be here. They say at least overnight. I ask if I can borrow a dictaphone.

4. Hospital
It’s Wedneday the seventh of June. Or so I’m told. I’m feeling a bit better. They have me on medication here. It makes me softer. I don’t know if I like it. They transferred me to a different part of the hospital.
I pass the days smoking cigarettes and listening to the radio. The television room smells like decay and everyone sits all day in the same chairs. Gardening programs, home makeovers. I drink twelve cups of coffee a day and I am still exhausted. When the trolley comes round with the pills I swallow mine from the little plastic beaker and shuffle off to nylon sheeted oblivion then do it all again. The blanket sparks as I toss and turn. I walk in the garden and my spirit sinks into the soil. They talk about me here. They know things about me.
My psychiatrist came in to see me. She said this had been coming a long time and maybe it is for the best. I don’t know what to say to her. I just nod and mutter agreements. I don’t care if they let me out.
They say I will be here a while. I hope not. I would like to go to the pub. I would like to go to the shop and buy a sandwich and eat it. They said I might be able to go to the shop soon. If I could go outside I would buy a newspaper. I smoke another cigarette.
I think I am sad but it’s hard to say. Sometimes I feel like just a body. Sometimes I feel like my soul is on fire. Everything is through frosted glass. When I wash my hands it feels like I am wearing gloves. I wash my hands a lot. The flames don’t go out.
I have a bath and I feel the same when I come out and I was once sick a bit in the water. I looked out of the window and I saw a blackbird and it told me to keep quiet. At night I think about climbing out of the skylight. I think about breaking glass and slashing my wrists. I have moments of mystical feelings that flood me but I don’t think they’re real. I have elaborate and violent daydreams. I don’t think about sex as much but I dream about it. I am usually strapped down. Everyone is either obese or rake thin. Suffocating folds of skin and brittle bone embraces. They feel like they go on for hours, these orgies that leave me sapped and raw. Always at the end I am begging to be killed. Eventually I am suffocated in flesh and I wake up gasping for air. I am afraid to go to sleep.
For a week I didn’t really talk to anyone. I talk a bit now. There is a man called Frank who sits in the smoking room too and he reads the chess puzzle every day. He likes birds. Sometimes he looks out of the small window and names the birds that fly past. This doesn’t happen very often. The window is normally a static view of concrete offices with shuttered windows and a sky of impenetrable grey. I stare at it for hours. Time becomes redundant and is only broken up by meals at the canteen and tea-rounds.
There is a bookshelf. I tried to read but I can’t. The first thing I picked up was War and Peace. I’d meant to read that for a while and thought I might finally have time. I couldn’t follow it. My eyes skim over words but nothing goes in. I get to the end of the page and realise I have absorbed nothing. My skull is a vacuum. I reread the page, chapter. Same thing. I put the book back on the shelf and pick up a romance.
I thought I would get on with that better. It was no different. The characters didn’t come alive for me, I couldn’t see the scenes. If there were any ideas or themes they weren’t being communicated to me. I threw the book in the toilet and banged my head against the wall until the tiling cracked and my blood ran down the fractured rivers. When the staff heard the commotion they came and sedated me and I woke up in here.
I am going backwards. It’s getting worse. I might be here forever. The door is locked and I am under constant supervision. I eat with plastic cutlery on a bolted down chair. The numbness inside is exhausting. I thought it was hard before. I wonder if a plastic fork could be thrust into a jugular.
I started acting crazy. I think it was boredom. I drank from the toilet bowl. I daubed inverted crucifixes and pentagrams on the walls in my room in brown excrement smears. I shout at the radio. It sends me messages. Where do they come from? Is it in my sick head? Do I put them there? Or are they there all along undetected? I can feel ghosts in the walls. People talk to me and I talk back but I know they are other people not the people I see. I talk to my old friends through the vessels of unrecognisable faces. Friends who are dead and gone rise up and speak to me through puppet mouths. I think about my parents and wish I could cry. Every minute I live someone dies in my place. I’m not meant to be here.
I try and get on with it but I have twitches and my gut feels rotten and my liver swollen and everything I am told has numerous layers and interpretations. I wonder how people manage to stay on the surface. There may be no way back. The end is coming. I climb inside the wardrobe and rub my eyes and see bodies in the patterns, eating each other. Piled up to the indifferent sky in mounds. The sea of writhing arms and grinding hips groans and parts, and I walk down the causeway. It is steep. Snakes emerge from wounds and nip and hiss. I keep walking. I can see something at the top. It is a vending machine. I walk up to it but I have no coins. It asks me what I want. I say I don’t know if it has what I want. The machine appears to be full of bones. It says nothing. I punch the glass and my hand shatters. The cupboard falls over and heavy feet run in.


