An on-off night and a mosquito in my ear and I fumble in the dark and then it disappeared but now the night has gone for good for me as I lay there and think of what I have to do, what I probably should do and what I’d like to do and all the while a soundtrack is playing in my head and it’s Manfred Mann’s version of The Mighty Quinn which is not a bad song at 5.30 in the morning, although I’m yawning but now I really want to hear it but that means getting up and using technology and 5.30’s far too early for technology, after all, I’d only check the news and see big, fat Mike Pompeo bully another sick and twisted little country with sanctions, sanctions and, ah! stick your sanctions up your ass, fatty, so it’s no technology for me, like a smoker avoiding his first cigarette to let his lungs breathe, you see, and now I’d love a coffee now I’m up with the birds but I guess putting on the kettle is still technology but I could really use that coffee while my pencil scrawls my morning scribble across an unwritten page.
Christmas passed,
the year thins to an end
and I too seek closure;
of my eyes in the darkness
(well, temporarily at least).
My thoughts flash like festive lights in no order
and my mind considers things like political parties
and grey life under the Stasi,
of free-flowing intellectualism
and cold, uncaring capitalism.
I think of flights and holidays
and rhythmic train journeys
hurrying to their destinations
where destinies await the destined.
I think about the sun
and where the winter has gone
(It will be back to bite us on the ass,
no doubt).
I think about you and me
wind-blown from the sea.
Years end
but the waves do not.
The keyboard lies silent, like a long-closed factory, its worker-keys now unemployed, passing into disuse and irrelevance.
The pen lies on its side, like a dead soldier, a used-to-be who has taken an early pension, now laying in the sun.
The notebook lies closed, in a crypt-like embrace, its secrets hidden inside except; here there are no secrets, just untouched pages.
The once-writer lies on his side, a book in his hand, eyes skipping over the words someone else has written; and wonders.
Staring at four bare walls
unavoidable, inescapable
No sound, just silence
Not even the mechanical sound
of time passing
as a welcome distraction
The silence isn’t deafening
but the thoughts are.
If they had colour
it would be grey
If they had sound
it would be a low, lost hum.
Clock tick, ticking in the silence of the apartment
or
the apartments because there are nine in the block
and
I’m the only one awake at this time,
in
these hours where I should be elsewhere
and
not writing, or reading or dropping benzodiazepine for sleeping
and
my body aches for sleep
but
my mind tells my body to fuck off
and
get up, get going and do something
and
I’m on the sofa with a pen in one hand
and
a notebook in the other and a book by my side
and
the clock keeps ticking
and
to think that somewhere the sun is rising
and
somewhere else it’s setting on another day
as
the momentum of our forward roll takes us around
a
big ball of light and heat that keeps us here,
alive,
going nowhere except forward;
rolling, rolling
in space time, in real time,
(who’s got the time anyway?)
as
somewhere to the east of me the sun is coming up
and
somewhere to the west of me it’s going down
as
10,000 lives have just left
and
10,000 have just begun
and
we just keep on rolling. Somewhere.
The stairs crush my knees and steal my breath
and I get to the top and I ring the bell
and I enter the surgery but the waiting room
is empty except for the noise
because the window is open
and the noise from the street competes
with the radio newsreader’s urgency
to tell me the headlines and I can’t hear them
but maybe it’s a blessing because
I don’t want to hear them because
everyone has a missile pointed at someone else
and it’s always someone else’s fault
and everyone is trigger-happy
or God-fearing happy-clappy
and it’s mine versus yours anyway
and now the smell of the floor cleaner joins in with the noise
and the headlines as they vie for my senses
and it makes no sense and my knees hurt
and I can’t hear myself think
and I can’t feel myself breathe
and then the doctor comes out
and asks me how I am…
I’m here, aren’t I?
“Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery that mediocrity can pay to greatness.” So said Oscar Wilde.
