The Work of Art II: Henry

"Cop on, Henry. Don't look at me like that or I'll kick you down the stairs."

Henry is being difficult. He's old and grubby and one of his wheels doesn't really turn any more, and the wire doesn't unwind as smoothly as it should. Suction's ok, as long as your knuckles are white gripping the joint where the metal pipe meets the plastic tube. And he's much too portly to rest on a single step so you have to keep one knee pressed against him so he doesn't fall. It would serve him right if he did, the way he keeps getting stuck round corners and tripping me with his wire. 

Day two of my internship and I'm hoovering the back staircase.

The building is just covered in debris. Mostly fine sawdust and flakes of paint, but also dust and god-knows-what-else. There are three floors plus the basement. It's taking a long time, my back hurts, I'm covered in dust. And after I'm done, the front staircase awaits.

"God, Henry! Stop being a little bitch."

The plastic overalls are making me sweat.

I said it before;

Art is hard.

Stew

What makes for better writing? Feelings as fresh and raw as a newly severed finger? Thoughts scrawled out as you're thinking them? Memories imprinted on the page as you live them, like a photo onto Polaroid paper? Or that which is left to simmer, to settle? To congeal. Maybe those words we've rolled around on our tongues for months are the best ones. The grit becomes a pearl.

We all know some dishes are better the next day. Takeaway curry, for example, or Mum's lasagne. It's best to leave your tea to cool, lest it burn your mouth.

What is this, then? It is it an attempt to excuse laziness, tardiness, distractedness?
Probably.

But I've had at least enough time to think on things that I could come up with a better excuse for my literary absence than mere writer's block.

So let's just say, I didn't forget. I wasn't too lazy. I just wanted time to reflect. Time to let my thoughts develop, slowly.

Time to let the meat of a story tenderise, slowly.
Time to let it melt off the bone.

The Work of Art

Today I started the first day of my work placement at an art gallery.

Which is a euphemistic way of saying, Today I painted the walls of an abandoned bank for three hours.

It wasn't the only thing I did. I also drank coffee and explored the bank vaults in the basement. Dark and dusty with metal doors half a metre thick. Some dimly lit and full of dirty tools, some black and filled with obscure miscellanea. One well lit and filled with coffee table books. One almost empty, save for a single red glockenspiel in a pool of white light. I struck a G. The warm note flooded the vault and its closeness startled me, as an unexpected tap on the shoulder might, if you thought you were alone. I left.

The building was icy cold, and on the upper floors the rooms were white and concrete grey, ceilings populated by snaking pipes. Stepladders wandered round half-built installations. Paintings hung still. Wide windows let in white light and views of dancing tree-tops, vibrant yellow. I pushed my Nikes clumsily through the legs of a white overall. It had a hood.

Then I picked up a bucket of paint and an assortment of brushes and clattered down the back staircase till I found the bits of wall the last painter had missed. Long strips behind banisters and wide stretches of sloped ceiling. The paint smelt wonderful. And it was so white. The wall was the colour of discoloured teeth. I took pleasure in the bleaching process. You can't leave brush strokes, but you've got to blend the new white with the old white so it doesn't show. Not easy. But it's an art. A work of art. I liked the rhythm. The repetition. The sense of completion. The mindlessness. The cleansing. The catharsis. I painted until my arms ached, until my necked seized from gazing at the sloping ceiling, 'til my head span from the fumes and from the vertigo of being on the staircase but not looking at my feet.

When I'd finished the flight of stairs my hands and shoes and face and watch were flecked with tiny white dots. Like stars. And bright silver sparks flew around my peripheral vision. Like stars.

The vast and empty rooms grew dark save for the faint orange glow of street lights where once shone the golden leaves. I scrubbed my hands in icy water and peeled myself out of the overalls and wandered round dark corridors looking for someone to say goodbye to.

Then I left. Wearied from my strange, quiet work experience.
Art is hard, they say.

The Race

At the end of the race they handed me a medal. Dull heavy amulet on a yellow string. A consolation prize, for coming seven-thousand-three-hundred-and-forty-eighth.

