A redundant giant slumped silently on a porcelain escarpment washed by all weathers
Hesitated and slipped under the turbid foam. A mission bell tolled, candles were lit and praise was lavished on the magnificent shit.
“We may never see the like again,’’ claimed a source unknown to number ten.
A long time ago
I went on a journey,
Right to the corner
Of the Eastern Ocean.
The road there
Was long and winding,
And stormy waves
Barred my path.
What made me
Go this way?
Hunger drove me
Into the World.
I tried hard
To fill my belly:
even a little seemed a lot.
But this was clearly
A bad bargain,
So I went home
And lived in idleness.
‘Will that do?’
‘No, it’s wrong’
‘Wrong?’
‘Yes, wrong.’
‘Who says gross moral turpitude is wrong?’
‘People…just people.’
‘Well, I wouldn’t know anything about that, would I?’
‘Suppose not.’
‘Suppose right.’
Let us pause for smoke and prayer…
Teeming sardines in the Arab Sea
A billion starlings over the Fens
Sensing food and predator.
Poor old religion gets another lambast
Courtesy of these withered digits
Hens in the back are revealed as angels,
a blackbird coyly juggles rats
Louche, pleasant, twisted opiate dreams.
The bayou shoulders slow magnolia
Grits for slow, big, muddy river that quivers
Magnificent regardful like a python
Weighing up the yearly weenie
…in the Jacuzzi of good and evil
In
Seamless
Sleep
I saw you
Gallivanting
A
Sumptuous
Blaze
consumed me
Juvenating
the wake
New Grub Street records below for future delectation; and on the ruby doorstep, a letter for Professor Phipps containing a packet of pulverised sage to keep the lonely onion happy & engaged in crazed seasonal endeavours lies. A nuclear fog subsumes Trollenberg as zombies fill the diswashers incanting the curses of Mali and smiling on the memory of Nkrumah’s wizard foxtrot.
‘Maradonna’s dead’
‘Good, but what of little Diego?’
‘Mudlarking, no doubt. Slicing dentures from washed up concubines of the East Indian in inky sepia drab. A crow observes from a tendrilled groyne. All is muted, unspectacular. Waters lap. A heat pipe giggles in Abrasia.
‘Will he wash?’
‘In good time, when opportunity arises.’
‘The crusty stench is beyond the daily luminal’
‘Crud!’
‘Poor wee Diego’
Covered in purple dark spots is if mauled by myrtle spores, I changed under and over shirt. In The Hirsute of the Millennium we soon learn it is for the best to indulge both Brabancons and Chevaliers− flip sides of the dominant coinage−praise them equally in the font of(_^′)spare methe hassle′ italics^′
We try again to toll the bell where Zen flows, seems afar the berg of Grim juts apostate on the jagged skyline. Marauding friars and godless nuns make merry in the meadow hereabouts− Maddered children of the House of Love accursed by local soaks and wizened sinners that frolic mustard green and orphic twisted in night’s duplictous shade, St Salacious dribbles Augustinian ale on the mellow mass come Sabbath. The House of Nassau lives on the tithes and indulgences thst follow.
Why Wednesday already! No day for godless Chaplains to feel vacant. Hedges and history confound the third eye. Gregory vii is on the prowl for followers of the sacred owl, hounds surround the cuckoo’s nest. Milady is at vespers. Good job that I wear a vest emblazoned with the dripping eagle, venal thyrsus and divine cheroot. Plague confounds both mind and body politic.
‘The world’s gone nuts’, a little one shouts. All the elders hoot, A flash mob gathers. The child repeats: ‘The world’s gone nuts’, the mob chants back,
‘Eudes de l’Etoile…
Eudes de l’Etoile’
Herr Hemmingway’s new fangled card tricks garnered whoops of ghoulish euphoria; cryptic brevity entranced the maidens in the downstairs parlour. Whip cracks of girlish giggle and pinch play pierced the dour scourge of curfew night. A carriage pulled up before the sombre granite Manse. A parcel was delivered in speedy silence.
Casaubon ate freely of the doctored truffles. Mary Ann rested back to wait the denouement, puffing gaily on her long clay pipe and petting Daniel Absconda, her Sicilian spaniel. All would be revealed next Monday in The Infidel if they were spared.
