Or Mr

Smiles. Through flames. Yes, he does. A picture develops under a skin of chemicals. Snap. The moments aren’t quite joined up, fragile like a baby’s skull; pressure distorts the shape. And he moves through images like someone bursting through one of those hoops with tissue paper they sometimes use in clown acts, he thought it was.

He knew that somewhere scripts were pushing the direction of his footfalls. He knew that somewhere edits were pushing back. He was not a sympathetic character – he knew this, but he hadn’t run across many heroes … they were few and far between as far as he could discern.

He pressed each finger against the glass carefully – he did not wish to smudge the prints. Treat every act in your life like it is a potential crime scene. Why was that important? He wanted to make an impact, always. He had a strange sense of the world around him and himself.

The newspaper talked of him – a constant chatter which he had to work hard to tune out. How could he be villain though, if there was nothing he was doing except following around? He circled the word thoughtcrime in his battered copy of 1984. He thought long and hard about many things.

Death came from a rumour. He wasn’t sure who spread it, but it pushed out of the cocoon of its quotation marked genesis, and flapped its chaos butterfly wings to push towards oblivion on eddies that became tsunami. Bang bang. His suit ignited. And he dreamed that he was a phoenix, in moments where he was bleeding out, and … and … back to the beginning. The worm swallowed its tale.

What had he been doing? Who was he? Fingerprints in a room where nothing happened.

His sister wrote a little story about him where he had learned to eat fire. He fell asleep every night in a bed full of ribbons. They had said that he had done things – stolen ideas, wrote them out as his own – but the truth was, his death was the only act of plagiarism he had ever been involved in. It was strange. It was strange.

The gun fires. The fires burning. He gets fired. He gets shot. A photograph.

 

 

Outlines

He was an Outline, some kind of reality glitch, where the continuum rejig hadn’t erased a non-person completely. Logically they shouldn’t have existed, but somehow there was residual data stored in the signalling part of some of the upper dimensional particles that had been quantum entangled with the individuals.

He could see others like him easily – he knew none of the non-Outlines could really do that, but where did that get him … unless there was some kind of quantum physicist genius who had been outlined as well, they weren’t going to be building any escape routes any time soon.

He knew his mother had christened him Christopher, but he felt that the fact he no longer technically had a mother meant his name seemed a little invalid too. Screw it, might as well call himself Christ – who was going to oppose it?

It was maybe his third year of trudging through this half-life. It seemed longer – relativity took hold of the experience and stretched it like taffy. It was depressing – reality was a vestigial limb of his perceptual apparatus that itched like hell, but which he couldn’t get in a position to scratch.

Christ sat down and wondered how this had come to pass – what thing had been bumped aside or erased from the continuum preceding his existence that had wiped him out? What if he could skirt back down the loop of infinity, through the eye of the needle singularity, and unstitch that event horizon slipslide drown into oblivion? There was something unphysical about him, so what if the logical constraints of the physical universe were not binding to him? He felt no concern about theoretical Hawking radiation or unilinear time. What did he care for the postulated universe of some quantum physicist? What if observer influence and intention had made the first time travel machine possible, and what if, here on the outskirts of the real, his own perceptual push could undo something … could unmake some newly minted absolute?

He had once listened to a cassette on the power of positive thought. He had once managed to get his foot behind his head after a particularly limber yoga class where he had spent over an hour sat in the vedic position doing circular breathing – so he could focus really hard … he was good at that shit. So he did it.

One man can make a change – he had been an author back before he was wiped out. He had ghost-written before, so he was used to working with outlines. He sat there and he reconfigured the localspace around him into a script, digging in down deep and dirty into the heart of reality, and he had started to fill in that outline. He sat there and smiled as he thought about how all works of art are, in some small way, a self portrait, and he wrote himself anew; he wrote himself back in.

He sat there writing, burying himself in the work, excavating himself from the shadow world he had slipped into, and when he felt the soft pressure of a hand on his shoulder, and when he smelt the familiar perfume that his mother always wore, he knew he had travelled back to reality … one he had put there, and he fell in love with his life and the world again. He knew it loved him back, because he was the one who was the beating heart at its center – he was the engine of this place, and as he drove it on it rewarded him back.

 

Block

He sits there with a tiny block – his artistic spirit was sacrificed upon it. He needed a larger one for his integrity. Above his bed he had a picture of the sainted Gordon Comstock. The aspidistras were wilted.

He pissed on a toilet block. Piss on his writer’s block. He lifted a cinder block and hefted it over the edge of the building. Someone walking around the block looked up and had their block knocked off. Sitting in Cell Block W he would have plenty of time to write.