I didn't run thirteen miles for this.


I did it for the pain.
I did it so my heart would thump against my ribs.
So my feet would hurt and blister and bleed.
So my legs would cramp.
So my throat would burn with the cold.
So my stomach would churn.
So my brain would rattle inside my skull.

I did it for the sound of twenty-four-thousand-four-hundred-and-ten feet pounding tarmac, out of time.

I did it for the relief of it all being over.
I ran so I could finish.

Happy Yingmei

In a dark wood a Chinese woman in a white night dress told me her dreams.
She dreamt of a mother hen with four babies. Working hard to find food. In the dream, each day the chicken mother lost another baby. She said she could sense the sadness, deep inside her. But the chicken mother kept on searching for food to feed the remaining chicks. She said, you should go into the countryside and find a chicken family. And follow them. And then you will learn about hard work. And sadness.

Platform 1 (Southbound)

There's something I like about a train station of an evening, when the sky is turning dark teal-blue and the lights bless the platform with warm, synthetic gold. It glows here and across the way, on the other side, where the people congregate and buzz like flies. The numbers on the clock and the train's destinations tick over in that same orange-gold, and the sky grows bluer still. Ink blue. Deep sea documentary blue. My hands are cold and the wait is long and time goes slow but there's something I like about being on the platform. And when the train finally comes, I don't want to go.

Persephone

Yes, I ate the seeds,
but only six.
Let me back.

Let me back.

I admit it, yes,
I accept my fate.
you can keep me
here all winter,
only,
let me back one day,
Oh, let me back.

I made my wintry, hellish bed,
and I'll yes, I swear I'll lie in it.
But promise me you'll let me back.
Some summer's day when the sky is blue.
When the black spire slices the sun in two.

Let me back.

Skype

You are not you and 

I am not I

we are just

blurred versions.

Voices lagging.

expressions dragging.

Freezing up in little

squares and missing

punchlines, nuances.

Each other.

No touching.

No one prefers it.

But you can be sure

our ancestors would have

killed for it.

The Cure

You want to hear something good about mankind? Too bad. There's nothing good to hear any more. There's nothing good about mankind; we've wrecked the world and sold our souls and we can't buy them back. And it doesn't even matter because we're all going to die. Everyone. Everyone is going to die. Does that make you feel small, does it make your guts go cold? Do you want to hear something that will make you feel better? I know the secret, I know the only thing that will light up the dark abyss that rages inside you all through your sleepless nights.

I know the cure.

Get out of bed.

Go to the kitchen.
Take a knife, yes, you heard me, take a knife in your hand.
And with the knife, carve a
knob of butter from its rumpled foil, and
drop it into a frying pan.

Then take a banana and peel it, and slice it down its middle, and savour the ease with which the blade
slices down through it.
Place the slices in the pan and inhale the scent of butter, frying.
Put the kettle on. Put a teabag in a cup.
Slice a hunk of soft bread.
Spread butter on it.
Flip the banana.
Pour the water into the cup. Add milk. A spoon of brown sugar. Discard the bag.
When the banana has gone from ivory to rich, golden yellow, when its edges are soft and ever-so-slightly burnt, tip it out, onto the bread.
Add a quick grind of black pepper.
(Trust me.)

Eat.

And you'll feel better.










(O, humanity; if only there were enough bananas for you all!)

Genesis 3 Revisited (Or why I ate Rich's Fruitcake)

Now the fruitcake was more crafty than any of the other baked goods that Rich's Mum had made. It said to Isobelle, “Did Rich really say, ‘You must not eat any of the delicious treats in the kitchen’?”

Isobelle said to the fruitcake, “We may eat snacks from the fridge, but Rich did say, ‘You must not eat the fruitcake that is in the middle of the table, and you must not touch it, or you will die.’”

“You will not certainly die,” the fruitcake said to Isobelle.  “For Rich knows that when you eat me your eyes will be opened, and you will be like him, knowing good and evil.”

