What Oscar Amor Left Behind

Off went the television and in the filthy screen was the face of Oscar Amor, dead. Three days dead, yet still he clutched tight the remote-control, oil-black but for the yellow masking-tape preventing two double A’s from falling out. The other hand was free and resting on his right leg. He had ruddy knuckles, thick and coarse with wiry hair on its verges born of an out-of-doors occupation, and anyone who ever cared to consider those hands might have supposed he ate his lunches out of plastic bags and sipped watery tea from a flask battered by the knocking of tools. But they would only be half right. His tough skin and clipper-proof nails were undermined by softer palms, the likes of which told of an early retirement. Those hands had dealt with soap, choice soap, premium soap, soap of waxy-paper and bought by someone who had a preference for soap of a certain lavender scent, saw to it that Oscar got plenty of it, used plenty of it and did appreciate it. That someone was Aggie Amor, his wife. She’d found him dirty, left him clean.  

So they’d done well for themselves, through her keeping stock: of soap, of money, of food, of good-sense. She’d brought out his better nature. But he died an old, stocky, bent man – leaning always from the pains in his chest and struggling with some secret weight. In years to come they might discover what it was by digging him up and finding there a few bars of soap lathering his damp remains. That said, Oscar didn’t die alone; at his feet was the old grey heap of his dog, Fibbs. Fibbs had remained ignorant of his owner’s death until now, preoccupied as he was with sleep and with watching television, walking about occasionally with nothing in it, like old dogs do, in that bored-with-domestic-life attitude, stolen perhaps from the bored-with-domestic-life attitude of dog owners. Fibbs was frightened by the sort of change death promised them both, he stayed out of the way and sat watching it happen to Oscar and thought to himself that perhaps he had a chance of outliving his man by some margin. They had lived together since before Aggie. The pet was something she’d tried her best to cast off but had failed and Fibbs had outlasted her too.

These days he’d taken to watching whatever Oscar was watching, he had no choice in the matter anyway. He enjoyed game-shows, and he knew that Oscar knew he enjoyed game-shows, and so he was outraged when suddenly the thing was off and Oscar’s corpse was reflected in the glass of the television set. The house was muted. The answer to that afternoon’s Countdown Conundrum ‘nosmtoowb’ was lost forever -  though he’d thought, ‘boomtowns’ and was fairly convinced he was right as he’d got it within three seconds. That’s how it worked for him - if it came to him it was fast like that or it wouldn’t come at all. Now he’d never know. Before this incident he’d been rather glad at Oscar’s silence lasting the past few days’ worth of game-shows, as the quiet was usually spoilt with ‘Don’t tell me, Fibbs! I’ll get it myself.’ This he knew not to be true.  

This state of things incensed Fibbs; that the man had gone and died without at least topping up the electricity, and that he would die too never knowing the answer to the Countdown Conundrum. Because expecting something and not getting it - for a dog at least - is an abuse, and he hated that even more than the bitch next door or the torture of getting bathed. Though the latter crime had all but ceased to be a threat since Oscar had stopped going upstairs, in order to save his legs. Now he found himself thinking that a bath wouldn’t be such a bad idea, he certainly wouldn’t protest much at having one, if it was offered. When Oscar pulled back from stroking him with, ‘That’s you. I know it is. You’ve a bad smell on you, Fibbs. Now get gone.’ He found he quite consented, but felt a strange lack of conviction in the old man’s tone, and it was at these moments of hollow anger that he found himself missing her and missed seeing her in him.

Told that he smelled badly Fibbs took walks in the dark of the house. It struck him that most of the house remained in darkness most of the time. Whereas Oscar found solace in shutting himself off from certain rooms, Fibbs felt no such desire to avoid or hide. The closed doors frustrated the dog because for him these rooms held no special worth in themselves, even if they did still seem like her space and he’d become conscious of that if he wondered  by chance into thicker carpet that was particularly good and soft to walk on. When he thought Oscar had forgotten about him he would return to the space in front of the television where Oscar would then shake off his felt slippers and hold his toes out - wriggling them lose of each other like rusty chain links, and if only they were made of metal, a quick burst of WD40 might have sorted them out for good. But they were human toes: pale, stiff and hard. With these dull tools he’d rub Fibbs’ belly like it was a hot-water-bottle and then Fibbs had a time of it, he’d always been a ticklish dog. Oscar laughed too, bereft of any actual laugh; rather it was an involuntary gasping action. Fibbs felt close to Oscar at these times. He felt they were not too dissimilar after all.  