6. Visitors
People come to see me occasionally but I don’t recognise them. They ask how I am and I don’t know what to say. They bring me magazines and food and one woman brought me flowers. She was nice. I take new tablets now they are white and small. They say my illness was resistant to the last ones. I don’t know what my illness is. I just feel lost. They let me go to the church. I feel like my head is in a fishtank and my thoughts spill into the corners. Something happens in there. The vicar is kind. I can’t really talk. I dribble and my cheeks twitch. I think I am dying. I start to cry a little. He tells me it’s okay and I am bawling on the floor banging the hard floor with my fists shouting why and stop and let me go and guttural primal groan shouts from the very depths. I am in pain. I have carried this pain and it has warped me. I don’t know where it came from. I start to remember things. Cogs shift. The pain is growing and gushing out. I’ve lost control. My whole body is twitching. I am seizing I think flashing colours left eye right lightening my head the rush at over now the seismic and what of it now I can see is this something where I go under and I am out my body twitching on the floor and I am in the room now lifting upwards but something holds me back I am tied to this sick hungry body but I want to go. I hear my grandfather and feel his hand on my shoulder. Not yet son. I sink back down and there are people everywhere, someone has put something in my mouth and they are holding me down. The taste of blood again. I have knocked over the altar. The vicar is putting the cross back up. The altar cloth is still clutched in my white hand.
I am taken back to the ward. They take my shoes and trousers off and put me in bed. They close the door but they are still looking through the window I can see the curtains moving. I am thinking about a hippopotamus and it’s funny. It’s yellow and when it smiles its teeth are big. There are maggots in my heart. I dream of sunshine beaches, of fishing in glass lakes with autumn trees and cricket violins. I am on the verge of serenity. I don’t understand. I get up and ask if anyone will play a board game with me. They ask what I would like to play. I say I don’t know nothing too difficult. They say maybe one with drawing and I say I don’t know if I’m good at drawing. They ask if I like questions. I don’t know how to answer so I say nothing. We play Ludo.
I am having fun. The nurse sticks her tongue out when she is thinking. It is pink and moist. I don’t know why she has to think and I wonder if she is doing it deliberately. I think about how I used to fuck my evening class teacher and I get an erection. Ludo is better with an erection.
Every time I take one of her pieces and send it back she gives me this mock sad look. I swear she is flirting with me. If we were in a nightclub she would be putty in my hands. As it is I am pissed off at having so little power. I am an object of pity here. I am a cuddly toy with a missing eye. They look at me as they would a child and I smile while thinking of holding them down and kneading their buttocks between my palms. Kneading and watching. I think I am doomed. I am a lost sick wrecked soul in a broken ocean.
I am making jigsaws and wondering what’s missing. I wonder if anything ever gets completed really. I have done projects until their conclusion but it could always be better. The absolute exists only in vector space. I think I could travel through time if I wanted. I wonder about walking through the walls. Outside. Where I can walk anywhere do anything. What did I do with my freedom? I was free. In a sense. I could have done anything I liked. I could have learnt to paint. I could have written a book. What’s the point. Everything is just an activity. There is no inherent meaning contained within any activity that renders it more important than another. I should just find something I like doing. I could build things out of wood. I could learn to play chess properly. I could sneak out at night and throw rocks over the wall at the people leaving the bars. I would like to throw a rock at a man’s head.
I have fruit in my room but do not eat it. Instead it festers, softening flesh, the furred skin of the peach slackening and sliding down it. I push a finger in. It breaks through, juice comes out. The smell is slightly cloying and fermented. I squeeze the juice out between my fingers, smear it on my face. Someone comes in and I stand still as they walk to the window and walk back out again. I hear the tea trolley rattling and I go to the sink and wash my hands and face. Shadows in my peripheral vision ask unanswerable questions and mutter accusations.
I sleep under a spider’s web. I am ashamed every time I hand in my sheets to be cleaned. Lunch is the best time of the day. I’m never hungry but I always eat pudding. I think I am getting fat. There is an old lady sits downstairs and hums to herself. Sometimes I stand and listen to her. She stares into space. She never notices me. The carpet patterns give me a headache and I can feel the electricity coming through the walls. I draw pictures of snails and magnets. My arms hurt and my back hurts and my knees hurt. I wonder when something will happen. I check in the office every day for post. There’s never any. I try and write but my hand won’t let me. There are faces pushing through the ceiling and I can smell nothing. We played dominoes yesterday.

