WHAT ARE YOUR WORDS WORTH?

I wandered lonely as a funeral shroud, shamefully sucking each hapless cloud, putting them to paper as cotton wool: what an obvious originality cull. But is it any worse that your repetitive green; the only symbol you have to display jealousy, or your infinite love prose, hued in red, do you really think that’s better instead?
For these words and their meanings are words in themselves and into the cannon our minds often delve and we’re searching for new ways to say the same thing; I’ll try hard not to use the image of ‘spring’. By the looks on your faces, you seem confused perhaps unclear are the symbols I’ve used? You see, words are like daffodils, in bulbs and dormant, fighting off parasites, a daily torment. And parasites represent clichés, forever worming their way into phrase but if you work hard to protect all your words; make sure the bulbs are safe from the birds, then what a glorious emotion you’ll feel when you order ideas to create the ideal and out of the ground just like ink out your quill will sprout the shining daffodil.

This yellow no longer has hue of decay but looks to me like a pleasing bouquet. And oft when on my couch and say: “There’s no worth to words without joy of word play.”

ILL POET

The map of a thousand inky worms; an unfathomable deep of wordy concerns but we’ll hold on to beacons; our symbolic terms; those obvious words that our hearts often yearn.

Oh vile uncertainty! How our minds do return, Oh you vague, ugly signs, yes for you we do spurn! But in sickly anxiety our brains they will churn ‘til we build up a fortress that’s deformed and infirm.

Your castle of words is crumbling down and into the moat your symbols will drown, you should dredge out the mould and recover the crown and bestow it (ill poet) to forgotten nouns.

Why laugh at the thought that poetry’s dead when all you do is repeat what you’ve read and the literary spider is spreading its web but you don’t seem to realise it’s captured your head.

Is it lexical choice, or your love for James Joyce that has stopped you from having original voice? How absurd that you drown out of arrogant choice!



And we take it in turns to repeat what we’ve learnt, how we love that precision of shared, ailing terms, but when will we see the inbred is infirm? We will die in this moat ‘less innovation returns.

You can’t just live in summer days; in quiet breeze and happy haze; we’re gliding down the night-time ways; I hope you know it’s just a phase; I feel like it’s all slipped away; the feigning smiles; the disarray; we’re working through the black; the grey; empty bottles; stale ashtrays; but when you turn to me and say; ‘please help me not to feel this way’; I’ll say, my dear, you’re just the prey; the green will feed off your dismay; I’ll say that we have hell to pay 'cause Eli Lilly made things this way.

PLEA TO S.W.M - the Yellow Wallpaper

Petals shatter off delicate trees
While the songbirds and swallows litter the eaves
For a winter of silence and a terrible breeze
And the sunshine that’s starving its heat for disease

It’s icy and shallow and as shattered as she
There for hours in coldness and waiting to leave
But all power and warmness is caught in the eaves
For a winter of silence and that terrible breeze

But she’s waiting and hoping the knowing trees bleeds
Out a sap all of fire, blazing energy freed
But it’s cold and it’s quiet and as quiet as she
In the rooftops of treetops in the eaves saved for she

So come crashing and trashing alone through an air
Cold and piercing and evil and dead and unfair
Unforgiving, aborting the stale, stagnant air
There’s no room in the house for this strong female heir

But she’s breaking and stabbing and filled with despair
Full of anger she’s winning this game: solitaire
And the men are downstairs smoking pipes unaware
That the prayer she is screaming is piercing the air


Take your chances, be different and paint over yellow
Then just wait and be pleased at the people who follow

NEW-OLD WORLD

We bribed the sun to sit near Icarus
So we could make more candles
And we used the candles to shed some light
On this vast pink-papered scandal

They needed more cheese for their bread
But then they needed more bread for their cheese

The door slammed in the kitchen and
The windows screamed sweet nothings to the wind
They’ll take you back to the storm
But it’s not so tempestuous and not so big
It’s round and quiet and it echoes myths
A wishing well where all the coins have been stolen by gypsies

So we won’t build ruins anymore
Or let the horse in through the door
Let’s not cry over muddy mounds
But help pick Icarus off the ground

CONCEPTUAL PATERISM

We must paint a portrait where the eyes never look at us,
Where the eyes look at nothing but the oil and the canvas,
We won’t see imitations of anger or lust,
But we will see the dust and the age and irrelevance.

