from swerve of shore to bend of bay
I always enjoy finding comics just as they’re starting up. End of the worldy ohshit what did I create stuff.
Our future is red.
Oh also since I’m bored and on the same place.
If you like watching a man fall over then click here. It’s better than I’m selling it.
I sat down yesterday and said to myself I had to finish this third chapter. It’s been sitting there for months, niggling and bothering me. I do this every so often. I go ok you’ve got til tonight, tomorrow morning, until you have to go out and I get shit done. So I powered through, working out how I wanted it to go and I went to bed thinking it’s done. I read it over today and it still doesn’t suck. It might even be good but let’s not get carried away. I may have to wait a week before I declare acceptability.
And now that is done I have new stuff to do. I can start adventuring with this idealised little me and I can continue fixing up the son of God. The only thing is after I started all of these bigger projects I don’t think I’ve written a single short story that was any good. But oh well.
When I pull the top off my ballpoint pen
I suck the inky end and wipe it on my knee
bleeding blacky blue denim
time to begin.
Old black and white romance
black and white conflict
crackling lines of scratches and age spots
and the top of my first letter is faint
so i have to go over over over it
to create a complete word.
It’s the same when i picked up the scissors I used
to cut wire into lengths to fit my
one two third finger on my left hand
to twist glass beads into daisy chains.
I cut off my eyelashes
and cut into my layers, uneven because the first
is not quite right
and i pressed down too hard
far too faint the first time I had to
go over over over it
smiley face scratch, bleeding at the corners.
All to wave in front of his face
look! look I’m crazy!
I’m unstable and wild and too much bother for you.
You bore me.
You love me.
Get off, get out, stay away
because look how crazy I am!
Not your fault!
RUN.
Giggling at ruin and mess, wiped the scissors silver again.
Folded up my troubles and smiled at number three
begin once more
You bore me.
You love me.
I had a pen, bought in Rome, imported from Japan with odd little cartoons on the pink
plastic and it wrote perfect.
Beginning flowed into the end
consistent and beautiful
and my skin is milky clear
like the only brunette doll Mama could find me
her face still superimposed onto my own
in the mirror.
I finished Haunted a couple of days ago. He’s one of those authors I can stay still for hours to read. I did after all skip two classes in order to read Fight Club. Thing is I kept having those moments when I wished I’d written bits myself and I could feel myself leeching and absorbing and saving away turns of phrases to mull over later. I probably should control that better. Like when I read this girl I found online too much that I wrote such awful poetry. I’ve always been too adaptable. The problem I have is I read and read and read and then I fall in love with the author and want to know them. I want to shake hands with them and say “On page 19 of your latest novel there’s a sentence halfway through you could have written better” but you know, inappropriate.
Sometimes I wonder what it would be like if we could simply string together all those words we love instead of labouring over the if but and when then she said he said on the saysure. I have a great fondness for the word insouciant. It’s right up there with asphalt and tawdry. Last time I wrote insouciant my pages were handed back with a ? under the word by someone who chose either not to remember they wrote it or were too scared to ask about it.
I realised I have far too much I still want to write for my novel in reverse. I just wanted to read over it, fix the things I knew were wrong and I thought I’ll read it back to front which makes it reading forward as I read backward. And then I started adding. And then I kept going. My God, I love writing it. I could write this forever, I could. Still, my first Natasha was fifteen and I can’t get her out of my head. But then my timeline gets a little ridiculous if I change her back. She’ll just be fifteen in my head I think. Let’s not go illegal. It’s the first thing I’ve finished that I still love and I wasn’t sure if I would until I started telling someone new about it. I don’t have a title though. Everything I think of seems trite. But since it’s the only thing that stops me I’m not going to complain. I get sick of writing in bursts, having to gather up all these girls sitting moodily for reasons I knew but lost. Frustrated guys and tired girls, it’s all I write because it’s all I am, but then I suppose I have my pile of going nowheres and slot them into somewhere new. It’s like filing. Each scrap has a space, short story C into chapter 5. When I can be bothered (so I imagine by the time my first essay is due in of the semester) I will sort through the ever increasing stacks of paper, notebooks and train tickets and one day it’ll all come together to a space on a shelf. It’s a good dream.