Marvin was a blockhead. Carin hated him – his bunkmate sat there and listened to Jenny from the block. His agent had put a block on his calls. But hey, he didn’t have the block anymore, and diminished responsibility meant he could block in a release date on his calendar; block in a release date for his book.

He looked at the illustration of some kids ABC blocks – that simple, eh? He smiled.

 

Note To Self

He left notes everywhere. There is found sound and there is lost sound. The melodious and the disharmonic. He felt so broken and had done for a long time. He would pick up the various instruments which once upon a time had made sense, but which he now talked of in terms of investment; which he now looked at wistfully. How had his life drifted so far off the course he had imagined it following?

Did it all really tie back to one bum note? Had it all gone wrong with that one time he corpsed on stage? Maybe it was so – that was where the doubt set in; that was where he began to feel that the perfect run of playing that he had had, had come to an end, and that was an immensely sad thing. What use is a broken musician to anyone? When the edge is blunted what kind of new territory can you saw into? None. All the maps were old in that moment – there was no undiscovered country for him, and he was scared that never would be again. He had seen people in this situation who had never come back from it.

Pinned under the fridge magnet was some poor excuse for mundane magic – a regular cheer up that Chip the chipper housemate tried to float his way … it didn’t work. His other housemate Billie would sing at him; would sing tunes that he had played that she had learned especially to cheer him up; it was a nice thing for her to do but it bummed him out more than anything.

What could resurrect him? What could give him the heart that would make his tin ear disappear and his innate sense of rhythm return? He didn’t think there was a thing in the world that could do it. He was surely lost in the wilderness, and the world of music was a world away from him now.

He liked kids, and he had a new nephew so he got invited to a few kids parties because his nephew loved him. The first time they asked him to play music for the kids he refused and made excuses and was confronted by enough crestfallen looks from the parents and the children that he felt like the biggest party-pooper in the world. The second time he was asked and refused his nephew cried and his sister got really angry at him. The third time was the charm – even he couldn’t mess up Chopsticks. He had an appreciative audience, and he had fun. And that was it – that was the simple magic that got him playing again. Fun. Who would have thought it? Not him. He had never associated what he did with fun, and maybe that was the hole where the magic leaked out. The music in a child’s laughter plugged that whole, and the music came back …. he heard it again. He was inspired, and he knew what he had to hold onto. He held onto it fiercely.

The Cure For What Ails You

Some people can find more ways to fuck up than you would believe. He was a hobbled nothing now – oh, hadn’t it all been so bright! He was in the league of cure for cancer – that bright and sunny and full of possibility. And now? Now he wasn’t worth shit. He deserved it. He had to deserve it, didn’t he? For it to be happening to him there had to be some effect he was pushing into the universe? He was so unsure of himself that he was even less certain about the environment around him, and how it might be impacting upon him. He sat down at the bar and ordered the house whiskey. The guy was genuine Irish, which surprised him. Wasn’t it an odd world when being served by an Irish man in a so-called Irish Bar was enough to cause some dissonance and psychic stress. The whiskey wasn’t Irish though; it wasn’t good either – the warmth almost disguised it, but not quite. Did any of the bar staff drink here? Probably not. That wasn’t a good sign.

He was looking for some kind of job; some kind of work that a low rent scumfuck like him would be able to hold down. There were certain kinds of job that he went for and they took one look at him and they didn’t even have to ask him a question – they knew that they didn’t want him; it was all conveyed in the momentary sneer that soured their whole face. When he was being entertained by employers who were a small half-step above him in the pondscum rankings they were a little less judgmental. Why? Because they knew what it was like to be coming from where he was coming – they had visited that very location themselves only recently.

Parmenter had a bad reputation as an individual, but he was supposedly a good employer – he paid what he promised and he paid it on time, and that was good in anyone’s book. Joel sat down opposite him and when Parmenter offered a smoke he took it – the brand was Zero Skull, which he liked because they were high tar.

‘So, what’s the gig?’

‘Something noble, Galahad. I know you like the Robin Hood shit, so what I have for you, come to me from a very reliable source, is that some bastard has a cure for cancer but is holding it hostage.’

‘What, and we’re gonna break in and steal it?’

‘In one, my friend.’

‘Where is it?’

‘Eight Gates Laboratory.’

Eight Gates was notorious for the way that it dealt with people who tried to break into it, and people tried to break into it on a regular frequency. Why? Because they had things like cures for cancer held there, that was why. This couldn’t be a coincidence, could it? That a man who had once stood alongside those scientists was now given an opportunity to liberate something that would help as much as the inventions which he had failed to deliver when he had worked there. How the mighty have fallen, and how those broken crippled phoenixes might rise.

