Never knew the phoenix- ash if I could

bottled always screw tap tight and twice preserved,

a jammy git

Hoist sails and wings

while wind catches you still

Billow- unfurl'd! In sailclothed glory

tack to the wind in jagged pattern

when the rip tide pulls, sneer good and kick,

backhand the drowning seer.

No tidemark measures this.

Stuffed Mice and Men

Karl felt sad. His pet mouse, Tre, his most favouritist thing in the whole world had died. It was his little friend who lived in his pocket, who he told everything to, all his secrets and thoughts. And now Tre wasn’t moving or squeaking no more. Maybe he had petted it too hard? It was true that he didn’t know his own strength, as his mother always used to say.

Karl went out and laid Tre to rest in the garden. He scooped the earth with one of his huge hands, and gently placed his mouse friend in the ground. After a moments pause, he covered him with earth, and lumbered back up to the house. The nice man, Pete, was at the house– he would understand. And his friends were there too– Jeeby and Roger. Maybe later they could have a game of baseball. Karl liked baseball– he could thwack that ball right out of the park and into the next town!

His friend Jeeby- Jeeby was just another way of saying ‘G.B’. “G.B” stood for ‘Guns n’ Bombs’– Jeeby had robbed an army store a year back, and got away with six pistols and a box of high explosives, which he’d planned to use in a robbery. Lucky for him, the police caught him before he carried out his plan, and they couldn’t prove anything because they never found where he’d hidden the bombs and weapons, otherwise he’d be in the borstal, not here.

“He got away with it. He be Jeeby!”, as Jeeby liked to say, the maniac.

Roger– he was just Roger. Didn’t say much. Didn’t say anything, truth be told; kept himself to himself. Good at Poker, was Roger. Poker and knifings.

*

Pete arrived at work whistling. It was a gorgeous morning; sun and blue sky, and his wife had just given him the good news last night that she was pregnant. After trying for several months, they had done it! A new life soon to be in the world– their new life; their baby.

Pete had brought a special present for Karl today. He knew how much that silly mouse had meant to him– he even slept with the bloody thing on his pillow. Probably squashed it in his sleep, the great lunk!

The tree in the driveway was now full of dangling yellow blossom that was at once both bright and fragrant; humming bees were getting busy with it. Pete took out his keys from his jacket pocket, put the golden one in the door of the home, turned it twice. At work on time, regular as clockwork. Once inside, he snapped the keys onto a loop on his belt.

Karl was still feeling sad. The nice man, Pete, had arrived at the usual time. Karl was playing cards with Jeeby and Roger. Rummy. Roger was winning. “How're you today, Karl?” said Pete. 'Oh, y’know…' “Come with me,” said Pete, “I got something for you”. Karl followed him to the kitchen area. Pete pulled a small packet out of his jacket– “Here!” Karl took it.

Pete had been working at the home for 3 years now. It could be challenging work, but he loved it– loved the children he was put in charge of, enjoyed the company of his co-workers. Karl was fun to be with; not the brightest but with a big heart. A big man with a big heart. Well, he seemed like a man anyway– Pete had to remind himself at times that Karl was just a child in a man’s body. Six foot three and hadn’t even started shaving. He hoped that he liked the present.

Karl opened the package. Inside was a beautiful stuffed toy mouse. The fake fur made it look incredibly realistic, and it had small black beads for eyes. It looked just like Tre.

“What the FUCK?!” Karl screamed. He smashed Pete in the ribs with a fist. Stunned and winded, Pete sputtered– “What's wrong with you Karl?” “I'ma KILL you!” shouted Karl. Pete, shocked and acting fast, scrabbled past him, out of the kitchen, and into the living room. Karl followed. “It’s a present Karl–” he said, trying to calm the situation– “I thought it'd help you to remember Tre”. He pressed the alarm button to alert the other staff of a situation. Karl picked up a baseball bat. “Oh, you gettin’ it now” said Jeeby, happily. Roger glanced at him, looking uneasy. A film was playing on the television– the other residents were watching it, oblivious.

Pete went behind the sofa– Karl swung the bat but missed, leaving a dent in the leather. Pete saw the form of a golden bird shining outside, like a phoenix glowing in the ashes, and realised he had to get out. Where the hell were the other staff?! He dashed for the front door, with Karl following behind swinging the bat, slapping it in his mighty paw.

*

“What’s wrong with you, daddy?” said Karl. Daddy was swaying back and forth. His eyes were watery. He was talking about Karl’s mum, how he had to make it right, but the words were coming out wrong.

I need my daddy. What’s wrong with him? He’s not speaking right, and his head is sinking into the table. It’s like he’s ill, but he’s not ill. Daddy’s just a lost little boy. Now he cryin. I don’t want daddy to cry. He’s drinking from a big glass that he pours from a brown bottle. Usually that makes him happy, but tonight he’s all a mess like a tangled ball of wool. Karl felt sad. He lost his daddy that night, and soon mummy went away too. Now it was all down to him. To make things right again.

*

Pete got some way down the road, and Karl came lumbering after. Then Pete came to a crossroads, and had to stop– too much traffic. Karl was right behind him, and swung the bat against his knees. There was a loud crack and Pete hit the deck, ripping open the skin of his forehead on the rough swathe of gravel by the roadside. Karl reared up then, but Pete took advantage of Karl’s slower pace to quickly pick himself up just before the bat slammed down– spotting a gap in the traffic, he made it to the strip of concrete-enclosed grass that formed the central reservation, grasping his legs in pain. Karl looked for a break in the endless file of cars. Pete was struggling to walk now. So this was it, he was going to die. In such a stupid way too– and when you die, you stay dead. Forever. Fear rose in him like a broken window, like static on a radio dial.

