Daily Bread

I eat my bread on the floor. Below the window. I am taking no chances. There are no pauses in this sentence. No mumbles. I cannot out run the holocaust in my shoes. I walk quite comfortably on its thorns. I am back in these towers. These blocks. Places built around corners. Over pipes. Between ditches. Places where no one has to see you exist. It must be lucky. To live in a house where you can’t hear your neighbour scream. Here even the softest cry from next door penetrates your ears. The part inside. The human part. Wants to put a hand through the wall. Give it to them straight. No one is ever coming. No one will ever come. But you have to block it out. I have to block it out. One of the new ones stands. At the window. On the frame. I fucking love you honey. I pull up the glasses. Put down my head. In three hours he will adjust. It’s not the ones who dabble their toes in the sky that will jump. It’s the ones that strategise. Make it as every day as cornflakes. Until the right time. The right time. Casually stepping off the pavement. They don’t need a push. They don’t need noise to help them fall. I don’t need a push. I don’t need noise to help me fall. Funny how the phone still rings. No known number. I drag it out of my pocket. Little pieces of grey plastic crumble off the edges. I can’t explain why I still carry it. Maybe because I once was. I once was. The bread is rough on my tongue. My throat is sore from the coughing. My nose still bleeds. I don’t have much paper. I fill it with geometrical blood stains and a few words. When it can carry no more I add it to the tip outside. A thousand pieces of me must be piled up out there. I keep my floor tidy. I tidy up my floor. I am taking no chances. I am taking nothing at all.

Alice

I started the book. The one which weighed so heavy. The one I thought would mean everything. I un-pulled the stitches. Peeled off the glue. Licked up the red and began. By the second page I breathed and I saw that letters are only shapes. Black marks. You can turn them upside down and this way and that but that’s all letters are. Shapes. Some days the black marks eat you. Some days they feed you. Some days they hold you so tight you can’t breathe and the blood inside you turns to acid. Acid and rust. All the seconds inside acidify into nothing. A poison you can’t hold. Or swallow. You want to capture everything. Turn the shapes into symbols. Turn nothing into meaning. But letters are the holes in the net. Not the string. It is in between the letters that the story can be found. If you dare to look. I am not sure I want this book now. The weight tires my hands. A stone carried too long in my head. I don’t care what signs are left on my wrists. On my heart. I will catch them as they fall past me on the way back up the rabbit hole. I smile. It is all such nonsense. There is no beginning middle or end. The Cheshire Cat comes together licks his paws savours the jam Alice dances with the candle. Her little letter feet inside her little letter shoes. Weightless. And I dream a thousand dreams knowing she is inside of me. That she never left. Alice is always there.

The Truth of Old Man Joe

I could tell you a thousand lies. I could tell you a thousand truths. There is no difference. I could tell you I threw the pills out the window. To test the trajectory. I could tell you I pulled the wires because I don’t want you to see my heart. There is no line to say. No alarm to signal. That I am not the body which lies in front of you. I am nothing. No sound. No mark. I have been walking for a thousand years but haven’t moved an inch. I believe what I let you see. I exist between the green. Adapting. I can be anything you want. I prostitute my body and mind for the penny that opens the door. It is more than disappearance. More than nothing. More than absence. More than ever and ever. I am old man Joe. I live in old man Joe’s toilet. I will never leave. The smell of ammonia and dirt in my hair will never move my feet. I already walk in a thousand dreams. I glide in a world you cannot touch or measure. Rip from me. The blood red is in my hand and I lick it up like milk. I am wedged sleeping dreaming cradled in these tiles savouring the smell of every morning disappeared.

The Dolly's Head

The dolly’s head lies under the car. A red flower by its crown. There are no signs of viable life. I check. That is what I used to do. Check for life. I think all that checking left tyre marks on my head. My face. Like the dolly. Squashed. No longer a loveable little thing for you to hold. They are working on something. I can feel. I pass by. Mute. Without consequence. They are not working on me. It is harder than you think. To become lost. It requires motivation. Co-ordination. Execution. When they keep knocking on your door there is still a chance. I set my eyes high up in my dolly’s skull and pretend I am no longer waiting. Put my body back into filthy clothes. Hang the outside clothes up for tomorrow. Baby’s best. Line up the metal flowers. Plant them. Try to ignore the day running out. Knowing I will be at the window again. Choking. Gasping for breath I don’t even want to own. Breathing makes your heart beat and when your heart beats your head thinks and when your head thinks you understand that you will be tidied up in minutes. And my head is so full it is empty. And I long to be that dolly. Separate from its body. Rolling in the road. A little flower by my temple. A little hand for me to hold.

