Dusty Old Annabel Lee Is Me

I wish that I were Annabel Lee,
While I'm busily wishing that you were me -
I could be gone and without a sound
While you wait to be with dusty old me in the ground.


Might look into expanding this at some stage, but I currently feel neither the need nor the inclination.

Poor Pedro

Poor Pedro got caught with a wee baggy in his shirt pocket he'd forgotten, filled with stalks, none of it of use, all of it inviting the litigious. Heaven, if there were such a place, would be filled with those easy with themselves, unaware of or unconcerned with the effects of their condemnations of no-one who hurt anyone, unaware perhaps that they were living human beings.

Pedro took his linen and hanged himself in preference to all that we desired for him, and the shit that hit the floor had more psychoactive potential than the scant botany that had rendered him an undesirable. Pedro was the sensitive sort, y'know?

I Couldn’t Possibly Know, Joe

Fetch the pail, pale, I’m thirsty. Here, you drink some too, you could use it, wash this down, this supplement, friend, get some iron in what you call blood, readers digest it with your pride and pasty, wipe your chin on your record sleeve, the dirtiest, friend, old friend, since records began. You hit the road, Tom Joad, and it hit you back, Jack, and we’re all the same to kingdom come and kingdom came and went, friend, where you were buried roadside and we’ll be buried or burned, come what may, that’ll come. Take any precaution with plentiful water against being overwhelmed by the world, and don’t be overwhelmed, friend, by the world, and don’t dribble your overdose on my pristine sedan chair if you’d be so kind; I mustn’t be miscarried, I must be delivered intact from a restless womb. We’re on the same side here, the same side of the moon, the same side of the canal. And while we’re giving orders here, tie your tie and fetch the pail, pale, I’m thirsty. If you recall, Paul, a week ago last any day now, you were drinking from a glass half empty and you drank the wrong half, Lord have mercy, and died. Well, I didn’t blame you, and I still don’t blame you, even after the resurrection that was a statement of intent post-dated, but still I’d sleep easier in a scenario wherein I’d sleep at all if I could understand why you went and did it all, all over again, painful as it must have been. Human frailty? I couldn’t possibly know. Write me a memorandum. Propose a toast; toast; anchovies on your toast, Tony? I can’t provide them, nor abide them, nor condone them, cousins as they are to the carp and cat, horse and bat; carping on, you call carp fish, but I call him Finn, and I couldn’t eat Finn, not when we’re sitting at the table, finishing starters, soup and salad, raising glasses, the first champagne, preparing for the New Year, the last flat sparkling wine of this old year; I couldn’t do that to him, not with his friends around him, not with the pervading air there already is of finality in all things present, all of us married and solemnly at that. I’ve an errand for you in the here and now, cow, I’d like you to run now with this satchel of mine, contents undisclosed, to some friends of mine, some dear sweet friends of mine, and colleagues moreover, identities undisclosed, I’d like you to deliver this and no I won’t give you this, and if you wish to take issue, Klaus, you can tell it to a hound dog, Pedro, you can flatten on the wheels of the National Express. Lick this ground that myths have walked on, lick the ordinary ground you’re going to walk on while walking, and pass the remote control, and before you put your boots on, and before you take your next breath, fetch the pail, pale, I’m thirsty, getting thirstier.

In An Automated Fashion

Veins

In a couple of million years (a pretty short time when you think about it), The New Dinosaurs will find some pretty excellent veins of aluminium ore on the sites of what The Middle Dinosaurs called “Landfill Sites”. Great towns will spring up around these most fruitful of veins, they’ll prosper, with all the New Dinosaur amenities, until the sources dry up and the towns begin to wither and die. There’ll be some real doldrums economically speaking before the service sector saves the day.

Aluminium will be shipped in while the residents write out receipts. It’s a pity there was no lightning back then, else they’d have had electric typewriters, Earth* willing.

*Steve, as they called her

“I wouldn’t… but I’m going to”

There’s none of what we (often quaintly) call rivalry among The New Dinosaurs; on the contrary, there’s a great communalism in their society, coupled inextricably with a pioneering spirit that would put our 18^th and 19^th Centuries to shame. It was quite by accident (with, of course, the requisite quotient of pure New Dinosaur Vigilance) that they (that’s they collectively) unlocked the secrets of Fusion. I shan’t bore you with detail, suffice it to say that it was most unfortunate, not to say ethically unwarranted, that the end came about; The New Dinosaurs cannot be blamed by any reasonable court of law. Natural curiosity can never be condemned, and it was and it was an unforeseeable happenstance that launched Steve into the Sun* while the rockets crept eventually into the orbit of the shoe factory where Mars used to be.

By this time aluminium could be synthesised quite easily and in an automated fashion.

*Croquet

The Chimneys of Orthodox Churches

The Chimneys of Orthodox Churches
March Larch & Birch over me
In production lines
its crooks with Salts of the Earth
& clogs its pews with incense or slate.

Dynamo spat out Virgins with Children with Halos
Make a stark, (old) contrast with me,
Especially when they're dimly lit.
Unfolding my arm at my elbow I could brush one.

