Grimbeau

Today is soundless, voiceless, no tunes, no printed word. Just the hissing cars and the heavy droplets plashing on the path, the hum of the drones, white wax burr, ear stodge, and the wireless ghostly common room below…

‘We cannot muddle on like this,’ you discern the jabber, groan and wince. Whose muddle? Eton or Harrow, Seychelles or Maldives, Cumberbatch or Merlin?

‘We cannot muddle on like this. No. We cannot…’

So on they charming chant, they never stop until the timer says so.

Today is soundless, voiceless, no tunes, no printed word.

The hisses quicken, grow more urgent.

A door slams. Does frenzy erupt?

Alarm is tangible, like ice.

Where are they all going?

Work, school, shopping, buildings, fields, aeroplanes, ships, trains, to meet, to avoid: to do normal things. I burn and rage at the thought, they cannot hear, no-one can but me, here, now, feeling chagrined, let down, dreamless.

Not all have gone, surely not all, surely not.

What if it were not?

What then?

What, what…what if

Yes, they are all going to Africa for the winter, or far out to sea to the spawning banks to reproduce. They know many will die along the way, but still they go, leaving a few for essential maintenance, to keep an eye on things.

Sentinels and Neutron Stars, mutants and deviants, unfinished business like us.

From the dark a stubborn mist emerges. Sargasso, hearse lassitudes, crazy horses banished, abandoned in dimlit cul de sacs. Back in the Overhang, you must be joking.

Every bloody November seems the same!

Politicians bite, scientists effuse, milestones are reached somewhere out there.

Wriggle in the shroud. The storm rampant

Wriggle!

Thrash, tear, thrust, push, rip.

Who sucked the strength, stifled you, keeps you down and never out? Mother Duvet and her iffy sisters, a day or two of agony.

Blame game on…

Yet, on reflection, in the round, with the benefit of blindsight, there are sumptuous grounds for complaint.

There always are, there always are. For, where would we be without them. There’s  the suck, the bruise, the gash, the provenance.

 The fear of nothing. A bobbing belled buoy ringing, tolling and bobbing, wired to monotony bay.

A stubborn mist insists, Bloody November weather.

Stop this now.

At once

Breathe.

It’s out. Quite some effort.

A stwrain. Ow and then strain toooh hard, runrunrunning around, getting all gummed up, so gummed up the more you writhe the less you ungum. Yes. Breathe.

Unravel.

De-Bolero.

Amen. Stretch and stretch another stretch.

Phew!

Crawl.

Breaststroke.

Butterfly.

Backstroke.

Doggy puddle.

The sexy sea

surrounds some.

This Cove is cold and dull, uninviting in every way to all but the seasoned swimmer. What doesn’t kill you makes you get up and see if it does this time.

Jesus! That’s a hell of a thought

-Urghh.

Raider alert.

Jumpy, jumpy, jumpy…

There’s the reason there.

Bloody chickens in stubborn corporeal mist. Hanging around. Hanging in the air, the atmosphere. Heavy, unyielding, dull: a depressed depression. Cut through. Cut out…

Go wild in delighted realms of scrawl, scribble, and scatter; splashing and smashing, rampaging, rumbling, romping. Having a hoot, a whale, a gas.

The colours flying, the sounds, the smell, the sharp and the smooth – get in there, get out of here; get up, get down, thrash about, make a mark, make a mess, do it. Flip out, unleash, be a devil, destroy, sully, soil, ruin, vandalise, lay waste and walk away, move on, let it be…take a break. Get a life. Get two for one.

Riot.