Your marble slabs – only fading epitaphs
In this land of deformed unreality
So sit with me on the spiral jetty and get smothered in the redness
The skies will fold against paper waves to make a mist of words for harvest
Some are missed by our perceptions and get tangled in the clouds,
And others fall off the horizon and are very rarely found,

There is no picture that they can paint
No frame magnificent enough to cage it
Blank walls become trapped behind red wallpaper
And the patterns stare at a lonesome man on a wide street
Where the buildings are like
Teeth stacked on teeth

See the art in the lonely man in the secluded jaw
You’ll see what’s in-between the teeth
Then put your half drunk coffee in the quiet gallery - And
Don’t feel angry that it’s art

HOME BURIAL

Four years ago, Amy and her husband’s house was like one you’d find featured in ‘House and Home’ magazine, but years of neglect had allowed cobwebs to knit across absolutely everything apart from the kettle, the door handles and the gin. The duck-egg blue which had breathed light and air into the living room just three summers ago was almost entirely covered with a fetid paste of nicotine and tar. Amy had taken up smoking after it happened and now went through two packets a day. No one visited them anymore, as the atmosphere of the house alone was enough to suck the positivity out of anyone.

Michael spent most of his time in the garage painting excruciatingly detailed pictures of the insides of fruit. Amy hated them; she found them grotesque. It became a sort of secret pleasure of his, to go into the kitchen and smuggle out kiwis and lemons when Amy’s back was turned. He had tried painting flowers and landscapes in an attempt to please her but she always said: “No Michael, I want you to paint our son”. But that was impossible, Michael didn’t have an imagination. Both of them knew that they didn’t really belong together anymore but it was as if some subliminal social code was preventing them from getting a divorce.

It was Monday, and Amy and Michael sat in the damp kitchen like they did everyday. The tap had been dripping for hours and the repetitive banging of water against metal seemed to mock the otherwise soundless kitchen. They sat at the warped table and neither of them got up to turn it off. An Autumnal wind was pushing through the cracks of the windows without making so much as a stifled whistle as it came. Amy was thinking about her son and her husband was wondering whether his birch fence would withstand the wind. They sat in the same position until the light levels outside halved and halved again and they found themselves sitting in a navy-blue darkness. Michael searched through the inky smoke for his wife’s face but could only see the fires of hell that were raging at the end of her cigarette.
“Put that out dear, you’ve had enough today” He said as he reached out slowly to take it from her. She waved it around menacingly to prevent him from getting it. “Please, I can’t see you.”
“Turn the light on then.” Her words spiralled out through a languid curl of smoke and got tangled in the atmosphere. Michael stared at his hands, his thoughts returning to the welfare of his fence.
“I’m going outside.” He said calmly. He stood up and felt his way through the dusty room to the back door. The wind caused it to fling open as soon as he moved the latch, and the moonlight shot painful daggers into the backs of his eyes. Smoke from the kitchen drifted out of the door and produced a momentary fog around his head. Amy didn’t move to watch him leave.

Michael’s worn out slippers shuffled into the moonlit garden and crackled over the frost on the ground. The sound of a frozen puddle fissuring under his scrawny frame moved him on faster towards his birch fence. As he got closer he noticed that one of the panels had splintered and was sticking straight up like a gaunt hand jabbing at the moon.
“Oh no” he muttered. He started to walk towards the garage to get his hammer and nails but his pace slowed down to a halt as he passed the frozen bump underneath the oak tree.
“How can a bump in the garden make me so miserable,” he whispered. He moved closer and touched the stone slab that marked the grave of his son. “You shouldn’t be here like this. I wanted you to be buried next to Granddad at the churchyard in Folkstone. It was your mother that wanted you here with us.” He looked down at his hands again and inspected his cuticles. “Oh I hoped the council weren’t going to allow it. It was horrible; I can remember the neighbours peering over their fences as we lowered the coffin into the ground. They perverted our grief.” He shuffled his feet. It was more like he was talking to himself than to his son. “Yes it was our grief then. Now it’s Amy’s grief and my bad memory. It should be a memory; a memory is in the past, grief is much to present, too painful.” He paced up and down. “I should leave, sell my paintings and pack up. Amy doesn’t love me anymore and I’ve done nothing to deserve being this miserable.” Michael looked up and remembered who he was talking to. “We still love you James; that will never change but things like this happen sometimes. My leaving doesn’t mean I love you less it just means I need some time to think about my feelings towards your mother. Sometimes grownups don’t stay together forever. They like to try to but it doesn’t always work out.”