Say it’s only a paper moon
Floating over a cardboard sea
Well, it wouldn’t be make believe
if you believed in me.
Rose sat disgraced on a red peeling paint step, her skirt hitched up and her stockings slipped down. She folded her arms, cupping her cheek with a cigarette and she huffed stale air up the wall before her to the garden party that chattered clattered in glittering gowns. Snow dropped from her hand and lay in the blue silk between her thighs. She held a mouthful of smoke and shut her eyes against the smoldering backdrop of the party that got so far away from her. Away from the small talk and the band she had found a pocketful of silence. Her ear twitched to hear the car turn up the drive behind her, the crinkle of her cigarette as she sucked the ash towards her lips, the sigh building high in her chest and each soft step on the broken concrete steps as Christopher slipped away.
Have you read 1984? There’s a book he gets from the man he thinks is in charge of the underground movement. All the pages are stuck together and hidden inside is the truth. The guidebook, the explanation that comforts and inspires. I sit up late at night with an extra strength prit stick and glue things to the pages I write my nonsense on. I stick my fingers together and the corners cling to each other with the annoying grip of a parting couple. And I thought that is how I can stop those pages of mine from becoming so dreadfully teenagery. Like an emo poet clutching detective novels to its skinny frame. Fuck that, I thought. Suicide and the culture of wearing your emotions in the form of terrible clothing choices and hair styles that compromise your sight are separate in my head. They were separate at the time and they have to be separate now.
So instead of what I had, that was juvenile and laughable, in her skinny hands, passed to her white hands, left for his searching fingers, is a guidebook. A textbook. Story after story of sad teenage suicide. Sealed within the pages of a set book for English. The wrong interpretation. So all I had to do was perfect my suicides. Now I generally don’t talk about this, it’s rather difficult to explain and the last person I told didn’t react the way I would have liked. it has nothing to do with my mental state, I can be happy, sad or whatever in between but I will imagine dying. Standing waiting for the lights to change if I step nnnow that van would drag my body down the road. As a plane taxis faster my head will slam into the seat in front of me, twisting my neck crack. A hand on my shoulder is going to pull me round so a fist can destroy my face. I think these things all the time, idly. I have for years. So because this was my latest big idea I can’t write another thing until I get this done. One day I will write something sweet, then I can smile over my coffee with the draft leaves on my lap. Saying that I’m almost happy with my third suicide.
Daniel and Katie is a familiar tale. Love-lorn and lost-lost the two separated over nothing. Over convenience and circumstance and neither knew how to cope with the overwhelming sense of loss. To grieve for someone still warm and breathing is a difficult thing. He stuffed her locker full of pleas, littered her windowsill with stones, rang out her phone and she turned away, dripping mascara onto her revirgined sheets. He followed her, always a street behind. She knew he was there and he knew he was not invisible.
She lost herself on a Friday rush waiting for the train. As he stumbled down the stairs her feet came into view, bouncing upwards to her legs under her skirt. He held back a moment before her face could turn to his and my fingers stretched to hold his. Distracted we turned from the platform so he almost didn’t see two feet move forward suddenly. He almost didn’t see the dive or the oncoming locomotive obliterate her frame. I held him for a moment, felt his heart stop and then he took my hand properly and we walked those sad steps down onto the opposite platform.
The 16.17 was a minute late and he left my hand with a sigh. A strip of concrete separating them they were united in plastic bags, scooped from the metal lines. It was difficult to learn anything through the shrieks and gasps and shudders and even the most curious turned at the sight of two mangled lovers but I watched so you could see.