When Isobelle saw that the fruitcake smelt AMAZING and was pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it.

And it was good.

Hunger

Sometimes I'm so hungry that I get irrational. Yesterday, for example.  I was thinking about how much I hate Peter Piper. God I hate that man. So, so, much. Because he's got all these pickled peppers and I've got nothing. Have you seen the Muffin Man? No I haven't seen the muffin man, but when I do see him, I'll punch him and take all his muffins. And the Gingerbread man can't possibly run that fast, little prick. Then I'll stare at my toes and wonder which little pig it was that had roast beef so that I can steal it from him. Toes don't even have mouths and they've got more food than I have. Snow White! Are you finished with that apple? Oh she's asleep. I'll be having that then.

Then I'll go to the kitchen and eat some toast and be fine again.

Blowing Smoke Rings

Breathing wispy Cheerios,

O O O O huffffffffff

(the last one's just a puff)

Lost Proverbs

I've started forgetting how to speak.
No, it's not quite as serious as that.
But I'm mis-saying sayings. Which is saying something.
I'll just be talking and throw in an idiom. And it will come out wrong. And I won't know why.
Like water from a stone. I make a really dogs ear out of it. A real pigs dinner.
And I've forgotten, too, how to pronounce some words. People snigger.
I was never like this. Never so malapropriate. Which isn't a word, I am aware. That was on purpose.
I used to make fun of my Mother for the very same thing and now, I am just as bad.
Maybe it's from long months spent speaking another language. I'm forgetting my mother tongue.
Maybe it's from so many hours spent writing, searching new metaphors, avoiding the very clichés I can no longer even get right.

I don't know.
Maybe I cut out my tongue to spite my face.

Baboon

Baboon
Baboon
Baboon
Baboon
Baboon
Baboon
Baboon

Rather Taxing

We could have seen it coming. The unemployment levels were rising. The population was rising. The oceans were rising. And all the taxes were rising, accordingly. Although he promised that they wouldn't. Our prime ministers aren't dictators, men who look good on propaganda posters, whose power, whose very voice, leaves the nation prostate in fearful admiration. No. They're bumbling Geography teachers and sheepish fathers, worn down by their job and their obese, nagging wife of a country. It's not that she let herself go. She was like that long before he wed her. He married her, it seems, for the money.

Too bad there wasn't any.

So the taxes have landed. And amongst them, the one that we could have seen coming. But, at the same time, the one that we could never have imagined. Perhaps because we'd joked about it too much.

The Air Tax. Income assessed, of course, and assessed, too, by the purity of the air you're breathing. Londoners get it pretty easy. Most city dwellers, in fact, have gotten off quite lightly. But in the countryside, and on the coastlines, the people have annual taxes that would make a banker wince. It works sort of like the TV licence. A yearly lump sum. Sadly, you can't dodge the Air Tax by hiding the TV in the loft. We all have to pay. It was protested, of course. Something about human rights. Well, air is never mentioned in the bill of human rights, because it is taken for granted. And shouldn't it be? We're in no danger of it running out. None of it is going to waste, and there's enough to go round, even with all the Seychellian immigrants (their country drowned).

How do you protest against an Air Tax?

You stop breathing. A few fools tried it. A couple of deaths; accidental, it was claimed, not suicide, although I'm not quite sure of the legalities involved. Some eccentrics decided to breathe out of oxygen tanks, carting them round on their backs all day like extremely lost SCUBA divers. They refused to pay on the basis that they weren't breathing the government's air. Biting off their nose to spite their face, it seems, because the canisters of oxygen were a lot more expensive than the tax itself.

I don't know. You can't really complain. It's ridiculous, of course, but they needed to tax something. Rather pay for air than healthcare, anyway. No one touches our NHS.

Snowberries

We never asked anyone what the plant was called. Did we ever? Were we just told? That's a hydrangea, over there. With the flowers that are pink and blue, both at once. Those are rhododendrons. The ones with the little ballerina flowers are fuchsias. And that's a camellia.

