Sunday 27 February 2011

X is for No

He begs the clouds to rain. Really begs them. Pleads with them, as though each gathering of vapour is a newfound god.
The air is so thick and dry it's almost like glass being made. A thin glass mold, settling around him. Trying to set, but cracking minutely and quietly as he twists and wriggles in the dust.
He is trying to coat himself with that soil-powder, those flecked flakes of earth-flesh. To keep back the mosquitoes, the other bugs. To try and dull the burning of the sun. But there is no moisture there, and it does not seem to want to cling. It runs between the hairs that line his forearms in mussed-up waves, and then trickles out. He does not seem to have any liquid left inside to pass out as perspiration and make it stick.
He searched for saliva with his blistered tongue, but finds none. He has heard that sucking on pebbles can help draw it out, but the only stones around here are too large to fit in his mouth. Far too large. Like fingertips shorn off of giants and planted, petrified, in the overbaked clay.
He looks up again, through heat-wrinkled eyes, but the clouds have not and do not answer. He didn't listen and that's why he's here. They, the clouds, don't listen and that's why he'll die.
There are no diamonds, they said, and he hasn't seen anything glimmer.
There is no gold, they said, and he hasn't seen anything glow.
There are no animals, not fresh ones with meat on the bones. They said that, and he has sure enough not seen any, not roasted their remains over fire.
There are birds, of course, that he spies as thin streaks against the canvas of his smoky-hued deities. He knows they will be watching him back, and bite harder than the bugs the soil will not keep from off his skin.
But he won't feel them. And they will find him stringy, lacking in flavour. He will just rot away, inch by inch, and those who know his name and what he went here for will forget it soon and not come looking. They do not care for the men who come here looking for treasures they themselves will never find, not greed for, nor profit from. They do not care for the men who come here and do not listen when they tell them there is nothing in the wider desert but loneliness and heat.

Ritual

His eyes traced a wide arc across the ceiling. Took in lines and cobwebs. Took in cracks and flakes of paint. Counted all the seconds that gathered where it met the walls.
Dry skin crested his cheeks, darkened only slightly by wavering slants of tear-water. Most of which was drying too, but some of which was touching beneath his nose, and catching in those two places where his bottom lip met his top. The salt and sour rush of it kept drawing out his tongue to wipe it clear.
I ain't never felt this way before. he said to himself. That old ritual. Maybe used to go through it 2 or 3 times a year, but recently once every two or three years seemed enough. It wasn't that age was slowing things, deadening his hunger. More that it was softening his shell.
He placed his thumb and forefinger upon his eyelids, massaged them, pressed slightly against the jelly-feel stuff underneath. Held them closed like they belonged to a brand-new corpse.
A few weeks more of crying. Of getting up and being angry and jerking himself off and then showering and crying again whilst he made breakfast. As he drank his coffee. A few more weeks of that and he wouldn't have to think of her no more, and he wouldn't have to worry that his hands might stray towards the phone some night and call her and say
I'm sorry. I was in a bad place. I need you. Come over.
He lifted his finger and his thumb, and the lessening in pressure caused the lids to buzz and throb. Patterns flashbulbed round in them like tangling wires, or like the mess of her.
He looked up at the ceiling again, and tried to smile at it like he would if it were an old friend. Tried to imagine what such a smile would be like.
Everything's gonna be OK as long as you don't flip and start being the floor.

Tuesday 15 February 2011

Somethings that I want

I want to sleep naked
beneath a ceiling I can
makebelieve holds stars,
and search the ether
for an answer to the
riddles in my heart.
Want to blueprint
colossal castles in studio
backlot of my brain,
want to drink of
Scotland's finest
just to strip layers
off the pain,
and be a man,
and be a hero,
as room's air sweeps cobwebs
from my skin.
Want to play the game
and fight the rules
and, at last, I want to win.

Wednesday 2 February 2011

Te Rua Manga

Climbing ever upward over tangled roots, the endless green forest obscuring the trials before us. Two of us heave and sweat, the thrill of adventure tempered with a little drop of dread, a twist of hunger. Should we have taken a guide? The air is heavy and scented from yesterdays storm. The passage is slippy and treacherous, threatening with every dip and bulge. Are we even half-way there? Have we even, really, started? To climb is to know.

There is something prehistoric about this land, something raw and savage, life itself come screaming out of the big blue. The iridescent sheen of small lizards sets dead tree trunks ablaze with flashing colour. Little creatures that always escape before you can really focus on them, making you doubt their reality, your reality in this lonesome place. We see no other animals, but we know they are there, as they know we are. A cry of a single seabird overhead is choked by the dense forest canopy. Other sounds all around; indescribable, unknowable on this tiny dot of rock. I look at her as we continue upwards, this part steeper and more arduous than any before. She is smiling through the exertion.

Nearly.

There. A break in the trees. A tiny window of blue. Blue so vibrant it makes your eyes ache in the subtropical gloom. We have traveled half the world over, yet never has the blue sky looked so new before. As we frantically clamber out of the forest and onto the volcanic summit, our world transforms before our eyes. We can see where we have come from, and where we cannot go - Three hundred-and-sixty degrees of shimmering shades of blue - sea and sky merging together as one across this whole portion of the planet, besieging this small island. By some mercy we are allowed to reside in this unpredictable place, or by some defiance this island exerts its strength of will to survive alone. Yet we feel peace looking at this world laid before our feet. We both sit, exhausted, at the base of the spear of rock that juts proudly out of the carpet of forest. We sit, we breathe, we see. Time stands still, as it always has.

It is time to move on. After-all, we are only truly half-way there.