We kiss as we step to the platform

‘Another Day In Paradise!’ a gent said to me,
Bloodshoot eyes grinning over, je ne sais pas, aujourd’hui.
Late, late, nugatory freight; Time, marker
Along tracks, rattle and thrash the last boneshaker.
Meanwhile, arms round each other, each other, each other,
And again. ‘Another Day In Paradise!’, he said
Smile cracked between us, sand strewn from trouser sleeves,
Circle lines severed by marks man made, next stop Gethsemane.
Dust gathered on the hallows, Time the great pretender
Arrested the circle, with stealth engendered,
Subverts the circle as a line, arms to order bend.
Tick, Tick, Tick, Tick, Tick, Tick, Tick, Tick, Tick, Tick,

Blue bar on red ring,
A simple mark of tunnelling gadlings.
One hundred and ninety three steps to station
Five meters under:
Six Foot’s foundation.

It’s getting late,
This is us.

WAY OUT →

A Thursday Snapshot of Love

Fucking. I guess it’s something I’ll always have, through the highs and the lows. Life on speed-dial is enough to weary even the most brazen of men, tearing through the atmosphere, filling in any congruous spaces or gaps with a fast trail of noise, junk, handshakes, concrete, opinions and their terms & conditions, words, numbers and abstracts. On a self-imposed quest for the end of infinity. "It’s the high life".

Of course, there is no end, but we realise this too late. The problems start when you’re forced to backtrack, return to where you began, make some sense of what has passed. Most burn up on re-entry. But at least I’ll always have that. At least, when it all seems like a farce, when the money transactions become so quick and efficient that they don’t even exist, when the analytical stares sniped behind the façade of businessman’s camaraderie become too daunting, too knowing, too meaningless in their assumptions, when it might as well be a line of zoo animals dancing for me on their hind-legs in grass skirts and all I want to do is sit on my own and masturbate… at least I can say, I’ve fucked a lot of women. I like me, I am powerful, dominant.

I wish this damn taxi had a toilet. Fold-down seats, why not little fold-up crappers? It’d make my life easier. Normally I’d get the lumbering chump in the front seat, caught in the daily, directionless spin of his grey steering wheel, to pull over some place so I could empty my guts. But this is the high life, I’m on speed-dial and can’t be late. My client is due to attend an awards ceremony tonight and, if the turnout is right, it will mean big things for his career and, by extension, my career. I have to make sure the turnout is right.

Before that though, I have to make sure I don’t shit myself. It’s only another fifteen minutes until we’re there. I try to distract myself from the catcalls and taunts of my rowdy intestinal tract, but as I scramble for any kind of distant memory of calm, the threats of bowel riot aggregate, like the image of multiplying bacteria in those old biology videos I didn’t pay attention to in school. Weirdly, all I can think of is sex. Sex and Shit. What more is there to life?

I don’t care. I slap a twenty into the palm of my driver and rush through the spinning glass doors at such a speed it kicks up a pointless little eddy of excitement. As hard as we try to make it all more meaningful, life always boils down to something as simple and mundane as rushing for the toilet.

I make it, just, but I’m ten minutes late for my meeting. Quick apologies, but no embarrassment. Not this time, at least. I’ll have to go see the doctor again. He’ll tell me it’s my diet, too much junk food, and I’ll tell him ‘yea’ and ask for some medication. I’m a busy man and don’t have time to go re-assessing how much or how little of what or what not I do or do not put in my mouth. I have to eat, I am human. Anyway, they’ve got medication to sort these things out. Why go back and waste time changing something when you can sanitise it with half the effort and in a quarter of the time? Yea, they sure have come up with some great things in my time. Still, brainiacs out there, get working on those fold-up crappers – time is of the essence!

If I were honest with myself, which I’m not, I’d say I look like shit. Not because I’m uncouth, unwashed, hung-over or nursing the immediate scars of fresh decadence, it’s simply how I was born. I’m not ugly, but my eyes are distant and unimpressionable. My features are well sculpted but cold and uninspiring. My handshake is firm but robotic. My frame is slender but weak. I am textbook mediocrity. On its own, my body would be little more than background radiation, an indifferent click passing inconspicuously through the atmosphere amongst all the other indifferent, inconspicuous clicks. Thankfully, I’m thoroughly dishonest and have haughty ideas above my station that enable me to present myself to the world as something I’m not. I am not me. I am a puppeteer pulling the strings of me from a place much higher up, a place more ‘in the know’. This is no bad thing, this is what we all do, just to vary degrees of success. Apart from fucking, it’s all dishonest.

Anyway, I've got to go, no rest for the wicked etc. Just don't judge me ok? I'll settle down one day, I mean, you've got to. It's been nice talking to you, I hope you think I'm alright.

Walled Garden

Enter art flighty blue
Green sepia
Seeping
Soil grumbles
Buttons
Burrowed, flowing
Fleeing!
Far, Red pecking, pecking,
Peck...

'kiss quietly'

Whitely turning,
Wet moss dripping
Stone cooling
Calm...
Light leaves nightly hue

My new job as a human

I'm still unfamiliar with most of the things I'm supposed to do as a human, but I'm learning on-the-job, picking up the techniques that all the others who've been doing this for ages are able to do like clockwork, so well practiced are they.

A young man in a stripey, multi-coloured polo shirt sat staring opposite me on a long train journey, but didn't make eye contact once and I noted this down. His time was consumed chewing the skin around his nails, a precise display carried out with only the slightest movement of the wrist beneathe his masticating teeth. With the only extrovert action to which I could reasonably respond to being the occasional, accidental slurp of the saliva being suctioned between his finger and lips, I was impressed by his self-contained deployment of personal neurosis and its way of making me feel archly ill at ease.

This, I assumed, was a work strategy of some kind, that most humans must use on a daily basis. So, being keen to fit in, my natural instinct was to respond to this gentleman's insistance on fidgets with a discomforting tick of my own.

First I tried chewing my lip. On its own it seemed to elicit little response from my cuticle-sucking travel companion. Four minutes later I added a series of short, sharp, but crucially non-rhythmic nasal snorts to my repetoire, being careful not extradite any mucal discharge in the process.

Then - Communication! His irisis momentarily leaving their gaurd posts in the centre of his eye-sockets, he looked down to his moist finger. Not to be upstaged by my performative gurning, with a subtle sashy as swift as a samurai slice he delivered his brutal response.

At the mercy of tooth, skin now parted with the base of his nail, and a warm dark ball of blood appeared, riding his digit like an elephant-backed jungle explorer. Ah-ha, the exoticism of discomfort, the exhalation of mutilation! As an amateur in the field, I was astounded. I kept watching but only a moment later, irisis perched back in their forward-looking gaurd posts, satisfied with there being no breach of security, his reconnaissance tongue surveyed the reddy-black deposit and consumed it in another perfectly excuted, minute manoeuver.

Well I never, who'd have expected a pass like that? He must have been doing this for years, working only with the best! I realised there and then that if I too were to integrate successfully into the daily fabic of being a human, holding back the gore of our messy bodies was essential.

To show my shy sensei I'd taken his lesson on board, I made one last gurn, this time allowing the fruits of my sinus to englobulate the back of my palm. He didn't look, just let out another timely suck, the quiet acknowledgement of my offertory gesture. A moment to admire and I lapped up the white snot back inside me.

Yes, I could expell and express, ravage and repudiate if I so chose, but I'll keep it all inside where no one can see, because that's what you have to do if you want to succeed. There's only one thing I really want, and that's to excel in my new job as a human. I'll keep contact to a minimum, I've got twitching to worry about! To the young man on the train, thank you - you've made my job a whole lot easier.