Patrick Perrysloe

Sat low and glaring through bent fingers he watched the unloading

of the blossom tree blown utterly naked by the wind.

He thought his father’s hands were now his own

and he used them as a mask with which to watch behind

what seemed to him to be the ending of the world.

Nothing would hinder the pink lot becoming dark.

The loss of the white flaking bundles.

Flowers wet and teeming, seeming to aim just for him

his cloth hat, his strong calfs and for his mouth, like confetti might.

As if all the world was shaken up yet glassed tightly and filled full

of this stuff, this air filling blossom.

A single button made-tight but by time made-loose

sprung-free from his coat when he stood.

Hitting the bench and rolling under.

See how these fixities can all of them fling themselves from you

at will, with something like that wicked button-confidence.

Patrick Perrysloe: world forgotton.

His door was dark and peeling pale.

Letters behind it gathering for him and one other. 

He was a strange sort of sad like the bee 

that stays too long to see the death-show

of all that he had once begot.

Nothing for it now but get drunk on the fallen fermenting fruit.

Or die close-curled within the yellow flute of a daffodil.  

See his wooden table all waxed in that particular and beautiful brown.

So clean but for one corner worn soft and dull by his nights

of smoking pipe-tobacco or listening to the radio

or to his CD’s: Gieseking, Bach, Mozart, Mahler.

History books piled high even to hide the laptop that some son had

bought for him long ago promising to show him how.

He stood and prepared himself two cups. 

Opened the door into the backyard

where he’d built a small shed eight years ago.

Where once he came home and found a crack-head almost dead inside.

And now he checked it all the time and imagined inside 

what was never there again.

His thoughts turned back to the tea.

   

First cup he took milky, the other tea brewed in its black leaves.

Ripped tea-bags halved and fainting and fainting over in the breeze.

Her old pills there by the china bowl, still.   

Eighteen 500mg capsules of morphine, 

15gms of Fucidin Cream for the scars.

For a long time now he’d a sneaky suspicion

that this, her last dosage went to the toilet.

Replaced with sweeteners or paracetamol or both.

That she’d wanted all the horrible pain of it in the last instance.   

He opened a low unit and stepped a foot inside to reach better.

He found the plastic lid and felt the embossed script and numbers there.

But he slipped, fell and hit the floor.  

The medicine tub tumbled and split apart despite all the seals

And hard white bits of her came out and dropped like blossom

Against the unnatural kitchen sky.

Or so they looked from the floor to him, Patrick Perrysloe.

Each one pill a little white hill of her for him to climb.

He tasted one expecting sweet, but no – better, like morphine.

He tasted more as they came rolling by.

If they touched the blood they stopped dark and vanished.

She’d died in no pain at all and the good pills had killed her well.

And now they killed him, not fast but very slow. 

Manchester

Manchester - somewhere between Salford Crescent and Manchester Piccadilly is a house that has been there forever. Long enough to watch the city unfold for miles around it. From canal-ways to motorways. It's been watching from its privileged vantage point. Not so tall as to be noticed much by anyone on the street, yet not so small as to be smothered entirely by the ever-growing city. It gets just enough light. The train-drivers know it. They cannot remember a time when they did not know of it. They eye the house suspiciously as they near, changing gears, slowing down even to a crawl half-dreading the dark mass with its puckered brickwork. They imagine how the constant vibrations of the trains might be forcing away the dry cement, making it crumble and move and that one day it could all come tumbling down on top of them, taking the raised track with it. But it hasn't yet and they forget about it as soon as they pass, for though it is a-part-of, it stands apart. Like how trees sometimes have gates erected too near and since the stubborn gate metal won’t budge and the tree just can’t help growing the tree ends up absorbing the gate. So the house seems absorb, to crouch quite underneath the railway but lean in dramatically as it nears the tracks and then rises above it so that the two structures almost meet or even do meet. So passing-by the train windows darken in the shade of the house and though they are not conscious of the reasons why the passengers stand and ready themselves to leave. What they do know is that something old and strange has passed and that they are now more or less in Manchester.