*
Silas Marner pitched up unexpected the following day, dressed in limpid russet homespun which reminded Willoughby Dunlop, the virile batman, oddly of withered futuristic inner tubes.
‘Your luculence become you Massa Silas’ Dunlop growled with syrupy menace. ‘Do you bear subversive notions for the mistress?
‘That I do, swarthy vassal of capricious empire, that I do’.
Willoughby scuttled away to disarm her, the sound of his chains echoing through the capacious lobby as he went. A smile of brute rapaciousness broke cross his ashen face.
*
The eagle dripped on Zion as Ezra piled up the faggots in Parousia, Tertullian gazed on amazed on the third day of the shining wall in the morning sky. Nereus took his leisure, replete in still dry oceans. What was in those truffles? Precious time had drifted away. Calypso’s suitors fed the fowl with pith and peel.
‘Nightshirt!’ demanded Funk.
‘I shall be with you shortly; in the fulness of time; post haste; forthwith…’
May Ann appeared at the door, dishevelled, her cheeks a roseate hue, panting.
‘There you are, my dearest. But why…’
‘A spot of bare Pilates for the circulation. Doctor Jasper’s orders.’
A boneshaker hustled over the gravelled drive.
‘Mice?’ suggested Casaubon, aroused.
*
‘So Dude, what’s your beef? I post a lot? I am a friggin writer, a communicator. It’s a subject to object relationship. Intercourse. God proposes: man disposes. That kinda set up. So quit your incessant carping, Buster. Just because my numbers turn out better than yours. Get a friggin life Godammit!’
‘Discouraging words from Herr Hemingway, Adolf. He gets so reckless when he’s on the saucel I’m sure he will come round in the end. We all have our eccentricities. Our peccadiloes and foibles.’
But Adolf was inconsolable.
The rest is
Off course
Is history.
*
Chesney reached inside his great coat pocket and took a slug from the vial in the brown paper bag. The liquor! Dammit the liquor. Huxtable was wrong. He took another swig. It was then she emerged though the Bourbon mist of the cold November carpark. Zelda Zuchenslooper. What a broad.
‘Who you screwing, Small Fry’, she chirruped from some distance, yet somehow audible over the hubbub of a not inconsiderable crowd. All eyes turned on Chesney. He cleared his throat. It was now or never, and he hollered.
‘You baby. Only you. You is the One of it’
Fin
The Night of the Bog Heat plays out below as ballooning over Tara above the steam stench peat and course heather the summer thermals waft muesli west to titanium ships that calibrate conditions for the fleet. A neutral landscape unforgettable and unforgiving to the bug eyed.
Drought brought us down with a sharp shallot, shed from an upset colander
Hey Mister Storekeeper, quit that cruel gruel rustic fabric. Don’t leave us besmeared by steerage stirring for a box of frogs! Give up and yield to sunshine and snorage.
Pay off the elders with jalop and deploy quick wits and cutesy metaphors.
So deep the seeds of self-movement sowed. Patience is its own discord said the blueberry to the snail. Adding:
‘Be gone you irksome carry house from this esteemed wilderness. Talented Cromwellingses of all stripes and zealous alkyhorlicks abound in well clad tower blocks throughout the land, I’m unreliably told by sources near to the ketchup.’
Why so sorry? Why so sad? It could be worse; it’s not so bad…
Well, yes it fucking is. It fucking is. It fucking is. It fucking fucking is…
On Tuesday the Twentieth of June 2017 it became, at 5am, 24c and in the corner the fan purred loud. It was sat on a spare chair slowly watching tennis from Queen’s. At the end of the encounter superglue handshakes were exchanged. The combatants wore green flip-flops.
Pink is the colour of my true love’s ears
In the morning
When we rise
Like a fridge over troubled waters
I will cool you down
Chuck bread out the cookhouse
windy for the birdies
For the birdy birds
Slice potatoes down the grain
& fry
Like an eagle
To the sea
Working in the hot sun
uninterruptedly
Egg hard boiled
Tomato sliced
Cumbercu flintly slitheroo
Rindless salami
Door step:
Batch
