Thursday 18 September 2008

Boo!

Hi there to anybody that might be reading this. This blog used to be somewhere I would post film, dvd, cd and concert reviews but I got a little bit tired of all that and kind of retired. I haven't posted in ages so I thought I'd throw up a couple of things I've written over the last few weeks...so here they are. If you read them I hope you like them but if you don't that's grand too. Take care.

Horizon


I came upon a throng of faces pointed at the sky
Many sets of plate sized eyes staring way up high,
I had to take a few steps back to understand their dread
The hospital looked back at us, a girl perched upon its' head,
A tiny, simple, plain white gown were all the clothes she wore
Her dark hair, teased by silent breeze, reached nearly to the floor,
Tiny arms hung by her side masked by the strangest things
They looked to me, for all the world, to be two cardboard wings,
I looked around and saw some people on their mobile phones
Some others now were running round but I had turned to stone,
I waited and no words would come, not even just a token,
I just couldn't bear to watch her fall and see her body broken,
Panicked calls hung in the air but didn't reach her ears
That heavy air was syrup thick with everybody's fears,
She stood there looking down on us, a poker players' face
The hospital beneath her feet, above her only space,
Please God don't jump, don't take your step, my arms could never hold you
Just come back down, take off your wings and nobody will scold you,
I catch my breath as all at once she's one with gravity
She's falling, falling, falling fast, she's falling right towards me,
Without a thought my arms shoot out and I look into her eyes
Bright and calm they look right back as she's falling from the skies,
I'll be so very good from here on in if her life can continue
I brace myself, my muscles tighten, I stretch my every sinew,
Looking up, I steel myself expecting a disaster
There is no sound, nobody blinks, she's falling ever faster,
Then it happened, I can't explain, her cardboard wings stretched out
And off she soared into the dusk and glided softly south,
Her tiny, simple, plain white gown fluttered in the breeze
Her long dark hair just like a cape followed past her knees,
She did not speak, made not a sound, just flew towards the horizon
She was the only thing, for oh so long, that we could keep our eyes on,
Then she was gone and I looked down, to see my arms before me,
Waiting still to catch the girl who had glided out to sea.

Rose Tinted Binoculars


A time ago when I would run the grass would barely bend,
The laws of physics and myself were not considered friends.

I would fly along at such a pace my shadow would surrender,
Before a letter was even sent I could return to sender.

I could jump from any crazy height and land without a mark,
I could tumble down most any hill, make a fire from a spark.

My hands would very rarely rest upon my handlebars,
The road was but a playground for weaving through the cars.

From our secret lair we could watch the world and never once be seen.
If dirt was steel I was a magnet with not an inch left clean.

Ghost stories made the short walk home last a thousand years,
A multitude of hidden things to fertilise my fears.

I made a fairly decent dent into the sugar mountain,
And quenched my neverending thrist with a sticky fizzy fountain.

Trees were climbed and blood was spilled and bees were caught in jars,
And our hearts came tumbling from our mouths as we lay and watched the stars.

Feather


It seems that would I fall on my back I would fall through the earth,
As if it were sky,
The dirt and rock and metal would be just wind to me,
Pressing my clothes against my skin,
Stretching my skin taught.
My eyes would be carelessly closed,
Sound would be somewhere else, dull and distant.
And I would be waiting and waiting,
Waiting,
To be caught.

Fifty Years


This is a poem from a good few years ago, it's kind of a fairy tale really. My wife asked me to put it up - as if I needed to give people another reason to ridicule me! Anyway here it is in all it's corniness...


Hundreds of millions of people find love,
But I see so much more here, bestowed from above.
Seeing them sit there, together, alone,
Something between them, so long carved in stone.

I asked him one day, was it always the same?
He smiled and said nothing but his eyes spelled her name.

The effect that they have upon others is strong,
Seeing something so sacred gives strength to go on.
But this passes them by being blindly content,
Each engulfed in the other, each kiss an event.

So after five decades of wishes fulfilled
He slipped his worn hand into hers and was still.
His last thought was spoken and will live long in my head,
Here, to his wife is the last thing he said…

“You are the half that makes me whole,
You are my life, you are my soul,
So as I lay me down to sleep
I pray to God my soul to keep”.

The life left his body and passed through the room
And sailed towards the sky like a ghostly balloon.
She lasted mere minutes before leaving us too
And they sailed up together, a life to renew.

We know where they went to, so good and so fair,
And heaven burned brighter for having them there.

Principia Street


Every so often Martha would glance out the kitchen window into the yard. She had told Chris he was not to stray from the garden and while she would like to rely upon his sweet acceptance, she had seen how easily a six-year-olds’ head could be turned. He had asked for another ten minutes in the garden and Martha wondered if she had given in too easily this time. She knew that he was looking forward to seeing his Dad turn into the driveway and she suspected he was hoping he might be allowed to beep the horn a time or two. Most of all she knew that he was a six-year-old boy who simply didn’t want his day to end.
She opened the window, “Easy now Chris, don’t bounce the ball too close to the gate”. “I’m not Mam! Anyway there are no cars around so I can get it if it goes out”, Chris replied in a tone designed to reassure. Martha smiled.