June 28th, Smoking room

The radio is singing the same old songs. Every day is a degenerating carbon copy of the last. I am wearing jogging trousers and a baggy grey tshirt. I have a feeling like I have somewhere else to be. I don’t know how much time has gone by. I think I might be feeling alright but my memory is too poor to compare it to anything. I think one of my teeth is dying.

That’s a chaffinch.
Oh.
You don’t have to be here you know?
Pardon?
You can leave at any time.
I’m not sure that’s the case.
There’s nothing wrong with you.
What do you mean? I’m sick. Isn’t it obvious?
Believe me. There’s nothing wrong with you.
Well, thanks, but I think you’re wrong.
Do you want to get out of here?
Maybe. Well yes I suppose so.
You just have to believe you’re okay now. Then you have to behave.
Right. How come you’re here?
I want to be. For now. I’ll probably be out in a week.
You’re not on holiday. You’re in a psychiatric ward.
There’s somewhere that you have to be.
Well I haven’t been to work in a while but I imagine I have lost my job.
Not that. You have a mission. There is someone you have to meet.
What are you talking about?
Be quiet. Listen. I will only tell you this once. You have three days. You have to get out of here. You have to get your act together. There are currents in the ether. They are pushing towards something. These opportunities don’t happen often. You will be in a park. There is a tall man, awkward and silent, in a dark coat. He wears glasses. He is near some water. You are carrying a coffee and a newspaper. He will walk up to you and ask you the time. All you have to do is ask him what’s wrong. You may not believe me but you should. I have no reason to lie to you. Even if you don’t believe me, all you have to do is hurry up and get out of here. The rest is written. Cause and effect. Just stop derailing your destiny. There will be pointers along the way. Signs and whispers. Some of them are for you and some will try and trip you up. You know everything you need to know now. Go and have a shower, go and have lunch. I want you out of here by tomorrow. Shut your head off for a moment and feel what I say to be true, in the cavern of your breast, where soft voices are muffled by waves of hunger. You are a good person who has lost his way. And you could be part of something great. Now get lost.