While I hope my work isn’t mediocre, I can understand the sentiment behind the statement. We who doff our caps at others are acknowledging something which we appreciate and would probably like to do or achieve.
I have a weakness for reading Raymond Chandler. Every once in a while I’ll return to any one of a number of books on my shelf. A great writer. By all accounts a greater drinker also, but that’s neither here nor there. I’ve always loved reading Chandler and, not so long ago, as an idea to ‘unblock’, I wrote a small, Chandleresque sketch. It only runs to 68 words but after doing so I found a new impetus to my writing.
I hope you don’t find it too mediocre…
She offered me a coffee. I took it like a man. Black, no sugar; like my mood. I don’t know which discount supermarket she’d bought it from but even with hot water added it was as dry as a Saharan wind. I managed to drink it without pulling any expression except appearing concentrated on what she was saying, which wasn’t much. Her words flowed like an uphill stream.
My day is filled with verbs and tenses
clauses, phrases, words and sentences
grammatical structures
quantifiers and determiners
My past participle participated and departed
my present continuous continues to continue
while my future simple
will be far from simple
I’m conditioned by my conditionals
and positioned by my prepositions
I’m an English teacher who wants to write
my language is my day
but when I put that pen in my hand
I’ve nothing left to say
I thought black was black
as in: the night was pitch black
but when I close the windows
and pull down the shades
I see shades
of black:
pure black,
light black,
eerie black and
rich black
which is not pitch black;
the night tattooed on my mind
With my eyes closed
I see black
With my eyes open
I see black
As I wait to see
the grey of day
Awake. Again.
Counting down the small hours.
Counting out the night.
“Come to bed, baby.”
No one sleeps anymore. Have you noticed?
Curse of modern man.
Stress of modern life.
Stress? Ah yes, that new old chestnut.
It’s not exactly the same as being kept awake by the crackle and spit of the fire you need to constantly tend as you peer into the darkness looking for the reflected firelight in the eyes of a predator; a sabre-tooth tiger, for example.
The caveman knew stress.
Did the caveman sleep?
Did his weary body recover after a day traipsing across the plains, spear in hand;
looking for soul food and a place to sleep?
“Oh, I haven’t slept in years”.
It’s the arse-end of 2017.
What’s my excuse?
What’s my sabre-tooth tiger, baby?
I did it again, without thinking. I went to the shop to buy something for the lesson I was about to take when I saw a new line of notebooks at a pinch of a price. Well, I’m sure many of you will understand me…I just had to.
______________________________________________________
Another notebook;
another notebook from a noted store
of a noteworthy purveyor of notebooks.
Another notebook;
bought with the notable intention of
making notes and taking notes.
Another notebook;
Noting acts of notability
and of notable notoriety.
Another notebook;
I have to take notice if I take notes,
if not; how can I note what I’ve noticed?
A blank page will sit and wait all day: because it can; it has patience, much more patience than I have. The blank page is king and will remain so, never abdicating, until my peasant’s revolt, armed with a sharpened pencil, a dipped pen and the spreading stain of ink removes it from its throne.
This sounds easy but it isn’t. It should be easy but it isn’t. The virgin purity of the blank page reflects in my face, making me squint and cover my eyes.
One letter at a time. One word at a time. That’s both the minimum and maximum I can do. No less. No more.
A blank page will sit and taunt me, its fresh white light, as joyous as a spring morning, laughs in my face and beckons me to do my worst. A blank page shows no fear, even with a sharpened 2H pencil held above it, threatening to stab down at any moment. While its doom hangs over it like the shadow of the executioner’s noose, it laughs in the face of fear. It laughs in the face of my fear.
Now I must go and laugh in the face of that which laughs at me.
Now I must go and write.
I am the night rain,
float with me
I am the night rain
washing away
the day’s sins
from the shoes
of every sinner
I am the wet road
that will cause you
to slip, lose grip
as you grope the wheel
and slide
I am the oil that runs,
in colours
and streams.
