The Salty Dog
Turn up the dial and bump it up a notch, make it hot, that gorgeous blue gas. Let them dance erratically on a cushion of searing oil, those demon capers and pompous anchovies, salty dogs, mischievous sprites. Onion and garlic and dirty green chillies from Kenya, delicately sliced from top to tail, but don’t extract the
Dr Kazinski
In a drunken state of deep despair, I think about Dr Kazinski at his practise in the East End. I think about his posters, torn and wrinkled, showing white picket-fence families eating carrots like rabbits, caring for teeth like all families should. That was a long time ago. Now in the absence of regular dental visits,
Poor Hygiene
Fridge handle or front door, or maybe the button on the stereo. Poor hygiene and now the affliction of it. “Can you get some milk on your way back,” Frank asks shamelessly, both hands on the games console. Maybe it was on the Wii? Microscopic in egg form, they hide in every unseen corner, waiting
The Trader’s Bell
Maharaj and Co. General Suppliers, Established 1888. Large strips of scruffy Canadian pine cover the floor of the old warehouse. Sailors haul cargo from clippers, docked and resting after the tea run east. Accountants with clipboards (breaches pulled high, quills marking loosely) take stock, while dockhands scurry around in dusty rags, sweating. Can you almost
The Steaming Beast
Spring has sprung and new blossoms burst. Hungered by the lack of fuel, the compost heap beckons him from across the garden, angry steam rising up from its core of planned decay, a foundation for rebirth and a new life in mulch. He approaches the beast and tosses the heap; leaves, scraps of food, eggshells,
The Night Veld
Outside on a spread of lawn, behind the fishpond, dinner with Grandfather. Tender pepper thighs and a splash of water; a table of reminded wisdom. Pockets of cropped moonlight break like lamps on a wall. And then nature disappears, the last whispers in the night veld as the dogs’ snarl at snakes, tension and profanity,
The East End
Stilettos and hard black shoes, clack-clack, they walk the Christmas pavement. City dwellers and workers rush to the tube and pubs for warmth and bitters and peanuts in chipped glasses on soft napkins, moist from frothy beer. Shitty, spitty pavements, fag ends and chewing gum circles. Cold whores in skimpy numbers trying to think straight,
Solstice
What brittle, keening wind is this that stings our ears and dulls the fingers? The coachman of the foulest season whose kiss lingers on bloodless, frigid lips. We’ll soon be warmed by your celestial caress that will cause to pivot the great, grand chart that is infinity and space and all things vast and misunderstood.