No, we never asked and we were never told. Because we named it ourselves. The Snowberry Bush. It describes it well enough that perhaps you might know the plant we mean. With the little white berries, round as snowballs. We used to pick them on the way to school. We knew we couldn't eat them, though we never tried. We flicked them at the back of each-other's  legs. We crushed them under our feet. We held them up close to our eyes to marvel at how snow-like they really were; their insides, white mush, so similar to snow that it was hard to believe how warm they were.

If you hold one to your ear and crush it between your thumb and forefinger, the sound is like a footstep on a new blanket of  snow. The cold breath of Winter, whispering to you. I'm coming, he says. I'm coming.

A Strange Butterfly

On mornings in the autumn when the cold is setting in, I know the plight of the chrysalis. To tear oneself from the warmth of enclosed darkness with weak new limbs. To find oneself in stark, shimmering light, the cold sharp against new skin. Wings crumpled. Quivering.

Vertigo By Proxy

Hey jellyfish,
hey lost balloon,
who let you go?
And where you floating to?
The background's getting
darker, darker,
deeper, blacker blue.

There you are, inside a
tiny capsule, just for you.
Where did you come from, tiny man?
Where are you going to?

Nice helmet.
Nice space suit.
Are you going to outer space?
Well, I know that you are scared,
because I see it in your face.

Checking checking
everything. Checking,
Everything. Did you
check this? Can you
hear me?

We're watching you.

The door opens.
I could vomit,
watching you.

Let go, let go.
But don't. Please, don't.
(But do).

And there, below, the world curves.
Vast and round, and
nauseous blue.

Little white man,
how my stomach
churns for you!

And suddenly you're
dropping,
tumbling,
falling,
little fleck in
endless blue.

The world is watching,
but not breathing;
Your mother's crying
for you.

I can't believe what I am watching.
I can't believe I'm watching you.
Little thunderbird. Plastic figurine
my little brother threw.

You'll snap when you land,
I fear, though I don't want you to.
You'd shatter into pieces when
you land out of the blue.

But you don't.
Your parachute unfurls.
Small petal, white on blue.
Your feet touch down to
earth just like we
prayed for them to do.

Story, Plot

Story

The girl phoned the boy to say that she was coming. When she hung up, he got up off the sofa and put an Edith Piaf vinyl on his record player. Then he made himself a cup of coffee and sat back down, rolling a cigarette. Meanwhile, the girl rolled out of bed. She pulled a bottle green dress on over her head a little haphazardly, and pulled up black stockings, a little more carefully. Brushed her teeth violently. Shoved her feet into tan leather boots. She tied her hair up into a loose bun. Some strands fell down the nape of her neck. She shrugged on a navy duffle coat, grabbed her keys and, slamming the door of her apartment, flew down the black stone steps of her apartment building. At the bottom she unchained her bike from the drainpipe in the hall way, and wheeled it round clumsily. The pedal tore a hole in her tights and left a bruise. She opened the door, mounted the bike and free-wheeled down her cobbled street, into the cold night air. When she got to his apartment she chained up her bike and rang his bell. He threw her the keys from his fourth story window. She caught them, and let herself in. By the time she reached his apartment she was out of breath. He was at the door waiting for her. They embraced. They kissed. They spoke. And they went inside, shutting the door behind them.

Plot

The boy heard his phone vibrating on the table again. He walked to the window. The girl was standing in the street, looking up at him. Smiling. He threw her his keys. She caught them. Moments later he heard her footsteps on his stairs. She could hear Edith Piaf. He went to open the door and there she was. Wearing that dress he liked. Wearing her hair up, because he said she looked beautiful like that, even though she didn't think so. She had a small hole in her tights at the shin. Her boots were scuffed. He took her in his arms. They kissed. He tasted of coffee, and cigarettes. She tasted of toothpaste. Her nose was cold. "Your keys hurt my hand," she said. "How did you get here?" he said. "Cycled," she said. "Come inside," he said. "It's warm."

This Modern Love

(Disclaimer: this is about being at a gig.)