But I wouldn't: I'm choking on inscence
At the part where the 2/4 thumps.
And you weren't round that corner I pictured
Only concrete. on grey. on ground.

I wonder which tomb they'll think suits me,
I wonder what song they'll all sing
As I'm coughed out of Orthodox Chimneys
With Beeswax cloying my wings?

Dead Grass

Fitz was to gardening what a pathologist is to the healthcare professions. Susan was unquaveringly enthusiastic, though fickle as to the object of her attentions. She was young. It was late spring and the last of the healthy young birds were fledging. Some eggs lay cold, useless and abandoned. The flowers near the house were flourishing to varying degrees, but the lawn was dead. Susan’s family made the necessary calls, and Fitz duly arrived. His reputation, an estimable one, preceded him, and not undeservedly so.

There was little he could do, he said, given how late it was in the season, but he instructed them well for the next year. He looked at Susan, a little wistfully. She was pretty. He accepted payment graciously and headed home, his working day being over.

Susan is old now, and Fitz is dead.

Old Fool at the Egg

Inspired by Moxther to do so, I trawled through old notebooks, seeking The Jonathan. I found a fair bit, some of it good. The following dates from May 2002, though it required a little fine-tuning tonight, a little sanding of the edges. I gave that a quick whirl, and here it is:

I have a chance meeting with the sorrowful old fool who passed out at the egg last night on my way to see that gentleman I heard mentioned over foul cocktails, before Mr Samuel Thompson’s hideous public humiliation. I’m very surprised to see the Old Fool, who looked quite frankly dead last night. He still looks rather dead, and yet I hear him mutter words that suggest his continuing and pitiful existence, words like ‘pain’ and ‘alcohol poisoning’. I’m catching the drift, more or less, I’m really not sure, of what he’s trying to communicate. I won’t even attempt a verbatim transcription here of the poor bastard’s monologue. But it goes something like this;

“When I was your age, young sir, I had the deepest desire to donate a kidney. After all, my boy, I did have the two. It seems frightfully selfish for a young gentleman to have so many kidneys when there are people out there with really frightful kidneys, or none at all, even. I trust, my boy, that you have donated one of your own,” the Old Fool looks very stern. He frightens me. Of course I haven’t, nor will I ever donate a kidney, or anything else for that matter. But I must humour the old coot.

“Yes, sir, I donated the larger of the two, and a lung.”

“Splendid!” (This is an extremely guttural sound), “My dear boy, I myself was not able to donate a kidney. I was healthy young man, in my prime, barely thirty-seven years of age, my boy, and they told me they wouldn’t take the kidney. I was positively crestfallen, my dear. I believe that they said something along the lines of, ‘Sir, your stronger kidney resembles a dog turd, and the other is unspeakable,’ I mean, they just cut me open, took one look at my darling kidneys, and then turned away, truthfully, young sir, they were retching. They sewed me up and threw me out. My dearly beloved, that is what drove me to the drink, and I vowed that from that day on, if I ever saw a young man, like I was those many years ago, declining to do his duty, and keeping all of his kidneys selfishly to himself, I would cut open his gut and positively feed them to him, young sir. Just look at me now,” and he screams, “Just look at me now! I have barely two kidneys to rub together…”

“If you’ll excuse me, sir, I have an appointment to donate a portion of my brain to friendly helpful people. If I’m late, I will be a murderer, and be held responsible in law.”

“Oh, marvellous, young marvellous man! May you never become as I am, a pathetic, drunken old rabbit.”

I would sooner die, “Farewell!” I say.

“Farewell, young sir my dear.”

The Fox

In strides that cast long shadows over trees and felt like dusk for a blink’s duration, Gog and Magog trod almost whispered, lakes and valleys easy footholds. Under a stride at that very instant stood a fox tearing flesh, fresh flesh from a rabbit passing, natural.

The day, though old when the shadow flashed, was light enough that the bee could find his way to rest at the end of a day in the pollen fields, hard work. Twilight rumoured through the woods, the fox was at his picnic, quiet, his breakfast of that rabbit that was passing, and he’d been skulking, clever.

The green was new, and fragile, bright for its newness, strong for its brightness. Caterpillars were making it older, busy and slow, living, and the holes they left, the craters in the leaves seen from the moon, were life. A thousand drops that afternoon from a shower dripped through the leaves and wedded their way through earth to the roots of trees. A spider swung easy from a twig, up there in the canopy, unbothered by budding leaves; the length of a grasshopper, the twig was a leisurely brown.

The fox was steady in eating, here chewing at the tougher meat, there gnawing at a bone, feeding as a beast is wont to feed. From setting out from den to spotting through the trees the rabbit passing, this steady eating, chewing, tearing was the reason for his walk that evening. As was intended, the fox was eating steady, and barely a splatter of blood hit mossy ground.

Sorrel moved little more than the silver birches, and the sky, that instant darkened but no more than in the fraction where the rain cloud first envelopes the sun before the light in eyes ignites, was no less vaulted than the cathedral roof when all eyes alight upon the altar. Unseen by the fox, keen-eyed though he is, a finger of Gog descended, picked up a leg-bone of the rabbit.