*

He staggered off the central reservation, then half-limped, half-crawled across to the other side, where Karl caught up with him, running like a tank, both feet in his big boots. Karl smashed him hard in the ribs while still running– Pete doubled over from pain, and Karl flipped round and blasted his shins with the bat. Pete fell to his knees, screaming for help.

An old couple were just going into their house nearby. The old man said, “I’ll be with you in a minute– I just need to get my wife inside”.

A thousand thoughts of escape flashed through Pete’s mind, before the realisation, not arriving without some grim humour, that, barring some miracle, this was the end. Then resignation, and acceptance. It was a beautiful day to die– the sky was blue, the trees waved in the gentle breeze– even the brutal white noise of the traffic seemed wonderful, perfect. His wife’s conception– this too was part of everything, and was perfect too– life ends, life begins. One in, one out. In, out, in, out, shake it all about. All of this passed through his mind in an instant that seemed eternal, like the Summertime in childhood.

Even the pains shooting up his legs like knitting needles, and the blood that was seeping down his forehead and making a furry crimson lake of his eyebrow were perfect. The sweat was stinging in his eyes as he looked up into the shining sun.

Karl gave Pete a good sideways one in the face with the bat, knocking out a spray of blood and splinters of teeth, and Pete finally fell back onto the street, jerking, then spasming, and finally unmoving. The shining form of a golden bird appeared above his battered body, swelled up to the size of a house, and then zoomed off into the ether. I think I was the only one who saw that– I was down by the supermarket that used to be a cinema, looking North, and I wondered if the sun had returned to earth. It was just the brightness– I couldn’t look at it directly, but I felt it. Pure light without heat. There, and then gone again, like a comet ascending, rejoining the sky. Anyway, no matter, I’m not actually in this story.

The old man then came over, having helped his wife into the house. He seemed entirely unafraid of Karl. “What have you done here then?” Karl paused. “He mocked me, man. I had this pet mouse that died, and he went out and found a mouse in the forest and killed it and gave it to me, to insult me. Who would do that?! Look!”

The old man took the mouse and examined it. Karl took the time to take a tissue from his pocket, and wiped some of the blood from his bat. “You idiot,” said the man, “this is a toy mouse.” He peeled back part of the head, to reveal the stuffing, and several bands of elastic holding the body in shape. “Not only that-” he reached inside a seam in the mouse's stomach, and pulled out a small key. He then inserted the key into a slot in the mouse's back, and turned it a few times. The mouse immediately became animated, it’s limbs making a running motion. The man handed it to Karl, who watched it moving. “It was a stuffed clockwork mouse” said the man. “A wind-up.”

“Oh.” Karl looked forlorn. “So I killed my friend for… for nothing?”

“Your friend?” asked the man. He looked at where Karl was indicating– there were just some scraps of leaves, playing in the breeze. Karl’s head was spinning. He looked down at the baseball bat– there was no blood. The old man said nothing. There was nothing to say. After a brief moment, he turned, and walked back to his house, as the cars zoomed by, unconcerned.

And Karl looked down, and he saw clearly then that Pete was the mouse; everything that was Pete was there in the mouse, had always been there, and the mouse was alive. He grasped the key and turned it a few more times, then removed it. The mouse’s head raised up as if to look at him– maybe there was even a subtle wink? He set it carefully on the ground, and its little legs scuttled it off into a hedge. It soon disappeared into the undergrowth.

Karl released the bat; it clunked onto the pavement. Still the traffic flowed on, like an endless snake eating its own tail.

*

Later that day, Karl was with a couple of local children– Sam and Chris, on the fourth floor of an old building on an abandoned lot. Karl liked hanging out with them. Today they were playing a new game– each of them had 100 feet of metal chain attached to them, with a grappling hook on the end. The aim of the game was to get to the bottom of the building, by bunjee-jumping with the chain, or using the grappling hook to make a swift descent, before one of the 20 timed bombs that he had carefully planted at the bottom went off. Karl had found Jeeby’s bomb store, fo’ sure. The catch, was that all of the timers had been set randomly– he’d set them without looking, so you didn’t know how long you had. The aim was to make it off the lot before the whole place got blown into the sky– the aim was to get out alive.

“Ok, go!” Said Karl, pressing the remote button that started all the timers. The kids started off.

Then, out of the corner of his eye, Karl saw a movement. He turned– a mouse! Running along the corner where the ruined wall met the floor. He thought he might have seen a key sticking out of its back. It had a different colour fur to Tre, but his heart leapt to see a real running mouse! And yes, there was definitely a clockwork key, slowly turning as the mouse scampered along. And then suddenly, the whole wrecked floor was full of mice, all running crazily, willy-nilly, bumping into each other, and all clockwork; the keys revolving as their motors whirred. Karl was transfixed, mesmerised. The children had already abseiled halfway down the building, when the first bomb went off– BOOM!– blowing out part of the foundations and rocking the block with aftershock. “C’mon Karl!” shouted Sam as he neared the bottom. “C’mon Karl!”

Karl picked up one of the mice, held it between thumb and forefinger. He watched its tiny legs scrabble back and forth against nothing, in futile struggle, as the key started to wind down. He smiled and petted it. “Hello little mousey!” he said.

The two children made it off the lot, and looked up at Karl silently, as he sat still on the fourth floor of the building.

Karl smiled to himself. He didn’t feel sad anymore. He looked up into the sun, high above; it hung there like a giant golden bird, shining beneficent light on everyone and everything– the cars, the trees, the shops, the bees, the women, the houses, stuffed mice and men.

Fin

This is a work of fiction; any similarity between characters alive or dead is purely coincidental.

The burglary.

"But stealing is wrong,” his young sister says. Her face is serious. Her tone is lecturing. “Mum wouldn’t like it – if she knew...”

