Crack/ Unfiltered

I pull aside the curtain

the hallucinogenic dawn rushes in

a sporidium of colours splatter

against the Winnipeg Fog wall

a bacchanal, a squall

like the hormonal hysterics

of ‘The Notebook’.

• pic courtesy of pinterest

Allayed

Allayed.

They took me up the steps

after the hall emptied

and pulled aside the heavy curtain.

And

there it was

in the centre

of the stage,

wide and welcome as a smile

a bath

tub egg yolk yellow

rim robin blue.

My fears were allayed.

Two Moons

.

Look, she says. There are two moons tonight. Do you think that means anything?

Like end times, you mean?

I don’t know, she says. It can’t be good.

We move closer. There they are above the rooftops, one higher and to the right of the other.

Someone in the ranch-style house across the road switches the porch light on and joins us.

My ex phoned, he says. She saw it too. She’s bit of a sky watcher.

So we stand there out the front as one disc, then the other veer off in a north-easterly direction, silent as full moons.

Devil of a Night

They were in a little cottage out the back with nothing to write about on a dark and stormy night. Delia, a tall, strapping, Scandinavian woman, with long greyish blond hair down to her waist, had just given them, a small group of seniors, fifteen minutes silent writing during the class on short story writing. You should be able to come up with something, she said,almost despairing of her hopelessly floundering flock. This was the second session and still not a word had been written. The thunder boomed and lightning flashed helpfully as if to provide prompts. Delia paced up and down out the front working herself into a froth.  

Just then, as if on cue, the door flew open, and a drug-addled man with straggly blond hair and  black tank top stormed in, neck and arms swathed in devil tatts,  shouting obscenities in a strange guttural language, throwing chairs around the room thankfully with no one in them, and then with his anger quenched, stormed out again. Where’s Security when you need them, fumed D who immediately phoned the police. Suddenly everyone started furiously writing. Delia could  not stop them.

pic by pretty sleepy on pixabay

The Thing in the Cage

It always come down to this: Did he see it or did he not?

Warren goes to the Children’s Hospital to see his daughter who’s been run over by a car only he gets lost in the maze of corridors. He panics, opens doors at random, many without signs. That’s when he sees it, the thing in the cage. It’s humanoid, hairy,stands upright and rattles the iron bars. It looks him in the eye. A stricken, get-me-out-of-here look. Warren is horrified. What is it doing in this big white room? In a Children’s Hospital? Warren backs off, fumbles for the door handle, and races out, down the corridor, any corridor that leads to the light. What had he seen? Was it an experiment?  Was it top secret? Had he seen something forbidden? He retches for air.

When he steadies himself, he goes back to Reception, makes sure of directions this time and finds his daughter. He does not say anything about what he has seen. He knows he has seen something he should not have seen. Or maybe he had seen nothing at all. Frenzied phantasmagoria.  He keeps quiet. He talks to his daughter about home, about how she is, about when she is coming home. They talk and talk and talk and he holds her closely. .

Up Late

Did men really walk on that?

It looks too pale and flimsy

at nine in the morning

a ghost of itself

that clouds could pass through

not strong enough to bear

the weight of history

something the night

had left behind

& forgotten

Eyeballs of Yr Brain

Some people say I should write

More about people

Social issues

Than, say, red pencil sharpeners

Or cats with no eyes

But I reckon you’ve got to run

With what you’ve got,

Whatever grabs the eyeballs

Of yr brain,

the sad, empty chairs of the Nail Salon, for instance,

plushed as if for royalty,

the little commas at the end of sentences wriggling

like tadpoles,

that lop-sided moon like a broken smile,

Whatever,

You’re there to celebrate its otherness,

How it shines out in a tawdry world,

What brings it, and you,

In the words of Trent Reznor,

‘Closer to God’

Accent

I don’t mind her reading passages from ‘The Secret Garden’ before breakfast each morning , if only she didn’t go around the house the rest of the day speaking with a Yorkshire accent

*have you read ‘The Secret Garden’ or seen the film?

*when’s the last time someone read to you?

*what’s the most difficult accent you’ve had to contend with?

Like Hummingbirds on Crack

D,H, Moore wrote

in 2014

that his thoughts buzzed around

‘like hummingbirds

on crack’

but I like to think

of

Wordsworth & his sister Dorothy

wandering aimlessly

as a cloud

through the fields

in 1804

& being seized

by the vision

of the ‘host of golden daffodils’.

my distractions sit

in between

plentiful & constant

as weather;

sooner or later one settles

like a hummingbird

on a flower

pic courtesy of Wiki Commons

Beast

There was a man in our street who had an apparition in the middle of an afternoon.

 

He was driving on a country road where on a whim he took a detour. His wife was beside him. They drove down the avenues and streets and occasional crescents till they realised they were caught in an infinity loop. The man began to panic. It was like that time he was stuck in a lift. He could feel his heart fibrillating, his bladder wanting to burst, his vision blurring but he held this from his wife who would accuse him of weakness.

 

That’s when he saw it, the apparition. It came for him, lumbering down some labyrinth in his brain, a Minotaur bristly and bellowing, big as a tank, barging into him. His heart stopped.

 

His wife never knew what happened but she found her way out.