Time Spent In Green

The woman in green sits on the wall and watches me. I am standing at the railing. The bag on one side. My feet and legs on the other. Anchored like jelly. Maybe she is the bell. Not real. But an alarm in my head. Yes. I decide that’s what she is. I want her to be. But people are just colours. Today it has been all green. Apart from the water. In the aisle. Standing with stitches and pins. The green trouser man attends to someone else. Time falls around the shampoo. The bottle I hide the packet behind. In. For a moment it is me at the back of the shop. I am on the floor catching myself up. The carpet ripped open. The powder sticky on my hands. The cherry red ink betraying me. But that was another time. It is hard to keep up remembering. Colours are much simpler than memories. Than people. There is always green. When I am ready. At night - in between thinking and doing - it is yellow and I feel someone on my chest. Sometimes I speak to them. My hands are folding up the blanket and I am sharing a joke. When my eyes catch up I see am stuck to the bed with glue. No going forward. No going back. The thump of a hand gives me breath. I remember my life today. It lasted one minute and thirty-nine seconds. I dig my feet deep into the only dreams I can muster. Raw. Dirty sand. The dry fuck of time passing.

That Time

The smell from my elbow radiates through my sleeve. It is that time again. I watch her. From a different seat. Through different arches. I rub my hand over my stomach. The black fabric snagging on the ulcers. The holes nobody sees. Oozing quietly. Hurting me every time I fold or bend. I wonder if my card is lost or if it has been stored in a catalogue of unsolved prayers the father reads on a Saturday night. Everybody asks the same. Help. Remember. Help. Her tiny shoulders must ache. I hope the father holds the baby for a while. It is hard. Holding two worlds. One outside. One in. Maybe it rubs her stomach too. An unholy collision of prayer and need. I worry the nail polish off my finger. Nobody is immune from me. From the smell that leaks out and doesn’t wash off. Red goes dark the longer it is exposed to air. I keep myself under. Gather up the rust on pieces of lint. Collect the drench of time. Sniff at it like prayers on a Saturday night. But that time becomes one time. Stuck together unsolved in a box. In a drawer. Under me.

The Teller

I hang myself with a string of red liquorice. It tastes nice. A real pleasure. Like my red finger nail which I chew. And scrape along the bath. The words from that book. The one I won’t leave. I take it to the church. Where they show their patchwork and quilts. Big ladies who won’t disintegrate into candy splinters or threads of red words. I see no rings of sticky sweets hanging around their necks. Maybe they wash it off. Cover it with busy hands and prayer-filled hearts. Like the Queen, full of tarts. Busy playing. I am not a player. I am a teller. Forged out of stitches and glue. They gave me back breath. To keep talking. But they left me with nothing else. I shout with the red pen and the red tin but the breath I was given is not to be spilled in the church. It is not to be heard in this story. I am the teller. I have breath but no voice. I lost my voice when the red liquorice turned to wire. I lost my voice when I told you; ‘I cannot make myself worth being murdered.’

(Beautiful, borrowed words from Camilla Gibb – ‘Mouthing the Words’)

That Girl

That girl’s a walking holocaust the man says in the dream. And I laugh and put the pierced body in my pocket because he is right. I make a note of him. One am. When I am not sure where the beeping sound is coming from. If it is the pulse of my heart. Or the stalling of a truck. Waiting by the door is a black bag full of things. Things that were too nice to use. That I saved up for so long they lost all their meaning. The white fluffy kitty pencil case. Worn. But not from my fingers. From the scrape of time passing over it in the drawer. Funny. How my things will become your things. That once again I will lose my story. Time has scraped over me too. I am turning to junk. Rising into the clouds like ether. I lie down. Trace the words on the side of the bath. Meaningless words that have no ink to appear. The sky is full of nests and pink ink. Marshmallows and forgotten treasures. I want to swallow it. Like my final dose. I imagine the softness passing through my skin. A tender bandage applied to the emptiness of war. My hand rests on the cool bath. The man is still there. I try to change his words, but I only have time to say - that girl’s walking.