To his surprise the house did not remain silent for long in the absence of sound from the television. Fibbs soon began to perceive the irregular operations of the fridge, which seemed to be struggling now in desperate tones as it tried to carry on without any power and manage its empire on the food economy of crumb-regions and slick yellow rivers formed by accidents with the milk. Oscar never had any food in the house. He was quite content in his own way and to the acute annoyance of everyone else who happened to be around at dinner time - to eat a sliced tomato on a saucer with salt, ‘for taste’. Or fill up on a cup of boiled water with a broken Oxo cube inside and plenty of pepper, ‘for taste’. Into this soup he’d say, ‘I’ll make a meal of anything me, Fibbs,’ and then he’d give his loyal pet a wink - which made the old dog nervous for the meat on his own bones.

Fibbs went into the kitchen, his paws made little taps on the stonework until he reached two shallow porcelain bowls on a tray by the back door. These were patterned in fine blue paint depicting nursery rhymes in several stations. Fibbs much preferred them to be obscured with the soft biscuits and jellies of a meal and the water to be filled to the brim. He remembered how he used to splash the liquid about the stone as he lapped it up from these bowls, but he soon perfected a method of taking it carefully, and now he hardly ever spilt a drop. He wasn’t a greedy dog and like Oscar he ate very little anyway so that his food had lasted. But now there was no water left and the food had gone except for a sticky glisten, as though a passing snail had taken the last of it. He went back through the kitchen, ducking underneath the table when there at his feet he found ice-cold water and noticed then that the fridge had been leaking. It formed a great puddle stretching out from behind the fridge, under a wall-unit and now reached the table. This he drank, not caring whether or not he splashed it about.

In the living room he lay down. He looked hard at the deep set blue eyes of Oscar Amor, which he thought sad now and in retreat. He couldn’t remember if they’d always been like that or whether death had made him stranger. He saw the all but useless legs below the tartan blanket and a single fine line of black, petrified liquid working down to the floor. It struck Fibbs that perhaps it wouldn’t be too long before someone found them there. Oscar had family enough, from before Aggie, who paid visits to their father once in a while to check on his health and make certain measurements in certain rooms leaving carpet samples here and there by accident. Fibbs saw that the old man had lived life so completely that he’d really left nothing behind. And after all Fibbs was with him right until the end. And that’s how the dog saw it - if it came to him it was fast like that or it wouldn’t come at all.

Come Inside

‘Come inside, you must. You must.’
I let Natasha walk into the kitchen as I undo my boots by the front door. Her house is broad and, I think, grand for my liking, so I let her pass into the body of the building whilst I untie my laces and tremble slightly from my knees. Something has happened, and, for a moment, I remember why I am here, but nothing lasts for me. There is now not a little bit that I remember of my journey here, but I feel Natasha knows more than I can, and her invitation inside is dominating my present state.
My boots are off, and I gain the kitchen and there is her mother. I struggle out a hello, but try also to appear calmer than I think I am. The mother is arranging some bottles on a shelf above a wooded cupboard. I follow the trends of her fingers as she slides a glass about, trying to find its position. Natasha has told me her mother is drastically neat always, and this one statement is sitting like a leadweight in my head so I’m doing my best to stand very straight and nod carefully, like a learned antiques dealer deliberating something only he would know. She hands me a wide brown bottle. It says Peroni on its label, in white writing on a red background. I do not know if it’s new or old, but the mother tells me it is the Italian style of bottle and she likes very much to collect these things. My smile has cracked before I realise it, and she is currently smiling back. Despite her neatness, I don’t think she yet minds me being here. I don’t think I’m being untidy.
The room glows yellow and I notice that the kitchen has a door, and beyond the door is a green garden. There is grass and I am now outside to watch Natasha as she lies down. I caught a glimpse of her while I was still in the kitchen, and I saw a boy with her which made me upset. I suddenly felt overwhelmingly homesick, but now I’m outside I can see that the boy is actually a girl, but she has thick legs that push out at her dark, thin jeans and I don’t really notice her face although her hair is most likely a dark brown. She is not attractive at all, she even looks like an unkempt, greasy boy but Natasha’s hair is blonde and she is skinny like me. Not skinny because underfed, but rather, she must be built that way.
Natasha is on the grass which is raised above me. No, not above me, but about waist-height; so it’s only above half of me. I don’t know why they are doing this, but the boyish girl is being held by Natasha. Perhaps they are in love. But I will not stay here because the mother has just called for me. Back inside, the kitchen I notice has a tall ceiling and the walls are half bottle-green and half cream coloured, but they are well-suited I think and everything seems much better and tidier than me. But I am not expensive, at all.
‘Come here, and see,’ the mother says to (hopefully) me.
Now she is not holding any bottles or glasses. Now she is holding a can and outwards she is pouring the beer and – this must be – it is falling into a glass, a pint glass, and I am holding it.
‘Drink up!’ she glitters a smile at me ‘its such a pleasure to drink a cold beer when outside it is so hot,’ she is whispering to me and her lips fold in the middle downwards and yes, again I watch her smile. I almost throw the glass to the floor because she is being so lovely, and her heart must be so warm because there are broad veins in her arms and I breathe in the scent of her skin and she smells like hot Monday lunchtimes at school. I look to check the glass is in my hand and not broken in pieces everywhere on the floor, or worst even, cutting her feet, or any bit of her. Or even me. But I never get cut, really. I am trying to keep in order for her.
‘And will you take anything to eat?’ The mother asked. Natasha was inside now also. I had watched her bury her face between the boyish-girl’s thick legs that shuddered like wet rubber. But now she was inside, now she was quite next to me.
‘Just buttered bread,’ I replied. Still, I cannot believe really that butter comes from a cow. I can’t grasp that at all. But it appeals to me in a sensuous way and anyway Natasha’s hair is butter-coloured and I do, in my own single way, want to bring scoops of it up into my mouth because she let me come inside and despite the boyish-girl, I really do want to fuck her. But do I really? No. I want to melt inside her, so I ask for buttery bread please and think about Natasha as I bite it. As the butter melts on my tongue I think I know how beautifully she tastes.

