Semi-automatic #2

This time of night, the pav­ing stones sing to no one and to every­one. They chant their drunken chor­uses and non­sense rhymes. I wish I was with them, into and without their sweaty tor­sos, singing mean­ing­less groans and inebri­ate anthems to the upper floors and the dis­tor­ted heav­ens, scud­ding fast and loose without purpose.

Come up here and look me in the eyes. Kiss me on the blood-spattered mouth and tell me that this will mend, this will under­stand, this will all make sense in the morn­ing. Punch me if I don’t tell you truths, if I don’t sense you sense­less. Oh, for­get it now. For­get it. That slap sounds sharp, but I need it, crave it.

Instead, I con­jure up names and num­bers and pack drills. Lists of blood types and venge­ful fantas­ies etched in con­crete and metal. Tor­tured anim­als and sick chil­dren on skew­ers. Pray if you no know better.

I suck on cen­ti­metres of skin, wish­ing for bones under­neath but only tast­ing juice and burn­ing. I devour souls so that my guts can stay full until morn­ing. I don’t dream, because dream­ing is weak­ness and shelves stuffed to the point of col­lapse with ama­teur psy­cho­logy. All I do is eat you alive. Eat me alive in return. Eat me alive. Eat.

Purely medicinal

Sleep. Snort. Fuck. Not a descrip­tion of my aver­age day, sadly. Only the first of those three really applies to me, in truth. And as I cer­tainly don’t get enough sleep, you can ima­gine what my record for the other two must be like. But I digress. This is SLEEP. SNORT. FUCK. And today’s sleepily snort­ing fucker is me, with a small tablet’s worth of prose entitled Always Read the Label. Hav­ing told you that, I’m off to indulge in an effer­ves­cent Vit­amin C tab­let. I might even be reck­less and have two. Then I’m going to bed early. Phew, rock ‘n’ roll.

[Note: if you haven’t done so already, read the post before this one. Because I don’t remem­ber writ­ing it. Really. I don’t. Not a single word. Impress­ive. Scar­ily impress­ive. Or just scary.]

Semi-automatic #1

I wake with spiders spin­ning their slither­ing webs across my eyes, and taste them hatch­ing their eggs on my lazy, lolling tongue. There’s a rolling, salty, dirty ocean drag­ging my limbs down into its oily depths. I mur­mur ques­tions and wait for answers. Do you still keep keep your plants in an open-air cup­board? Do you still pin your thoughts on a cork board? Do you still scrawl your night­mares on the front of your fridge? Do you still scurry up the stairs because you’re afraid of shad­ows? I don’t hear any replies, so I scrunch the spindled insects in my skin-shard fists and cover the wounds with mere ghosts, the sticky remains of bloody Elastoplast. Pick­ing up the knife, I bru­tally slice away the half of me that’s still alive, that might still be of use to devi­ous enemies and for­eign spies intent on caus­ing harm to the national, notional interest.

Speak to me in slurs and stop­gaps, whis­per to me in riddles. Who knows?

Hey, grue­some. Hey, fuck­face. I look out front, dumb­struck by solitude, and snap to sud­den, wet-dream sod­den and awful, aroused atten­tion. I am a poor sol­dier, a worse war­rior, a failed fighter, a devi­ant on record for crimes never com­mit­ted. I’ll com­mis­er­ate with you later. Right now, I have a storm to attend to and a light­ning bolt to catch. Hold on to the chicken wire, fuck­ing battery-powered bat­tery chicken bat­tery hen and plucked bird for slaughter. Squawk to the cloud-ridden skies and scream, scream, scream, scream, scream. Scream until you’re afraid. Afraid of some­thing, afraid of some­thing that you can’t even give a name. You can’t even christen the baby. You can’t smother a still-breathing foetus.

Are you afraid? I’m afraid. I’m afraid. I’m afraid. AFRAID.