They picked him for his inside knowledge, and he did not fail to deliver. He had to admit that until he saw it – until he read the specs and the lab results on the screen he had though that they were on a wild goose chase. When he read that report though he was so happy – it was real, and the best thing was was that he discovered some small part of what he had done when he had worked here had proved useful – he may not have made the intuitive leap necessary to formulate the cure but he had surely built part of the launch platform. In that moment it was fair to say that some of the fight went out of him – that he felt a satisfaction he had never known before. As the guard moved in on him, weapons hot, his knowledge that there was a cure for cancer cured something in him that had been broken long ago. He died a happy man.

Never Tired Of Hanging Around

He has enough independent wealth to do whatever he likes. He likes to be around humanity stripped raw – something he has found harder since his worth grew a hundredfold. So what is he doing today? He is sat in the gridlock he spent the early morning driving to find, wishing really hard for it, driving just well enough not to die, and just badly enough that he might be a stone sending out ripples across the surface on the pond and create the perfect storm that would bring this standstill into being.

He likes standing in line. He likes waiting rooms. He will get himself embroiled in all kinds of things he should probably keep out of, just to feel that peculiar pressure of people packed in like sardines and feeling uncomfortable; tension building. Is this Freudian womb desire? Is this, as his hypnotist told him, derived from that past life experience of being buried alive in a mass grave? Too complicated – drive towards something simpler.

He adjusted himself inside his tight blue jeans. Odd – a boner? In such a sexless and sex-thought-free life his body acting this way actually surprises him. Was he unconsciously aroused by the girl in the convertible next door? Her smile curdles into a sneer when the light shining in her eyes lessens and she sees he is older than she thought he was at first – she doesn’t need or want a sugar daddy; she is an independent woman. He turns his head and smiles to himself, a thing he knows she would misconstrue. He doesn’t mind witnessing arguments but he doesn’t want to be part of one.

The horns have been getting louder. The colourful epithets are getting more colourful. It is music to him. For him this was something he did a lot. Not many people knew about it, but those who did wondered if there was something loose in his noggin. He felt he was totally sane, and that these actions he indulged in actually contributed to that. This was going to last quite a while.

His money brought him in contact with those people who wanted to find some way to wrestle control of his life from him for his own good, and those who worked hard to make it known it was not important and then it came to occupy a different kind of place in their relationship. Sat here, all this humanity pressed in close, this felt real – it was artificial, but it gave him what he needed. Hendrix came on playing Crosstown Traffic – what a perfect day.

See Horse Bleed

Look through the right eye. Look through the left eye. Look through both. Binocular vision is an interesting thing, makes him feel a little alien within his own skull when he becomes aware of it. He thinks of the idea of the bicameral mind. He wonders about the holographic universe. And then he ponders how having someone to talk to can have a similar deepening of perception.

He is alone. He is confused. And all the people in the cafe move around him unaware. They smile – and his lazy reflection fools their surface read. He comes here for this, even just for this … it’s something. It is something.

She refills his coffee cup, and he salutes her and she giggles. If she weren’t this friendly to everyone it might mean something, but it doesn’t. The country-fried breakfast sausage platter tasted good – he might regret it later, but for now it hits all the right spots. He eyes up the pies – he is thinking chocolate velvet, and maybe pumpkin. A couple of slices. He is getting out at least, right? Right.

How long has it been? How long is it since the break-up seemed like a legitimate excuse for the depression? Did it ever? It stretches thin over everything and it was a worn drumskin from early on. He doesn’t even have the energy to pull off even a vague echo of the early rhythm he used to throw into the patter that became his rehearsed excuse. He feels sad. And some of that sadness is that he keeps relying on this shorthand distancing mechanism to handle people. Keep pushing and see how many people continue to push back – it saps the energy.

A mouthful of chocolate velvet. A mouthful of pumpkin pie. A mouthful of coffee. He smiles like a big kid. The waitress sees him transformed into the younger man he has forgotten how to be most days, and it pulls forth the smiling younger woman that she has forgotten how to be. The moment is brief but it is a a little sacred interlude in the everyday.