He stared straight forward in a daze; he was working through all the emotions that Amy hadn’t helped him to release. His index finger starting to twitch and he picked at his nail with his thumb. Then the piercing screech of a barn owl caused him to swing around suddenly to face the house and his eyes fixed on the glowing ember of Amy’s cigarette, a speck of orange in a plain of darkness; the centre of the universe. She was by the window at the top of the stairs looking down at the mound. The window was open. Michael felt a molten anger trickle down the creases of his brain. He rushed across the lawn to the door and stormed into the house. The door banged against the frame as he went through the kitchen to the living room and then across to the bottom of the stairs and he shouted up at Amy, “Our life is so silent! Let me into your grief.” Amy said nothing “It has been four years and you stand by that window every night! We can’t carry on living like this, we have to move on.” He paused, “Why can’t you move on?”

Amy stood motionless at the top of the stairs. She had heard every word that he said outside. She had so much she wanted to say to him but couldn’t form the sentences in her mind. She stood with her mouth open which angered Michael more. He wanted to see the glimmer of some emotion, not the glimmer of a cigarette. He stepped forward as if he was going storm up the stairs and Amy cowered in the corner. But he changed his mind, turned around and walked back towards the kitchen. The door stopped banging and Amy heard the sound of Michael’s speed off down the driveway. She wiped the tears from her eyes and walked calmly down the stairs.

Michael was gone all night. He drove down motorways and through silent villages. He didn’t read any signposts, he just drove until the low petrol light came on and coloured his face and then he made his way back home.

As he stepped out of his car he felt a sense of overwhelming sadness. It felt different to misery and he couldn’t work out which feeling he preferred. He came in through the front door expecting to find the same dusty, uninviting kitchen but it was spotless. The counter tops gleamed in the morning sunshine; everything had been put in its correct place.
Michael walked in slowly and looked around in amazement. Amy came in wearing a brightly coloured dress and smiled at him, “Hello dear,” she said. He totally forgot about the plan he had formulated during his drive. He was going to get his cash from the safe, pack a small bag and leave for at least a month before getting the rest of his things. He wasn’t even going to speak to Amy. He thought it strange how an unexpected change could have the ability to melt away so many intense emotions.
He smiled and said, “Hello darling,” and kissed Amy on the cheek. As he stepped back he noticed that his best painting of the inside of a Satsuma was hanging on the wall above the sink.

AUTUMN

As the lapidary did it, built a palace of diamonds and glass-
But how do diamonds come from dust and dark storms of rocks from the North,
Corrupt bankers and tricksters and deluded bricklayers-
When all there was, was a dream, a golden dream
Now turned to abyss,
And how your face was spangled gall,
Your eyes quixotic, but still constellations
Mapping a path to bliss.
But stars burn out and all I see now is a black hole-
Your work the supernova to our black hole.
Oh the plans and scenarios and decadent evenings, the shroud
Over our eyes and in our brains, the bullets
In the pheasant we ate for dinner.
That’s not our life now; the wine cellar’s almost dry
And we’ll sit here and toast to Jacob’s Creek, disappointment choking our throats
I look across the lake, its Autumn, your eyes are Autumn
Green clouds form green floods
And we have no arc - and now your
Leaves are turning grey, I see them in the wind and
All I see is the cutlery, the knife, the fork,
And In my spoon I see my eye
Half your I but upside down
And I don’t blame you, I blame myself, and others
The liars, the selfish get buyers. And blossom will come in the spring

JESUS DU PAIN

“Madeline! One can’t expect to make a silk purse from a sow’s ear. You and you sister go to the shop and get me some new bags of flour, there is something wrong with these ones, the bread isn’t rising high enough.”

