‘Low Battery’

Hear a buzzing. It is the phone. On a table.

Everything buzzes. Or beeps.

And always disappoints, or stirs in the despair good and proper.

The phone convulses in a barely visible blur next to bills which is next to a pouch of tobacco next a mug or glass of something.

Whatever it is.

There is hardly enough table for it all.

*    *    *

I assume I answer it because I begin to hear a voice coming from the earpiece and so I answer the voice through the mouthpiece. I’m unsure what the voice is asking and equally unsure of what I’m saying by way of response.

Failing me.

Electrical signals supposed to form words squirm like drugged tapeworms through the sick fat in my head before deforming; becoming black, crackling spiders encased in marshmallow, dropping like dog shit into my voice box and spilling incomprehensible sound bilge from my gob.

Speech reduced to rubble.

The voice responding to all this feels frustrated but I couldn’t tell you why. Indeed, I realise that I have stopped ‘communicating’ altogether.

*   *   *

Fallout strokes the ghostly movement of air on the other side of the window pane. I feel my heart banging away on my ribcage. I hear a faint, crackled whirr coming from the phone, followed by a deep breath.

It doesn’t belong to me.

Then there is no sound except for the shouting outside. Car’s failing to start.

Planes overhead.

A repetitive thudding sound like bodies hitting and breaking upon the pavement over and over again.

*    *    *

I hold the phone in my hand and play with the sliding motion of the handset until the display displays: ‘Low Battery’.

I realise that both my hands and feet are painfully cold.

Pulling the blanket across my body is the last thing I do before the morning.

The Mirror

A face in a mirror. There is fear in its eyes. It has become aware of a skull beneath the skin; the brain inside the skull, like a treasure, or delicacy. Hard to get at, unless using the right tool for the job; typically, by bullet or the morticians saw. Prior to death, at its very centre, the brain is home to a small galaxy. At the point of death, however, this galaxy falls in upon itself forming a tiny grain of matter. Like a miniature nut. This nut, or grain, is irresistable to small rodents and insects. And upon decomposition of the body the grain is consumed and excreted by a small animal becoming, finally, a small pellet of mud. This provides the basis for the planet, encasing the burning core of the Earth.

At the centre of the Universe there is a man. At least, there was. Now he is dead and been replaced by another man, who, by now, is also dead. In the space occupied by the men there are nebulae; the remnants of the vaporised men. These nebulae freeze in windless antigravity.

In the eyes of a face that hangs in a mirror in the endless black, resignation replaces fear; a resignation that survives each reincarnation. As the eyes and faces and men change, in the beat of the mysterious clock that measures eternity, the expression remains fixed. Man has finally come to understand the purposelessness of the mirror.

End Up

End up in the same place. A cheap pub selling stale beer. Taking it off the brewers hands, presumably. Would be a shame to waste it. And it’s not waste. Almost, but not yet. Everyone knows, too. But, instead of letting a small fact like that get in the way, they order another drink of piss.

The dark, I don’t mind. It’s the chill that gets me. And right into the marrow too.

Although, it didn’t vex me this earliner on my walk in the country. I felt, for the first time, that I was stood upon a planet of no significance. Of course, we are meant to feel certain ways about our environment, I understand that. But, single-minded self-preservation aside, I felt, breifly, the sublime indifference of the Earth.

Not to mention the fathomless space beyond it. The blackness, for argument’s sake, is the one true father. The entity, the nothing that drives us to invent Gods. To invent a world that drives us ga-ga. Until we, finally, rot into the sodden Earth which, itself, merely exists to be blown to smithereens by the tremendous death rattle of the Sun.

No, the only true father, or true God, doesn’t give two penny’s worth about anything you do. Probably is you. The same thing that makes you smile, dance, cum, bleed, cancerate and rot. The one true father.

And beyond the fiery body of destructive life, all there is is blackness. Emptiness. Time between events. And I scurry inside the pub as though I were a premature child, aching for the warmth of the womb.

I think to myself, ‘where is the fire?’

Perhaps I feel it on my face and decide, simply, to turn away and stand in the cold like a barren tree.

Smoking.

Drinking.

Hardly living.

It’s miserable.

Yet it’s honest. An honest defeat. I wave the white flag, if that’s the fashion for surrender. If I could be bothered to get a flag, or care about its colour, yes, I’d wave it. But the look on my face, really, ought to be enough.

Is this how I will continue?

And one day, as an old man, I’ll look across the pub and see myself. He’ll look at me as though he didn’t mean to. He’ll understand but will not comprehend. He’ll glance over again, like a flash. And he’ll be wondering to himself, ‘Is that how I’ll end up?’

The Sound of Blood

He grabbed the barrel and balanced himself.
The blood was pouring from his ear. I spat some whiskey in there. He laughed.
And threw the messy, bloody tissue away. It landed in the ashtray and caught fire. Smelled like burnt, cheap bacon.
The blood wasn’t stopping either. He poked a finger in the ear. Licked off the booze and blood.
Still, the blood came.
He raised his eyes and pressed the burning end of his cigarette in there.
Asked me if I wanted another drink and left.
I sat amongst the copulating cats and tried to read a tabloid.
A woman laid in a pile of leaves and crossed herself over and over again. I nodded to a bouncer, who was, in fact, just a head case who’d wandered in off the street. He snatched her up in a screaming heap and bundled out.
I scratched my ear.
Then the blood came.
I lit up.