Division (1)

Look down through the scope of a God

and see the canvas of your creation.

Backlit in bright light

on a plastic square

it sits:

a single cell,

a bubble, an eye,

a dimpled drop of life

outlined in black.

Its shadowed centre

stares silently back

and across its soft surface

are moon crater marks

where atom-sized astronauts

have cell space-walked.

This comet, this planet:

inert and unmoving

yet born from nothing.

Now its boundaries are bulging

the cell it is growing

expanding

ballooning

but squeezed in the sides,

pinched in the middle,

and still it gets bigger

but its body is strained

and a rupture rips downwards,

tearing right through it,

and splitting two cells

slowly apart

now only a bridge

connects them together

a stem, a bond,

a hand holding on which

bursts in a last bubbled kiss

as the parent gives birth.

Two cells, two hearts,

a beginning, a start:

a child, a cancer

a mother, a monster.

Stargazer

 

 




A young man, old;

Silent, and thoughtful

On a hard chair, cold;

Smiling, but weary.

Breaking, the flow

No work, no play

Detached, limbo;

Not worried, not restless.

Thinking, ahead:

Glazed eyes, glazed mind

A long way, to go

Through dreams, through hopes.

Drifting, away:

Past planets, past stars;

Not lost, in space

Just travelling, afar.

Judith

The wind blew at the gate as Robert Flanagan walked towards the farm house. Past the worn, broken concrete of the road, he travelled down the drive that led to the inner gate of the front garden. Robert pushed open the gate, the metal felt cold, and he brushed away bits of disintegrated paint from his palms. The night was grey, and full of bruised cloud. Some light shone through the canvassed sky and lit up the meagre primroses and tall fir trees, but caught them in such a way as to warm their colours. They looked like they didn’t belong rooted in the earth; they were alien, but beautiful against the harsh, dull sky. Robert made his way to the front door, which was sunken into the wall of the house. It was a very shaded place. The path he was standing on was overcast by the crazed shadows of the perambulating branches of the fir trees moved by a wind.
Robert had stopped, just before the door. He had spotted the outline of a small building on the patch of grass to his right. He crouched on his haunches and touched the wooden planks that comprised the walls of the structure. They were hard and rough, but spattered with small mounds of soft moss, or an insidious lichen that disguised the building’s door handle, making it hard to pick out. Eventually, however, Robert gained the small, flat disc of wood in his hand and wrenched the door towards him. There was a muffled knocking sound as something fell between shelves and out onto the dewy grass. Robert snatched the door closed to avoid further misplacement and picked up the object from where it lay. It was covered in a kind of lace, but felt very hard beneath that. He turned it around and discerned a little doll. He gave a quiet shirk of his shoulders and smiled, then took himself underneath the orange haze of a streetlamp to study his find more clearly. The doll was made of white porcelain, but the face was painted with two inky pools to mark out the eyes, and a thin red curve, forming a mouth. The little woman – for it must have been a woman, on account of its makeup, and its blue lace dress – belonged to Judith’s childhood.
The sound of barking dogs came from back door of the house, they were probably getting fed by the old man. Robert placed the doll on the short wall that supported the entrance gate and passed again to the front door, and knocked. He was greeted by the mother, who was a polite woman, but had never seemed able to be fully conscious of amiability. Robert felt this again as he asked for Judith. The mother smiled, but it was not a whole, full smile. It was much like she’d overheard the punchline of a joke without understanding why it was funny.
‘She’s up in her bedroom at the moment, I think she’s reading. Do you want me to call her down? – you can just go up if you want?’