“Who gives a fuck if it’s wrong, Anya?” It takes all his self control not to react the way he did this morning, and he keeps his fists bunched in his pocket. She is useful to him. Being small, she can slip by unnoticed. Who would suspect such an angelic child, with her engaging smile and her blonde curls, of being a common criminal?

The look he’s given her is enough. “I know,” she says, hanging her head. She resists the urge to suck her thumb. As he keeps reminding her, she is a big girl now. “I’m sorry.”

He looks at the house again, at the expensive black cars parked outside with tinted windows. At the elaborately sculptured garden. In the town somewhere, there’s a siren. He listens nonchalantly. It’s far away and it’s not like they care, is it. You don’t get things like sirens here. That’s what makes it so easy, the stupid fools.

“Think about all the gold,” he says. “It’ll fetch a good price. Just imagine it, Anya. Imagine what we could buy with it. I could buy you a necklace like the one you lost.” Actually, she didn’t lose it – he sold it, but she doesn’t need to know about that. Ah, fuck it. She probably knows anyway.

“Yep, it’s easy with these fools,” he says under his breath, climbing up the steps to the open double doors. His sister follows him tentatively. “They get careless.” He presses his hand against his coat to make sure that the knife is still there. Anya doesn’t need to know about that, either.

He walks painstakingly on the soft carpet, Anya having little choice but to follow him. At one point he turns around sharply as he can almost hear voices coming from the garden. These paintings on the wall must be valuable, though he doesn’t know the first thing about art. But those things can go for thousands. Millions even. Thinking about it fills him with an almost sexual excitement. Things would go nicely for him then. He pictures himself walking down the street in designer clothes worth thousands, a stylish hat, a pretty girl on his arm, to a house not unlike this one, a garden, kitchen staff. You can get rich this way, really rich. He half admires one elaborately-carved door frame as Anya disappears into the kitchen to look through the cutlery drawers.

These people probably got their mansion like this. Them, or one of their ancestors. That’s usually how it worked. You were more likely to make it like this than those poor fools working all hours of the day for peanuts. Idiots like his mother, scrubbing floors for twelve hours a day.

He barely hears Anya, which is a good sign. She is learning. Maybe she’ll to do things by herself soon, although the thought doesn’t fill him with confidence. He calmly walks upstairs into the master bedroom and his eyes fall on a small, locked box on the bedside table. His eyes catch sight of a portrait opposite the bed. And suddenly his fantasy is destroyed by utter revulsion and loathing. You greedy fucker, you dirty bastard. Why do you want to live like them?

“I’ve got them,” Anya says, afraid to look at him. She passes him the boxes of crystalware and silver cutlery in her small hands. He simply takes them from her, and walks over to the box. She looks around the room, at the king-sized bed. And he hears her intake of breath. His eye wanders to a newspaper on the bed and his anger returns. He clenches the knife in his pocket.

“I don’t like it here.” Anya opens the commode and out of the corner of his eye he catches the glittering dresses as she pulls them off their hangers one by one, folds them up neatly. He ignores her, as he feels up and down the mattress. Is there anything stashed here? No. He takes the knife from his pocket and slashes the sheet covering the mattress. They’ll know he was here. He kicks the table hard, so that the expensive light smashes on the floor.

He slashes the bed again with his knife, as the newspaper falls to the floor. He imagines some spoiled, jumped up tart pouting her lips and looking over her husband’s shoulder as he reads it. He stuffs it into his bag. They can use it for firewood tonight. Pity they can’t use the whole fucking house.

He’s not sure why he hates these people so much, so ferociously it surprises even him. For what they have, or what they are.

He picks at the thread on his coat, the only remaining sign that a yellow star was once there. Sown on by his mother, because she didn’t want anyone “in trouble”, as if they weren’t in trouble already by being alive, by simply living and breathing. Never getting in trouble didn’t do her any good, did it. The Fuhrer’s portrait stares at them from the other side of the room.

“We’ve got what we need,” he says. “We’ll go.”

Anya nods at him, and he lifts the heavy sack onto his back. Silently they walk down the marble steps, not speaking. He feels as though they understand each other.

We're back!

April 2011 Renegade Dogs Writing Contest!

Entries by 27th April - voting on U75 until midnight 1st May.

Peter Campbell Falling

The first thing he noticed once he got up there, other than the wind whipping him in the face, was the way isolated noises would work their way up and free of the crowd of sounds on the ground, so that, every so often, the sound of a joyful child shouting through laughter or the chorus of a birdsong from the trees in the park; the acacias, beeches and the other kinds that he didn’t know about. It was beautiful, thought Peter Campbell, and that should have been his first inkling that his plan, the one that he had given birth to, nurtured against his will and let fester like a tortured child trapped at the bottom of a well, somewhere deep in the recesses of what he imagined was his true self; the one that he tried never to let anybody know of or see, was not going to be something that he could execute.

Up there, he stood and looked down, standing on the flapping grey asphalt strips that sat atop the two looming brown towers, with their jutting balconies, two each side of the building on every floor, all the way up, each one long since coloured grey from their original white, the cumulative build up of exhaust fumes that silently work their way around the world and up into the atmosphere long since having forced a repaint upon those who lived within. The wind was fast up there; it hit with force from every direction, so much force that nature threatened to push its own agenda and, with it, Peter down, past sixteen floors, down and to his death on the paving slabs and on the faces and clothing of those unfortunate to be stood too near the spot that gravity would deign fitting for his exploding end. His green denim train driver’s hat - which, he had always suspected, made him look pretty ridiculous anyway, trumpeting out loud the unease he felt in his heart and mind at having been born at this time, with these people and this way of living that left him withered up inside and alienated from everything and everyone in his life - blew away from his head, leaving his matted brown hair exposed, lifted up and pushed down and from both sides simultaneously from the strength of this wind.