5. Getting out

I wake up in a sweat. A dream of an endless supermarket aisle stocked high with rows of beating human hearts, vacuum packed and spitting blood bubbles. Fluorescent lights melt my skin in wrinkled rivulets as I walk down the frozen causeway looking at the merchandise. My feet are bare. In the distance a figure pushes a trolley with a squeaky wheel. I try and catch up with them but they disappear into a pinprick hole. The hearts are thawing and the floor is slick with pink water and the screams that come out of the air conditioning are my screams, and the blood cordial is the urine in my bed that is warm embarrassment radiating from my thighs. I push the sheets off and get up. The window reflects my hollow eyes against clouds that grey and move and the sun is hidden but glows through. If the sun would set forever. If a day had an end.
I wash in the sink. I am in a private room. I have been behaving better. I have been talking. I constructed a plausible story for my sickness involving drugs and exhaustion and stress. I described a modern malaise based on the novels of Franz Kafka. I hint at trust issues that may affect me in my everyday interactions with people. I go and shower as I do every day and I put my finger inside my asshole to see if the spiders eggs are still in there. I don’t want those fuckers hatching and climbing out. I hate spiders. Their furry legs and many eyes remind me of some women I have met. Their poison belly sac and pincer teeth. If spiders were as big as people. Nightmares haunt my waking life but I watch them pass and I smile because it’s better than the cinema. People sitting in rows watching lives play out. A spectacle of sadness. A caricature of love. The tit-wank of war, soldiers fondling metal, dressing wounds. I dry my body. I feel human. I hear music. The music isn’t there. The music hasn’t been heard before it is coming from a planet in my skull. My body has new borders. The static branches dissolved and drained into the plug whirlpool with the pubic hair and fingerprints. I fancy a game of dominoes and a milky coffee. I think about death and how long it takes. I wonder if I could get laid in here and if it would hinder my escape. It would probably depend on the candidate and my performance. I decide that my chances of getting sex are increased when I get out.
What is mind? Where is the canvas that these thought winds blow ripples that twist and seep? How am I? Is there an end in sight? Inside has no meaning. I am all gas and plasma and rock. What space is there for a soul between synapses? How does the ether fit inside an atom?
Breakfast. Porridge and prunes. Cummy shit slipping between my teeth. How can the grass keep growing in a place like this where the soil is full of sadness? The garden is trod by decrepit voids of hope who pace their nothing cathode prints in magnetic strips up and down by the tree that grows despite or because of their pain and throws it skyward at the birds that circle. How are there sparrows when a vulture would surely smell our death stink from across a continent?
A man walks up to me with bandaged wrists and Bell’s palsy. His gouty ankles are rooted with varicose lightening and his face is port-stained. He lisps and spits a request for tobacco. I roll him a cigarette and wilt into the ground. I wish I could root myself in like a tree and bleed what I need from the soil and not have to work another day and not have to speak another word. How long?
We discuss the weather at a remedial level and time stretches and fractures. Images of my stomach being opened up with the stiletto heel of an ice-pick drag me into a new circle of hell as I dance with the demons that share my space. As he sucks on the cigarette I see sperm swimming into the glowing tip and I’m sweating. I see a squirrel nibbling a hazlenut open and I want to break its neck. I need to get out of here. I go inside.
I walk down the corridor, swinging my arms lightly, holding my head up. I look at the words on the walls and they offer suggestions. I ignore them for now, but they make stories and speak in one voice that is a whisper from the well. Eat properly, exercise, care, hide, bath, now, swim, clean, hand, together. I knock on the office door and ask if I can run myself a bath. I look tired in his eyes. Through mine I am just burning. I get the key and a new towel.
In the bathroom I run the water and a moth beats its parchment wings on the dusty glass. The taps run hot and in my mind I walk myself out of here in reverse, out through the broken muddled days in here and into my house, the nightclub, the dark streets. I get up off the floor and get in the bath and hear a telephone ringing. I know nobody else can hear it but I whisper hello and a voice talks to me. I have to leave. She might still be okay. You need to find her. How do I find her? Quietly. You will know. I lather myself with soap paying attention to every dirty corner. I feel my muscles all tense in the hot water relaxing and the fibres touching and moving and I look at the lightbulb on the ceiling but the light is weak and cannot touch me besides so I rinse and step out and dry off and change, reciting the four times table between my ears and wiggling my toes.

