Philip

Philip is walking. This much you now know for sure, that Philip is walking. You may think you know other things about Philip. You may know that he is handsome, dark and tall, or dull, fair and short, or any permutations thereof. You may know that he is walking in a street, or in the country, or along a beach. But what if then you were told that he were walking weighted underwater, or on a tightrope? What do you know about Philip besides the six letters of his first name and that he is walking? Does it seem aggressive, belligerent to be told that you don't know Philip at all? Do you feel robbed of the voyeur's privilege, knowing more about him than he could about you, or disappointed at losing the illusion that you were a voyeur at all - that in knowing Philip you know less than you know. Now, let's not ask where Philip is walking, that scrolling and transient background will evade our ever knowing at all, but ask where is he walking to?

The World After the World (Winter 2010; Dorset)

Ummm, so I started sketching this out in my head yesterday while taking a little walk around my home town, first as a poem (I was thinking of writing poems again), but now as this, whatever this is... sort of a sketch, I suppose, I'm not totally sure why but writing it really bummed me out...

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Bench was white, which is why it looked so wrong there. The sky was flat grey down over the field; trees like anaemic hands pulling it down like a dirty sheet over the dirty earth. The fields looked ashamed as far as we saw them, with the moist damp dark that comes after snow and makes grass look dead and more alive all at once. Bench was in the swamp, the swamp was dry, dry enough, and held bench and the can well. In front of bench was the can, in the can we burnt what we found for fire and heat, in front of the can was the clearing and the fields and the hands and the sky. Bench was always so white.

Kolya spat at the can, I always hated Kolya for a bastard, but he knew me well. The mucous in his spit bubbled by the fire in the can, and slid over the rust while boiling. He cleared his throat. ‘You remember when you was a kid?’ I nodded internally ‘A man came to your house and talked to your mother. He worked with the scrap metal, dancing with it all night, and he brought you a bike he found, to your door.’

‘I remember’ I spelled the words out, moving my eyes over the fire like sparklers and shut my lids for a projectionist’s canvas. ‘I remember’.

‘You took the sorry little thing everywhere, it was humble and yours and you loved it. Then when winter came around your father thought it kind to visit on the man who danced with metal and had its metal cares smudged on his hands and clothes. You went along unwilling like to where he lived.’

I formed Kolya’s next words with my tongue inside my cheek, ‘Hundreds of caravans…’ before it became distracted, tonguing cavities, and fell asleep on the seabed of my mouth.

‘Hundreds of caravans, all with the wheels removed, the sadness of their metal parts rusting round their plastic parts moved you before you entered the man’s home to pay your respects. He said he looked forward to seeing you a man’.

Kolya was drooling a little as he spoke. He loosed his lip over the fire to let the drool crackle in the heat, as this entertained him, but singed his hair and he sat back down, scowling.

‘You whined like an animal when they left you alone, with the noises animals rarely let people hear, I heard you whine so.’ He had malice now and the sinuous muscle of my heart squeezed affirmatively. ‘You cried that you had no means or knowhow to cook your meals and the cold would be the death of you!’ He was excited now, as far as he ever became. ‘And you gots hungry and hungry and hungry, and you took -I know you did take- your little bike and you dropped it into the pool of water from where you drank. (Because they was good enough, I recall, to show you to water before leaving you be) and you waited and waited until you were intolerable thin, and your skin stretched over like a fish with no fins’ A dreamy look came over Kolya’s malice now, as cruelty always pacified him, and he became distracted, ‘Was I to tear off a birds wings I can think of how the bird would be on the ground. But a fish with torn off fins? That should I like to like see. For curiosity’s sake…’

‘But as I say, you were intolerable thin when you harvested the fruits of your sacrifices, I saw you, you drank from the pool, laced with the rust of your little now nothing bike, and it sustained you little and little like.’

My open eyes howled at him and he stopped there.

‘Never mind though my boy,’ he stared through the fire at the fields, the anaemic hands were pulling down their blanket and hiding their shame and our fire in can was the only throbbing little something of a heart to their dank forgetfulness.

I always hated Kolya for a bastard, but he knew me well.

Dipthongs (Summer 2009; Varese, Italy)

...because I am fat, and drunk, and when I say your name it sounds like I'm tearing diphthongs apart with yellowing teeth; and you're lovely, and you make worlds and look at them with open eyes, and I want to lick those eyes. Because nobody else could.