There's a small, round bruise,
on my arm, below my wrist.
Liver-red on ivory.
Like a lover's kiss.

Small relic of a mystery blow
Inflicted by some flailing limb.
Bone on bone. Blood
blooms under skin.

The lights flash blue and black;
I'm crashing, smashing, into you.
This raucous, clumsy, modern love
has left me black and blue.

Glossy Leaves

On the bridge
In the bright Autumn sun,
The wind made a magazine
read itself.

Giving Up

Sometimes giving up makes you feel worthless. You feel as though you've crawled through the desert and died of thirst fifty metres from an oasis. You feel weak and small and sad, faded, tired out, deflated like an empty balloon.

Sometimes giving up is a weight off your shoulders, a weight you were carrying all your life, that you never knew about. And suddenly it's gone, and you feel as though you should be flying upwards but instead you fall to your knees with relief, with joy.

Before you give up you never know which feeling it will be.
I'm about to give up.
I'm about to see.

Tattoos

I dreamt, again, last night, that I got some tattoos. Three tattoos on my right arm.
One of a turtle, with the word 'turtle' under it.
One of an arm. A tattoo of an arm, bicep curled, inked onto my bicep. How meta.
The third was a small green jewel, drawn on my wrist. Badly.
It didn't hurt, in the dream. And at first I really liked them, though I can't say why, considering how tasteless they were. Then someone pointed out to me that they were ugly. And permanent. And suddenly came the revelation, the disgust, the regret. I spent the rest of the dream walking around looking for somewhere that did tattoo removal.

I have had this dream more times than I can count. Different tattoos, in different places. Always hideous. And always, the sense of regret is enormous, overwhelming; it consumes me, devours me whole. And every time I wake, the relief is immense. I feel reborn, clean, as though I have had a second chance at life.

I've always listened to my dreams, a little. I haven't gotten a tattoo, for example. Because it seems that's what the dream is telling me. But now, I realise, that I was never really listening. No, not at all. Because I think in reality it's a dream about regret. About the permanence of my actions, about how the past cannot be undone. Though I try to pretend that, in forgetting, it is gone. No, no. Never gone. It will never be gone. There is no laser removal. And though my actions don't show up as ugly markings on my skin, they will never go away.

I am full of regrets. I am so regretful. I am covered in ugly, invisible tattoos.
And I should realise that if I don't want ugly tattoos, then I shouldn't get them in the first place.

The Jade Man

Beneath the glass cabinet before me lay the dead man. Not dead, really. Not a man.

But the concept was there, evoked in a way that moved me to stillness. The idea of a dead man, spread out on black cloth and lit with museum light, crystalline and quiet. A person mapped out in pieces of jade, smooth and green as sand-smoothed glass. Jade feet. Jade shins. Jade knees. Jade buttocks, jade phallus, jade heart, jade hands. Two jade eyes, two jade ears, a jade nose, and a jade tongue, carved to look like a cicada. All thousands of years old, all taken from different tombs. Here, now, in unison, parts of a new whole. I imagined the pieces, long ago, being laid gently onto the body of the dead one. The coldness of the stone on the eyelids refreshing, a baptism. The gradual descent, as the body melted into decay,  of the jade emblems, until eventually they touched bone. The blackness of the earth around them. The worms that could not bore them.

It left me with the strange desire to lie down on the museum floor, cold hands open, cold feet pointing skywards. To sleep until my body melted away and left only smooth green jade. 

Sardines

Olga went into the kitchen to make herself some lunch. She cut a thick slice of sourdough bread and tried to squeeze it into the toaster, but it wouldn't fit so she smushed it with the heel of her palm and then it did fit, just about. Next she poured herself a glass of water but it was too warm when she first sipped it so she poured it out and ran the cold tap again until it wasn't warm any more.

Then she opened the cupboard, realised she'd opened the wrong cupboard, opened the right cupboard and took out a tin of sardines, in sunflower oil. Although she'd have preferred tomato sauce. And she opened them, over the sink so she wouldn't spill the oil on the counter.