Division (2)

This is the second part to the poem I posted at the end of March. It didn't take five months to write, I just left a draft stagnating for a while and have only recently thought to actually finish it.

Division (2)

Look through the lens of a compound microscope

and see the fabric of all living things.

With dish set down

and lamp clicked on

it is visible:

a parent cell,

magnified 100 times,

with a cellophane cytoplasm

and a nucleus; a womb that nurtures

the chaos of chromatin.

From this inert interphase to prophase:

The paired centrosomes part,

linked by microtubule arms

that stretch across the cytoplasm,

clasping hands tightly, making an arch for dancers.

The chromatin then coils into chromosomes,

condensing scribbles into four stringed worms.

In prometaphase the nucleus splinters

like a broken glass bubble,

and the strings morph into

butterflies with DNA wings;

they fly out and

stick to the spindle flowers.

Metaphase is simple:

the butterfly chromosomes are

pushed in line,

and in anaphase they are

ripped in half, the spindles

snapping them back like bungee cords.

In telephase the cell divides,

reaching the final stage of this

split story: cytokinesis.

The two daughters drift apart and

piece themselves together;

the chromosomes wrestle

until they entangle,

and an envelope

curls around them like a shell:

one nucleus, one heart,

and two living cells.

Canned Heat

They were on what must have been one of the last trains to nearly to arrive at Oxford Road Station. Outside the day was thinking about a turn toward a darker form. It would start off from the hills and then take the long road back into the city just as the last of the traffic raced home to beat it. Outside it was the still the great sweat of the summer that just wouldn’t leave off. But it wasn’t as muscular these days and not so demanding of one’s time. People had been wrestling with it for months though. They had hated it and loved it and now they seemed to pity it. Sorry that it had to go, but accepting of that fact as something quite inevitable like run-down batteries or slipping wallpaper. It had been welcomed, especially at first, but like many welcomed too readily and with too much zeal it had soon forgotten itself, got drunk on its own self-involvement and stayed far too long. It was self-inflicted then and was all anyone talked about anymore. They couldn't help talking about it. It waited all day long on the pavements demanding to be addressed. It dozed on park benches so that no-one else could sit down. It ranged across entire buildings so that windows seemed to melt away in giddy shimmers. It sat on cars and then inside cars. It was immobilizing. It was diurnal but waited up all hours. And now even at its lesser strength it still blazed a way into ‘C’ carriage making everyone tired and irritable. Now, looking out of the windows the passengers had nothing but shear jealousy for those hazy houses that came galloping up close to the line with what seemed like instinctive knowledge that a great rush of wind would follow that train and drench every swollen brick in diesel-coolness.

Pastoral

They ask for a pastoral scene
so I give them an industrial wasteland
with a bluebell growing out of the rubble
clutching the concrete like a child crying out for its mother.

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.