The Mirror Scene (Again)

We see Penshaw; making tea in the morning. The house he is in is tidy, it is his mothers house. The tea is in a tea-tin, the milk is in the fridge except at the moment it is on the counter waiting to go in the tea, the boiling water is in the kettle, boiling. He stands still, frozen, reaches into his pocket and watches the screen as it rings a third, fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh time; the back-light pulses slowly, out of time with the ringing, the phone vibrates, out of time with the ringing. He is wearing gingham print pyjamas and a little eye-make-up. He answers the phone;
Where are you?
time
I thought so.
time
Where I left you. Okay.
time
The kettle boiling, he fills a glass with water and walks out of the kitchen and there are acne scars on his shoulders by the way as he goes back to his bedroom where Mira lies on her side with her brow furrowing her eyes closed.
What’s matter?
“I can’t get up?”
There is wine on your lips.
She had arrived drunk in the early morning with the damp light between dawns. There is a deep shadow of purple on the inner of her lips and outlining her teeth, and as they had had messy sleeping drunken sex the night before he had tasted mulled-wine burnt and mashed with mince pies and coal – this morning a staleness had set in and he could smell a ferment, too sweet, sugars turning acid. She doesn’t look well.
“Don’t feel well.”
She sits up and, weakening, falls back onto the bed facing the wall. He places the water on the bed-side table.
“No. Thanks.”
Going to the bathroom he pisses deeply, emptying his bladder and enjoying the stretching feeling as it shrank back; indulging the hot sting that came of being still slightly sensitive from the night before. He looked for where the hole of the urethra tip would be a little engorged and extending pink, notices a red crust on his foreskin.

Funfair #1

In a first for this here Gander, I shall post what, by means of its lines not reaching the edge of the page, must surely be a poem. It was written some two years ago; it's almost ready to walk. But not quite.

Funfair #1

What are these toffee-apple questions that you’re asking?

Funfair, just where? that’s what I’m asking…

Candyfloss! (We might as well…)

Trouble comes whispered as you lie half-sleeping

Before it closes –

(It’s a jittering grizzled influence on half-sleep

In the morning – hard to analyse)

-- We may be talking dreams, but it’s all consciousness --

Why are you dreaming of the funfair, sister?

What dodgem schemes are up your sleeve

That you don’t know?

Candyfloss? We might as well –

You’re sticky and I’ll lick it off you,

Grease the tunnel of love now don’t be vulgar…

Dreams are inevitably analogue…

The subject, unsurprisingly, the object, worryingly,

Changes – changes – changes…

Candyfloss… get sticky… let’s lick and roll… let’s go round

merry… candyfloss… we might as well…

Get sticky, put your sticky toes in my mouth…

Ride dodgems, war with other children…

Would you like a cigarette?

Let’s smoke behind

The bike shed, baby,

What’s this funfair with a bike shed,

Are you dreaming?

Candyfloss, we might as well… eat it?

Suck it slurp it wake the neighbours,

Dribble down your chin all pink and – sticky!

Now it’s dripping down the cleft of your buttocks,

Now it’s rising in this carousel,

The pinkest tide of your sweet spittle,

Rising – sticky! And it’s reaching

To our noses, how much longer can we last?

Candyfloss? We might as well here as

I dive into the mess and lick your

Tiny anus, but not clean.

February 2006

I Hope My Darling's Phone's OK

I really miss that boy. I wish he loved me. There’s nothing I can do though, I’ve already sent him a message today. Maybe I can just call him and not say anything and hang up. But he’ll know it’s me, it comes up on the phone. Damn mobiles. It’s ok, I’ll just:
He picks up “Hello?”
I wait one and a half speech turns. I say “Hello?” I say “Hello?”
“Hi Nora? Hello?”
which I overlap with “Hello? Steven? Can you hear me?”
“Hello yes. Can you hear me?”
“Hello?” I say. I hang up and he looks at his phone as if it’s gone odd. His voice is beautiful.

Jack said there's too much fiction on here and not enough..well....non-fiction

About a minute ago I was lying on my bed thinking about what to write down, with my face turned away from my cat, who had his front feet on my hip. I knew it was my cat there but suddenly he started to touch my right hand in a way that felt so much like a giant bumblebee that for a moment I was convinced and frightened like a nightmare.

Dreams

Last night I had some dreams. They were a terrifying mix of beauty and fear, like most dreams. I took a few notes before I set out of the house so that I'd remember them. They were:

Whales having sex on clifftop. Infra-red feeding butterflies --> "chopping + dropping" on the wind.
All on an island.

These dreams were a result of a virus pouring through my body that Jimmy kindly brought back for me from Barcelona, as well as extreme lack of sleep and nourishment, as well as light social drug use.

Packet of Twenty

Between the chains of opportunity, somewhere, and the pitfalls of potential, in the midst of plimsolls and satchels, Mary bought a packet of twenty. She’d smoked the odd one at parties from acquaintances, her first on the building site, surreptitious, she’d liked it, liked them all, she never coughed, well, maybe spluttered, but she liked them so she bought a twenty packet from the racket on the platform that would sell to girls in plaid. She liked to smoke so Mary smoked, and in the pub with weekend feathers, Mary drank with older girls and passed and rose to any challenge that she was a schoolgirl.

Time has passed now; Mary has passed too, out of her school and into the dream lethargic as life. From phony potential to the jealousy of words, Mary’s mind can skip objective, drinking wine and smiling cigarettes and stretching limbs on waking, impassive as dawn.

I married Mary, not because she coughs now and she doesn’t like it, nor because she drinks like breathing and it’s ordinary, but because she eats a second breakfast or she doesn’t eat at all if she doesn’t fancy lunch, and she has a fine laugh, and she smokes the same cigarettes as me.