I’m almost certain that my mother has completely lost her mind; those were the bags that I collected yesterday, they can’t possibly have deteriorated overnight. Lilly and I looked at each other as if to silently agree that it wasn’t worth arguing with her over the small details and we left the kitchen.

Our mother is called Elizabeth Callows and she almost solely speaks in idioms. I’m sure it would be extremely difficult for any ordinary person to understand a single word she said but I guess that doesn’t really matter because there is a serious shortage of ordinary people who come to our house, in fact there is a shortage of any people. Apart from our house keeper there is only the occasional visit from a crazy old shepherdess with wiry hair and cracked hands. She buys about 10 loaves of mother’s bread and then goes on her way. She must be making her sheep sandwiches! Anyone else who comes down our drive is rectifying a wrong turn into a dead end. When I hear the pebbles outside the house crack under car tyres I rush to the window only ever to see a few dents in the shingle and the faint, lingering fog of exhaust fumes. No one has ever got out of their cars to ask for directions. I wish someone would.

Perhaps they don’t like the look of the house. It’s huge, and crumbling and the type of house you’d expect a witch with silver hair and glass eyeballs to live in. The inside is in no better repair either. There are gaping cracks in the plaster, mice under the floorboards, clutter everywhere, newspaper cuttings, heirlooms, dusty china, dried flowers, but its cosy and its home. The surrounding land is beautiful, there’s a lake, birds singing all around, and a decaying oak tree covered in vines. There are tiny details about the building that I love also. I like the smiling face on the kitchen wall comprised out of a crack for a mouth and two chips in the paint for eyes; sometimes I look at it and smile back. I like the sound that one of the steps down to the wine cellar makes when you tread on it, like you have trodden on a toad or the chest of an old man with smoker’s lungs.

Of course there are things I don’t like about the house as well. I don’t like the draughts that rush through the corridors in the winter, or the door that you can never quite shut and is constantly banging, or the rotting Elm tree outside my window which at night looks like a hand clawing at the sky trying to grab the moon.

Occasionally our mother teaches us Geography, History and Grammar but that is only when she can sandwich us into her vigorous bread making routine and that means we only have a lesson once or twice a week. She just bakes, bakes, bakes, in fact the kitchen has developed a permanent fog of flour that makes me cough when I walk in. She bakes more than a dozen loaves a day and that’s not counting the loaves she discards for being “deformed” or “ill balanced.” I’ve never understood why she makes so many, there is no way we can eat them all before they go stale. Lilly and I must have eaten every possible food that can have breadcrumbs put on it.

When I was about 5 years old I remember mother drew a face on one of the stale baguettes, wrapped it in a tea-towel and told me that it was Jesus and if I cared for him for a week we would be saved. I took it everywhere with me, he even slept in my bed. But then, I was outside playing princesses and horses with Jesus one day and it started pouring with cold, piercing rain and by the time I had ran back to the house I was holding white mush with a distorted, face. I had nightmares for a long time after that. I had killed Jesus and we weren’t going to be saved.

STEAK AND FRIES (EXTENDED)

My involvement in the court case all stemmed from being at a bar downtown the same time a man was found dead in the restroom. I was drinking with a business associate at the time and we were among the last people to see him alive. The man appeared to have drunk a little too much scotch and he drunkenly joined in our conversation. I was surprised to find out that his name was Bill Drysden; a man from the bank who had helped me over the telephone with some business transactions.

Following the discovery of his death, my associate and I were called upon to be a witness at the trial. It turned out that Drysden had been poisoned and I assumed it was most likely to be suicide, because who would poison a man in the middle of a crowded bar? I expected to be asked a few questions concerning Drysden’s behaviour leading up to his death and be free to go, but the business associate I’d been drinking with at the bar started to give false evidence against me. I sat there with my stomach churning an acid storm as I heard him speak further. He told the judge that I’d acted strangely ever since I learnt the man’s name and that I became increasingly agitated leading up to the discovery of his death. A burning sweat was tracing around my hairline as I listened further to the lies that were coming from his mouth. I was just an innocent bystander, how was I suddenly on the way to becoming a suspect? I was under a state of pure confusion until I followed his line of vision to find my brother sitting in the stalls, and it all started to make more sense.

