V. Short Narrative

There was a young man who knew a girl and she was around the same age and were both very close friends, spending a lot of time together. One day, unprompted by anything, the man decided to ask her “Are you in love with me?”

After a short pause, in which she was stunned by the question and slightly embarrassed, she said “No.”

He said “Well then, I think you should keep away from me.”

And she did. They stopped talking, in effect stood back-to-back, no longer friends, no longer acquaintances, no longer anything; they didn't even see each other to speak. Soon they did not recognise each other on the street with the time they spent apart.

Ten years past. In their thirties, the girl soon marries, and not long after, the man, too, marries. One day, they past each other on the street, but this time the girl recognised him and she says: “You're – ”

To which he replied “Yes, and you're – ”

And she confirmed it was who she was.

After a short pause, she looked at him and said “You're in love with me, aren't you?”

To which the man replied “Yes.” And there was nothing either of them could do about it.

Hop Farm Festival 2nd - 4th July 2010

About 3 weeks ago I went down to Kent to the Hop Farm Music Festival. Me and my friend headed down to London, but we didn't know the way, with being Northerners, and we ended up walking around Waterloo Station with heavy bags in over 20 degree heat and when we finally found the coach station, we'd missed our coach by 20 minutes. It drove us mad because we walked past that road in the first place, and if we'd walked that way to begin with we'd have made it. So we were stranded in London. A massive city, never been there before, and with thoughts of sleeping rough.

Luckily, my fiend had a stroke of genius. He said we could jump a train to Paddock Wood, Kent (£14 each), and then get a bus straight to Hop Farm. And we did! It was a long journey, I tore a muscle in my left shoulder, and we were both exhausted. We were 3 hours late, but that didn't matter. We set up our tents after I'd collapsed into the grass. I couldn't believe we'd walked so far, and for so long, through London, and I was sweating and in pain and we thought we wouldn't even get there.

After we set up our tents, we walked down to the main field - still knackered - and saw Blondie. Had some drinks and then saw Van Morrison in the evening. It was good, considering how tired we were. In the night we sat in the grass at the small acoustic stage on the campsite. I lied down and was talking nonsense as I looked up at the stars, I think I was talking about reincarnation. I suppose it was interesting to hear me talk like that, though as people said sorry as they stepped over me, they must have thought I was on something.

Next day my shoulder was so painful. But we had to do what we came to do, which was get as close to the stage as possible to see Bob Dylan. We got to the main field around 12 or 1, and watched a guy called Johnny Flynn, then The Magic Numbers, and as each act finished, and people scattered to the toilet or bar, we moved forward, and held our place. Pete Docherty did an acoustic set. Laura Marling (who has sang in Noah and the Whale with Johhny Flynn). Mumford & Sons were very good, as was Seasick Steve.

By now were were quite close, and couldn't risk moving from our spot (not that we could without squeezing through). It was kind of claustrophobic, I sat down when I could. The heat was immense. There was warnings about covering up and drinking water. I had my hat and the t-shirt I'd bought was round my neck. Unfortunately, I'd left my bottle of water on the ground and someone had kicked it.

Ray Davies from The Kinks came on and was amazing and everyone wanted him to sing Lola, which he did last. Then we moved forward one last time as he finished and we must have been about 10 feet away from the stage. I was feeling too good and there was no room at all to sit down. It was ridiculous. I stretched my legs (and I think I kicked someone behind me) so the blood would flow properly - I didn't want to faint. Bob Dylan took ages to come on, there was a weird voice over talking instead of music as his roadies set up.

Then he came on. He was amazing. I'd seen him twice before, but this was the closest I'd ever been to him. And, as my friend said, the closest we will ever get to him. I think he is the best musician in the world, and always has been the greatest lyricist. He is a living legend and I couldn't keep my eyes off him - until camera began to block my view. A bunch of girls behind me were short and could't see and tried to look over my shoulder - which I didn't mind- until I felt a hand on my torn, left shoulder.

He began with Rainy Day Women (Everybody Must Get Stoned). It was hard to know what he was singing, because he changes the sound all the time, I still liked it, though. We all sang along to Just Like A Woman. At the end, he finished the set with Like A Rolling Stone, which sent everyone crazy, including myself, screaming the lyrics into the Kentish sky. His encore was Forever Young, which means a lot to me, not that it's my favourite Dylan song, but that it was the first Dylan song I heard, and I love that song. We all sang it the way he did on Planet Waves, and he sang it his way nonetheless.

Rainy Day Women # 12 & 35

Don't Think Twice, It's All Right

Stuck Inside Of Mobile With The Memphis Blues Again

Just Like A Woman

Honest With Me

Simple Twist Of Fate

High Water (for Charlie Patton)

Blind Willie McTell

Highway 61 Revisited

Workingman's Blues #2

Thunder On The Mountain

Ballad Of A Thin Man

Like A Rolling Stone

Forever Young

Old Experimental Poem I Found

Conversations Overheard on a Train 17th April 2008

I wanna eat or suh 'un,
I'm gettin' paranoid now,
What time d'ya reckon
We'll get 'ome?

It was dead good
When I was werkin' on it,
I'm gonna get off the station at 'ome

Like Crosby or suh 'un.

If you get off at Aintree station
You can cross over and get the bus.

You know, er, signs –

It's twenty-past
No hasn't gone yet –

Don't notice it, do yeh,
When you're on the road,

Signs, you don't see 'em.

He had the most perfect bird whistle,
He's like a kid and he's twenty-two.

I had like four sugars,

Surprised I could wake up this morning.

Are we here?
The next one.

A replacement bus service is in operation.

No Sleep - Myth of Sisyphus

I'm listening to Blonde on Blonde on a warm rainy morning, after I cleaned the room and found about 7 socks under my bed. I love the rain, it makes a morning. I could do without it being so warm. I think I'm so warm because I've been moving about, and the hoover heated up the small room, but the window – as always – is wide open, and I think it's 17 degrees today.

I'm tired a little bit; I woke up around noon. I couldn't sleep again last night, it's probably the same thing I had about 2 years ago in Preston when I had a big manic episode that lasted about a month and I hardly slept or ate and I just got drunk and wrote. I wrote a lot of poems back then, most aren't that good, but I still have some in my collection now, which I'm still working on.

Anyway, I was crowded with thoughts and trying to write my first novel, which I couldn't do and it drove me mad. I kept looking into Naked Lunch and then into Catcher in the Rye, seeing how two very different writers can write so differently in the first person. I was stuck with this terrible terrible piece of writing I just couldn't have in the novel, so got rid of it, leaving me with nothing again, because I keep starting again. And back again 2 years ago, with my dissertation, which drove me crazy, and I re-wrote the whole thing at least 3 times. I thought, forget it, I'm not writing it simply because I'm actually not writing it. I was sat there staring forward, and then the bad thing happened.

There's a poem I've written called 12:24 am, in which I travel 35 miles to see a girl. I began to think about her. (Because it was written about a real person). I then found on my laptop old MSN conversations that had been saved somehow. I read over them and it was a terrible feeling. We were quite close. And now we're not. Thing is, at the end of the poem I write something about her going to Falmouth, this was our plan, to go together and do our Masters Degree down south, but we didn't. Now I've found out, not only is she getting married, but she has the same plan with that new guy. To move down south with him.