“If I’m not going to do it, I may as well go home” he thought as he, again, looked down. “Or, maybe, to the National Gallery to look at the girls”

Peter Campbell often made his way to the National Gallery to look at the girls. The girls came from all around the world, he imagined, and they would leave the gallery, having stood before the art and appreciated it in ways alien to Peter, and walk to a coffee shop or a nice café, where they would write in their journals or work on their own art, perhaps taking off their scarves in winter and resting them over the back of a comfortable chair, fit to sit in for hours and do whatever it was beautiful women of culture and sophistication did. He imagined. Peter Campbell imagined a lot but, mostly, he imagined he was happy. He imagined he was happy in the arms of a beautiful love; a lasting love that offered him a new life, maybe far away, maybe in the same town but a new life, nevertheless. Find the girl, get the girl and the life would follow; that was another plan of Peter Campbell’s and, like all of the others, its execution remained beyond him.

He had, almost straight away, chanced himself into and perfected a certain routine. He would wake up in the morning, disconsolate and unknowing on the days wherein his mind would turn against him and compel him upwards; up to the top of one of those two brown and grey towers, neither of which he lived in. Upon reaching his summit, the highest point he would reach in his life, he would take from his pocket a letter. These were letters he addressed to unknown and unobtained lovers; the girl from the coffee shop with the Japanese design tattooed on her back, the woman from the train who had locked eyes with him and, he had felt, understood and accept his entirety, or the woman with the brown eyes who crowded his dreams by herself. Reaching the top, he would take the letter and, knowing them to be forever undeliverable, tear them up and return them to sender; the cruel world below, bit by fluttering bit.

How would they fall in love with him, these women? How would he move from casual observer, he imagined – the reality resembling more “strange man staring”- to lover, friend and confidante? This was the fatal flaw in his plan and it was a fatal flaw that, day by day, edged him ironically closer to successful execution of another one of Peter Campbell’s plans; the plan that had led him to be standing here and now, on the asphalt, atop one of the two brown and grey towers. Not today though. He knew it wouldn’t be today.

Peter was sure that there was something wrong with him. At some point in his life, he was sure, something had happened to him and he had split in two. He sometimes thought that he must be crazy, since he knew it wasn’t normal behaviour for a man of his age to regularly make his way up, via a piss and graffiti stained lift, up one flight of stairs, pushing through one fire escape door and up and out to stand on top of one of two brown and grey towers that cast shadows onto the nearby park. One of those two towers, neither of which he lived at but which, he felt sure, he would eventually die at. It was the behaviour of a crazy person but, before he could get himself comfortable with his new crazy person persona, Peter would remember that he had never jumped and then he would feel like he would never jump and then he would feel that he wasn’t crazy. And he wasn’t crazy, not really; he was something else altogether. Peter Campbell was sad. He was sad and he was lonely and it was more than he could bear to think about but it was all he ever thought about.

When had it happened? He could never pinpoint any specific moment or time when these feelings had started. He knew that he had been happy once or, at least, he had not been miserable. What precise moment, what second had it been that he had switched from being a happy person, oblivious to the world through sheer force of quiet joy, to the man he was now; stood on flapping asphalt, on top of one of two brown and grey towers that loomed above the ground and cast shadows on the park nearby, looking over and wondering. Wishing. But never doing.

Whenever these thoughts came to him, Peter Campbell’s mind was suddenly awash with snapshot images of a life once lived. There he was again in the arms of his lover, Emily, laying in the sunshine at the park in which they had often gone to feed the ducks. How curious it was that the simple act of throwing bread to ducks, who would eat anything, could bring such joy to a man’s life that the imagery should be permanently embedded in the depths of his psyche and ready, at any time, to rise up and torment him. There he would be again, underneath a white sheet, bathed in light, naked with Susanna.

These moments were unbearable for him. The memories of love brought with it, just as suddenly, the memories of loss. Peter felt betrayed by his own brain and wished over everything else that he might one day escape it. It was this wish that, in turn, gave rise to that plan that led him here to now, yet again, stood on flapping asphalt, atop one of two brown and grey towers, neither of which he lived in, looking down and hoping to be able to jump this time.

His worst fear was perpetual reincarnation of the same soul, the same mind; battered, bruised and broken and locked inside a new way of being; starting out on a new journey through youth to misery. Peter Campbell felt sure that, if there were such a thing as perpetual reincarnation, this was to always be his pre-destined lot.

How had it happened? He didn’t know and, stood on the flapping asphalt, atop one of the two brown and grey towers, neither of which he lived in, feeling maudlin and insignificant; a place and a feeling that he now knew with all the familiarity that he should have been sharing with a lover, now it seemed as if none of it mattered much at all. Insignificance is a challenge to a mind like Peter Campbell’s. A challenge he often felt he could rise or, rather, fall to with great aplomb and splatter on the pavement below like a falling bomb. But he wouldn’t. Not today.

And so began the descent. As routine as the climb to the top, with all its attendant feelings of certainty and dissonance; isolation from and internalised confrontation with a world that, Peter would imagine, sneered at and rejected him but, in reality, never noticed him; another miserable face in a miserable crowd. Peter Campbell wasn’t hated, he was ignored. He wasn’t despised because he wasn’t even there. The thoughts he thought and the feelings he felt were not unique to him and he was breaking no new mental frontier for mankind in happening upon them; they were, for a lot more people than he had ever appreciated, simply the way it is; the human condition we have been conditioned to accept and to suffer with in silence. Were that silence to ever be broken, were everyone to drop their guard and to say out loud, to eachother “I’m not coping”, would it even bring the Peter Campbells solace? Would it do them good to know that, rather than suffering in isolation and silence, they were all suffering together aloud? No, it was the hope that sustained them all; the hope that, one day, they might wake up and be free of the invisible chains that held them inside themselves; the hope that one day they might be somebody else. Somebody normal and un-tormented.