Sprain and pinch

If you are a mangled organ, pierced, then this is how you dance. Twist over, unravel and bleed through my shirt. I have worn red for such a spe­cial occa­sion (I remembered to put on clean under­wear, too). I have sixty thou­sand miles of ves­sels to spread among the popu­lace in the hope that they can reuse them for frivol­ous dec­or­a­tion “because it’s how he’d want to be remembered”. I have writ­ten clear instruc­tions on my Donor Card to this effect. I have asked, too, for my eyes to be placed in a match­box and given to a small child who thinks there are mon­sters in the cel­lar. (There are mon­sters in the cel­lar, make no mis­take, but they’re often friend­lier than the humans.) I have fur­ther instruc­ted that my clenched fists should be stripped of their remain­ing skin, hav­ing defen­ded me so well dur­ing the less than eleg­ant scuffles, and shoved onto the rust­ing prongs of metal rail­ings, ideally at a site of immense his­tor­ical import­ance and national pride; some­where where the sound of my decay­ing bones frac­tur­ing then fad­ing into dust on the breeze will at least not seem too futile as final ges­tures go. And lastly — lastly — peel off my cereb­ral cor­tex, which I insist must retain every single con­scious and uncon­scious thought I’ve ever had, every memory and word pre­cisely cata­logued and stored, and force it down my killer’s throat. Make it stick. Make them choke.

A new national anthem

Stand to atten­tion. Show no emo­tion. Salute. Give the state your best blank-eyed stare. Kneel when ordered. Rise when ordered. Turn when ordered. Kill when com­manded. Expire when expedient.

Place your pos­ses­sions in their metal safe. Turn into a num­ber in a sea of sim­il­ar­ity, of upturned faces, of reg­u­la­tion uni­forms, of beatific smile upon beatific smile. You will exist only to work for the Supreme Leader Whom We Love, and for the bene­fit of the masses. You will com­ply. You will give up your cre­den­tials when asked, but never your name. Your name is not import­ant. The per­son you once were is safely sealed in the files, deep in the government’s steel-lined vaults.

They will punch your face, red­den your eyes, shave your head, knock you sense­less, harsh-flash your pho­to­graph and mark your dulled expres­sion with a foot and with ten ran­dom digits. Rub­ber­stamped. Author­ised. Cat­egor­ised. Your iden­tity will be replaced with a drone. You will be sent me to your pro­grammed des­tin­a­tion to live, breed, work and die, but noth­ing more.

Indi­vidual respons­ib­il­ity? It will be beaten out of you. Notions of per­sonal free­dom? They will be seized from your grasp­ing hands so that your wrists can be shackled to the indus­trial grind­stone with the rest of the proudly face­less nation. Exist­ence? Your head will be pulled from the clouds and pushed down onto the bat­tle­ments, ready to fight the unseen enemy, the enemy who does not, in truth, exist.

“Give me the pat­ri­otic words, the verses filled with empty rhet­oric. I will sing them from my heart, fists clenched, my right arm raised towards the flag. There will be no tears in my eyes, but what remains of my spirit, whatever the state has failed to claim, will surge with man­u­fac­tured emo­tion. Because this is my Uto­pia. This is my home. This is free will.”

Three prayers, then silence

We pray to the west shore.

This being — your god, we don’t know his name — this being eats through the sand and gets between your toes. He wraps him­self in skin foil, in body-bags and debris. He does not accept pray­ers before sun­rise, no mat­ter how earn­est or plead­ing they might be. He looks down and observes the crawl­ing souls, but doesn’t extend a hand to scoop them up because his fin­gers are wrapped tight around an archive of words, all the verses and mur­mured pray­ers he com­mis­sioned from the greatest minds alive, and he has become too pro­tect­ive of them, too guarded. He refuses to let even a syl­lable fall from his grasp in exchange for sav­ing a single soiled nat­ive from the oncom­ing tide.

We pray to the east shore.

Here, your god is dead. The skin foil has long ago been shred­ded, the body-bags unzipped and emp­tied of their walk­ing bones. The debris has been fash­ioned into statues of lust, pleas­ing to the eye and to the caress­ing touch. Feb­rile minds, drunk on blustery air car­ried in on the waves, can eas­ily ima­gine these shapely forms being open and com­pli­ant. Rape is the price of such pro­gress, such dis­eased ima­gin­a­tions, and under their inva­sions these child-bearing hips of con­crete and metal will, if impreg­nated, give birth to the future. The beach­combers dream of nat­ives who won’t crawl in the mud, but will instead run into the sea and wash them­selves until they’re adults, bled clean and ready to breed for the first time. Words, mean­while, are his­tory, washed away in the murky brine.

Behind our massed ranks of name­less, num­ber­less sol­diers — the eager, war­mon­ger­ing front line, then the unpro­tec­ted can­non fod­der, fol­lowed by the scared to shiv­er­ing rear gun­ners — north clings des­per­ately to gravity’s embrace. She wants to believe in the earth in all its roots, stones and cor­puscles, and she prays fer­vently to be held forever and ever, amen.