I pick up a book from the shelf with a picture of a tree on it. I am on my bed thinking about opening it and thinking about the tree that hung over the fence from my old neighbours’ garden, the apples of which would drop and clatter on my shed. Something is holding me back. I lift up my t-shirt and look at my pink chest. I have scars I don’t remember getting. They form a name. Lightly carved letters faint and raised. Angela. The word underlined in pale skin worms.
Some whispers in my skull. Brick rust again. Moist eventual decay and the thrust of life in surges through the alley of the collapsing now. I am hunched I feel my shoulders brush my jawbone and the floor shines with polished drool. All quiet. A rocket falling into a black hole. Bodies writhing in orgies under the dying sun. Sunbathing by a dormant volcano as lice crawl alive on hair follicles and orifices seep. Get up. I see the wall throbbing. I see a lung behind its painted skin. Stand up. I feel the roof come to meet me, my feet touch the ground. Get to bed. Drink some water. Here in the rush of the glass and the ritual of pouring from a metal tap that gurgles and spits and groans in deep pipework veins. Cold refreshing water. Clear cold water. Water the garden. A grave in the garden. Blood in the bath. A telephone ring. Get into bed.
What is it? I’m sorry. She can’t be. It happened. You’re lying. Put your head down it’s okay to cry. Why? There is no why. How? They don’t know. Have they found her? No. Are they still looking? No. How long has it been? Months. Could I have done anything was it my fault what did I do wrong how can she be gone how can the picture in my head be a ghost I can hear her voice I can feel her breath like the breeze in yesterday’s leaves I will get out of here I must get out of here maybe I can find her.





How are you feeling today Thomas?
I’m feeling a bit better.
Are you still having those thoughts?
Some thoughts.
Are they troubling you.
Not much. A little less.
What can you remember?

I remember everything. I remember clouds coalescing through the tinted windscreen. We ate in the car and she told me about her father. I was so fucking angry but I just wanted to cry because it happened and he was a man. Someone knocks on the window for directions or something and my knuckles are white on the steering wheel. She asked me to take her home. She said she couldn’t cope anymore. It wasn’t simple. She said she still cared for me. She said.
I remember a woman.
Yes?
I was in love with her. But something happened.
Fuck her. I thought. Fuck what she promised me that was lies and foam. Her lies were beautiful though, by and by. Her lies were like poems that soothed my soul, and my head knew but I could feel us meet across the space between, across the wall that is never broken I felt her sing her sweet lies. Somewhere between whispers, a slow suspect blink. In the back seat of the car the way she hid her thumbs. The radio was always on.
Go on…
It’s hazy. I remember her face. I have a warm feeling when I think of her. I feel safe around her. I think I hurt her.
I took her home. She said she couldn’t see me anymore. She said she was going to try and get better and I had to trust her but it was better this way. I said goodbye and on the way home I yelled and screamed at traffic lights and thought about running over a lycra cyclist. Fuck her and our perfect life together.
How did you hurt her?
Emotionally. Over time. I wore her out and she got fed up of it. I loved too much.
Where does all this anger come from? What can I do with it now it’s here? I want to shout blood on street corners with tiny bats summoned from my breath. I want to dig a screwdriver into my navel for the iniquities I have brought upon myself. My sin is a wall and I built it around me. You cannot touch me.
How long ago was this?
I don’t know. I’m sorry I’m trying.
Is there a way back? Is there a tunnel to you? Is there a voice in the dark to talk me home? There is no home for me. I shouldn’t be here any more. It’s making me worse.
What about your parents?
They died before I could make up for my childhood. I miss them but they let me down.
Where is the dim distant horizon? Where is the road leading? There is no road. What of this moment? What is its weight, its hollowness? Have mercy upon me, a sinner in a suit of armour. Leave me well alone. I know nothing. I am sinking down the well. Well well well. What trauma? Be safe. What possible expression of truth is there within my collapsed narrative? What kindness is there in this manure? Can the rose grow in urine? How many family gatherings have I spoiled with my gloom and outpourings? What trials broke the back of my friendships? When did I ever truly love? Give me a drink and give me an end.