Eight doors down on the same street a young girl was still desperately struggling to come to terms with a bombshell that had been dropped three days before. She knew that there was only one person in the whole world that she could talk to about it but she also knew that that person would probably never want to be around her again. If only things could just go back to the way they had been before her world caved in. Eve figured herself to be a fairly normal sixteen-year-old girl from a fairly normal family. She couldn’t have been more wrong. She knew many people but only considered three or four of them to be true friends. As a group she felt that nothing could break them. Of the group she was closest to Alison who lived directly across the road. They appeared in each other’s earliest memories and knew everything about each other. Well, nearly everything.

One would finish the others sentences, they had similar tastes in everything from music to boys and even seemed to think the same way. So many times one would be about to phone the other when the phone would ring. So many times they would meet half way between their houses, each on the way to knock into the other. They were even born on the same day, the same year. People often said they looked similar, asked if they were sisters or even twins. Three days ago they would have giggled and said no. Eve had recently discovered that the reason Alison’s father left was because he wasn’t her father at all. Sixteen years before, Alison’s family had just moved to the street and had held a party in their house for the neighbours. Eve’s mother and father went along and over the course of the night had quite a bit to drink. Somehow Eve’s father had some drunken time alone with Alison’s mother that night and Alison was conceived. When Eve’s parents came home they made love themselves before falling asleep and Eve was conceived. Three days ago Eve found out that herself and Alison were half sisters, half twins even. She was horrified and ashamed and ran screaming from the house straight across the road to Alison, to see if she knew. She didn’t.

“Ten more minutes Mam.” “Now Chris you promised you would come in good as gold after the first ten minutes” said Martha through the window. He didn’t respond, he just pretended not to hear and kept on bouncing his ball. Martha shook her head. “Okay Chris, you can stay out until I’m finished washing these dishes, just a few more minutes”. He heard this time. “Thanks Mam!” Too easy she thought, definitely too easy.

All at once it happened, or rather all at once nothing happened. Everything stopped, everything simply stopped. Dan stretched to answer his phone and suddenly found he couldn’t move his hand any closer to the receiver. His first thought was that he was having a stroke or some sort of seizure but after ten minutes of listening to the phone ringing and seeing his paralysed hand mere inches from it he understood that this was something else entirely. Dan’s girlfriend Chelsea was upstairs having a shower when everything stopped but the water. After an hour the hot water ran out and cold poured down but she did not shiver. As the condensation evaporated on the shower door she saw her reflection - a mannequin with frightened eyes.

Philip was halfway up the stairs to a plane when it happened. After all his initial panic and anger and fear he decided that he was a lot luckier than the people whose planes were already in flight. Many hours later as each plane dropped from the sky he began to wonder if in fact they were the lucky ones.

Jane was making a horrible face for her chuckling father when her mother walked into the living room. “Stop that right now Jane”, said Sorcha, “right now!” Jane took her fingers from the corners of her mouth and removed her thumb from her nose. Sorcha couldn’t believe she was getting encouragement from her father. He knew she was worried Jane was becoming too much of a tomboy. “What harm can it do?” he asked as Jane made another face. Sorcha was surprised just how much she sounded like her own mother when she said, “If the wind changes you’ll stay like that.”

Lenny and Marv were driving nowhere in particular in Lenny’s new car. “I still can’t believe I got this for only a grand with the trade in”, said Lenny. “I can”, smirked Marv. “Shut it man or I won’t take off the sticker”. There was a sticker running across the top of the windshield that said “Dave” over the driver and “The One” over the passenger. At the moment Marv was The One and was less than thrilled about it.
“Hey let’s swing down Principia Street”, Lenny said, changing the subject. “You only want to head down to see Eve you horndog. I can’t believe you like her, did you see the jumper she wore at Christmas time? It was the kind of thing you’d put on a down syndrome kid to make them look a bit Christmassy”. “Give it up about that jumper Marv, Christ that was months ago, she seems nice to me and anyway I’m not in the form for your nonsense. I’m running on no cylinders here”, said Lenny. Down Principia Street they went when suddenly Lenny found that he could not move his hands to steer, nor move his feet to break.

Locking his bike to the railing Frank heard the bouncing of a ball and looked across to see a small boy. At the same time the boy looked up, lost control of the ball and watched wincing as it came off his foot and bounced out the gate. Frank wandered over and scooped it up. “Ready to catch it?” he shouted. The boy smiled, gave a thumbs-up and the ball was airborne. Martha watched Chris catch it at the second attempt but smiled only with her eyes because her mouth had stopped working. She sensed the atmosphere all around her change. She could still hear and could still see but her body was rigid as if dipped in cement. Outside she saw Chris and yearned to call to him but could not. Chris still had the ball in his outstretched arms and the man who threw him the ball was stood off balance in the middle of the road. The first thing that occurred to Martha is that she had had some sort of mental breakdown. She waited to blink with the expectation of seeing that the world around her had caught up on itself as her eyes reopened, but even though her eyes soon become dry she did not blink. She tried to call, to hum even, but could not. She could see that the man in the road had fear in his eyes.