I wonder what would have happened if we had gone. I mean, the Masters I'm doing now has improved my writing so much, I'm much more well read, and I have some new friends. I probably wouldn't have any of that had I moved away because I would have been drooling over her all day, whining about her all the time like a lonely puppy. Such an idiot. Still, I was thinking about the other people I knew in Preston, and it depressed me to think it's been 2 years since I've seen them, and they're all split up anyway, since Uni finished and everyone went home. All scattered over England like seeds in the soil. One girl has gone to Australia. One guy is now in Canada.

I felt like doing a Rimbaud and quitting writing altogether. 60% of the time I don't get much enjoyment out of writing, it's just something I'm compulsed to do. However, people do say writing is a method of relieving stresses and things like that, maybe it's the writing that driving me crazy. I know I'm not going to quit, I'll always have the compulsion to write something, because I'll always think of it. I suppose I should get my poetry published and then my novel, and then I'll think about it.



I read over some of Albert Camus, who wrote The Stranger (L'tranger). This is one of his novels, in which he talks in relation about The Myth of Sisyphus. It is about the Absurd life of man, and the acceptance of the Absurd as something to support the idea of life or living a meaningless life. So, to accept your life is meaningless, you in effect, accept the absurdity of your situation, and thus you are free to be contented.

Sisyphus was a Greek myth who put Death in chains so no human had to experience death, which defied the Gods, and therefore, angered them. Death escaped from Sisyphus, and so he had to die. However, Sisyphus escaped the Underworld, but as the Gods were still angry with him, they punished him to push a large rock up a mountain, once at the top, the rock rolls down, and he has to start over again.

Camus uses this Greek myth as an example of the Absurd notion that life is, indeed, meaningless, but if you only accept that meaninglessness then you are freed to experience contented acceptence. Just as if Sisyphus would have acknowledged the absurd situation he was in, he would be have been fine. “One must imagine Sisyphus happy.”

I think Camus also made three examples of absurd people, or “The Absurd Man.” The Lover, one who is a serial seducer like Don Juan. He does this because he lived a passionate life to the fullest, as he recognises life to be short-lived.

The Warrior is the man who sees life and death as one thing, and chooses action over contemplation; he wants to engage in human history and become something after life by laying down his life for what he believes in.

The Actor, one who becomes a number of different personalities to achieve fame. “Appearing creates being.”

Koumpounophobia

Those plastic things hooked in a line, from her throat – the V of her collarbone – down to her stomach, like a list of eyes the colour of a dilated pupil. She looks at me and smiles with her teeth, and her teeth look like buttons, and there is no way I could get any closer to that, she'll taste of plastic and I'll choke on her as if she is a button herself.

It's strange how quick she moves compared to me. I cannot move, I'm fastened to the hardwood floor. Her hands are by her side but I don't move my hands. I pretend I am in control and I look at her clothing and the pieces of plastic holding them together, which are looking at me – little eyeballs of a CCTV biologically inserted intravenously with nerve endings and wires and veins into her body.

She says something about unbuttoning.

I say something like I'm not entirely sure that would be appropriate.

She frowns and takes to the motions of unbuttoning her clothes, as I rub my hands together so as not to touch the plastic discs, which I imagine feel smooth between my fingers. Black like coffee, white like cream – or cataract of a blind eye – I can taste the plastic in my mouth as the first button is undone and it's like coins sliding down my gullet, more and more, choking me with the acrylic taste, right at the back of my tongue, touching my tonsils and scraping at the bitter taste buds.

I want to be sick, I say.

She says something like, Oh no, is it me? What have I done wrong?

I say, Of course not. But I cannot carry on this conversation because I've been trying to hold my breath. The talking has brought a quick release of carbon dioxide and the reaction of oxygen in my head sends me blind for a second.

I am now sitting down, looking at her face, my dizziness giving her four eyes like a button. She tells me I look pale. The rest of what she says is white noise from a radio. She is sitting so close to me that the buttons are almost touching my hand, and I'm frozen again. Don't move, don't move, don't be sick, don't be sick.

I tell her it's okay, I'm fine, I just felt a bit dizzy. And then I sit back into the cool leather couch. The buttons are undone, I don't have to look at her now – but her eyes, great big black buttons, just staring at me.

© 2010 Michael Holloway

Object of Dreams Mag - Haikus

I updated the blog because it was old and worthless. It still is, but it's much better to look at, like me in 50 years time.

I've been writing freelance for a small magazine called Object of Dreams Magazine, which is an arts, music, fashion and culture mag aimed at people around Liverpool. So I took it upon myself to call myself a Freelance Music Journalist, even tho I've written 2 small reviews for some bands and the magazine is only up to issue 2. Still, It's about getting yr name out there, regardless of money, and while I'm working my name into the arts scene, I'll be getting my actual writing out there.

Here's my review of the band Misery Guts: http://objectofdreams.wordpress.com/ and further down is the review of Dirty Tricks, which appeared in the actual print version of the mag.

Also, click here to see the actual print version of the magazine, and my small, edited review of Dirty Tricks on page 34.

To listen to Dirty Tricks click here
To listen to Misery Guts click here



Haikus I wrote last night:

The sound of yr voice
Is like heavy rain on me
It feels very wet.

and

Seagull on chimney
Sun burns thru clouds like fire
It stays 'til it goes.

Sophia De Mello Breyner

I found a note in one of my poetry anthologies for Sophia De Mello Breyner. It only said her name. It was a reminder just to read the two poems of her in that book, which I did back in 2006 or 2007 or whenever it was I made the note.

She was a Portuguese poet. She wrote these beautiful poems, which were usually quite short but powerful. They had these perfect one-liners that were quite brilliant, burning a poingiant thought in you, leaving you with a feeling not so dissimilar to sad, but with a certain power to it, as well.

I never knew she's died in 2004. A year before I was even in Uni. I only found out today. The one poem that sticks with me is Inscription.

Inscription

When I die I will return to seek
The moments I did not live by the sea.

Sophia De Mello Breyner

Based on a Short Story, I write Like DFW

I write like
David Foster Wallace

I Write Like by Mémoires, Mac journal software. Analyze your writing!

My June - My Poems - In The Casa

I went outside 20 or 15 minutes before I had to read it and paced up and down in my suit, I liked how odd I must have looked. I talked to my brothers friend (who was also my friend when we were kids, I'd seen him once in 10 years). I got a cigarette off him and we talked a bit. Then he went in. Soon my sister came out, looking for me, thinking I'd done a runner. I told her to go back in. I got ready, mentally, and I went in and did it. Never been so scared.
Too bad I promised my friend I'd read out some poetry at an open mic night in the Autumn.

So I'e got back into my writing, and it helps that I've taken a month off work, and now I'm reading about 7 books at once. (Not including the 5 or 6 books of poetry).

The last poem I posted was "What I Remember of Sunday 16th May 2010." I took this, as well as fie other poems, to the workshop last week. We sat in the back room of The Casa and we talked about them (as well as my friend's extract of his novel). We both got good feedback, and I was glad about this, having put off submitting poetry for the past 9 months, which is silly, being more of a poet than a writer of fiction.

This poem, though, was interesting because it was the most prose-like piece of poetry out of the other convoluted, absurd pieces. It was like a diary extract. That was the intended effect, to just show the memories in such a mundane and simple form - a form I don't usually use.

However, I've been reading a lot of poetry, and putting some poems together for publiscation soon, and having come across T.S. Eliot's The Waste Land, I realise what I want to do. I read The Waste Land when I was at University in Preston, but I didn't study it, so didn't know much about it. But I want to re-write my poem and try to adapt the simple diary-format into something not as weird and Beckettian as I do, but also not a pastiche of Eliot either, but to write a long (4 or 5 page) poem regarding one day in a strong poetic language, relevant to today.