We look south.
We bow our heads.
We pray to no one.

Keep this card with you at all times

Cracked screen

She whis­pers to his naked form. Stand­ing over him, press­ing her worn and wrinkled heel into his fore­head, push­ing too hard against his skin and flimsy bone. Her mind is fuzzed by the gut­tural wrench of the voice she stole on an autumn after­noon, ripped from the throat of some singing, snort­ing drunk­ard in exchange for a single coin. She won’t give it back; she enjoys the burn­ing of the cheap alco­hol in the back of her throat too much for that.

Every­one needs to wake up now, to be the ador­ing audi­ence and watch as these spe­ci­mens ema­ci­ate for your enter­tain­ment — live and dir­ect, grainy and green-lit on closed-circuit tele­vi­sion. Bring your slav­er­ing beast-dogs to watch too, the more the mer­rier. Observe the scream­ing and shout­ing. Encour­age their debase­ment for your amuse­ment. Applaud as these once-humans shed them­selves com­pletely to merge into the painted wood­work and live as house­hold insects, suck­ing on dirt.

He’s beat­ing on the piano, using his ragged fists against the ivor­ies to avoid using them against him­self or on the body of another, close to hand. He’s all slow motion aggres­sion and heav­ing gasps for air, all flak wounds and thoughts of for­nic­a­tion. His head is made up of noth­ing but frenzy: beads of sweat, sick in his mouth and a single intox­ic­ated desire. He doesn’t move his leg when a tired hand grips his ankle. He feels his calf muscles tighten, but he no longer knows how to kick against a want or lash out against a need.

She turns up the volume, the speaker crackles with inter­fer­ence and static hiss. He plays even louder, the chords fall­ing through the gaps in the floor to clat­ter over the city below. Night, ham­mer­ing on walls, no sleep. The smell of semen and the stench of viol­ence, laced with one or two drops of for­give­ness on the tongue.

Complete write-off

For those of you keep­ing track of my vari­ous activ­it­ies across the inter­net — which I appre­ci­ate is a rap­idly declin­ing num­ber, thanks to the incar­cer­a­tion of most of my devoted stalk­ers for their own safety and men­tal health — you may be inter­ested to know that Writers’ Bloc, the site I notion­ally ‘edited’ and where writers wrote about writ­ing (oh, be quiet, it seemed like a good idea at the time), has shut up shop. You know, because. Because it’s the inter­net. Because, whoosh. things change. I prom­ise that the site went quietly and will­ingly, without com­plaint, and suffered no pain. I didn’t have to put an imit­a­tion fire­arm to its head and say “Bang!” very loudly. I reserve that dubi­ous hon­our for other trouble­some areas of my life.

Go and read some of the mater­ial in the archives, if you get a chance. From art­icles to stor­ies, from inter­views to flash fic­tion and poetry, there’s some insight­ful, cre­at­ive and enlight­en­ing takes on this down­right pecu­liar activ­ity of put­ting words together in a sup­posedly artistic fash­ion, which some people still con­tinue to do in this day and age even though they could be — oh, I don’t know — going out and meet­ing people. Strange. Very strange.

Harold Pinter, I love you, marry me

No longer shall I shield myself from the plain and some­times harsh truth. Instead, I am going to cel­eb­rate it and shout it from the rooftops. Ladies and gen­tle­men (but not chil­dren), pre­pare your­self for a rev­el­a­tion. I am a bit­ter, cyn­ical and utterly hate­ful mis­an­thrope. ENJOY! (Ugh.)

May cause drowsiness: day 31

So. End. Start. Whichever. Rico­chet. Start again.

Empty-minded. Come here empty-handed. Choose at ran­dom. Clean slate. Wipe-clean sur­face. It worked out. It didn’t quite work. Write up the exper­i­ment. Describe what happened. Describe what we expec­ted to hap­pen. Aim and out­come. Aim and fire. Cause and effect. Now cease and desist. What did I dis­cover? What did I already know? What have I learned? Has this been a learn­ing exer­cise? Have I achieved per­sonal growth? Have I found? Lost? Found again?

Bul­let point. Anim­ated graphic.
Bul­let point. Pos­it­ive state­ment.
Bul­let point. Conclusion.

Buzz buzz buzz. Word. Words. Wordless.

