Archive for the Holes in time category

Three times removed

Find­ing myself sur­roun­ded by index cards con­tain­ing intric­ate data, pock­marked for pos­ter­ity, scratch­ings of mean­ing­less fig­ures totalling a sum I can’t even com­pute, and end­less screeds of inform­a­tion doused in the mois­ture from both lov­ing and unlov­ing sighs, I begin the task of burn­ing the evid­ence they reveal. One hun­dred and twenty index cards every […]

Words is an anagram of Sword

But a sword can cut off your face, whereas words can only be tat­tooed onto it. A sword can be plunged into a stone for a nas­cent king to remove. Words can be writ­ten on the stone to warn the king that what he is doing is impossible to mere flesh, and there­fore he should […]

Bus, taxi, car, pedestrian

In a bid to resus­cit­ate my pathetic, dwind­ling cre­ativ­ity — or rather, repeatedly kick its body in the stom­ach as it lies on the floor, plead­ing for mercy — I am attempt­ing to dis­cover whether, via the mir­acle of sleek ‘n’ sexy mobile tech­no­logy, I can write some­thing elo­quent and pro­found whilst ‘on fhe move’, […]

Somewhere, late afternoon, before sunset

Syn­chron­ise watches. Just nod if you’re syn­chron­ised. Okay. Good. So. I think we could be there by mid­night, if we leave now. I really want to be there by mid­night. Mid­night, there or there­abouts. Depend­ing on where we end up. Yes, I like drain­ing my last drink dry come the witch­ing hour, then fall­ing into […]

Seven fifty-four six degrees cloudy

Stop right there. Stop whilst I can feel the creep­ing tendrils of new life in my fin­gers, the work­ing week’s first sur­ging and rip­pling in my whitened knuckles. I stop myself. I always do, always. I have to stop myself. I can­not be any other way. If I exist for only one reason, it is […]

One longer later

Are you still with me? You’re still with me, right? I’ll be keep­ing you in mind — always in mind — as I take your gift and all the pieces of the per­son it con­tains. Grate­ful, that’s me. Grate­ful, for always and for everything. I’ll pull the anonym­ous pack­age from the tooth­less but black-brushed jaws […]

Six forty-eight sixteen degrees sunny intervals

I just went to see if the pair of coo­ing, love­sick pigeons who have been rent­ing space on my bal­cony were up with the lark. As I am. When did I start envy­ing birds that so many con­sider to be little more than trouble­some ver­min, riddled with dis­ease and pes­ti­lence? I just went to see […]

Seven seventeen fourteen degrees overcast

Don’t tell me that I don’t know what I’m doing. I know pre­cisely what I’m doing. I am grabbing the moment, seiz­ing it with both hands, twist­ing and strangling it until it lies limp, cold and unmov­ing in my arms. These few words are the delib­er­ate, con­scious act of tak­ing an inward breath, whilst I hold […]

First day, last day, every day

Okay. So you wake up. You wake up, you yawn, you scratch your­self. You peel sleep crys­tals from the corners of your eyes. You check that your body is gen­er­ally intact, as you left it the night before, before it was tossed this way and that in dream­time or night­mare hours. You run your fingers […]

Cannot locate signal

I went look­ing for the cracked, faded and dis­tant voice that I knew lurked some­where in the jagged land­scape, hid­den unheard between dis­tor­ted peaks and hushed val­leys. I held the sleek, elec­tronic sea­shell to my ear, and behind the tem­pes­tu­ous waves I could hear the faint prom­ise of a silent sea of sound, stretch­ing as […]

Melodrama in nineteen syllables

Many happy non-returns

I’m woken by weak morn­ing sun and even weaker mourn­ing tea — are you still drink­ing green? — accom­pan­ied by a slice of mouldy, putrid birth­day cake that oozes and spews ran­cid cream. Freshly knifed, but rot­ting from the inside out because it was left to gather dust for months in pre­par­a­tion for this tender […]

Footprints end

Stopped in my tracks by words, by a fan­fare of blasts and horns and cries and the faintest of whis­pers. Syl­lables must, sen­tences must not. Out, damned spot. Out, damned semi-colon. I remem­ber walk­ing through an alley some­where off the North Pole. I’m sure it was the North Pole. There is a road that leads […]

Solstice

She tells me that today is the longest day. Tells me too as if it is a con­spir­at­orial secret, as if it would make me want to leap up and embrace her, kiss the child-like grin that places ripples of echoes of grins fur­ther up on her roun­ded cheeks. Wreathed in smiles. Please don’t stop […]

Nothing here but clinker

Pick­ing through debris. Sift­ing detritus. Siev­ing and shak­ing the coal from the clinker, and then I’m back. An inward child sat cross-legged in the middle of the high-walled back yard. Regress­ing and regret­ting. Embra­cing the past for fear it might reach out and strangle if I don’t take its hands in mine. “Did I do well?” […]