What I Remember of Sunday 16th May 2010 (2 Days Ago)

It began with like a square of light at Waterloo Station at around 3:04 pm
And I had to wait half an hour for the train,
I had to sit down because my leg was aching at the hip
And someone had dropped an ice cream on the ground near my foot,

I felt warm in my hoody with the heat waving down, magnified thru the perspex
And kind of stupid because I'd had a haircut, but no one in the station saw me
With my long-ish hair anyway, so to them I looked normal,
So I calmed down, and looked at the clock, it was 3:10pm
When Sara texted me she'd meet me at the Contemporary Urban Centre
And not at Dean Walters Building on Upper Duke Street like I wanted,
And I was running late, and I wouldn't get there until quarter to
And James was going to read out a chapter of his novel
And I didn't want to be late, and I didn't know what room it was in,

The train was packed full like hot vegetables in a pan
And I kept looking at my reflection when we went thru a tunnel
To check my shorter-than-usual hair,

I'd heard there was a delay on the Ormskirk train,
This didn't affect me,
I got off and walked fast, forgetting to go the shop
To buy some chewing gum and water,
I'd not eaten a thing, except one finger of a Twix
An hour before,

It was about 3:42pm when I reached Chinatown,
Sara said:
“I was gonna go in
but will wait outside
if you like,”

And I said:
“Yeh wait
for me,”

The writing competition was at 4 o'clock,
The part between my foot an shin was aching
So badly is felt like they were burning,
But I kept walking, breathing heavily,
And I got to CUC and saw some graffitti artists
Spraying a wall, and I saw a dozen parked cars
In which I saw my reflection and my strange head,
And two or three people came out for a smoke and looked at me
As if they thought something of my haircut,
And then I saw James, who was late because of the Ormskirk train
And I asked him why he was late
And he said because of the Ormskirk Train and his dad drove him there
So he went in and I followed because Sara hadn't shown up yet,
James went to look for the others and find out where to go,
I saw Christof but he didn't say much to me,
Although all I said to him was:
“Hi, I didn't know you were coming to this,
I'm just going to get a coffee,”

I didn't know who was in the queue, so I just stood there,
Then I saw Sara come in and I waved to her,
She said she saw me come in with James,
I asked her if she wanted a coffee,
She said no,

Steve appeared behind me,
He said something about going to a different building
On a different street, thinking it was this one,
Then he went away, following James,
And I still hadn't been served, and I wanted some coffee
Because I hadn't eaten, and I needed at least something in my stomach
Not food,
Sara was talking, her chin resting on the counter since she's so small,
I said forget the coffee, we should go,
We'd be late, and there was a girl who'd been waiting for longer,
Who wasn't getting served,

We saw Steve in the lift as the doors closed,
We jumped in the next one,
The room was the same room I'd been in the day before
When I saw Richard Milward and Joe Dunthorne
Reading from their books, and I'd got Joe Dunthorne
To sign his book of poems for me, of which I'd already memorised
The poem Worship, I wanted to tell someone, but I forgot,

It was crowded, but I found two chairs to the left,
The others where to the right, I waved to Hazel and Sarah,
I saw James and Christof, I looked around for Robyn but couldn't
See her, but I knew she was working there,

Sara sat down and said something I can't remember,
I couldn't stop thinking about not having coffee,
Then the readings began, and Jim arrived, and the man read the names
And I couldn't count how many there would be
Before I could get out
Because I heard James's name and then Sarah's name and Hazel's name,

I saw Robyn standing at the back and waved to her,

When James read Aracnophobia he looked nervous and kept
Pushing his hair back with his hand, so he looked more cool
Than scared, the writing was good, a woman in front of me
Liked it, he answered the questions well, he was the favourite to win
Like a horse at the races,

I found the bar – which James and I couldn't find the day before –
If I wasn't going to drink coffee I was going to drink beer,
I sat with Sara, Steve, Sarah and Hazel,
Sara was talking to me about something,

I was drinking Hoegaarden,
I wasn't hungry, I was impressed with the bar,
I was impressed with James, I could smell beer and Sara's gin
And I kept looking behind me for Robyn and James,
I was fidgeting, not jittery, I wasn't listening to anyone
As they spoke to me, I couldn't hear myself,
Sara said something about a music pub quiz she went to
The question was songs with colours in,
I said: “Yellow Submarine,
that's all I got,”

I was glad when it was time to go because I felt like I was being stared at
And I walked with Sara to the lift, wondering where James and Robyn where,
As Robyn appeared behind me, and I said:
“Hi, Where'd
you go?”

I can't remember what she said,
She was wearing either her pink or brown coat,
She'd been for a smoke, about ten of us got in the lift,
Robyn was at the back, I stood by James who was drinking
Hot Chocolate, which Robyn found funny,
I still had my beer in my hand, I didn't know where Sara was,

We stood in the hallway outside the lift,
I stood with James, Steve and Jim,
I found Sara, she must have been behind me,
We knew James would win it,
Robyn called me from behind and – sitting down –
Introduced me to someone called Roy, I think,
I said: “Hi, Roy,”
Then heard her say the other's names,

Back inside, and James won first place,
We clapped really hard, Robyn screamed, James looked nervous
I hugged him, then we went to the bar,
Sara and I bought him drinks, I bought myself drinks,
I bought some more drinks, I got drunk, I saw Jim manically handle
His beer, James called him nuts, Hazel was talking about
Jackie Kay for some reason, and I described a book
She'd already read, Robyn came and sat on the arm on my chair,
I was looking at the stamps on her hand, then she was gone,
I saw her leave but no one else, it was James, Sara and Myself,
We took some food from a Christening party,
A man at the bar asked if I'd had Hoegaarden before, I said I had,
He said I'd be on the floor soon, I said I could handle it,
He said wait til I breathed in the fresh air,
The three of us went to The Pilgrim,
We sat in the outside bit, I was talking nonsense
About the Lord of the Rings and Doctor Who,
Jimi Hendrix and Slash, The Breakfast Club,
And James mentioned Buffalo 66,

James left and said me and Sara would stay,
He hugged us and went, we sat inside,
I can't remember what I was drinking, it might have been Cains Pilsner,
I remember feeling funny when I said the word “Pilsner,”
Because I never use the word “Pilsner,”
It's just another word for beer,

We sat at the end of the long table in the middle,
We sat opposite each other, I can't remember what she was saying,
I didn't say much, I think I just laughed with bleary eyes,
They called time and we had to leave, so we left,
I had to catch my train, I had work in the morning,
She was still talking when we walked down the road,
I would have said more, but I couldn't hear a word she was saying,
I couldn't hear anything, the whole world became a vaccuum,
I said goodbye with a hug at the station and had to wait 17 minutes
For the train, I got home,
I found my roast dinner in the oven,
I ate it in bed, it would give me indigestion in the morning,
I wanted to carry on drinking because my thoughts
Were coming back, I was beginning to hear them,
I texted my brother because Ronnie James Dio had died,
And I wanted to bother somebody,
I fell asleep at around 1am, but I should have texted the girls
To see if they were alright.