Originality is always the fear when you try to create something. There’s the drive to produce something unlike anything anyone has ever seen. But then there’s the comfort of familiarity. Some of my favourite things; films, books, music whatever, borrow from the previous. Incorporate a whole ton of other things. Reinterpretation. Reimagination. I sat in a coffee shop and I was asked what I wrote so I pitched my favourites and realised I never have much of a plot. Can’t really say this happens and then this happens. It’s all just scenes and if I get lucky I can connect them. Of course I had to listen in exchange to this boy and all I could think was I’ve read that already. Not exactly but I read it recently but I didn’t say a thing because he’d talked about originality. The drive to achieve it. And just before he began, before he told me how his were almost always based on some sort of science thing, I thought I should pay attention. There could be something worth stealing. There could be a spark of inspiration here. We’re all magpie thieves. Listening to stories, wanting to talk to someone new in the hopes of a good tale to share as our own words. It’s a line of thinking that started with Chuck Palahniuk as I did my convince others to buy books that I may read them for free. Our household has three of his books, I have not paid a penny and I read them all first. I convinced my dad to buy Haunted because it was the biggest and he rolled his eyes at me because he’d already read Guts and my calling it wonderful made him laugh at me. Naturally I skipped to the end, the afterword and there’s the bit about how he had these three stories he had to do something with. And it’s something like how he said he couldn’t die until he’d done so. He couldn’t let them go to waste.
And i just liked that. It makes going out worthwhile.
We were one, the audience and I. A family unit. Together we gasped and wooped and slapped one hand against the other with a puff of air to our faces inbetween. We were spectators with just as much of a role to play as the actors on stage. We were guiding those viewers at home, easing them into the mood and letting them know how to react. We held a lot of power.
Of course we were at the mercy of the producers. Simpler than that, we were at the mercy of a series of little dots on big black boards. Cue cards or a teleprompter in minimalism. Happy, sad, excited, shocked; there wasn’t much of a middle ground on TV. Save that for reality or maybe those arty foreign movies which deal in silences rather than the shouts and screams of daily broadcasting. Everyone starts out thinking they’re better than that. I’ll clap when I want to clap and I’ll laugh when it gets funny. It doesn’t last. When the rows and rows of melting smiles roar and thunder, tears streaming down their faces from that last quip and their hands buzzing from the constant pounding, you can’t ignore them. You either leave defeated or you join and feel that surge of power. The strength of a crowd. We could turn and destroy these little people, blown up on screens so even those at the back can see the expressions. We won’t because we need to love them. But we could and they know that.
I don’t know what I thought when I read the email requesting seat fillers. I’d replied out of curiosity, I’d never been on a set before. They filed us in, asked us not to talk during the taping, to turn our phones off and to react appropriately when the screens flashed. They asked us politely to leave our free will at the door with our coats and our bags. The toilets were to the left and down the stairs. Coffee and snacks on a table. It was dull the first night and I’d signed up for the full four days. By the end of the week I was a trained seal. In the warm bask of the yellow lights my arms twitched up, hands parallel and once the audience begins so did I. I stopped before the audience did. I left my email address with a girl holding a clipboard and she smiled with crooked teeth and said they’d be in touch if I was needed. Successful little seat filler.
It was during the taping of a talk show that I saw her for the first time. Girl in a green belted coat. She never removed it even when the lights hummed their brightest tune but I realised that wasn’t why I couldn’t stop looking at her. It was only by the time we had sat through the third cheating couple that I noticed her hands were deep inside the pockets of that coat. She never pulled them out once. I was so startled at this audacity that my fingers stumbled on their way to my palm. An odd thud as I caught the edge of the bald man’s head in front of me and he twitched to glare. But the cameras were panning our row so he hissed and turned back to the front. I started seeing her everywhere. Game shows, sitcoms, comedies. I even saw her at the plays I was paid to attend. Always staring blankly in front of her with her head to one side, considering them. Weighing up their worth. She bothered me.
