Sunday 11 November 2007

Story, Plot

Before; then the stone age, then the bronze age, then the iron age, then the ancients, then the greeks, then the romans, then the dark ages, then the middle ages, then the renaissance, then discovery, then machinery, then now.

- An insect man sits with his many eyes looking through rituals of decomposition. Through slits of carven writing, through thumb-nubbed tool handles and the faded devices of dynasties.
- The insect Man is a factory, a pick-axe handle, a razor of flint, a plank, an ankh, a camera shutter, a tail-fin. Insect man don’t know no love don’t know no hurt; knows blood and guts and fucks though, squeezed into words and sediment, and long rows of figures under headings in a thousand hands.
- Insect Man doesn’t know taste. His room is a cave of threads, his bed is of reeds, the uppers of his shoes are london, soled athens, a tongue of rome, it’s straps are flayed donatello and stippled with arcadia.
- Then Insect Man is made of emulsion, his carapace is celluloid glazed with moving pictures and a dark cave wall. His mouth is empty, his teeth are stretched out on a rope many nights long.
- Insect Man never woke up to it, he has stared for all your lives with his milky insect eyes that don’t know, that don’t know and he is tired, and he was tired, and he tires of tiring when he is born again. Was tired in the first Fire, the first Gun Shot, the first Sling Shot to The Moon and Back, to the first Dull Edge, the first Sharp One too.
- An insect man sits with his many eyes, and he cannot see, he hasn‘t got the right, he ain’t got the hang, no manual, no remit, no certificate, no proof of ownership. They’re not his eyes.

2 comments:

Bic Biros & Moldova said...

I've often wondered whether our writings have anything in common, Jack's, Emily's, Patrick's, etc.'s
(It wouldn't matter a bit if it didn't).
But one theme that crops up from time to time is Insects and/or the Moon.
We're Insect/Moon writers, from time to time, if nothing else.

Tom Coles said...

I actually blamed Jack for writing this.

Someone at a writing thing said "your friend who read was very.. eccentric."

I responded, "It's my friends/his fault I was in the mood to write about moons and insects."

The tutor (Schmidt) responded, "Don't apologise, I think it's the best thing you've written so far in the class."

And I wasn't sure how to take that.
(But it doesn't matter a bit.)