In the Event of Kidnap

In the event of kidnap
The air solidifies and cracks
Gets boils on their backs
Stares at stars til they turn black
Revolves around moon, hits with a smack
Against its face –

In the event of theft
The diamond-hard head shines and breaks
Moves with clarity and knows what it takes
Lets eyes open til it wakes
And sees a hand move and breaks
Against its face –

In the event of freud
The paperwork done and posted
And the fear in which is hosted
For so much money to be boasted
And glasses lifted and toasted
Against its face –

In the event of murder
The drunken leans forward to smell
The evil rising and swell
And knowing he's going straight to hell
And the buried one is going as well
– It's written against his face.

Free Hire in Reverse

This room when I touch it keeps its fire
As they speak from tongue-coloured mouths
And over my arms I hung her,
Bit down the way a dog chews a bone,
And moves smouldering hands up to smouldering face
Forces a sentence of laughter and spit –

Girl stands behind gleaming red throws
Arms against black woven sky
Armed with thick stolen lips
Drags upon ghost when I touch
Feels like a million people vanish
And forces thousands of heart attacks

Face of lead or the angry smile of the girl you love
A rat painted on the wall
Stands like devils on our backs
With that hot soap smell
The skin of my hand the colour
Of the skin on her belly

Feels miserable I imagine lying on the floor
And her eyes in her head still
On me like my own eyes on me
And between me and the window
Sits next to me, chin in hand
I cannot be here at this place need to leave

But refuses with perfected laughter
Higher up in my chair pushes people away
And the man speaks to the lady
And she replies with less anger
And when she looks at him
I see her eyes and nothing else

Lying down forever in the foetus-shapes
In front of her – regressed to lies and insults –
Looks at my hand arms reach out to her and
Nothing but air in fist-shaped room
And she talks to me all night
And then she talks to me all night.

Untitled Poem 18/4/10

Betray me please why

Should I stay?

I enter the cold to follow
And I follow your mouth
Out calling to follow
So short the soft ache

Is beautiful.

What happened to that girl?
She got married, didn't she –

And I died,

I got married myself,

And I lied.

I yell into the grass
Where I lay,
And I bite you hard on the arm–
What's that noise?

It's you, it's you

Being eaten alive by the world.

Fever-hot burning a tongue
And throats she came
Along the road carrying
Two bags & and ancient earring

Then butterflies who scream at
Spiders who scream at
Each other –

The mysterious clock

Is an old woman banging.

She only believes I
Can protect her. This is good
For her.

Death of a Clown [final version]

The Death of a Clown


I leave the dressing room door open as I walk in. The make-up is hot and heavy on my face. I sit in the chair, feeling the weight of my body pull downwards and I smell a funny smell in the air. It could be the mop in the corner, or the greasy paints and make-up in front of me, but all the smells are mixed together. In the mirror, a clown's face is looking at me – ugly as a germ, magnified a hundred times under a microscope; an old, crawling thing; blue, white, and red.

The single light bulb hanging from the ceiling burns thin streaks of

light into the room allowing me to see where the thick mascara has bled, leaving inky crow's feet near my eyes. My dry, ridiculous mouth, stuck in a permanent grin, is thick over the lips with the powdery consistency of eye-liner. I lick my lips, tasting the greasy paint. I roll it on my tongue, it tastes a bit like wax crayon. The metallic smell is getting up my nose and begins to sting and gives me a headache. My tired eyes are kept open with painted-on plus signs near my corpse-white cheeks. Green hair shoots out past my ears. It's my real hair, I don't wear wigs. All this make-up makes me feel heavy. But my reflection seems to like it a lot with that mad, crooked smile.

A cold draft blows in through the open door and a small fly buzzes in.

Its sexless, compound eyes watching me. It says:
– First she took off her clothes, undressing with the slow precision of a machinist, dropping a thin layer of fabric showing muscle discharge and afferent, the articles of clothing like shedded skin … Always drinking … Always drinking … Lips no use for kissing; tongue like a rat's tail …

The fly buzzes around my head and dips in and out near my ears, the

sound rising and falling as it does. It's small and sickening. It's a little black dot moving from side to side like the pupil of an eye. I look back to the mirror and I see myself, cleaning off the make-up. I apply Pond's Cold Cream with my hands and rub it in an upward motion over my cheeks, then in circular patterns, then under my nose and over the thin skin of my eyelids. I rub it over my forehead, moving towards the centre of the glabella between my eyebrows. It's freezing to touch at first, but then it goes cool and my skin becomes sensitive so I can feel the draft coming in through the open door behind me. The colours melt. I wipe the cream off with a tissue, and now it looks like my eyes have burst as black goo runs down my cheeks. My lips are swollen. The white skin wipes off. I am a ghost. I look terrible. My eyes are bloodshot as if I have been strangled and my head is pounding, still, from that horrible metallic smell. My stomach contracts. My hands clench and relax. I feel sick. I want to be sick. Am I wearing clothes? Yes, I'm wearing clothes. The door is open. There is no one there.

– You look ridiculous … Always drinking … Slow muscles, the clothing,

the skin … You look as bad as her … Covered in paint, poor old thing … Creaks and moans, struck down with sick grins, the moaning catches a glimpse in the mirror, undressing with slow precision, ruined her body … Stuck, you go back and forth … Wipe your face, you look terrible …

Now my make-up is ruined and I look ridiculous. More ridiculous than I

did before. I'm so tired and I just want to sleep but I can't with that fly buzzing over my head. Why are you so attracted to me? I say to the fly. I turn and my spine cracks and there is the odd moment when my spine makes the only sound in the world, like gunfire behind a pillowcase. I lean forward and bang my fists against the dressing table and the lamp jingles and everything rattles, the rubber chicken squeaks, one juggling ball rolls and drops to the floor with a muted thud as the fly flies around the room watching my every thought.

– You look terrible. You look ridiculous. Put that make-up back on …

Always drinking … Covered in paint … Stupid thing, used up … Struck down with a knife, with slow precision of a … Poor thing, she was, her sick grin, no clothes, painted face, you look … Muscles, the clothing, the skin …
Why should I put the face back on? I say.
Because you look terrible without it. So did she, that's why she wore it. Haha!

In front of me are a number of face paints and some make-up with

coloured thumb prints on the lids. I apply a red paint over my mouth, which feels so thick it's like lard, and now my lips are thick and swollen again like a woman's. The red has gotten onto my teeth. The carmine hook I call a mouth is stuck in a permanent grin. I am tired. I … I am … this flesh-thing sits … face like some dead creature … face white … face like melted oils, morphed into an animal … I can smell the danger like a dog.

I look into the mirror. I hate having to clean my face, and I haven't

even finished cleaning it; pale with red lips, I look like a dead woman. The fly buzzes around my head. It says:

– You are old and used up, just like she was, poor old slut … poor and

old … I know you're thinking of her, it's all over your face …

– I hate you. I was never old.
– Poor old thing … Hate was such a strong word, throwing them back and

forth, back and forth … Your body is old, it creaks and moans, she was a scorpion's tail stuck suddenly like a knife, but it doesn't hurt … Aren't you going to clean your face? You look funny … She looks funny … Poor old thing she was, stuck suddenly, but it didn't hurt though, it didn't hurt … It didn't hurt, not really, not like you did … Old thing … Sick grin, the slut, smells of oil … Throws the knives back and forth … Your mouth looks funny, she said, stuck in a permanent grin …

I wave my hand through the air to shoo it away and I catch a glimpse of

my half-done face in the mirror and I feel like laughing at it. I should clean the rest of it off to get ready for the next performance in the theatre, but I see this sick grin over my lips beneath low hung eyes caked in blue powder, and I don't want to lose it.

– Pay attention to me … Why aren't you paying attention to me?

– No, go away. You get on my nerves. I say. I think I'm smiling.

