The smell of seaside lunches in Mimizan
Mussels with parsley butter and rosé
I’d walk along that giant strand with the foam gushing to the lip of the shore
The xx in my iPod nano
You kept that iPod, I hope you still have it, kept it from falling in the Atlantic
And I hope that you enjoy the music of Television, Talking Heads, Roxy Music and the Modern Lovers
Because they were songs I listened to a lot in those days
The murmur of the street outside
Stymys the loneliness
The wound blooms in my breast like a cobra
Dancing to its own psychotic hum
Down and down again it wrenches, wanting to engulf me
I wont let it, much like the matador dodges el toro
I wake and walk out into the metal black dawn. The crescent moon hangs diagonal over Mars like a burning coconut heated by astral vapour
The morning wanderers – the busman, the cleaner, the nurse finishing his nightshift, the baker dusting the flour from his grey brow, flecks of buttery pastry stain his jaded overall
As the sky hemorrhages from naked black to a greyish blue overhead, the awful sirens of seabirds echo through the silence. Someone has tossed surplus bacon fat into the garden
The mournful hills melt beyond, my heart blisters with coffee and anxiety
As I walk back to my room, I pass the low lit and idle hallways of suburbia – a bookshelf stands perfectly on someone’s landing – university accolades of children long since emigrated – pinned to the wall like paper brooches
I can stand on the precipice, stand proud and howl
It can’t touch me there, it won’t touch me there if I don’t let it
I can look in, look into the oily viscuous black
The winding, onyx stairwell leading to the cold soapstone floor
I’ll meet her in the olive forest- her jet hair tousled among my guitar
We’ll both examine the state of things, our lips tasting of warm peaches, the sky a hot kaleidoscope
She sits on oriental colours
Smiles whisper like pink mist, barefoot across alabaster frost
Her thighs are like oiled foliage – a green, damp thicket
I’ll wait here for her, in the turquoise cove of Capri
Waiting for us to be, to be, to be, to be
She may be the last one, I’ll never forget the first one, the last one is always the first one
I knew
Wretched thumping love pangs
Anew
I did really well. I did right by me. I have integrity – honesty. I can hold my head up high. The rest of them are gossips, venal, shallow, dim-wits. I have done right by myself. I always did my best. I am honest and truthful. I am very good and helped everyone. I can hold my head up high. I am strong and reliable. I don’t like weakness in others. Other people are very fragile but I daren’t say boo to them. I very rarely make mistakes. I was in the right. I am surrounded by yes women. Massage my ego, protect my vulnerability – delete my mistakes. Ensure me I was right, that I AM in the right. My personality is that of integrity and honesty. I very rarely make mistakes and if I’m wrong I will hold my hands up and admit my shortcomings. I have worked on myself. I have corrected all past faults and put my resentments to bed. I am filled with love and appreciation for all of the luck and chances I’ve been given. I channel positivity and allow it seep into all aspects of my life. I never feel sorry for myself or for my lot. I stand up and face challenges, take on my responsibilities. I do not engage in gossip or scurrilous hear say. I am never duplicitous, insincere, manipulative or conniving. I tell it like it is and call it as I see it. I am, and will always be, your loving Mother.
The screeching. The noises. The poison, the powerlessness. The utter futility of it all. The thuds, the waste, the excrement, the profligacy, the proficiency, the damnable horror. It stalks, it weaves inside your spine like black silk pissed by some craven arachnid, like turbid smoke clinging to ivy. Slaloming up the vertebrae, tangible frost, you’re good at it now, the voodoo algebra, falling asleep in daylight only to creak from supine to erect like a wolf suffocating in dusty gossamer. No pardon, no love, no sex, no Eros, no supper before bed, no dinner at candlelight. You had her before. You had it all before, her cunt tasting of honey, her breasts melting over your chest, nipples tasting like hot clotted cream, her perfume sweet yet tart like vinegar infused jasmine. You’ll fuck her again. She’ll bounce on your throbbing shaft again, drilling deeper into her ravine, her interior glaciers melting as her thoughts migrate to yours across La Manche. Lo! there is no twilight now – no dusk, no gloaming, no sensuous crepuscular weakening of the limbs, softening of the joints – no yawning synergy into the oily night together holding hands eating roast chicken with parsley buttery potatoes and cold darne of smoked salmon with parmesan soaked asparagus and cracked black pepper and then creme brulee for dessert like two hyenas munching on love, gorging on air and feasting on each others thoughts, dripping from the naked saplings – the inchoate boughs of mutual adoration.