“What goes up, must come down” Peter thought to himself as he descended the floors in his piss and graffiti stained vessel. The trick, he thought, was in coming down hard. Hard and fast. Make gravity do your bidding, make it a slave to your will, an accessory in your demise. All this thinking. All this thinking on one theme and no respite, no release. Was he, Peter Campbell wondered, destined to spend the rest of his life trapped in this cycle? The thought was yet another thing for him to enter onto his list of things that made life unbearable.

Down the lift went, past floors of doors and nothing more, open them and find diversity; each door revealing and interior reflecting the tenant’s creativity, devotions, triumphs or poverty. Behind those doors life played out to a soundtrack of clunking feet and over loud televisions and stereos. It was there in various ways, news of dissent and dismay or loving and laughter carried through the thin walls and ceilings and, in winter, those sounds were joined by a hacking cough that spread from one wall to another, up and down the blocks.

Ping!

The lift came to a halt at the ground floor and the battered steel doors opened to reveal a vision in black on the other side. She stood about 5”3, 5”4, which Peter had always felt would be the perfect accompaniment to his 5”7, 5”8; she had big, brown eyes that dominated her face as she peered up to look into Peter’s blue ones. She had her black hair cascading down into curls that Peter instantly imagined unravelling and re-twisting and her skin was olive to contrast with his white. On top of the curls, she wore a black beret, an accessory that, until now, had always seemed to Peter to be the absolute height of pretentiousness in women’s fashion was suddenly transformed into a marker of sophistication; any idiot girl wearing such an item was as guilty of impersonation as the man who, pretending to be a doctor, performs surgery and accidentally kills a man. Peter was prone to exaggeration, maybe, but this woman, little more than a girl, that stood before him was, undoubtedly the single most beautiful woman living now or who had ever lived. In her 5”3, 5”4 frame, she carried all of the answers, comfort and reassurance that Peter had been seeking his entire life. He resolved right then and there that he would never again journey up to stand on the flapping asphalt and look down. He was going to love her and roll around in parks with her, be naked under white sheets with her and create new memories all of their own together and, eventually, create new minds and devote their lives to giving them the very best of memories.

The doors began to close. Peter snapped back. Why hadn’t she gotten in, he wondered? She hadn’t gotten in because he hadn’t gotten out. She, Sabine Patulea, regarded Peter curiously. She wondered why he hadn’t gotten out of the lift, mainly, but, also, there was undeniably something that had struck her when the doors had slid open and she had seen him standing there.

He was a nice height, this man, Sabine thought, and she had liked his tousled brown hair that fell in different directions, his blue eyes and pale colouring. She had even found it endearing, the way that he had been startled by her, but now she wondered if she could get into a lift with him, since he didn’t appear to be getting out. Instinctively, she jammed her foot in the door when he made no effort to pass her and, instantly, she regretted the decision. The regret was difficult to fathom, however. She shared this lift, soaked in piss and covered in graffiti every day; with Mrs Patel from the floor below and the fat man who never wore a shirt, always stank of sweat and carried strong beer with him in a can. Why had this most depressingly mundane setting been transformed into a moving den of awkward intimacy?

Now, his life could split in two again or, rather, the two disparate parts would be reunited. She had the power. She stepped into the lift and pressed 4. The lift doors sealed themselves and fate.

Movement began and the 2 in the dial of numbers, rising in twos, lit up momentarily, to be replaced by 4 a few seconds later, then 6, then 8, then 10. Still silence. Since the initial reveal of the steel doors, no further eye contact had been made. The tension in the air was palpable but equally misinterpreted by both parties. To Sabine – not her real name; she’d changed it from Suzanne which, she had always felt, was the name of a spinster, a name to grow into and fall back on if all else failed – the tension was alien and slightly bizarre; she felt it just as keenly as Peter Campbell, but she could not put a name to it. Peter Campbell could and the name was “self loathing”. Here he was, stood next to the woman he was sure was to be his wife in every conceivable sense and yet…and yet…not this time.

“I’m Peter” he finally said, in a voice that croaked rather than spoke past the point of “I’m”.

“I’m sorry?” Sabine replied tentatively

“Sorry” began Peter “I said I’m Pete…”

“Ping!” cried the lift

“…r” finished Peter

He looked up at the row of illuminated numbers, now a full set. The last one said 16.

“Fantastic” thought Peter

The doors slid open. Sabine stepped out. Peter looked down, crestfallen. That had been his window, his doorway to another life; the life he had planned and wanted. The doors began to slide shut again as Sabine prepared to walk out of his life. She stepped out of the lift and his head fell down low. The doors were sliding. They slid. Right until they hit a foot.

“Peter?” Enquired Sabine

“Yes?” squeaked Peter, before he cleared his throat and croaked “yes?”. Because that was way cooler.

“I think I would like to know you” she said. Sabine’s voice lilted in the middle of all of her sentences, which gave her the air of an ingénue or some kind of pixie. Peter didn’t know what the hell he was thinking about; he never normally thought words like ingénue, because he wasn’t certain how to spell or pronounce them properly. He was reasonably certain that Sabine sounded like one of them though.

He was still in the lift. The beautiful woman he had fallen in love with before a word had passed her lips was outside of the lift, saying she wanted to know him, and Peter Campbell was where he had been and as silent as always.

Sabine stepped back. The door slid closed whilst Peter stood in silence. He looked up as it was closing and caught a direct glance into the brownest, most beautiful, biggest eyes he had ever seen and they shook him out of his torpor. But the lift was moving now, in the only direction it could; it was heading downwards and away.

“Ping!” said the lift, and the number 12 was illuminated.