He remembers the seahorse he saw at the aquarium last week, he remembers the facts about them – the whole male pregnancy thing, which frees the female up to produce more eggs. Wasn’t he a seahorse for a while? He smiles. They called it Couvade Syndrome, named for the old spell that used to be cast to transfer the pain of childbirth to the man. But as she said – he didn’t really know what it was like to have a life growing inside him – something spiritual and not purely physical. For him it was a symptom. He told her he felt the loss like she did, but even as he said it he knew that couldn’t ever be true. It was the wrong thing to say. That thin tenuous link between them ruptured and blew away in the strong wind of her grief. He did feel grief, but it felt like such a selfish thing.

Another mouthful of chocolate velvet. Another mouthful of pumpkin pie. They have turned to mush. Another mouthful of coffee. It tastes lukewarm and muddy. He doesn’t even know that he is crying. Anyone who sees it turns away. This isn’t the place for that kind of thing. A middle aged man crying in a family diner? Who ever heard of such a thing? It just isn’t right.

calling the ghosts up

I remember her as pot-pourri. She is one of those dolls with the knitted dresses they sit atop the toilet rolls. She is apple-scented shampoo. He is mintoes – those mint sweets with chocolate centres, and the smell of garlic tablet farts. I have to catalogue them somehow, and sometimes doing it by name or by crimes committed against me or favours done for me seems unfair.

Conjuring up ghosts is like blowing smoke rings held inside from the moment they disappeared behind the curtain at the crematorium. Yeah, and sometimes she is a heart-attack; he’s an embolism; she’s bowel cancer; and he is brain tumour.

Depending on whether the memory resurrects itself through the sense of smell or some morbid hospital shadow of memory, they come to me as the figures they were before the illness, or the decimated remainders they became. One I like – the other is less pleasant.

I like photographs. I like kid’s drawings – presents for grown-ups that represent both a child’s state of mind at the time and an insight into what he perceived as necessary to communicate something to an adult. Innocence can peel away the latterly achieved carapace forged from layer of disappointment which dull the patina you should have.

i dream of a perfume that captures a life; a taste that lingers on the tongue and plays a symphony upon the palate. to imagine that i am crafting something for a deafblind person with whom there is no other form of communication than the olifactory sense. i wish to craft a joycean engine from which my own dublin can be reconstructed. each poem, each story, each book is a bottle of perfume.

being deep

do you remember starting out with some illness that you apparently had? they gave it to you and you took it as a defining feature of your life because it added depth to what you thought, at the time, was a facile personality.

you’re coughing up your profundity and spitting it in the sink while i am sat there in the background wondering why you can’t just set the germs free from the cage of your excuse? i don’t like to build my palace out of half-glimpsed shadows and undelivered promises, but you tell me that all we have is scrapbooks.

when we moved into this place there were ants carrying the sweetness of the previous occupants away. the fingerprints were still fresh on the formica; an old unemptied kettle and a novelty message on a mug that was not part of our conversation. we called it cleaning up and moving in – unpacking our reality and history from the boxes we had managed to sort it into. the post-it notes looked like diagnoses; fridge magnet haikus barely noticed. if we were to sit there and pick significance out of the alphabet soup how long would it take before we found something we could believe in or argue about?

i don’t like to see you unwell because it is all so unnecessary – an affectation you pick up as a useful prop to stir up the air when you think it has staled from inactivity. the way you come out of all these illnesses is you forget that you need to perform certain actions to make them real; like those guys who forget which leg they chose to be hurt. you’ll maybe stumble a little bit as you realise you’ve been caught out – that everyone, even you, knows there is nothing really wrong with you. but when you are feeling good and there is nothing holding the performance in place it is kind of hard not to smile at how daft you’re being.

you never needed illness to make you profound – like a lot of people when you start treading that invalid path you are scuffing your shoes on dropped cliches and tying your tongue in knots to explain away the flaws in your facade. when you are happy and you are really looking at the things which are before you, it’s easy for you to say something and watch as resonates with those who are listening to you. they don’t have to excuse away the passive agressive way you are communicating with them – they can just accept what was uttered for what it is: truth.

sleepy head

the promise of sleep sits there like a small impossibly dense of bundle of barb wire possibility which he rubs against in the thinking – the sensation is not pleasant and he balks at it.

the thin skein of patience by which he is tethered to his politeness is being sawed at by the held off future where sleep is already unpacked and transmuted from an angular torment to a flat plane of silken comfort.

coffee interjects as an aroma on a scrabbling sensory switchboard which is reaching for answers. he pushes it away. pancakes are coming and he knows that when he eats them some of his good mood will be restored and the sensitivity to everything he is now displaying will forget itself.

he touches smooth skin, runs his fingers through soft hair – and in the glissade of sensual poetry that is the body of his wife he eases away from his antagonistic perspective and opens like a blooming flower into the radiance of the idea of a new day.