I need to know.
Fucking let me out.
What have I done?
Are you alright?
I have a headache. I’m tired. Sorry.
How do you feel?
I’m sad. I don’t like it in here.
Do you know why you’re here?
Yes. I made myself ill. I wasn’t looking after myself properly. So I’m here.
I can see you’re trying to get better. I’ll see you again tomorrow Thomas.
Okay. Thankyou.

Dreams sleep dreams dark dreams null dreams vacant drown cloud forlorn purpose wasted from the dark corridor my toes on tiles a gown of duvet a crown of carbon a faecal apple once tasted never forgotten all in my mind new and improved is this why here in the tunnel can I believe in the sky above? Now bluer than ever. Here in an endless tunnel underground my legs leashed with entrails slipping worms and gases should choke me brave skulls smiling and gagging in the tunnel forwards for three miles and see where I am disappear into my thoughts keep going choking and vomit sick vomit chest stain choke horror bones where this long ride nowhere.

I wake up sweating on the floor and go to the bathroom to tug one out but my brain is empty and I have no access to pornography so I look at the smears on the wall and think about putting my tongue to them under duress and think about electricity on my balls but still I’m fucking bored and I try and shit but I can’t be bothered and the window is high and small and nothing but grey through glass and the room is a perfect cube and I wish for something but I don’t know what and I see blood running up the walls and the room tips and I’m on the wall climbing at the window and someone’s banging and I fall down and crack my head on the door handle my teeth clack together like pebbles.

I’m in a different place. I’m further away and they’re watching me. My head is blank again except for a few pictures. Who is this face with goodbye in her eyes? What is she clutching in her hand? I hardly move. They think I can’t respond but I’m just fed up. I might be here forever. I thought there was a way out. I could burst out the window but the glass looks stronger than the wall that frames it. My knuckles are bruised and I feel like I’m being raped by demons every time I lie in my bed. The ceiling drops dense gases onto me and I’m withering. The new drugs are even worse than the old ones. I dribble and twitch constantly. Ruin and captivity. The colours are wrong. The tv doesn’t speak to me but it doesn’t interest me either. I can’t read. Music is noise. I hear rats in the sheets and feel them up my leg. I can’t see the world outside. I don’t know if there is one. How long have I been here? I can’t think. Scuttling feet in the corner of the room. I feel awful. Guilty and dirty and wrong. I hear them talk about me in hushed tones. I don’t understand what they say but they think I’m incurable. I need to get out. This is worse than the cells at the police station. I don’t remember where I used to live. Have I always been here? Was I dreaming it all? This is like a coma you can walk around in. The days are too long and time is like gravy. I have nothing to hurt myself with even if I could get up. The inane chatter of the nurses sounds like a buzzing talk radio show of virtuosic pointlessness. How do people survive under these conditions? Could I stop breathing through sheer will? I need to get out. I want to walk and see branches, want the sun on my face. Want to eat and taste food. There might be a gram of love in me still but it will fade. Something needs to happen. Something will happen. I will make it through this. I can do this. It’s too early to give up. There is never no hope. Minor unending despair. I wish I was sicker. I wish my awareness would drown in the bursting thoughts that rot me. I want to sink into the mire and shout goodbye through bubbling lungs and join the decay once and for all and end and merge with the plants that dropped their last leaves and the buried bodies that once were people and are now soil. Why is life so persistent? I look out of the window. Through the glass the stars hang on nooses in the blank sky and I stand half way between the moon and the sun. The wire trees flop and shiver and headlights paint yellow white pools on the tarmac. Everything hums. I would go outside but the door is bound with tendons that grow out of the frame and writhe slick and pink across the wood. The floor is bending and the wound in my arms seeps a silent smile at me. I am frozen as whining winds pulley my body about in every direction reaching a climax and I shiver wet and sticky in my trousers still gazing at the night at the round moon and the hanging stars with one hand down the front of my trousers and one round the back and somewhere inside I imagine my fingers could meet and a dark spark would open me without a sound.