– Stuck suddenly like a knife, the scorpion throws strong words … She creaks

and moans … Poor old thing, moaning, back and forth, back and forth … It didn't hurt though, she looked ridiculous with that sick grin, hardly one to clean her face … Such strong words, weren't they? … Poor old thing, poor slut … Put that make-up back on! Haha! Makes me think of her, old thing, dead as a body …

– Can't you stop that?

– From the left ear to the right, through that old shilling you call a brain

… Makes me laugh sometimes, when I think back … Back and forth … Throwing those old strong words … It didn't hurt, though … Remember her, do you? She would draw attention in the same way you would empty rooms … You still do empty rooms … Stings suddenly, stuck like a knife, forth and back, she throws them, hardly ever wiping clean her face … cleaning, cleaning, but still the flies, like me, flies round you … She catches a glimpse in the mirror … The poor old ridiculous thing …

I dab the Cold Cream over my face again, rubbing over the lips and then

wiping the paint off with a tissue. I toss the scrunched up tissue aside and wipe my face with facial wipes, making weird, contorted mouth shapes as I do. My skin is slightly pink now, but quite soft. I might get a rash on my cheeks if I don't moisturise, but I don't feel like doing that right now. The pores in my skin still feel clogged up. So, that's what I look like. I'd forgotten what I looked like. I'm looking in the mirror and my eye sockets are huge black dents with green circlets inside. It's this skeletal figure with a cubic jawbone looking at me, the faded red smile almost entirely gone. I'm hardly recognisable at all without the make-up. I feel the cooling effects of the cream on my skin and smell a mixture of antiseptic and grease. There is that metallic smell, too, coming from either the metal aerosol cans or the pigments in the colours, the vapour sucking up all the air in the room; my head is so painful now, making me wince. I don't have any painkillers, just make-up and paint and more greasy colours all over the table. Used tissues with black and red smudges, and empty spray cans mixed in with the full ones.

The fly buzzes around my head, almost hitting me. Once it hits the

mirror, making a papery sound and it almost falls down, but it carries on flying, dipping up and down, getting so close to me I can almost smell it. I am still sitting on the chair. I am smiling. I say:

– Why don't you just go away and leave me alone?

– Left ear to the right ear, back and forth … She would draw attention, but not anymore … She would creak and moan, but not anymore … She used to sting, not anymore …

– She did this, she did that. Is there anything she didn't do?

– She used to wear that make-up like you do, remember? That would draw attention, not like you … Poor old thing … Stuck a knife in her, that happened, didn't it?

– Poor damn thing … Damn thing, damn thing, I say.

– Stuck suddenly, you didn't think it could happen, did you? Stings like a

knife … She moans, she moves back and forth, back and forth. God, don't you love it?

– No. Of course not. Shut up, now, I don't want to hear anymore of it.

– But she's not here anymore.

– I didn't do it.

In this little dressing room, I feel a chill on my naked face, and I realise

I have taken off my face. I feel so bare. I turn my head away from my reflection at last, and stand up. She protrudes like fingers when I reach the door, and there is the icy breath of the draft on my damp face. It makes me shiver. I begin to smile a lot wider and a small giggle hiccups out of my throat. The fly buzzes over my head and I start laughing, I can't help it. It's almost like a seizure in my diaphragm and it hurts; the sound of a horrible mechanical thing as I think Two clowns walk into a bar and I burst into a fit of laughter, holding onto my stomach. The fly watches me and I can't stop laughing. I knock over a bottle of moisturising lotion and the rubber chicken and I laugh so hard I feel the blood pound in my forehead. My stomach begins to cramp. I can hear the buzzing above me and I just can't stop laughing. I smell the medicinal smell of soap and creams and a metallic smell and the laughter is coming out of me like vomit.

– What's so funny? It says.

– We're just clowns. That's what's funny.

But the fly doesn't laugh, it has no sense of humour. I take in a huge

breath and let out a long, relieving sigh, still grinning, knowing she won't be coming back. What's funny is that I'm still dressed as a clown with my baggy pants and suspenders. I still have green hair, too. There's no escaping it. I think I'm always going to be a clown whether I wipe it all off or not, and I find this hilarious. But what's really funny is that she's still here, on the floor, where she died. The blood is still warm on her arms, half-congealed over the floor and her baggy pants. There is a fly buzzing round her smell. Her rainbow-coloured hair hanging off with her head hung down. I realise the noise I must be making down the corridor when I begin to laugh again, and I hear the manic echo of my voice, going on and on. The fly leaves and there is silence. I close the door shut.

German songs - Til Lindemann

Eins für mich
Eins für dich
Gibt es nicht Für mich

Ich bin so verliebt
Ich bin in mich verliebt

*Translates from the German:

One for me
One for you
Does not exist for me

I am so in love
I fell for myself


This is taken from Til Lindemann, otherwise known as the singer of German Industrial Rock band Rammstein. He is a poet himself, and his songs translated to English are actually quite amazing. I like that heavy metal music anyway, but it's hard to recognise poetry like that with the type of music Rammstein make. Which is what, I suppose, Lindemann intended.

That excerpt was taken from Zwitter, which is translated as Hermaphrodite. The word Zweigeschlecht appears, too, in the song, to describe the self as one, rather than the actual noun. But the weird subject is so interesting, it talks about a man and a woman becoming one, and therefore falling in love with one's self, as his lover is now a part of him.

I'm just interested in languages, I guess. But when you get poems with such weird and original images as that, that's when you've created something.

Excerpt from 'Less Than Zero'

[About Elivis Costello]... "'Like him? Did you see him at the Amphitheater? Yeah? He's in Europe now, I guess. At least that's what I heard on MTV. Like the last album?'

'What about me?'

'What about you?'

'What about me?'

'You'll be fine.'

'I don't know,' I say. 'I don't think so.'

'Let's talk about something else.'

'What about me?' I scream, choking.

'Come on, Clay,' the psychiatrist says. 'Don't be so ... mundane.'

Bret Easton Ellis

Less Than Zero p. 112

Edie Sedgwick (faces)

Fur Elise - Les Tourtre

I'm sitting on my bed with my laptop on my lap, not feeling the radiated warmth because the window is open and I'm bare-footed. My stomach feels heavy from the pill I took a while ago, I think I'm anemic and de-hydrated. I should cut down on the caffine. I'm listening to Vanilla Fudge, I love the psychadelic rock music - as well as loving most types of music. I feel a bit sick. I'll be out tonight to see a band called Dirty Tricks, the guitarist is my friends' brother, and I suppose I'll end up really drunk again. Fur Elise has come on. Vanilla Fudge's take on Beethoven. I went last week and I was so out of it, I used the girls toilets and got lost and got my friends drink order wrong twice. It was funny though.

Sunshine of your Love comes on, I think it's Cream but my laptop says it's still Vanilla Fudge. Doesn't sound like a cover. I'm writing a story called The pigeons (Les Tourtre), which I'm going to submit to uni next week to be workshopped. Don't know how they'll take it. It has a French character. I might post it on here soon.

I think it is VF doing a cover of Cream. I put my glasses on, I'm supposed to wear them for reading but I never do. I've started wearing my glasses to read Ulysses. It's killing me. I love it, though. I'm still feelin a bit sick, but I'm hungry too. I don't eat very well, must be why I get like this. I wrote a poem in about a minute. It'sm rubbish, but it's something. Inspired by what I can remember from Ted Berrigan.