I’d been invited to the first taping of a new entertainment show. This one was different, we had to pretend to sit at a bar. At my table had been a mousy girl who stole glances around the room looking for celebrities and a couple who’d been audience members for years. The three of us murmured like old friends out for a drink, talking about nothing and never above a whisper. Mousy rattled her costume jewelry as she craned her long neck between our conversation. “Doesn’t he look familiar? Isn’t that whatisname from Eastenders?” She darted off to check and a green belted coat took her seat.
“You can’t sit there.”
“Why not?” she asked too loudly and the couple shushed her in unison.
“Our friend is sitting there.”
“Don’t be daft. You’ve never met her before today.” The couple shushed a little louder. The host was two tables over talking to the newest singer-songwriter whose sullen face adorned every music magazine in the country.
“I’ve seen you around. I wanted to ask,” but our hands cut her off. The singer-songwriter was taking the stage at the back and we had to applaud to cover the sounds of his heels on the stone floor. “I wanted to ask you for a drink!” The couple were disgusted and I shrank from the volume beside me. I pushed Mousy’s untouched vodka towards her and adopted my rapt music listening face.
“Do you want to dance?” She was standing now, disrupting the clean groups of potential fans. “I said do you want to dance?” She cocked her head around me to block my view.
“We can’t.”
“What?”
“We can’t. Please sit back down.” For a second her shoulders slumped but she thrust them back up and unbelted her coat to throw it down on my lap. Unabashed she marched across the floor and stood before the stage. Wrapping her arms through her hair she shimmied-shaked until the security guards guided her through the doors. She’d been in a blind spot so no harm done. Mousy stealthily returned to her assigned spot and I draped the coat over her shoulders. We were supposed to leave outer garments and bags at the door to avoid clutter. It distracted the eye.
She punched me when I told her the coat was gone. A sharp jab that burst something, broke something because my hand came away bloody. I just stared at the red stains.
“You fucking loser. What did you do that for!” I stared at her. “Fucking hell. My keys were in the pockets.” I stared at my shoes. There was blood on the toe. “What have you got to say for yourself?” Nothing. There was nothing. She dropped to the curb and screamed into her knees. I didn’t move.
“You’re supposed to leave all outer clothing at the door.”
“What?”
I cleared my throat and repeated myself. My voice was lost in the cold night. There were no walls to bounce them back reassuringly and I doubted if I’d even said anything for a moment as she didn’t react. I dabbed at my nose but came away clean and she still didn’t react. I edged away to leave when her back started to shake. It shook until her head had disappeared between her legs and then she came shooting back up like a geyser in hysterics.
“Oh god!” She wiped the tears from her eyes and tried to smother her flashing gums, tried to compose herself to talk. “Oh god. Are you for real?” And I hated her for asking that. She called after me as I walked down the street, sniffing away the dried blood and mucus and salt water that tasted so bad as it hit the back of my throat. Her arm slid through my hunched elbow and pulled my chin towards hers.
“There’s a whole world outside the studio. Everything here is more vibrant than in there, you just have to learn to see it. And the best part is I can clap whenever I damn well please.” And she did. Taunting me, I winced with every slap of her hands. “Stop messing around in the shadows.”
was written in smeared black ink on the back of my hand. Most of it was on my face. I picked up the notebook by the side of my bed and flicked through them. I found the answer in the only one I don’t write fiction in. I remembered waking up and knocking everything off the bedside cabinet looking for my pen and I remember writing stuff but dear god the writing is worse than usual. I must have written in the dark. I don’t remember the reminder but maybe that’s why I wrote it. This is what I made out:
Hold me close, my love, my darling.
Pull me in tighter until our
hip bones entwine.
And if the flesh should fall away from our
skeletons in this next wave of polluted
fungi clouds
then it’ll take forensic scientists months
to sort us both out
archaeologists months
to understand us both out
and all the king’s horses
and all the king’s men
will stand anxiously by the box
labeled Us
studying the diagram of
how to construct a couple.
Your knee bone connected to my
neck bone
My head bone connected to your
leg bone
and our hips crushed together
overlapped and intermingled
what’s yours is mine and what’s mine is yours
but all we are is bones in a box
and a heck of a lot of dust.
