Inducing a Migraine
She serves the warmest smile, and pulls a perfect pint, her eyes like a goddess. Like Dionysus. Red wine in abundance, warm in texture and plentiful by the glass. In my mind, the most beautiful shapes enhanced by the toxins racing through my bloodstream, the vividness of my childhood, like the Creation, space and time
My waitress Mary
Johnny Cash on the Jukebox, Walk the Line. In a truck stop with bloodshot eyes, all-night drivers, and builders in blue jeans with arms as thick as legs. Also travelling salesmen, in cheap suits with frozen faces. I wait for Mary. And on a menu, on a chalkboard, white chalk, blue chalk shadows, powder on
Rafters
Taut line of thin manila, rope creaking, on dusty rafters swinging. In your shame. On your record player, the crackle of stylus on vinyl dry, Nina Simone, in a smoky jazz bar, patrons sipping on cognacs, oblivious to your indignity, your shame, your cat alone, and a patch of urine dry, the stench at the
The Mirror
Her morning tea, a large pot of turmeric and aniseed, a slight diminution from the whiskey, important for digestion and tired liver inflammation. She thinks about the mirror in the classifieds. It could have been hers for a tenner, that round mahogany classic, deep set with a gold trim on a hard frame. Franklyn, the
Sticky Rice
A wonderful evening with my daughter, with sticky rice and green tea; sweet and sour, her favourite. We laugh and she tells me stories about new love and life. And then I think about my mother, and my training of the sticks. It’s a long story, over three years, just like a degree. It started
The Hosepipe
I needed petrol, 5 litres to get me there, and the rest for the process. A small price to pay, running on empty, the urine, already cold on my winter jeans, stinking on my frozen legs, a trembling fear. The hard stench of black tobacco fills my nostrils, my last few cigarettes, another dirty inhale,
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,
Elated No More
The elated cyclist smiled like a pony, after a lump of sugar. He had huge sunken eyes, and teeth like a white picket fence that protruded from a square hole beneath coarse whiskers, dry like Savannah brush. Elated, yes, that he jumped the lights on East, Making it across to the other side intense euphoria,
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
Spark and Flint
I don’t put faulty Zippo’s in the post for maintenance or repairs. Once damaged, they are kept safe, and stored in a small wooden box in my study. It reminds me of the trauma that each of them endured across the years, every bang and scrape and hurt. Like dropping them on isolated runways in
Broken Homes
It’s not easy avoiding them, on a dark path, in the early morning. Try in vain, the lack of light, but it all ends in tears. Hidden shapes or curled up leaves? One cannot tell as you trudge to the garage, to get your bike for the early train to London, knowing that soon the