You. You could never get lost, could you? You could never wander off into the fog, aim­lessly trail­ing skin debris and crumpled paper in your wake. No. Avoid the forest, stay on the pave­ment under equidistant street lights. Catch a bus because it’ll take you exactly where you’re going. Even if you miss your stop you’ll still be able to press your face to the win­dow and watch the des­tin­a­tion you dreamt of simply flash by. There, there, and gone. Bet­ter for you to be sur­roun­ded by people, fel­low trav­el­lers also miss­ing their stops and nar­row­ing their eyes, cran­ing their necks to scan the faded route map. That’s where we are, and that’s where we want to be, but we’re here. Which is some­where. We know where it is, and the name seems reas­sur­ingly famil­iar. Com­fort­ing. We can just cross the road and get a bus back in the oppos­ite dir­ec­tion. No chal­lenge. No upset. Don’t go out of your way to lose your way, will you?

None of this helps you to become lost, to be gone, to dis­ap­pear. To step off the trampled path. To fall into bushes or throw your­self against a wall in the hope that it might just be a false front­age, a film set, and behind it noth­ing but a sud­den col­lapse of sur­face, a lack of where­withal, an absence of being, just a dis­persal of cells.

This is how you go. You go like this.
You go like this, so that you can return.
You go like this, so that you can file a report.
You go like this. This is your wit­ness state­ment.
This is how to dis­be­lieve every word you ever said.
Fin­ish on a pos­it­ive state­ment. Fin­ish on forgetting.

So. End. Start. Whichever. Rico­chet. Start again.

May cause drowsiness: day 25

She jokes — nervously, via an exhal­a­tion of faint, scat­ter­shot giggles — about her para­noia that she might leave a smudged imprint of lip­stick on the rim of the wine glass. Human remains that would enable him, with the aid of forensic sci­ence, to track her down wherever she chose to hide, whether it was in the imme­di­ate world or bey­ond. He reas­sures her. The faint lines of a person’s lips aren’t as unique as a fin­ger­print. No one would be able to make an iden­ti­fic­a­tion based only on tell­tale cos­metic traces. She smiles at him for dis­trac­tion — his rather than hers — while widen­ing her grip out­wards from the stem to the bowl, press­ing the soft pad of her index fin­ger into the dark red stain. Leav­ing a mark to tell a story, to make an impres­sion, even to offer proof of her exist­ence in this place, on this even­ing. She hands him the glass as he stands to go to the kit­chen. Tells him not to wash it, to never wash it. Alone for a moment, he mur­murs and allows him­self a flicker of con­fid­ence amidst so much uncer­tainty. He upends the glass, shakes the last resid­ual drops of alco­hol into the sink, and places it care­fully in a cup­board. The sev­enth glass, along­side six oth­ers that already bear wit­ness — if not admiss­ible as evid­ence — to each shade she wears when they meet. Tomor­row, her mouth will be scrubbed clean and raw.

May cause drowsiness: days 21 — 24

Con­sider this an abridged omni­bus edi­tion. Or con­sider me lazy. Whichever you prefer. In sum­mary, how­ever, this means that I have failed in my grand but pos­sibly fool­hardy inten­tions to pro­duce 31 pieces of writ­ing dur­ing the month of May, and won’t even be sat­is­fy­ing my OCD nature by going back to try and fill in the numer­ical gaps. My only con­sol­a­tion is that, sur­pris­ingly, I did at least man­age to make it as far as twenty entries before feebly throw­ing in the towel. Woe is me, etc.

In defence of my fail­ure, how­ever, I offer you the fol­low­ing. It is hot. Very hot. And I am Brit­ish. Very Brit­ish. Though not Brit­ish enough to join the throng of blokes wan­der­ing the streets and parks in shorts and san­dals (but, sig­ni­fic­antly, no shirts), proudly mod­el­ling the charm­ing raw-skinned lobster-red look that seems to always be in vogue on these shores. Well, I’m not get­ting my flab out for any­one, baby. I am stay­ing indoors, cur­tains drawn and out of the sun­light, top­ping up my unhealth­ily grey Eng­lish com­plex­ion and per­spir­ing a lot.