My brother and I had been partners at a real estate firm in the forties but soon after my wife Virginia and I got married, he cheated me out of a lot of money and tried to get me put away for fraud. He had tried other scams, and his presence at the court hearing led me to believe that he might be involved in this as well. Whether he wanted me caught up in a murder case because he wanted me dead or whether he had some other plan he was in the process of carrying out I wasn’t sure. Either way, when I was being questioned a stale lump of air expanded painfully in my throat. I could feel him looking at me and I fidgeted and stumbled over my words. If he did want me sent away, then what chance would the truth have when bribery and blackmail is involved? I was to remain in police custody for about twenty-four hours, while the court went through the evidence and spoke to further witnesses. As I was led out of the courtroom, I saw the corners of my brother’s mouth quiver ever so subtly into a demonic smile, and for the first time, I was scared for my life.

While I was at the station I was able to speak to my wife and attorney once over the phone. I had to hand in my belongings to the cops, which I knew to be perfectly normal and expected. I gave them a pack of smokes, eighty dollars, my Rolex and a picture of my wife. But shortly before the time was up, I received a telephone call from a man who said he was my attorney’s associate telling me that some evidence had come forward concerning my relationship with Drysden and a possible motive for murder. I was to be transferred to the state penitentiary! I was in a complete state of shock, the cops indicated I should leave by the back door of the station but strangely they didn’t accompany me. I should’ve ran away right then and got to the bottom of this whole injustice myself. But a van appeared and a very large man stepped out and told me he was to take me to the penitentiary and I would be able to call my attorney once I arrived. I grew increasingly drowsy whilst I was in the back of the van and could only force a few questions from my mouth which elicited no reply. I don’t remember arriving and I was never granted my phone call; it was from that point I realised things weren’t quite right.

II
But here I am, three days of uneaten food around me, in a cell that smells of overcooked peas and sour milk. I count the days in a rather unorthodox way, which I find much easier than scraping lines into the wall. I arrived here on a Sunday and the vegetables which came with dinner were carrots, for six days after it was peas, then carrots again the next Sunday. So, I have been lining up one pea for every day in the corner of my cell until I get a carrot to replace the six peas to make a week. I now have 2 shrivelled carrots and 3 shrivelled peas, making it seventeen days. I spend a lot of time dragging my memory over all the particulars of the trial and how it came to all of this. I remember the sounds; each word said; each sneeze or cough that flew across the room to get tangled in the hair of the judge. I picture the twiddling fingers of the witnesses, the stress lines on my attorney’s face, the red moss of veins creeping under the skin beneath his eyes. But most of all, I remember the icy shock that came over me when I saw my brother sitting in the stalls. His face had all the looks of arrogance, power and malevolence combined. Even now, despite being locked away in jail, his cologne seems to flow down the cracks in my brain and release mocking bursts into my nose.

Yesterday, I woke to find a form on the floor, requesting I write what I want for my final meal. Was this some kind of joke? I admit, I don’t know a huge amount about the legal procedures on death row, but I’m pretty sure that I should be able to speak with my attorney and request an appeal before I was writing down what I want my last meal to be. Besides, if I was found guilty then I would’ve heard the verdict with my own ears in the courtroom. The man who brings me my meals said that my wife was here to see me and she’d only be allowed in once I completed the form. I was stupid to believe that of course, but in a moment of frenzied hope I scrawled down ‘steak and fries and a glass of red wine,’ thrust the note under the door and demanded that I saw her. Nothing!

In-between my nightmares and bouts of anxious, cold sweats I think of her, But all I get is the faint smell of roses and a wavering laugh that’s slipping away. I miss my home, I miss the everyday sounds that I became used to: like the sound of a clock ticking, or the irregular tapping of my typewriter. Sometimes I close my eyes, and imagine a giant clock face with golden numbers on embossed lacquer. I tap my nail on my tooth but it makes a “tick-tick” sound instead of a “tick-tock” So then I go about imagining that every second tick is a tock; something I can get close to if I tap my canine tooth followed by my front tooth, and after hours of this it becomes satisfactory enough.