‘Oh, no bother. I’ll just fetch myself upstairs. Cheers,’ Robert’s voice faded to little more than a whisper at the end of this exchange, he’d got his meaning across, there was no need to properly enunciate everything. The mother moved aside into the dining room, to the immediate right of the front door.
‘Now Rob! Y’alright?’ called the father. He was sitting in an armchair before the fire and teasing one of the kittens with his thick, hard fingers. Robert asked him about the farm.
‘Way! Same old bloody shite, man. But ye-es, still trundlin’ along – but, the old man’s in a one. He’s sick of not bein’ able to do anything, but I don’t know. It’s a pity, it’s a pity. Nevermind!’
Robert laughed quietly, he felt uplifted by the warmth of the room and the farmer’s game with the little cat.
Up the stairs he went, with a great surge of expectation rising in his front. The stairs were carpeted with diamonds of deep red and blue, and each step was worn away at the very edge. Robert felt an overwhelming sharpening of his faculties, as though he were about to defend himself in a fight as he turned at the top of the stairs and moved towards Judith’s bedroom door. He closed his eyes and almost punched at the door when he knocked.
‘Hello? Hello-o! You can come in, you know!’ Judith was sitting at the foot of her bed, painting her toenails in the amber lamplight.
The room felt extremely cosy. The blankets that held Judith were thick and woolly, incredibly inviting after the glass-like coldness of the outside night.
‘Oh – thanks.’ Robert shuffled in and sat on the deep windowsill, looking at Judith all the while.
‘Need a hand with them nails? Here – I’ll fetch this lamp closer. There you go, much better! Hey, they look lovely.’
‘Well,’ she laughed, ‘A’m no artist, but A can do these alright – you like ‘em do ya? Hmm, I’m still makin’ ma mind up – A’m not sure if A actually like this colour …’
‘A clearer light then, maybe? Do you want me to turn the big light on?’ Robert was already on his feet.
‘No, no, don’t worry! Sit back down this instant, boy!’ she scalded him, and the two laughed.
Judith became still as she concentrated on guiding the little wet brush against her nails. Robert looked out of the window and tried to find the doll he’d left outside on the wall. He had to squint and his head involuntarily nodded towards the glass of the window which bore a light film of condensation.
‘What’s outside?’ Judith had sloped off the bed and now leant over Robert’s shoulder. She knew she had startled him slightly, and a little flame lit up in her chest as he muddled together a few words in explanation. He wasn’t instantly sure he should tell her about the doll, it was probably not entirely appropriate to do so. It was a form of trespass after all. So, Robert lied that he’d been watching the wind blow the big fir trees around.
‘The old man reckons they’ve bin ‘ere since the farm started, they’re goin wild now, though,’ returned Judith. She held herself steady with one hand on the windowsill while she looked outside. She still loomed over Robert and he buried his heart in her scent. It was like a mixture of hay and sweet perfume and Robert found it an incredible tonic. He became immersed in memories of the two as children and the games they used to play together. It all seemed an infinite cosiness, a period of ecstasy in an unspoiled childhood. He became settled and easy in his gestures and words as the two discussed the night ahead of them.
Off, off and out they would go, tonight, to a gathering in the largest of the farm’s outbuildings – the topshed. Robert had already drunk at his home, but felt a tenacious lust for another. He, being so utterly impassioned towards Judith, resolved to share his evening entirely in her company. So, with a ‘Cheerio!’ from her mother and two slow nods from the father and the old man – for he had returned from the feeding – the pair set off from the front door, and Robert marched ahead to knock the doll from the wall and out of Judith’s sight.