“Shit!” thought Peter, as he pushed his way past a startled Mrs Johnston, a Scottish woman in her 50s with an alcoholic husband, neither of whom Peter would ever know, because he was away. Away and up the flights of stairs. Up and round, up and round at the top of every flight; up towards that asphalt roof he knew so well but where he intended to stop short of for today and forever after this one.

Up one flight he ran, grabbing hold of the banister to use his momentum to push him halfway up another before he even really thought about it, then another, and another and more and more until he reached where he wanted to be and who he wanted to be with. Floor 16. Where this girl lived. Who’s name, he realised, he did not know. Peter pushed open the door that separated floor from doors in a hurry and, in doing so, the back of his forward right foot caught the front of his trailing left foot and caused him to trip. He stumbled forward at first for a few steps until he lost his balance, fell forward and smacked his head against the front door of number 64 and sprawled out on the floor in a heap. He didn’t see Sabine – who’s name he still did not know, but she knew his – anywhere. Until the sound of the smacking head against the wooden door brought an answer. The door opened in on itself, Peter looked up, Sabine looked down. Peter had found Sabine and Sabine had found Peter. Reunited, though they knew nothing about each other whatsoever at this point.

Sabine had heard a knock at her door and had come to investigate. Perhaps a knock was the wrong word, since “a knock” always brought with it the promise of another knock and another and another until the door was opened. This was not a knock though, this was more like a thump. And, so, a single, solitary thump at the door had caused Sabine to turn on her heels, having discarded her beret, checked her face in the mirror and, in doing so, she looked herself right into those big, brown eyes and missed Peter; the man she had never really met.

Sabine walked down the hallway, along stripped back floorboards that she had painted white herself and up to the heavy front door, which she had also painted white. She allowed herself one further glance in another mirror that she had placed just to the right of the door and left with its original black colouring. Sabine opened the door and met Peter, the man she had never met but who she had wished, without even realising it, would be the source of the single knock against her door. Possibly, it had been more of a thud.

The door opened up and Peter, all at once, knew how it felt to be the man who discovers that he has won the jackpot on the pools draw in one letter and learnt that he has terminal cancer in another. He had hit the right door, the girl was there and this was a source of immediate and intense joy to Peter. The difficulty was that he was sprawled out on the floor and that his head, which had been resting against the door, had fallen forward when it opened, where it opened and had now come to rest in between the girl’s legs. This was pretty over familiar stuff on his part and Peter knew it. As instinctively as he had felt that this girl was someone special for him, he knew he had blown it. There was unlikely to be any coming back from this.

Sabine looked down and saw a head looking up from between her legs. She felt no threat at all and couldn’t help but let out a giggle, which she hoped would not be interpreted as assent. It was, after all, highly unusual for a man she had never met to be laying between her legs; she couldn’t really see how the situation had come to be, and yet, here he was; sprawled out and looking up at her.

“He has pretty blue eyes” Sabine thought to herself, as she opened her mouth to speak

“She has beautiful brown eyes” Peter thought to himself, as he maintained his gaze into her face, terrified to look anywhere else for the potential legal ramifications such a glance could provoke. There it was again. Her sing-song voice, which lilted in the middle of her sentence again, as if to prove that how endearing it had been before had been no accident. She was like a dealer in fine loveliness.

Here was a hand being extended to him and, with it, a world he had given up on believing in. Here was a face much closer to his as he rose and now was a shock that induced by his logical left brain being shouted down by the flighty right. Almost every bit of Peter Campbell was a man who allowed life to pass him by on the riverbank whilst he was sucked under by the current. Almost every bit of Peter Campbell was reconciled to a life devoid of love. Almost every bit of Peter Campbell had wanted to die before and protested his foolishness now. Almost every bit. Almost. There was one bit of Peter Campbell left, maybe that flighty right brain, maybe his big left toe; unaware of the internal conflict, Peter Campbell cared little because, for Peter Campbell, there was no conflict. Peter Campbell was already engaged in the act of slowly turning his head to the girl as he rose. Peter Campbell was already engaged in the act of parting his lips and bracing for contact. Peter Campbell was still alive. Peter Campbell was in love.

Sabine was unaware of all of it, of course. She had her own process to manage and it was all she could manage not to start weeping. She felt such sadness radiate from this man on the floor at her feet. Empathy, the likes of which she had never known, hit and overwhelmed her like a tsunami, devastating her defences and her standard practised social convention. She had heard of love at first sight before now, of course, but she had been in love before and this was different. This was powerful. And she could feel it changing her life, even as she extended her hand to Peter Campbell, even as he rose. Even as he turned his face to his and she could see, for the first time clearly, the lines and imperfections that mapped out his face and made him beautiful. Even as his lips moved closer to hers. Especially when their lips collided and Sabine Patulea was in love.

Once more, Peter Campbell felt as if he were forced along by a current. It carried him into the arms of the girl he had just met, pushed his arms around her body and his momentum carried them both backwards and into her small flat. On the wall by the doorway hung a framed poster of a black cat with some French writing on it; a stylish oasis in the otherwise culturally bereft green hallway. Backwards they were pushed, past that black cat and along the green hallway to a white door. Their mouths still locked together, no further words exchanged between them, Sabine broke partially free of the embrace to fumble behind her back until she hit upon the handle and the door gave way and then backwards they were pushed, past that white door. The white door had given way to a white room with a wide double bed inside and little else. The bed had yellow sheets, yellow pillows and a crumpled yellow duvet resting on it. On the wall, there hung the print of a Hokusai tsunami that Peter had seen many, many times before. He had never been affected by it before, seeing it as merely ornamental and considering its purpose to be purely aesthetic and cosmetic; there to break up the monotony of a million student walls that would otherwise go blank. Now, he felt the full force of that wave crashing over him, drenching he and Sabine in frantic, kinetic love so that they were both mere vessels, carrying out a pre-ordained destiny and, now, for the first time, stood against that yellow bed, with its yellow sheets, yellow pillows and yellow, crumpled duvet, now, Peter Campbell was finally falling down. Now he was not alone and he was thankful for his prison cell mind that had rendered him incapable of leaping from that lonely, familiar spot on that flapping asphalt roof, on top of the grey and brown tower, wherein lived his love. Now he was happy.