Sneak out.
Huh? I’m sleeping.
Time to go.
Go away.
Get up, get your things and go.

I get up and bundle some clothes into a bag. There are items being washed but I am happy to leave them there. I get the few precious items that somehow made it in here with me, my watch, leather washbag, my signet ring. I am quiet. Except for the whispers in the air all is silent as I ease the door open with a whimper and a muted creak. I am carrying my shoes and padding down the corridor.

Go towards the light.
They’ll see me. That’s the staffroom. There are nurses on duty.
Shut up and listen to me. You can trust me.

I walk along the corridor and step across the chequered floor towards it’s vanishing point.

Go.

I hesitate. I hear a snore. The door is open.

Go.

I look behind me. I try and think.

GO NOW.
I run full pelt down the corridor. The door is actually shut but it looks open. I hear a startled squirm in the staffroom, papers leafing towards the floor, the fluttering of butterflies someplace hidden, I pull on the door with all my might and it yanks open cracking off it’s metal latch, snapping top and bottom. Open sesame. I keep going, not looking back. Around the corner. Past the other wards and duck into a doorway, slipping my two shoes onto my sockless feet. I see a cluster of hands unfold in front of me like birds swimming from a central point some strange thermal with fingers flickering like candles. A blue curve runs over the left hand side of my vision and I look at the stairs. I walk into an office. There is a cleaner’s coat atop a broom. I take the coat, pull it on.
The windowpane is dusty. Through the dust the deserted streets are swept with a single car that honks its horn. A streetlight halo swells like a nebula swirls like a river. A rising burble in my chest and the awareness of breath. My hand touches the light off again, the door handle. I twist it and the metal is cool on my palm which drapes over it and unfolds. The door pulls open and I step out and walk out and right with my arms swinging limp and light and my head floating suspended from threads in the space above me which roll light into me and my ears connect to my eyes to my body and I feel a three dimensional graph axis in my head and shapes form in it as the square lights above flicker on my blinking eyes and a square turns into a rhombus and I am walking and the rhombus morphs into a pyramid which opens at the uppermost point and fright enters like reality as colourful birds nest in my armpit hair and an egg falls onto the floor and opens; inside a leaking ooze unnatural inside but I reach in and I feel a key in my hand and its gold and glinting in my clasped palm with a song in my head in my heart and something coming alive among the fencing and brambles that annex and choke me and squeeze secrets from my lips and carve shame into my bowels. A nurse walks past me clutching a disposable lighter and glances in my direction but I don’t flinch away or acknowledge them and they don’t notice anything out of the ordinary and the anxiety dissipates into a vague rush of escape where kisses land light on my brow from a past time that rolls fast on a showreel. I wonder if this is okay and if there will be any negative consequences but it was so easy and I feel fine now I’m out of there, better than I have done in a long time. My brow furrows as I notice the key has vanished. Where did it go? No matter.
What separates the sick from the well other than circumstance and the opinion of ambassadors of the mediocre masses? Was I sick before? Illness exists only in opposition to health. I would like someone to show me a healthy mind. All I meet are people who seem broken and people who hide it. All souls are stained, either by torment or delusion.
Where can I go now?
A snack machine hums in front of me. Adjacent to it is a water fountain. I draw it towards me and allow my lips to taste the cool water cold water in my mouth on my toungue cool water drink deep my friend fresh an afternoon in the mountains glinting brook babbling with friends and she’s there. Angela. She’s looking at me as we sip from a thermos and it’s another lifetime I’m someone else and I feel an uncomfortable pressure in my tearducts and open another fire door, and another as I rub my eye, how many doors block me from my freedom? Is this the way out? A sign on the wall points towards reception and I walk with the arrow beside and a shiver runs down my arched back as I make a straight course for the exit.