That moment of darkness, fleeting, unthought-of as it was, brought a shiver to the fox, a momentary shiver, and, though a bead of wetness in the fox’s eye was also fleeting, unthought-of, it was a vein of quartz in a crag next winter.

The rabbit’s bone, carried by strides down an every-coloured road to where the Court of King Jelly Roll will be met, is free of pain and will make it to the feast.

3 Billion

I wondered, when I was smaller, whether everything just had the same number of heartbeats, one finite number, let’s say 3 billion and when they reach that 3 billionth beat, that’s it. They just die. Unless something bad happens before like a bus hits them or they drown. And so a mouse whose little heart just beats so fast, well he gets there quicker, to the end I mean. And someone who’s stressed, their heart goes a little faster too and pulls their 3 billionth beat a little closer so they sound their last more early. And smokers.
There are no doubt scientific examples that prove this not to be the case, though I can’t say I’m desperate to know them, anyway I was young when I thought this. Though I still wonder and am wondering whether it could be true, at least for most humans. No-one has really proven it wrong…
I’m just firing up a cigarette and listening to reggae instrumentals again, I guess I could wonder what number I’m on.

Your Guide to: Identifying Charlatans & Daredevils

As a professor of colour-coding and a fellow of the Royal Guild of Identification I’ve been consulted and queried on the troublesome topic of bandits, brigands and ne’er-do-wells very, very frequently, almost as frequently as fruit or ladies.
An often-asked question is ‘how much of it is in the colour?’ and the truth is ‘alot but it’s also in the texture’. In this short guide we hope to give an easy to understand, pocketsize manual to recognizing the Charlatans & Daredevils of these fair Isles.
-Prof. T. S. Bentham


Red: Slender, Speckled and common all year round, no aspirations and often seen sitting on fences and pinching biscuits. Nests in the summer and has broods of 5-6. No need for a wife.
White: A native to the North and a winter visitor to the comfort of the fireside this reclusive hipster has been in decline in recent years and a petition has been started to see them more.
Blackened: Once known as ‘the Greater Dark’, a term now considered archaic and perhaps just wrong, this Charlatan is often found in less rural areas in small groups. Part of the hoodlum family, this species tends to wreak havoc in the evenings and prepare during the day exhibiting little want for sleep. Its cry is horrific and has been known to make a man cry forever.
Green & Lithe: Kept as a good look charm and occasionally a pet in the seventh century by the Boatmen, for its song supposedly turned sour when danger neared. It was introduced to these shores some time later and has stayed here ever since, it must like it here. Breeds in pears.
Orangey: Probably should be from Morocco originally, this rascal type once stole the heart of a young impressionable girl making for a tragic tale. There is only one and when it is murdered (witch is always the fate of the Orangey) it will no longer exist, it is not however the rarest [see: Graph Paper].
Striped: (colloq. the lesser moxther) Eats smoke and smokes the thoughts they wished they’d remembered. It lives among the cold lights and is, of course, a pirate.
Corduroy: “Do you know how far away the moon is? It will never be your friend Katy: it’s simply too far away to be your friend my dear”, and when the moonshine sparkled in the black of her eye out sprang forth the beauteous Corduroy and Brown Paper magpies flying towards the moon to whisper the messages young Katy wanted, so much, to tell it. And this is how the Corduroy came about (sadly the Brown Paper is no longer with us and is often forgotten). They are the only magpies in the Bandit family.
Graph Paper: The rarest of the daredevils and therefore everybody’s favourite. The Graph Paper Daredevil is, perhaps, most at home on a Tuesday. It sketches the outlines of everything that ought to be and never cares to rub out the pencilled accidents (this is where mistakes come from), or so the story goes.
Translucent: Little is known of this variety.
Nocturnal: Living only in the night-time this rogue does not believe the Sun exists for he will never see it. It mayaswell be of Cajun descent and forages only for the bloodberries that make it giddily morose. Two varieties of the Nocturnal have been recorded: the Cardinal and the Ganderian.
Wounded: Steals, thieves and swindles, a pick-pocket of the old fashioned vernacular. Sleeps in wires and feeds on a diet of rust and shrapnel. Migrates to the shadows. It calls at dusk like it’s in excruciating pain hence its name

How Kitchen Things Get Broken

Ooh! I know a parable:

There was once a salt cellar who, for aesthetic and curious reasons (kicks?), fancied dressing as a pepper-half. The ink for painting extra holes was made with soy sauce for colour, a mite of Marmite, and a little flour to make a good paste. It was done with great tenderness.
Along came a human, fresh from the final argument with a woman. He snatched up the salt cellar and waggled it fluently over his salmon and sauce. Disgusting white rocks for pepper.
“Christ almighty, woman, why is there salt in this pepper cellar? And with my cholesterol? It’s blue bloody murder” he spat. And lobbed the salt cellar at the woman and missed and hit the glassy vase of cut daffodils on the side. The vase exploded, and, when the salt cellar hit the floor, it exploded too, in a storm of daffodils.