That night they made love and each one knew at last, after a lifetime of false dawns, what the expression meant. Over and over, they locked themselves together and, when it was over, they held onto eachother tightly and found to their mutual delight that their bodies fitted and locked together perfectly, as each one told the other how they came to be laying there. Sabine told Peter how she had come to England from France, how she had felt herself a stranger in that land and in this until the time she saw the hurt in her eyes and knew, instinctively, that this was the force that had driven her here and she was to be his salvation as he was to give her purpose. She cried as Peter cried, as Peter held onto her tighter than before and told her everything; all the reasons he had had long, lonely hours to identify as the cause of his malaise and exclusion. He told her of the women he’d known before and the ways in which he had frozen and they had left him, he told her of the feeling he had had that had kept him awake in the nights and consumed him from within with acidic self loathing, how he, too, had felt on the outside of his own life looking in, completely powerless and how it had led him, so many times, to travel, with his crumpled letter in his sweaty pocket to the summit of one of those two brown and grey towers, in one of which they agreed that night he would now live so they need never be apart, onto the flapping asphalt, to peer over the edge.

Te next morning, Peter Campbell made his last trip to the summit of that grey and brown tower, in which he now lived. He made his way over to the piece of asphalt and he took his crumpled letter from his sweaty pocket. He looked down into the shadows cast on the park nearby and he heard the sound of childish laughter. He tore his letter into as many pieces as it could bear and he threw it down to the ground and the world below. It may never be his world, Peter Campbell thought to himself, but he was not afraid of it any more. As the pieces fluttered to the ground, Peter Campbell took the hand of the woman he was in love with, who he now had the rest of his life to get to know inside and out and to plant seeds within, the woman who had been stood with him the whole time and who would nurture him and comfort him when, as he was certain would happen, the darkness would, from time to time envelop him once more. She gladly accepted his hand and, together, they made their way down.

Icarus Rex

Icarus Rex

I nearly
gave up I
never forgot
how to fly
just didn't think
it worth
doing

this maze of streets
suffocates in summer sweat
slides down spines
air choked with scents
of gently burning value burgers
and brittle forced bonhomie
later thoughts will turn
to the watering holes of the "Gaza" Strip
the waterfront apocalypse
of chain pubs and pointless kickings
angry minotaurs stalk the bars
slurping down their stupid suds
somebody else's accident
waiting to happen
this
is the 21^st century
incendiary lifestyles
for emotional cripples
and social chameleons

there will be casualties

and Gibbo moves with all the grace
of a knife fight in a phonebox
stares
at shiny faces
families
in new saloons meandering
along the beaten seafront
knowing it's too big a gap
to cross between them and him
they see
one of those funny chavs
you read about them all the time
tonight Matthew I will be
compartmentalising
dehumanising
who's afraid of the big bad dole boy?
if you laugh at what you're afraid of
it might go away
(shamefully
I do it, too)
Gibbo feels but could never articulate
an imaginary conversation
between these people and himself
I'll stay out of your dreams
if you stay out of mine
but even these car radios blare
In every dream home a heartache
into this anodyne world

where any kind of fame
is more sought after and celebrated
than any sort of kindness
or happiness
commodity over community
possession is 9/10
of the new lore
in the Iron Pyrite dreams
of this proud new millennium
glittering prizes to
own own own
which bleeds into
self self self
here's a new chest freezer
you don't really need it
but join us and you've made it
love the higher power
all on hire purchase
subliminal product placement
and blatant hard sell
hello hello
this is a good buy
time to get that 2^nd motor
for your neighbours as much as anyone
free to do every bit
of what you're told
like a good consumer
we are the champions
no time for losers
this is how the world ends
not with a bang
but a whisper
of a sale

capitalism:
the gentle holocaust
a subtle strangling

there will be casualties

I only drink so much
so I can stop the ticking
for a little while
of what the French call
La Tristesse de la Vie –
the sadness of life
and also because these days
I write best
with a hangover.

This will eventually kill me.
But anything can kill you:

A mother and her 12 year old
autistic son were feared dead
yesterday after they disappeared.
She left a note saying she thought
she'd failed as a mother and
her and Ryan were going to the bridge
so the family wouldn't have to worry
anymore. She hadn't taken
her medication with her.
CCTV footage taken at
3 pm yesterday appears to show
two figures falling from the 150m bridge
eight seconds apart

and what must she have felt
standing in the light
for the last time
before that forever drop
into darkness
she had balls
and a lot of heart
but in the end
it wasn't quite enough
and did she pray
for no life flashing
behind her closed eyes
in the rushing silence
all those years
drowning in the sun

I listen to other people's conversations:

- she's so fat
- yeah but I bet
she sweats when she fucks
- I bet she sweats
when she eats
- I can't believe
it's not Buddha

sometimes the apocalypse
can't come quick enough
sometimes
just an ordinary gull
wheeling overhead
can lift a day
the miracle of flight
of wings and hearts
let the missiles fly
and turn them into
circling birds
then I might
believe

but tonight
this sopping club
is holding
far more gurning
hatchet-faced simpletons
than seems possible
a real retardis
everybody
fired up
pilled up
the music can't be
loud enough
every desperate
flailing dancer
chasing that mad rush
when the bass kicks in
and takes your head
clean off we're
chasing ultimate highs
and maybe
this is love
chasing anything
except
tomorrow morning
then the lights are on
music dies
disappointed silence
and out
into the heart of town
the heart of darkness
tell me who prays
for the soul of a taxi queue?
one couple waits
slumped against
wet brickwork
her eyes are
almost open
staring past the world
in an alcopop reverie
his head in hands
laces undone
and puke on his shirtfront
a private apocalypse
in this public hell
someone in line
sticks the nut on someone's mate
and it all kicks off
stay still
don't catch anyone's eye:
the opposite
of all you've done
this evening
you don't even
breathe out
until the cab is
speeding you
from all that darkness
and into
the welcoming night

nothing in the battered
paracetemol packet but
instructions for use
and throbbing nothing
but holes in my pockets
sometimes hope can fall
right out of your life
as easily as
anything else
this painful pulse
the only way I know
I'm awake
and arguably
alive
I watch the second hand
go round and round and round
and wait for nothing to happen
and nothing does

I listen to other people's conversations:

- Get to the fuckin bar cunt
ah'm spi-ing fevvuhs

the time I felt most alive:
in the open space
of the grey heath in New Cross
with fast friends
watching
the grandmother of all thunderstorms roll in
forks tearing down the sky
chewing through burning ozone
drunk and exhilarated
standing on the bench
arms wide
as the storm came
holding bottle and cigarette
screaming
come on come on come on
urging the world louder
the rain faster
waiting for
a perfect death
and ready to defy
god himself

I've felt shivers of wonder at the alien spires
of the Church of the Sagrada Familia
I've seen a grown man punch a five year old
square in the face for dropping an ice cream
I've drunk tequila sunrises at 5 pm on a pub bench
winking at the businesswomen
I've spoken with the ghost of Primo Levi
and asked him how he made it and he said I didn't
I've chased a sunset for hours on a plane to New
York while trying to forget I was on a plane
I've seen the news every day every day every day

I have loved the stars too well to fear the night

At the wake
my grandma thanked me for coming
and said how smart I looked
in my suit. Smiled
as she said she hoped
I'd come to see her again
like we were arranging something
out of the ordinary.
But on the way out
her face became desperate
as she held on to me
and she said
- I keep sitting in his chair
so I don't have to look at it
and for once in my life
I didn't have anything to say.

I listen to other people's conversations:

- She had a cunt like a kebab
that's been kicked all the way home

I must stop listening to other people's conversations

What to make, then
of this ever-subtle
maddening sensual
fragile frame
which houses the muscle
that can move the world?
That conjures
symphonies and sicknesses
births dancehalls and Dresdens?
The only thing I can do
is make garlands of words
and hang them around the shoulders
of everyone I meet
forever
because in the end
I'd rather go down
burning and laughing
than trundle tamely
into that goodnight
a static prisoner
of the days and years
I'll take
a run at the sun
ripping at the darkness
with a pen and a smile
it's the only way to
fly.

In fairness I had not been expecting much. A fog of formaldehyde was the first of my memories.

The preservative fluid was not so much for me but for my steel eyed observers. Oh those, those were the days. I was no curiosity but a medical study for Doctor Rose, the only female doctor interested in me. She undertook her duties with an air of sadness.

A slight woman, cloaked in white and bespectacled, a long black mane tied back severely. When she had finished with the probing needles and the scraping samples I saw her wipe away a tear for my fate, so cruelly ripped from a life that was not the existence of a jar bound genius. And genius I am. I’ve perhaps a dozen off hand ideas that would galvanise society and science itself.

But I am cursed to remain here in this foul fluid tap-tapping against a glass wall I can never breach.

Once, just once, she removed me from my transparent cage. Brushed back my hair and whispered a small apology as she scraped a sample from my eye. Delicately I was returned to my jar and then to the shelf as the laboratory lights were extinguished one by one.

I began to scheme. Perhaps, despite my jar-bound existence I could possibly exert my force of will. I could concentrate my intelligence to a preternatural extent, my vast psyche might pull in some foolish humans and bend them to my simian will.

The problem, of course, is bending the right human to my will. As a monkey foetus I had no practised wiles or focused psychic dominance methodology. However this did not deter me from the cause I had discovered, no, embraced. I knew that worship was my due and I set about securing it.

Soon enough my usefulness as a biological sample was outworn. My raven-haired benefactor saw me to the furnace with that same sad air she always carried but despite the inevitability of my fate I had hope. My vast will exerted by desperate circumstance made mincemeat of mere human understanding, they decided to sell me as a curiosity. Or so they thought. I had managed a coup of sorts, and those white coated philistines would needle me no more.

I am not privy to the mechanism of human currency nor do I care to think upon such irrelevance but I am sure a vast sum of money made possible the transference of ownership. In my glassy prison I rejoiced! No more needles, no more white coated fools who await a harsh judgement come the day of my ascendancy!

Oh such an idiot was I. The bending of my mind unto the laboratory assistants did not have complete success.. I was sold, yes sold,(and what insult can rival that) to a travelling showman. A purveyor of tricks and fairground nonsense. To be exhibited before inbred fools who thought a man stuffing a ferret down his trousers worthy of laughter. I was not even the star attraction. Just a sad monkey in a jar to amuse the gap-toothed country fair bastards.

I shared my horrors with a fine gentleman tiger, they took his claws but never his spirit. Not one to speak often he told me ‘fuck them, they’ll get what they deserve someday’

One of natures stoics, but his earthy wisdom saw me through those dark, dark times.

And then, one day, people stopped coming to look at me. Times had changed and this new thing called the internet meant one could view all the disgusting oddities one wanted without leaving your chair. I was consigned to a dusty shelf and forgotten. But I still schemed. When the time came some humans dug me from obscurity and I managed to inveigle them in my world domination scheme. I have myself a shrine and a plan. Do not fear my plans. Just anticipate them.