Waited 3 days
Took a pill
Caffine ran thru me
Spirit of things
Ran thru me;

Next day

Feelin' sick,
Eats sugar and
Drinks coffee,
Takes no more pills -

Nighttime,

I see into future,
I am either drunk
Or writing poems.

Untitled Poem 7/3/10

You, little shadow, over there
In the jungle you pray you are asleep,
Unnatural as a crucifix,
The marriage of saying 'Yes'
Over and over again;

Gliding with ancient clarity

Reveals us Severin infuriated!
The most public face over
Other faces facing;

Phlegm of voice spat

And continues to reveal –
I proceed to be a novice,
Aiming little shadow at the breakfast table;

Severin below her (the most purist

Leader of Maidens), wants her dead –
But bound and gagged – O, enemy!

Softly, in the dusk, I do not hear,
Softly, in the dusk, a woman ...

Tourtre and Fright

The Old French for Passenger Pidgeon was Tourtre. I find this interesting because the bird is now extinct. North America also had a word sounding similar, Tourte. Weird the the English word torture sounds similar, given to this exstinct bird.

The last Passenger Pigeon was called 'Martha.' Poor girl.


I did my talk on Beckett and it went well, I think, although I came very close to stage-fright. I get stage fright, and this was talking to a small group of people, my friends, and I was so nervous I felt like running out. But I did it, and my mouth was so dry you could hear it. I think everyone is fed up with me talking about Beckett now.

Skull on a Skeleton, Van Gogh

I won't do Between the Buttons, I will talk about Beckett. It's easier to present literature than music if it all comes down to literature anyway.

I've done no work on it. Except find some short films. I need a new job, I'm so tired, been up since 5am. I've spent ages on that small Hemingway book. I keep forgetting to write by hand.

I will slowly die and I'll look like him:

On Writng Short Stories

The process of writing short stories comes as one whole thing. I could spend either an hour or a of days and I'd always write something quite short, like 2 pages long, i.e. “short” story. I've been working on adapting a style of writing since 2005. But I only began to see this style around 2007 when I was being influenced by Hemingway, Beckett and Pinter. And using cryptic metaphors I'd find in Sylvia Plath's poetry and the dead-pan tone in Bukowski.

These stories were usually two-character narratives (which began as third person, but now mostly first). The characters play off one another and it is written like a play, but written in prose. The dialogue works its way to tell the story, such as a conversation between 2 people, of which is no one's business but theirs. They don't tell the reader enough on purpose. I hardly give characters names for this reason, and for the reason of identity. Saying this, the identity of characters is no ruined, per se, but altered to a sort-of sub-human or different human who have nothing but they lives and themes. And the one they talk to.

Imagine having a conversation with your friend. Why would you tell them your name mid-conversation. You already know each other.

My short stories don't go anywhere, in story and in place. The characters hardly move because they simply talk, and to build around this are these carefully crafted metaphors with the correct narrative that I'm always trying to get right. I like to write in metaphors, it makes the writing much more interesting, but there's always the risk of overdoing it and losing the whole narrative just by not making sense in that one line. It's like when I read Virginia Woolf and I began to write in these difficult lines that only made sense in my head at first and I couldn't justify them when I had to, so that made for a lot of deletions and edits. “The feathers of parakeets-their harsh cries-sharp blades of palm trees-green, too,” (Woolf, Blue & Green). The words cluttered my narrative and I never had a story, I was just trying to impress with poetic language into prose. Like the harsh, confessional words of Plath, I wanted more than I could handle, and I felt like I was copying – which I'd written in an essay describing the origins of my style at first originated through a type of stealing. (But, of course, all artists steal).

So the first instance where I found the style I wanted, I saw in Hemingway's Hill Like White Elephants in which two people talk to each other about an abortion, which is never stated anywhere in the story except for the word “operation.” Everything else is hinted at. However, the lack of Hemingway on my bookshelf meant that I couldn't possibly be so much inspired by him having read one short story out of so many stories and novels from such a great writer. (I've now taken to The Old Man and the Sea).

I've been told I write like Beckett. Or, at least, I try to. I hadn't read much of Beckett, except Malone Dies which is a novel, so how can you differentiate what is good and what is not from reading the prose of a playwright? I picked up some short radio plays to read, but it wasn't enough, so my tutor told me to watch them. I saw the short films of Not I, Play, and Eh Joe. The latter being the best I've seen. One man sitting alone and hearing a female voice in his head drive him mad. It was exactly what I wanted to write, and I loved it, too bad Beckett got there first. But with my story The Death of a Clown I knew, somewhat, of how to go about writing a story without a story.

The themes just come. Sometimes I'd already have an idea, but I never, or hardly ever, make a plan of the story. Stephen King once said that you can't plan a story, you just have to dig it up from your mind. After I've written the short piece, I'd read over it and see the themes, mostly hidden, and sometimes they'll already be repeated. I'd go over it and repeat certain images on purpose to drill in to the reader's skull what I'm trying to say, without saying it. After that, I finish. The endings of these stories are not endings at all, but just a sigh. My Scottish tutor from my University in Lancashire liked my writing, but hated how I overdid it all, and he's the one who told me to focus my writing. He said I was writing vignettes, little scenes that weren't stories at all, but scenes of stories, and that was my style. And the size was perfect to go with it.

Between the Buttons - between Bob Dylan - and Beckett

How do I show this album is better than Bob Dylan? I can't. But out of all the music I listen to, and I listen to a lot of music, it's the only album I like above Dylan. I'm a huge Dylan fan, I like Bringing it all Back Home, blonde on Blonde, John Wesley Harding, The Times They are A Changin', and Bob Dylan LP. But I have to talk about something for a presentation in uni next wed, and I want to talk about music and it's effect upon my writing, but I can't stick to one thing with Dylan. So I thought I'd choose the only album that I'd consider calling my favourite album. And that's Between the Buttons by the Rolling Stones.

I can't talk in front of people. I hate it. I'm just not a speaker. I have to do it, tho, as compulsary for my course. I'm not looking forward to it.

My short story, Death of a Clown, was destroyed. Criticised to death. I hated it. I actually had high hopes for it, more than the last one I submitted. Seems that whenever I write something that I like, it's not good enough. I'm not going to write shit just so that it's accepted.

But I know how to fix it. I've been reading Beckett and Pinter like I was supposed to. I don't think I'll re-write it as a play, but there'll be more focus to it. I remember my tutor in my last University told me my main problem was lack of focus, and I think I let myself down by reverting back into that lack of focus again. Don't know why I did that.

If you read Beckett:
Eh Joe
play

thought is sin, realisation is pity

Wrong Day - Lots of Books - And Nemo

I'm passed it, but still in Limbo. In Purgatory? I still don't sleep very well and I'll wake up and think I'm scared of the dark. I'm not scared of the dark, but I wake up believing that I am. Weird, no? I'm more afraid of this house in the morning; in the early hours, like 5am. I get paranoid and I heard a guitar fall against the wall and I jumped, I saw a pile of clothes on a chair and I jumped even higher.

I get up at 5am for work, but I've had some days off. I thought I was going back in today since I remember telling them I'll have 11th - 16th, but they'd given me the whole week, so I'm off 'til monday. Doesn't really account for getting up so early and travelling 30min train journey in zero degrees. But they said I could work that day if I wanted, but I said nevermind, I'll go home. And I did. Off 'til monday.

In uni today and they'll workshop my Death of a Clown story. I'm annoyed at some people, esp. people who don't reply when I'm trying to visit them. It's less my fault for not visiting after so long when I don't get replies.