III
I became jolted out of my reminiscent daydream by the sound of a new tray of food grinding along the floor. Another pea! Had a whole day passed since the last carrot? As usual, the anaemic food swam in its own putrid juices but when I looked over at the plate I noticed that the food had sloshed over to one side. There was something underneath that was causing it to tilt. In a wave of confused excitement, I darted across the room and lifted the plate to find a piece of paper. Was it to be an encouraging note from my attorney, a letter from my wife? As I frantically unfolded the corners, an overpowering torrent of my brother’s cologne gushed into my nasal passages and I shuddered as I saw his handwriting on the paper. I read it aloud in a whisper, “Have you still not worked it out - read the notes Walter” I tensed my jaw as I read the words again. What? How was he able to get this through security? I sat in a daze for a few minutes until I realised, there must be more than one note! I kicked over the plates that were still lying on the floor of my cell. There were more notes; each plate had one underneath! I staggered across the room, with peas pin-balling off the sides of my feet and the smell cologne rising into a thick miasma all around me. I held in my hand four pieces of paper. I unfolded them quickly and his voice reverberated through my ears as I read, “Dearest brother, isn’t it funny how things can suddenly make sense?” But this voice was not just in my head. I looked up at the tiny window in the door and saw his dark eyes peer in at me. I stood up and in a voice straining from exhaustion, said, “What do you mean? None of this makes sense!” His glare intensified as he replied, “Poor, confused Walter, you’re delirious. Don’t you see what this is all about?” He held up the picture of my wife that I had handed in at the station.
“What!” I said, “How’d you get that picture? I left it with the cops.”
“And I collected it when you were released from custody,” he replied. As I looked at the picture I noticed he was wearing my Rolex as well. A dizzying sickness came over my body as I tried to comprehend how all this was possible. I swallowed the bitter tasting fluid that had accumulated in my mouth and continued, “Released! I was released?
“Yea, that’s right, they didn’t have enough evidence to keep you in custody any longer. I was able to push things on a bit and have you collected from the station early, and that’s when I paid some guys to carry out a phoney jail transfer, along with the fake call from your attorney’s associate. I waited a bit, then alerted the police that you’d disappeared outta my car at the gas station.”
“What you talkin’ about?”
“You’re not in jail Walter, you’re in my basement” he opened the door and stood silhouetted in the gloom.
“But what about Virginia?” I said, “She musta found out you collected me and thought you had something to do with it.”
“Well maybe, except she doesn’t think you’ve gone anywhere.” He walked over to me and placed a cold hand on my shoulder. “There are so many advantages to looking the same as someone you’re taking the place of. Wouldn’t you agree? And with you outta the way, I can live in your house and be Walter Brown.” I moved my eyes up to meet his and said “She’ll find you out! You’ll slip up and she’ll find you out.” I wanted to shout the walls down, but couldn’t gather the energy. The shadows bounced off the sharp furrows on his face and he carried on in an almost demented rapidity, “I needed you outta the picture, I couldn’t face seeing you together, and now,” he paused and paced the room, “and now, I have her, ha! Walter she’s mine, isn’t it swell? She’s all mine now.” An uncontrollable crescendo of exhaustion flew over my body and I lost consciousness. When I awoke he was gone.

IV
I gave up with my method of counting the days when I found a mouse nibbling on my vegetable calendar. No matter now much I plead to be let go my brother only torments me further. He says if Virginia really loved me then she would have found him out by now but instead she tells him that she’s fallen in love all over again. I’m exhausted, my hair is knotted in tight spirals and my eyes are dry and painful. I continue to take myself back to my life in New York, with all the mundane things I used to do. I eat cereal, brush my teeth and sit on secluded park benches. In the middle of one of these hazy daydreams the gentle tinkling of someone dropping coins by a parking meter turned into the harsh, clanking of the door opening and in walked my brother; grinning demonically, he placed in front of me: steak and fries and a glass of red wine.