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Split Pig Sundae

Gawd, to think that someone will bring themselves to actually read this...Makes me turn in my undug grave. I'm not going to write about the shapes of the clouds and how they make me feel. I don't care what the air smells like and what it reminds me of. Never seen a woman that really reminded me of my lost lover. Never eaten anything quite as good as a bread. Drank anything better than water. Don't get me confused with a saint, clear out your preconceptions. Whatever. Think what you want. If I turn my head 30 or so degrees to my left I can see the tops of the other office buildings around me. I can see, be studying the sky, that it's hazy. It might be smog. No-one talks about it, though. Do you know what they talk about? Do you want to know. Here are snippets grabbed from the fluttering air about my eardrums:"Did they e-mail that? Oh, okay...""There was a CRF...""Are you in? Oh, okay.""No, no. That's fine...he he he.""Next Thursday.""Thanks anyway.""Hi Michael. No that's fine.""This is when they were sending covert signals...""A star."I've not thought what this linguistic detritus must do to the brain when it is subjected to it for 37.5 hours per week, every week for 50 weeks a year minus sick days. And those sick days may be caused by being force-fed meaningless babble for day, weeks, months...Smog though, makes you think...Makes me think. How little control we have over the pipes and the wires and the funnels and towers right under our noses and all over the world. Nearly stopped writing then. Wouldn't have made much of a difference if I had done. I'm just writing as if no-one had ever done it before. A pig split in a window. Fair fare for the elderly woman, slavering from denture to bitumen with the carnivorous lust of a ribby hyena. Whatever...Whatever.Have you ever dialled random numbers on the telephone and listened to see who you might get at the other end? ...Usually it's just that intermittent beeping sound...Try, try again. Dangle the fishing rod of hopelessness into the teeming mire of fools.

Lavender

I parked the car near the sewage treatment plant so that it wouldn't get broken into. There weren't even any birds. The leaves had fallen from the trees. I tied a hanky around my face. Opened the car door. The smell was horrific. Dead sulphurous diarrhea and rotting testicles. Also the unmistakable scent of lavender.

Fragment

I rub something from my shoe into the carpet then look up to see if anyone noticed. I can feel this bubbling in my colon and I have this urge to do another shit. Damn, it's been three or four times already. I glance idly at the carpet and see a bug. It's a strange kind of insect, though. It seems to have metal legs and they stick out of the pulped abdomen resembling a gooey pincushion. Then I get up and lock the PC and go to the toilet. I relax and it just falls out of me like hot soup from a punctured stomach.

Shiver

Swirling ephemera inside the cerebral cortex and dead pigeons lying amongst the used condoms and dirty needles. Yet, that this all exists in the same sphere is a comfort. The leopard seal snaps his jaws, sinking the teeth into the blubbery belly of an emperor penguin. This is poetry. The scarlet ink scrawls across the virgin snow. The last words of an alcoholic Japanese painter. I listened and nodded and perhaps this was enough. The squalor filled my eyes and ears and nose. The rain tapped the roof and the halogen light flickered. I held his hand as he slipped away. The ectoplasm shivers somewhere unknown. I flick the ash from my cigarette and spat into the gutter.

TO LET

I wake up in the woods and I can hear crows but I can't see whether it's day or night. I am covered in leaves and twigs and I have fallen into a ditch. The ditch is about six feet long by three feet wide and about four feet deep. It seems to have been freshly dug. Worms writhe about near my nose and there are pill bugs crawling upon the chunks of bark that cover my face. I can taste whiskey on my breath. The air is sharp. I am shaking and I am naked and I am alone. I take a deep breath and it nearly splits my head open. The skin on my back crawls and the insects scamper around my toes. I roll over onto my back. Every muscle feels as though it has been torn. It's agony. I try to scream but nothing comes out but a dry rasp. My throat is on fire. My head is burning and my body is icy cold. I notice a shovel lying next to me and, above me, something like a wooden cross. I look closer, my eyes find it hard to focus on whatever it is. Slowly, like waiting for muddy water to clear, I see it. A blue and yellow sign, reading 'Packards - TO LET'.

The Weather

They carry them out, one after the other. The gallons of beer, the patronage of the whole community sitting around agawp. I read the best thing I’ve ever read in my life, probably. Someone eyes the book. Tell me they mainly read Sci-Fi. Well. Thanks for telling me that. I’ll just get back to reality, if you don’t mind; for there is a dragon to be slain. So many little devils in skirts and tops and tails. They are so friendly. Unscrew the back of their mind and you will see a murder plot. You are the victim. And they won’t be happy unless they see just a little bit of blood. The sky is a dead pulpy gray and the buildings are sores on the earth; weeping people, weeping.