Here I am. In these streets I have only seen through reinforced glass. The wind touches my face as I draw a piece of hand from my pocket and it slips through my fingers and floats away on the breeze’s wing. A startled fox pads speedily from an upset bin that drifts it’s reek past me and I step ahead. One foot follows the other and I head towards a garage that glows and grows as I near it stepping brave in the dark. I feel whole and defined, my fuzzy edges sharp and wired like my senses. Drunk laughter erupts in the distance and a wordless plan forms and hatches in my head as I see a string leading forwards past the garage and roads undulate towards a nearing something. Curtained windows loom over the pavements and a cctv eye follows my movements. I head towards the bridge and see a future graveyard. I draw myself into the moment and into my body. I’m all aches and radio fizz, but it’s tolerable. I think about who I know and trust who would let me in but nobody presents themselves to me. I run my hands through my hair and my head swims. Isolation steams from an empty phonebox and I walk towards it with twenty pence in my pocket from somewhere. I’m going to call my brother and get him to come and pick me up.

Hi this is Ed I can’t get to the phone at the moment. Leave a message.

Shit. Answerphone. Hang up. What to do? Think. How? You are in the phonebox. You have got out of the hospital. It’s late. You have nowhere to sleep.
Who can I call? What happened to those that cared? The receiver lies humming in my hand. I draw a blank. Angela is dead and the others have drifted away. Or I from them. Dispersed on the wind.
I hang up and the change rattles in. I stick my fingers into the metal flap checking for coins. I feel a piece of paper, draw it out. It is folded up into a neat square. In it is a map. Crudely drawn, three lines intersecting by some scribbles. Some initials. A wavy line. A red dot. A squashed ant.
Reverse call. Through the glass a bird picks at chips, soggy in the gutter. A car roars round the corner accelerating and the bird flies off, the headlights flash in my eyes sparking in the centre of my head, bulbs blow and I see a face glint in the glass. I open the door out into the road and a billboard says “Strength”. I feel my heart straining in my chest and my eyelids start blinking and it’s raining. In the puddles there are tunnels forming as the rain splashes and the reflected streetlights. All of this and the wind. All of this and the rising bile in my stomach and my numb feet and a whisper in my ear saying It’s your fault you shit you pathetic useless shit you are vile you are evil you devil you vile evil flaw of a broken cock. You killed her. You suck people with your curse. A dark star. My eyes are onion streaking as I rub them shouting out out out shouting get away from me be quiet they’ll hear you her voice her smile I have lost her FUCK OFF what is get a grip it’s fine you’re walking FAST RESULTS the colour green glowing what is it now your parents. Your parents. Your poor parents. Get something to eat. I remember our wedding day the brush of leaves in the road gold and orange and russet, the feel of the air in my teeth and my clacking shoes in the church. Standing at the alter, waiting for you. Standing at the alter my tie knotted and a rise in my stomach up and singing stained glass and pipes as you walked in I could hear you as you walked in I could feel you behind me but I couldn’t turn, your veiled face in the corner of my eye the movement of our marriage vows the yes, your eyes, your deep blue eyes.
I am huddled in a doorway. In the shadows. Racing thoughts drive circuits energy twitching and knotting, reflux and shivers. I can see formless ghosts hanging in the air. Nobody knows where I am and there is nobody to know. I know nobody. I feel oil leaking from scars in my wrists. There is a hole in the back of my head. The night bulges and the stars swing on their ropes as I stand on this crossroads between red lights and kneel down on the damp tarmac begging for a lifebelt to be thrown. The wind surges in my ears and I know that if I get through this night I can make it through another and repeat as long as I have to. Somehow.