Eve was thinking about Alison when it happened, she was remembering the last time they had been together. They were walking past the graveyard when Leonard and Marvin waved over and said hello. She had known them because they worked at the local mechanics where her Father would get his car serviced. Leonard’s smile always seemed to be a little wider when he caught her eye and she was flattered by the attention. Alison noticed too and seemed to delight in it even more than Eve. Alison was always better around boys than she was. Eve was thinking about how strange life was going to be if Alison had meant the things she said that day. Then she found she couldn’t get off her bed.

Just across the street Alison also lay on her bed. Also thinking. Her Mother had confirmed everything Eve had said. She explained it in even more detail thinking that it would help when really Alison just wanted to know nothing about it, nothing at all. In a matter of minutes her humdrum life had become a soap opera and she didn’t know how to react. She wanted to ring her Father but didn’t, wanted to smack her Mother but couldn’t. Her Mother told her it had been a mistake, a mistake that she had paid for across sixteen years of being a single mother. That didn’t help Alison though, in fact she couldn’t think of one thing that might loosen the knot in her stomach or stop the train running through her head. All of a sudden the only thought in her mind was to find a way to move off the bed.

Lenny and Marv sat in terrified silence as they moved down Principia Street towards a man standing motionless in the middle of the road. Lenny knew that if he could just turn the wheel a fraction he was still far enough away to miss the man but his arms had turned to steel. He could only wait. Frank heard the car approach and wondered if he might smash like glass when it hit him. As he lay on the ground a few seconds later he slipped into unconsciousness knowing he was still in one piece.

A day passed. Twenty-four hours. An ocean of seconds dripped by. Martha remained looking out her kitchen window. Her son Chris still held his ball above his head. The man who threw it was now on the side of the road having been hit by a car. Martha had thought he was dead but although she couldn’t be sure she thought he was awake now. One of his feet was askew and there was a wet stain on the front of his trousers but she was pretty sure he was awake. She thought he was lucky because some other cars had passed by soon after he was hit and if he had landed on the road they would have crushed him. She was glad she did not have to watch that happen. She heard the cars crash in the distance and wondered what had become of the drivers. Each time a car passed she felt sick with worry in case it was her Husband. She wondered where he was now. Most of all she thought of Chris, she thought of her fear and how it was only surpassed by her helplessness. What must he be thinking? She had prepared him for all the obstacles and miniature traumas a six-year-old might face but how could she have prepared him for this? She wondered if this was the end of the world. She felt so overcome by her questions that it was quite an effort to ward off the hysteria that she felt was sneaking up on her.

Eve and Alison had had a surreal three days. Their two worlds had been torn asunder and then without warning the world seemed to have stopped turning altogether. Alison could see her bedside clock out of the corner of her eye and knew that she had been trapped on her bed for twenty-seven hours now. She had a restlessness that burned and the tornado of her mind had subsided by now to be a gentle breeze. She knew something strange was happening from the commotion she heard out her bedroom window. That the commotion only lasted a few minutes and was followed by almost a vacuum of silence told her that she was not the only one suffering. So many thoughts had entered her mind and even though she had not searched for anything she ended up finding something very important. She needed to talk to Eve. She was the only one who she could talk to about this, about anything. She had always wanted a sister.

About the same time no more than sixty yards away that exact same thought passed through Eve’s mind.

Martha was pretty sure she was crying inside. Her legs were screaming and her back and shoulders had probably turned to dust by now. In a strange way the pain was a relief from the feelings she had while she looked at Chris. He was her only son though herself and her husband had been trying for years to have another child. Three miscarriages and some heartbreaking complications later it seemed as if nature had decided that Chris was to be an only child. Then two months ago Martha missed her period. She had never been as regular as some of her friends and to miss a period was not too unusual for her. This time however, she sensed there was something different and this sense was borne out by the five glorious pregnancy tests she took. The doctor confirmed what she had already known and told her to take it very easy in the early stages as there was a good chance she might miscarry again. She had decided not to tell her husband until the dangerous time had passed. Colin was destroyed with the last miscarriage and she didn’t want to see him all broken up inside again. Just over three months had passed and Martha had begun to show a little. She had decided that last night was the night she would tell him. She wondered again where Colin was now and felt her heart tear with the bittersweet image of his face as her words sank in. To see his face again… And to tell Chris! Oh to see his little eyes widen and his smile grow to a thousand miles.

Martha wasn’t sure if there was a God but she begged him to end it, she pleaded to him to wake the world again. Even if he could just let her rush out to Chris and take him in her arms and then freeze the world again. She could almost feel her body reach for Chris, across the divide of their garden. She could nearly feel herself glide across to him fuelled purely by the strength of her will, the strength of her love.

Over twenty-eight hours had passed when Martha’s finger moved.

And Chris dropped his ball.

Dan’s phone stopped ringing.

Chelsea saw her reflection slump to the shower tray floor.

Eve and Alison got off their beds.

Philip fell into the arms of the person on the step beneath him on the planes’ stairs.

Frank and Lenny and Marv screamed.

Jane’s face changed back.

And above Colin’s car the traffic light turned green.