In days:
In your mind’s eye stand at Chalk Farm tube, then walk from there to here. This morning’s walk. As it was. Recreating what you saw and heard. Traffic. Birdsong. Fumes from a bus. Notice every little thing and if you go blank, restart. Is it clear? Yes? Alright. Begin:
I fa. I. Step into. Ticket in my hand. Lift. Memory lifting. Concrete wet. Muck tiles. Memory lift to. Queue to. Bank machine. Roadside. To. Bus. Beggar. Back. No. Lift to ‘No Begging’ sign. Ears to the tussle traffic. Mini-cab rank. Cross I here. Salvation Army Hall and. Lift. Marlon Brando Guys and Dolls and. Pub called. Pub called. Turn to and see. Frill and I. See the. What? See the. City. City. Ah fuck. Fuck it blank. Start again.
So time moves, out in slow spins. To the first of life — keep your fingers in. And my head turns drowse in its lazy rings at the starting pull of gravity. Push me through to a different eye, to this world of pearls polished up for I don’t take for granted I. Not a single gasp of air. For here’s the spot to cover my tracks, where my butter-wouldn’t-melt slams shutters down. You’re God so young. Youngest one. Youngest in our year. Like the sinless one in Babylon despite hacking at my naïve. Free to singe my wings though on others’ likely tales — my own knowing, knowing to stay well away — I do learn a little how to be. Hithering out on fast Fridays. Go out go out whoever you are. Slip in with the cliques — if estranged from their midst — at the Enterprise, Crown, Fiddler’s Elbow, I burnish myself on their glut of chat, though mouse-trapped or snapped by snide schoolboy rat-tat that I can’t quite and cannot use — Wiggins, we are the clever clogging clever while you are only you — but. Even with, I dive into this. Gaudy myself with cigarettes. Daub my soul with a good few pints til my mouth swings wide with unutterable shite. Laughing lots too, like it’s true. Worldening maybe, I think. I hope. Certainly serving to get me bold and fit for whatevers come. Truth or Dare then? She laughs Dare! Show a nipple. Nipple? There! Unseen I ripen behind long hair at her cool-eyed show and scoff. Now you Irish! Truth, I cough, faithful to my fear of stripping off. Weighing, he waits my cigarette stub then The first time did you bleed much? Ground butt ground. I bled enough. Like I bet you did, she rescue laughs and my lie ate, they banter on. But come the hour Back to mine, she says All of you.
And we’re a forged crowd round hers, locked to the jaws, rattled with chatter and choke on worse as the night undoes its lace. I don’t hold with the Fuck! Fancy digs you’ve got here! and the What does your dad do? brigade. I am all for the spell of her elegant room — white tulips in a vase. And the shop talk, I can only half make, working place for itself in my brain. Swim swim, maybe you’ll find in to the life they apparently share. So my rule, when offered, is to partake. Tinkering ashes as spliff rounds the place. Tink too of beer bottles. Odd ends of wine. Music from her new cassette going riot to loose and loose the tongue. Float up of stories. Legs gone serene. Second years tattling You’ll see what we mean; they’ll kick you to bricks then desert to rebuild. Deconstruct you, they say It’s no lie. My brain puckers with these, then — surprise — divides and the room begins to spin. Very like and nice verl. Easy now! Someone help her. Better step outside. Better I will and will someone with? Yes.
Topple out to her sill going chill against the stars. Take a deep breath. I do. That’s right. Rub my fingers much tread-on this carpet-cooped night. Humful her room seems now, from outside. My flake throat ow but swirl’s whirling down. Feeling any better? A bit. Goose bump our arms. Bit airless inside, he thumbs. I nod. But my chin’s in his hand. I. Get my chin palmed. Pulled. Cheek palmed. Neck back scarlett o’h. Click! My mouth with a mouth on. My mouth by itself letting kiss and kiss draw in. Soft with the addle. Wine in the crease. Skitter I little and traitor knees. And knees. Touched. Knees. And kissed at more. Loddle of his tongue making flesh go No. Sorry and No and Shit! Slank my body. Are you alright? I am. I am Sorry. No I’m sorry, he says Just pissed and whatever. I go back on myself. I am I think I better go. Don’t because of me. No no. I am no. On my heel. To the end of her road. Sorry, and ’Night, and can’t.
What a stupid useless baulk. I curse to the traffic and its tooting horns. Why couldn’t you? Jesus. He was barely there. Even now could you tell him from a privet hedge? A mouth and something to get across. And anyway you’re dying to be a looser-limbed doll. Wrong at the first post. Ah there’ll be again, claims mortification, re-attuning itself. Before long you’ll diffuse in the city’s fuzz and after all, I recall, footing traces of chips, tomorrow is another day.
Other Things.
Morning freeze. Market. Downed I at dawn. One foot in rubbish. One in Camden. Suckering up unctuous noodles now for lunch and no longer listening out for birds. It turns lonely though, shouldering in through the hordes. All the speculative friendships I, jealous, observe. It’s just space but I have so much distance to make and this seems such a wilful world.
Glazed under bath water I go seven to eight. Drip moments remaking last night’s puce mistake. Dream I am turned slender and high as an arch. Glibbing and joking, reserved and smart and faraway eyebrows — not soaking here, under scum. Not landlady screaming You’ve used my hot water up! along with How much washing does one person need? Depends, I shout back. Don’t you ‘depends’ me. The rate you get through it you must be piggin. And I remem Shift. spit ert from slinged knees at dirt nursing finger hair grips clips and downdard spurtling clink through the byre floor don’
COME BACK.
MAKE back.
Here, from those votiveless margins of past.
Await await some blousier you and know her day will come.
Weeks.
Goes on time so. Every day. Hours spent opening lanes of ways on which I might set forth. These are your oysters, boys and girls. Here are your worlds of pearls. I remember it as I sit in dust. Put on tights. Stretch on mats. Lean with hot drinks on stone steps where the throng pokes holes through shy. Her shoving up a bench Do you want a fag? Grateful, I arrange beside but wishing I was less flesh and much more air. Still, isn’t here the right place to discover: don’t wear knickers, always thongs, without a flat stomach all the world is poisoned and no serious actress will ever eat cheese. Really? Really, I mean Jesus reeeaaallly. No, I didn’t know. At least I reek of new less and less. Now at night, uncurling stretch-sore self, I conjure farther futures from the ceiling cracks — in glorious technicolor — what this pleasant present lacks. I will it, hope and dream it. Fine my life’ll be when it comes. When I am right. When I have made myself. When I have. When I
By morning I’m returned to day’s black-and-white flick — flute-throated but learning to reach first for cigarettes. If the earthbound early clogs me in those dreams I’m soon enough back at a moderner me. Inhale. Blow. Lick splits on my lips. Permit cursory gawks at where my body’s remiss. Relent a little sometimes. Recall I am here and think where can’t I go? What else might I be? Besides, on the street, while the moth-life makes its way to bed, someone waits for me. She is my friend and this is Saturday.