I must remember to teach myself French and German. And some Norwegian. I only know what I write as translations in poems.

My room is filled with so many books. It's funny coz I never read at all in school. I have a Hemingway on top of a Pinter on top of poems on top of an anthology on top of papers on top of my printer. There is a pencil in the anthology, I think it's either bookmarking Lewis Caroll or Dylan Thomas. Next to that is a small pile of old videoes, mostly old Disney movies, I watched Sword in the Stone yesterday or the day before. There is a tall speaker, which I hardly use because I have music on my laptop, and I can't be bothered plugging it in, but on top is my work clothes. Under the clothes I think are 3 dvd's: Drag me to Hell, Silence of the Lambs, and Finding Nemo.

Another Unfinished Piece of Fiction

I waited for 1000 years, I counted precisely 1000 years, 3 months, and 6 days. And now I have lost my mind, but I'm still alive as you are alive in your skin. And I'm trying to be mental, my face stretched open my eyes, pulled skin open and explode – pieces of me disperse into the air. I feel like a nail presses against my skull into a vein, a nerve, the brain himself.

She is being touched. I look at where she is being touched. She laughs and shivels up, looking at me. Where am I? Holding back a laugh, face touches his face – she wants to move away. Her hair reaches down to her breasts, my eyes like a robot's eyes scan her face, throat, armpit, scar on arm, and the breasts I dream next to.

The thing is about her is what she never says. I'm looking into her eyes, these light brown walnut-coloured eyes; her eyes say to me: Come and get me if you want me. Get this fool away from me. Go on. Come get me.

Satan is in the background. The red skin is shiny. Black horns protrude from emaciated head of reptilian demeanour. She begins to grin and she has no soul. She kisses him and imagines the rest of the night. I try not to think too far ahead. Her fox-like mouth laughs at me now. Why aren't you on me?

She is in love with her body. So am I – hers no mine. I can see how her hair touches naked shoulder and spikes of wool. Eyes closed, she screams the song. One strap has falled carelessly off her left shoulder. She thinks she looks beautiful. Too bad for her. With a body like that she could have the entire male population of the country.

And all that ever derides her, the skeleton claws at her back, then the three cans of Carlsberg left untouched on the counter. Buttoned up, she grins and pulls her tongue out, arousing every man in the room; her horns stick up like red arched torsos.

Pancake Philosophy

latent pancake reality / am i a pancake? .. or aren't i? - if pancake is not here yet, surely i should be a pancake...

Short Piece of Fiction - Unfinished

She is on my mind like a murderer. Stinging in the back as if the sting of a wasp sting my back, piercing the nerves with nails and teeth, biting and tearing away at me, clawing at my body with her claws of the devil. What is on my mind doesn't matter as I am singing a song in front of about a hundred people and I don't even know what I'm singing. Am I singing? I have to check, to see if there is a sound emitting from my mouth. There is. I feel it more than hear it. But I'm using it, my mouth is working on it's own. Oh my God, my mouth is working on its own. What if it stops halfway? I don't know where I'm up to.

I'm singing a Lead Belly song, I will soon begin to scream like Kurt Cobain did when he covered the song in 1993, a year before his death, and when I scream it will feel like this is a year before my death. As if it's a death scream, a warning before I die. One year to go.

She is on my mind and she shouldn't be, hanging on like someone feining suicide, and I am pretending, also, that I can sing. I can't sing. I'm using this weird falsetto that scratches from my throat so its like I'm singing with this weird anger in me. I can't sing. I have a singing voice. But I can't sing. My voice goes low and high. My eyes burst with salt tears as the force of the song pushes through the valve of my throat. She is sitting directly in front of me, leaning forward so that her back doesn't rest on the solid wooden back. She has her legs crossed. Her body is in a dress. Her body is slim and petite. Her legs make her look taller than she really is.

The Death of a Clown

My make-up is dry and it clags on my chin
I'm drowning my sorrows in whiskey and gin.

The Kinks

I leave the door open. My make-up is dry on my skin. It feels hard and tight like fish scales, and I can't find anything to clean my face with so I just sit down in a chair, facing the mirror, and wait. I see half of my reflection; I'm sitting a little off-centre. My mascara had bled a little and it looks like a crow has stood on my face. I lick my red lips tasting the wax. I am like a cartoon, as if someone has drawn me, my mouth is ridiculous. It's a massive thing over my teeth. My eyes are big; everything seems so big, as if it's all been magnified a hundred times.

I see fleshy light bulbs burning thin streaks of yellow light into the room. The lights around my mirror make me want to flutter my eyelashes at myself, and I do, but it doesn't look pretty. I look like a child has found it's mother's make-up and applied thick coats of lipstick over and over again and slapped layers of deathly-white foundation over the skin. I feel heavy.

There is an old sense of madness with this face, which I'm wearing on my skin for everyone to see. There is a cold draft coming in through the door, there is probably a face at the door, its sexless eyes watching like the compound eyes of a fly. I watch it change into a fly – I watch you change into a fly – you first take off your clothes, undressing with the slow precision of a toolmaker, dropping your thin layer of clothes showing muscle discharge and afferent in relation to slow moving articles of clothing like shedded skin. And you fly away back out of the door, with a silent buzz that rings in my ears as if it was a scream.

The door is open and I am freezing cold, I can't see or hear anyone, I can still hear the tiny buzzing of a fly, I sometimes see it, or I think I see it, flying around the room. I am sitting down. I am drinking gin. I am waiting for something, I can't remember what it is, but here I am, waiting. My make-up is solid on my face, my skin feels like it's made out of rock, I am made out of rock, it is why I am not moving. A fly comes in and buzzes around my head, a thin, sickening buzz screeching in my ear.

I find a cloth and wet it under the tap at the small sink in the room. I see myself in the mirror again, cleaning my make-up off like a woman. It melts. It looks like my eyes have burst and secrete black goo down my cheeks. My lips are swollen. The white skin wipes off with cold cream. I am so white I am a ghost. I can't finish. My arms are heavy and I feel so lazy that I could just sit back and sleep. I look terrible. I look ridiculous. My eyes are bloodshot as if I have been strangled, savagely cut in half, one part English one part alien. My stomach contracts. My hands seize and relax. Seize and relax. I feel … sick. I want to be sick. Am I wearing clothes? Yes, I'm wearing clothes. The door is open. There is no one there.

My make-up is ruined, I look ridiculous. I look terrible. I'm tired. I doubt I am here. There is no one here. There is a fly here, somewhere, it is you. Why are you so attracted to me? Like a magnet. There seems to be a strange amount of magnetism in madness. I turn and my spine cracks and there is the odd moment when my spine makes the only sound in the world, and it's like gunfire behind a pillowcase. I lean forward and bang my fists against the dressing table and the light bulbs jingle and everything rattles and the rubber chicken squeaks and one juggling ball rolls and drops to the floor with a muted thud as the fly flies around the room watching my every thought. I find the lipstick and apply a new coat of red over my lips until they are thick and swollen again, like a woman's, but I can't finish the paint without someone to help me. Where is the help? I need my paint. My mouth is distorted like seeing a blood clot in a broken mirror. I am tired. I … I am … this flesh-thing sits … face like some dead creature … face white … face like melted oils, morphed into animals and various creatures … I can smell the danger like a dog.