Swirling, mixing
mesmerising
I am the lights’ reflection
broken and shattered
by each raindrop
I am the night rain:
drown with me.
Hanging in the air
in spectral suspension,
in anticipation.
Then, animation:
a slow sweep,
a bob, a curtsey,
a pirouette.
Framed in light,
a dancer’s spotlight.
I get up from my chair
and in the slant of sunlight
through the Venetian blind
a million others go dancing.
Dust.
I’ve decided I’m fed up with writing about insomnia. It remains. So be it.
I was in the waiting room of my GP the other day and I saw a picture on the wall which I’d never noticed before. I had one of those “what if” flashes that occur far too infrequently. Oh come on, it beats writing about insomnia…
___________________________________________________________
The blue-framed picture stood out from the white wall. It framed a poppy field scene; a blaze of red with a copse of trees in the distance and, further still, white-tipped mountains, hard and stark against the blue summer sky.
The buzzer sounded. The person next to me go up and shuffled through the waiting room. A door opened and a white-coated doctor stood, clipboard in hand, and ushered the man through the door.
“Good morning Mr…”
The door closed. I was next. I looked at the picture again, studying the contrasts of the blood red poppies against the yellow cornfield against the white mountains against the painful blue sky. I liked the green, it was reassuring, a place of rest for the eyes in this riot of colour. I looked at the trees, full in their summer coat of green. Something moved. It wasn’t out of the corner of my eye, I was staring directly at it, damn it.
Yes, it definitely moved. What the hell? Behind one of the trees a figure, a man appeared. He poked his head and shoulders out from behind the trunk. I looked away, it would be ok, just look away, look at the window, think about that bus that’s crawling past in the slush outside. I looked back. Still there, he was still there. He waved, the little bastard waved to me.
A door opened down the corridor and I heard a shambling gait amble towards the reception area. I was next.
I looked up at the picture. The little man was joined by a friend. They both waved as they came out from behind the tree. The buzzer sounded and the door opened. A man in a white coat and clipboard appeared.
“Good morning Mr…”
I looked at the picture one more time.
Thank God I was next.
I hope my doctor doesn’t mind me using this image…
3000 miles of ocean
as dry as a desert highway
Distinct words from remote voices
I hear you speak
as distances vanish in the setting sun,
my setting sun
as I become the nightfall.
Eyes flicker in the madness of dreams
Then open; awoken
but the images remain
The bark of the beggar
as the sidewinder stamps its tail in the sand
of the desert highway,
where 3000 miles of ocean lay.
So you keep writing. At least, you try.
You lie awake in the darkness waiting for the morning sounds; the crows in the fir tree, the far-too-early church bells, the Harley Davidson that surely must have an illegal exhaust system stuck on it. And so you lie awake and you write, except it’s all in your head. You know you should get it down on paper lest you forget (and you will) but you don’t want to disturb the part of the bed whose soft breathing confirms she has finally found sleep, so you continue writing in your head.
Enough! You ignore the hour, you defy the fact the crows are not yet even moving, let alone crowing in the treetops. You’ve anticipated the church bells and the (no doubt fat, short-legged) Harley Davidson owner is probably still tucked up in bed, riding noisy dreams.
The pen and paper await you like dogs waiting for their morning walk. You ignore the need for coffee as you rush to put on paper that which was rushing through your mind, lest you forget.
Sat at the table on the balcony breathing in the cool morning air with pen-scrawl for company. A pink-blue sky crawls out from under a dark cloak. A small bank of cloud above Mount Tamaro resembles the first huffs and puffs of a volcano, cars hiss along the distant road and birds chatter their morning stories.
The words on paper reveal themselves to you in the cool, blue light of day and have taken on an aspect and meaning different to that which came to mind, lying there in the darkness. The words that ran like liquid silver now seem lead-filled, dull and heavy.
So you keep writing. At least, you try.
My Words, My World 