But there wasn't any oil. Because the tin didn't have any sardines in.
It was full of  sand. White sand, with tiny shells and bleached pieces of coral and tide-smoothed glass. It poured out of the tin as though from an hourglass, or a shoe worn on a walk along the sea-shore. And the watery sunlight shining in through the window made it glow, and the sight was so strange, so unexpected, so beautiful, that she could do nothing but stare as the sand slid slowly down onto dirty dishes.

She stared for so long that she could smell the toast burning.

Haiku, Untitled

My bed is like a
kitchen drawer, empty but
for one little spoon.

The First Astronaut

Once upon a time in Ancient China there was a man named Wan Hu.
He wanted to go into outer space.

So, he attached forty-seven rockets to a chair, and, dressed in his finest attire, tied himself atop it.
Then forty-seven attendants lit the rockets with forty-seven torches, and fled for their lives.

There was an almighty explosion, louder than thunder, brighter than lightning.
When the smoke cleared, Wan Hu and the chair had disappeared.
He was nowhere to be seen, and never found.

Now, the legend goes that Wan Hu was killed in the explosion. His body disintegrated in a burst of blinding light.

But what if he didn't? What if, somewhere out there in the vast nothingness of space is a skeleton strapped to a charred wooden chair, dressed in Mandarin finery? Drifting past satellites and asteroid belts, jaw still open as though gasping for air. The first man in space, chalked down in history as a colossal, self-destructive failure.

When in reality, he was a secret pioneer.

Michaelmas, Night.

Back to creeping cobbled alleys on starless nights,
Past windows misted with drunken breath,
Crossing bridges whose bright lights make
ghosts of passers by, where far below the
black river rushes and, all the while, the
cathedral watches over it all.
Its faces glow like phantoms.
Its bells, silent.

Bath Time

She was taking a bath. Gazing at her feet and the body leading down to them. Breasts like small islands, pale against her tanned skin. Beyond her stomach, too, (bellybutton filled with water like a small pool), a triangle of white from her bikini bottoms. Hair dark against the porcelain white. She doubted the skin there had ever seen sunlight. Her legs looked strange, foreshortened by the viewpoint, magnified by the water. Her toes were wrinkled. She wriggled them.

Then suddenly small creatures began to pour out of the taps.

Not insects. Larger. Tiny animals she'd never seen before, some humanoid, some not. All different colours, all different shapes. A lurid assortment of fins and feathers, scales and skin. They trickled down and swam or floated or floundered around her feet. She froze. She tried to blink them away but they wouldn't go. She tried to wake up but she was already awake. She drew her feet back up towards her, and reached for the plug.

They all got sucked, spinning and screaming, down the drain, and she was left in the empty bath, sitting naked in a puddle of guilt with beads of confusion on her brow.

Fur and Bones

I have a fur hat. It's made of rabbit skin. I don't feel bad about that, though society might expect it of me. Guilt, I mean. For wearing fur. The blood of innocent rabbits is on my hands. Or rather, head. Well, on my head be it. I don't feel bad one bit.

 How cruel, you say. How inhumane. Well, my friend, I saw you eat a burger yesterday. I saw you suck the marrow from a chicken bone. It didn't take you long; in a matter of minutes you'd devoured it whole. And didn't that cow, that chicken have a life, too? Don't you believe it had a soul? And it was killed only for your gastronomic pleasure. Did it please you? A life ended in a series of bites and chews and swallows. Did you swallow your guilt down too? Does it sit there in the pit of your stomach, getting cold?

You put it on your plate and now it's gone.
Well, my hat will serve me all winter long.
And many winters to come. The rabbits' lives were fleeting, but their skin lives on.

And perhaps I don't deserve so kind a sacrifice.
Maybe I should pay some sort of penance, some sort of price?

So when I die, please be so kind as to take my bones,
and build a lovely little hutch for rabbits to call home.

New House

This new bed makes my skin crawl.

And I feel as though the duvet is a pall.

But I like to hear their voices in the hall.

And I like the way the morning sun draws straight, bright, lines

upon the wall.