Also: my words are simply ill-suited to sum­mer. I am an autum­nal writer. At times, I verge on being pos­it­ively wintry. If you don’t believe me, you haven’t been read­ing long enough. If I ever make it into print, I don’t fore­see my books being bought in air­ports by Hawaiian-shirted hol­i­day­makers look­ing for some­thing frivol­ous and escap­ist to read while soak­ing up skin can­cer on the beach. “Him? Oh no, dear. Far too maudlin. No sex, either. How about this six-inch thick bonk­buster with the shiny reflect­ing cover?” I don’t see my read­er­ship — that means you (sin­gu­lar, prob­ably) — as the type who reclines on a sun loun­ger in shades, sip­ping a cock­tail. No, in my mind’s eye I see the aver­age Unre­li­able Wit­ness fan as being someone shiv­er­ing in a depress­ing inner-city bed­sit in the depths of darkest Decem­ber, wrapped in a heavy over­coat and hunched over a one-bar elec­tric fire for mea­gre warmth, with their only com­pany provided by a syr­inge, a razor blade, and a bottle of wretchedly cheap gin. It makes me so proud.

If the puddle of sweat doesn’t suck me away forever, I will endeav­our to get back on sched­ule. Not that I’ve been com­pletely indol­ent. Some­where back there, I man­aged to write another piece for the new, eagerly keen and las­ci­vi­ously thrust­ing ‘Other’ magazine. It’s another thought­ful piece about an aspect of lit­er­ary style, but delivered via the sort of bad-tempered rant that I’m becom­ing known for in my advan­cing years. Some­what incred­u­lously, it comes adorned with a pho­to­graph of Brit­ney Spears, so even if you can’t stand my writ­ing, it’s worth going there to find out how America’s faded teen queen and I are inex­tric­ably linked.

May cause drowsiness: day 20

Twenty ways about you, twenty reas­ons to breathe in and out, twenty small mouths to feed, twenty words to write down on twenty scraps of paper, twenty strings to cut, twenty strings to your bow, twenty strings to pluck, twenty strings to tie, twenty tiny pack­ages, twenty pas­sen­gers overboard.

Too per­fect, too roun­ded, too eager to please. In need of more.

May cause drowsiness: day 19

Spit. Shit. Piss. Mucus. Blood. Pus. Ham­mer blow. Jack­boot on face. Torn hair. Scarred flesh. Gouged eye. Broken bones. Gap­ing wound. Jack­boot of his­tory. Foot­print. Your dic­tator will see you now. Your dic­tator will own you now. Your dic­tator will bury you now. Your dic­tator will dis­ap­pear tomor­row morn­ing. Your dic­tator will live abroad, in dubi­ous exile. Your dic­tator will live for many years, examin­ing your query­ing face.

[Whis­per] —
Is this what you want? —
Yes —
What you want to hap­pen? —
Yes —
It will hurt —
I know this —
How do you know this? —
Because it repeats —
Repeats? —
Yes. It repeats. It con­tin­ues —
[Breath] —
You need to say the word —
The word? —
Just once. I will hear it —
Word. Two words. How­ever many —
Yes. All of them —
[Unin­tel­li­gible speech] —

Dir­ec­tions:
1. Ensure fig­ure is kneel­ing.
2. Ensure figure’s hands are tied behind their back.
3. Tell fig­ure to avoid blink­ing.
4. Place right index fin­ger under figure’s chin.
5. Gently raise figure’s head to a forty-five degree angle.
6. Order fig­ure to look into your eyes.
7. Order fig­ure to reg­u­late breath­ing.
8. Wait for fig­ure to acqui­esce.
9. Fig­ure will acqui­esce.
10. Continue.

Very soon, an attempt will be made at restor­ing lines of com­mu­nic­a­tion. One line. No words. A tele­phone call. Answer it. Do not say any­thing. Just listen. You will hear trains. You will hear noise. You will hear a city. You will hear beat­ing. You will won­der if it is a pulse, if it is a heart. The tele­phone call will not answer your ques­tions or put an end to your doubts. You will replace the receiver. You will be unsure of all that you heard. You will not trust your­self. You will bend and flex your right index fin­ger. You will place it under the chin of a kneel­ing fig­ure and raise their head to meet your gaze. You will whis­per to them, but you will mouth the words in an exag­ger­ated fash­ion. Your face will appear grot­esque. You will be grot­esque. You will extend your left hand and help the fig­ure to a stand­ing pos­i­tion. You will turn the fig­ure away from you to face the wall.

They will not recog­nise the wall. They will have no idea of the room they are in, yet they will be calm and rel­at­ively at ease in their sur­round­ings, which you will have fur­nished com­fort­ably. This will be their home. They will hear a door close behind them. They will not know when you are com­ing back. Or if.