The topshed was decked with a few tables to hold drink, but most of the guests sat around on flat bits of rusted, defunct machinery, and upon a few hay bales strung together with twists of blue twine. Judith soon separated from Robert for a short while to talk to her sister, Katie. She was younger than Judith and Robert had come to dislike her on account of her emotional slowness which came across as a calculating reliance on the opinions of others to compose her own attitudes. She lacked the cutting, decisive qualities of Judith, who knew so definitely her own mind and was very much aware of the acute demands of her body, and – crucially – could govern her life through an instinctual ability to act on the requirements of her great, emotional centres of being.
Robert drank a third glass of beer alone. It wasn’t that he disliked, or even that he was not familiar with the majority of the people around him, he preferred to share his own company because he was waiting for Judith like an inevitability. Yet, he found that the ephemeral rush of alcohol around his body only surmounted to a feeling of impotence within himself, a veritable dulling of his own faculties, which, from experience, he knew did not make him able to engage in the emotional moment. The drink, rather, shut his mind off from his body, and blocked the proper judgement of his blood. He experienced a disintegration of his will, which he hastily tried to remedy with a large quantity of water. Some splashes sank into his clothing and the water touched the skin of his chest. He felt ashamed of himself, ashamed of his ridiculous clothes and of the unexpected chilling on his skin, as though his body should not have had to become embroiled in a crisis he saw as being purely a grasping for order from within his head. He patted his clothes with miserable hands and turned away from the gathering.

Judith, however, had been watching him. She felt quite bored with the chatterings of her sister, and made no qualms about her desire to leave. Katie then wandered off and mingled amongst the growing crowd of party-makers whilst Judith stepped outside. She found Robert sitting in the passenger seat of the cabin at the head of the horse-box. He had been there before, they both had, when Judith’s father, or – back in those days – the old man would ferry them around to the cattle markets of Corbridge, or Hexham. She gently eased open the door on the driver’s side and slipped into the squashy black seat before pulling the door to.
‘LCL lager, Rob, that’s what some of the lads have been drinkin’ she nudged his knee away playfully with the flat of her hand, ‘they’ve been sayin it stands for ‘lose control lager’, but A dunno!’ She chuckled to him gaily.
Robert meekly cracked a smile and drew himself up to look at her. It was easy to see he had been crying. She grew gentler, now, and told him not to get worked up; ‘let’wah not put wrinkles on that bonny face, eh?’
‘Oh, A don’t know, A don’t know’ he exhaled thickly and pressed his eyes ferociously to purge the tears. ‘A’m sorry for never lettin’ you know, I feel like A’m not doin’ what A should be, especially with you,’ Robert felt exhausted and slightly faint. In a way, he was unsure he’d actually said the words just spoken. Yet, Judith was alive, and she was tingling in her chest for him, she felt a soaring pain as she lent and kissed him, a voluptuousness in her very tingling being. She pushed her hand across his front then surged out from her seat and met him before the blank headlights. Robert, revived of his torment, still felt a lingering foolishness within himself, which became usurped by an overpowering desire to take Judith in her room, to impress his triumphant masculinity into her.
Judith dragged Robert towards the house, possessed, as the wild animals are, with the need to complete their unity as an exploding fire overruns all. As they achieved the front gate, Robert looked briefly to the ground by the short wall. He could see the doll, though its fragile dress was ripped utterly from the fall and there, in the warm, amber streetlight, glimmered its exposed and complete form.

The End Is Nigh

They say I am a prophet, brought down on this Earth to speak unspeakable things. I find this odd. This is certainly something I had never considered being. But there is no use in complaining. The great task of my life has been set out in the stars, painted in the heavens, and must be carried out. So I speak to a man passing by. I am a prophet, I say. You must listen, I say. The man appears not to hear me and instead walks faster. I try to keep up with him but his pace is quick. I am prophet! I shout. In response he drops a coin which bounces across the pavement in a glittering frenzy. I give up chase and bend over to pick it up. It is silver and cold and not round as I expected, but bumpy. I hold it up so the sun illuminates its brilliant surface. For my toils, for my troubles and hardships, this is my reward.

A Poor Man's Keats

Sunrise on frosted grass,
Crystal stillness broken; warming,
Wisps of mist curl upward,
A new day awoken; forming.

Flowers flourish colour,
An infant world reborn; yawning,
A gentle breeze on tired leaves,
The first breath of dawn; morning.