Two Trappists

I might have taken a walk in the country. Anyway, I ended up there.
Came to surrounded by trees and the smell of animal droppings. Various.
A flame licked out of a hole in the ground and then it was gone. Maybe it wasn’t there in the first place. I don’t know.
Fast twitching feeling in my fist.
Next, I’m chewing on the bird. Waxy feathers, snapping bones and pops of blood; tough, stringy sinew and blobs of tasteless fat.
Then I’m tossing them in, one after the next.
When I’m full, I feel sick and think about vomiting.
Realise that if I do, I won’t stop. Imagine looking down at a spittly, slimy pile of feathers and flesh.
I gag.
There is a pub on the corner of a road that wasn’t there before. A replacement for the birdsong; distant murmurs accompanied by clattering glasses. The odd laugh.
Mostly, all I hear are the branches fighting for my head.

Spend the rest of the afternoon drinking with a woman who, by rights, ought to be dead.
I know her, but she’s not alive anymore and yet, there she sat, smoking and drinking like billy-o.
She tapped the budgerigars cages on her way to the toilets and cackled.
“Get the drinks in, you old bastard,” she aimed at the roof, at me, “I’m dry as a cuttlefish bone.”
Then she flashed one, young eye.
“Two Trappists.” I say.
“Right you are.” the publican answered.

Funny Fat

Find myself sitting in the car. Slowly, I’m steaming the windows up. That time of year. Everything on its way out.
Reading war poems. Likewise.
I see a giant climbing the stile to disappear into the woods in a blink. How, I don’t know.
Nor did his dog. It ran into the road and then it, too, vanished.

The car seat all the way back now. And my feet up on the dashboard. I’d draw what I see, but it would look like diarrhoea, anti gravity, black ink.
Would make sense. But who needs sense?
Certainly not that kind of sense.

The giant rips into the biggest tree. I’m looking at him through binoculars. He is clumsy. Like a baby. Funny how fat has that effect on the body.
Also, he has earphones in.
He raises one arm, blocking out some of the pathetic sun, and jabs a branch into the earth.
I chew on a dry ciabatta and consider the orange juice (from concentrate).

My phone lights up in my hand.
‘We need to look at this mess. It’s everywhere.’
I roll a cigarette instead.
As I puff, my heart makes itself known.
As I turn the page, the headstone man complains about how the war overseas is affecting business at home.
I shut the book.
The sun has gone.
But the colossus baby man is still there.
I flick the cig out of the window and it lands in his bellybutton.
Cradled amongst the fluff and hair like a dirty, brown paper candle.
Serve him right.
They have to learn.

Un-cap

Travelled there in my old, falling apart car. Wind pushing me across lanes on the motorway like an invisible bully. No rain though. Yet. For some reason I notice my fingernails. They are dirty and the paint has dried. The metallic taste in my mouth comes back and my stomach leaps. I would eat, but…
I never knew her but she was a friend of the family and, while I was away, had helped them out.
A good woman.
So, out of respect, I un-cap the bottle.
Pour it over the grave.
She would have liked that.
They said.

Still as Death

The mobile buzzes inside my trouser pocket. I check the message.

‘Where R U Bro?’

The light from the pub window throws my shadow onto the pavement. Best place for it.

I can hear the waves and imagine them bashing the quiet, black rocks. The pub will be only half full. She will stand there half smiling in the yellow, rude light of the public bar.

* * *

When I walk in she blushes like I’ve told a blue joke.

“I’m not staying,” I say. There are a few tired men in football shirts with their arms around each other; faces blurred, live’s in tatters; like mine, like hers.

I pinch one of her nipples, secretly, as she leans on the bar in front of me. She says she likes it when I pinch her nipples like that.

She gets me a rum and ginger wine. I watch her body as she prepares the drink.

I drink it quickly, touch the ends of her fingers with mine and leave.

It’s dark outside.

I stare into the lit windows of the estate agents. Cheap properties for sale and no one to buy them.

* * *

The train station is deserted.

I sit on the edge of the platform then heave myself onto the tracks. It starts to rain. I move along the line. Unlikely anything will be coming in either direction. I unscrew a fresh bottle of rum and keep walking; cobbles, wood, cobbles, wood. The rain carves up my face but the rum protects me from disintegrating.

And deep in the Firth, the herring jabber into the darkness while the fisherman’s faces stare, still as death, into the bitter brine.

Damp Sun-day

Sunday afternoon. Really feels like the morning though. Woke up and had pains in the back of the head, chest, arm, elbow and ankle. Where they come from is anyone’s guess.
My girlfriends mother was talking on the answerphone. There I am in bed wondering where this voice is coming from.

* * *

Drank a strong paracetamol mixed with some pain killers.
Dandy.
Things better now.
Although I’m missing Columbo. Sunday without Columbo is like rolly without a Rizla.
The wind is getting up.
Imagine all the cats are indoors. Those that aren’t probably stuck to cars, the sides of houses and walls miles away from home.
Save the owner a few pence on whiskas.
Well, we are in a recession; every little helps.

* * *

Sunday limbo.
Nothing like it. A rare quiet.
And no, I don’t mean church.

* * *

Paintings slowly rotting in a damp basement.

Our Friend is Dead

His mouth tries to carve the words into the air between us. Though mute, I still understand him. He pushes a peanut around. It looks like a tiny, shiny distorted skull. Salt crystals gather at the end of his fingers; some fall upon the wooden table top.
Behind his eyes, a process of decoding. Working out what has happened.
I take his hand and close my fingers around it. He looks up at me, startled; lost in space and just barely able to recognise my face.
Then, a smile.
Out on the bay, a few boats return from the channel with empty nets.
He covers his eyes with his free hand, and cries quietly and steadily.
The sun doesn’t know. The sea is indifferent.
Our friend is dead.