My clown make-up is cold on my face, my eyes see my face in mirror. The light bulbs light up my face as if I am an actress. I am a boy. A room like flesh, and horrible, terrible things – when boy asks what kills the eyes you reply …

My face … my make-up gives me an enormous sense of power, as if I am larger than I really am, magnified a hundred times under a microscope – an old, crawling thing, blue and white and red, and black, and waxy and old … my face sees my face in the mirror.

My body is old and dishevelled, it creaks and moans, she is like the scorpion's stinging tail stuck suddenly like a knife, and it doesn't hurt, more like it burns and there is a fly buzzing around me, I hear it, but there is no fly, the room is empty, I don't hear a thing. I am sitting on a chair. Something truly big comes in the room like a shadow. I am forced to stand up and led away. I smile. I do a dance. I attach my big red nose that squeaks when you squeeze it. Although I am innocent in all of this, away from my reflection at last, my other half is like the devil, and she protrudes like fingers and when I reach the door, feeling the cold draft on my damp face, like icy breath, you almost kill me, but by the time I feel the expected nothing, I fall against the door. It's like being another person, don't you understand I'm not actually you? You are laughing … you are laughing … I am laughing … the gin has kicked in … I fall against the door and spoil my make-up, I fall against the door and nobody needs clowns anymore. I fall against the door as it slams shut.

© Michael Holloway

Favourite translation Norwegian

Mann stiljaktar annen kvinne

translates roughly "Man stalks another woman" or "Man stalks other woman"

Untitled Poem in stanzas

Be not like me
I am not like you,
I am not I nor you
I do not like you;

Kill not I
I will not kill you,
I will not harm or hurt you,
I'm not going to kill you.

Love not I,
I will not love you
I will not love you,
I am not going to love you.

Hate not I
I will not hate you,
I will not hurt or harm you,
I am not going to hate you.

Be not like me
I am not like you,
I am not I nor you
I do not like you.


Wrote this just now in about 5 or 10 minutes after reading a poem called Be Not Too Hard by Christopher Logue. It's good because I don't usually write this concise, not anymore anyway.

Drawing

Nightmares - Mad Mary - and Mad Kids

It lies on human chest and feel heavy pressure on lungs. Throat closes. Skin freezes. Eyes do not open. Looks down on you as you sleep, sees your closes eyes sleeping, your body straight, arms are upward and reveals body, neck and ears to the open air of the room, as it lies on human chest watching.

I'd wake up in the middle of the night and forget what I'd been dreaming of and turn away from the wall and face the rest of the dark room as if there was someone standing there. The door would be jammed shut and you wouldn't be able to see a thing until pressing a button on the phone for a light. I wouldn't be able to sleep. I'd be thinking of people for the rest of the night. Drifting off for a few minutes and waking up again, driving myself mad.

There is a horse's head peeking thru curtains. The floor creaks, but I can't tell if it was in my room or on the landing. I'm telling myself the door is shut, but I'm scaring myself with thinking of apparitions walking thru it. My sister told me she hears creaks in her room. Maybe we're all mad. But I admitted that I was messing around a while ago saying 'Mad Mary' once or twice and telling my sister I was going to say it in the mirror. (I think this is our version of Bloody Mary, Mary Worth, Mary Worthington, Hell Mary) I didn't say it into the mirror. I was beginning to think I'd brought a curse into the house, but I don't really believe in that stuff. I'm just looking for excuses.

Is it Mad Mary? We used to say that in Primary school because there was this ghost story of a woman who died by falling from the old bell tower (not sure if she killed herself or was murdered) and there were stories that this ghost had killed a caretaker or something. Us kids would be scared to walk the corridors alone, since it was a creepy old building. Some said there was a dint in the ground where she fell. Or, apparently, she'd landed on the metal spikes of the fence. The girls' toilets were supposed to be haunted and I think the girls would piss around chanting Mad Mary into the mirror and then run out screaming. Actually, we were quite mad as kids.

This Mad Mary must have merged with Bloody Mary. There are a lot of variations of the story, but one is that after chanting her name, she will kill you, or drive you mad, or haunt you. Or even, after testing courage, she'll reveal a deceased relative. If she doesn't kill you, then she'll haunt you for the rest of your life. Another version is that girls (is it just girls?) chant her name to see their future. A variation of this would be to walk up the stair backwards, in the dark, looking into a hand mirror and you'll either see your future husband or your own death. Which will, ultimately, drive you mad.

It's weird I've ended up talking about this, but I just found a Brazilian folklore called “a loria do banheriro,” which translates as “the blonde in the toilet.” Instead of the mirror, it's a toilet, and she'll reach out and kill you. Maybe that's why the girls ran out screaming from the girls toilets in Prinary School.

We were just kids. But we were so mad.

Grav Domma Vit Aether

Black geometric shadows of houses
And priceless armies of women
Expanding like Lycra begin to sing
While batting eyelashes
Thru a concentration of rainbows;
World stops being soup of death
Becomes old veridian,

Love hung like rubies in a cave,
Upside-down like bats their faces
Odd like pumpkins –

Or as impossible as
A baby whistling in the Arctic.


Poem drafted from earlier one 20/10/09. Title is in adapted Latin meaning something like: heavy (important/serious), woman (girl/mistress), life (way of life), universe (time). I've changed it a lot and the structure now stands like a vase-shape, the first stanza as geometric as the shadows. It shrinks; 7,3,2 in lines. The best image was the baby in the Arctic, which by moving to the end is more poignant. I think it's the best image of impossibility I've thought of. The only line I hate is the 'life stops being soup of death,' because the rhythm is different.



You can see how it's come to be this poem from the older ones:

20/10

Impossible things
Like a baby whistling in the Arctic;
Crucified freaks in pinstripes screaming:
I want to die,
I want to live thru oceans
Of red and purple clouds
Of hot evening sunshine –

Black geometric shadows of houses
And priceless armies of women
Expanding like Lycra begin to sing
While batting eyelashes
Thru a concentration of rainbows;
World stops being soup of death
Becomes old veridian,

Love hung like rubies in a cave,
Upside-down like bats their faces
Odd like pumpkins –
I see above a mossy rock
Or an atom in the dust.


AND, this one 10/8, the earlist version, first written by merging two pieces of writing together, which I probably wasn't going to use. I can't remember, but they might have just been notes or lines or just discarded poems.

When I do not love the world I will be alive
And no one will see me awaken
Barefoot and bare like a bloody newborn
I do believe things are impossible
Like a baby whistling in the Arctic –

To love a world that loves no one
But its self loving another is crazy
Afterwards it was odd to be trained in certain
Ways these freaks in pinstripes crucified
Screaming 'I want to die,'

Meaning 'I want to love,' travelling thru oceans
Of red and purple clouds of hot evening sunshine –
Because what beautiful things
Are so beautiful they are possible –

Above geometric black shadows of houses,
And priceless armies of women expanding
Like Lycra begin to sing while batting
Eyelashes thru a concentration of rainbows

And this world stops being a soup of death
And becomes miles and miles of old veridian,
In you love hung like rubies in a cave,
Upside-down like bats their faces odd like pumpkins –

My heart beats thru its skin
All I am is skin, skeleton and a heart,
I am almost nothing; hot petals fall and burn white,
Forces the bells to recede,

Why am I given back the moments of your stillborn?
And no one but me can see miles above
A rock with moss, or an atom in the dust.

Another Dirty Trick With the Scissors

It subsided. I'm calmer now. I feel silly now, in retrospect, that I acted that way. It's like being dragged into Hell, or having your brain pulled out of your head and you're made to look at it as it's dragged into Hell - with your eyes still attached.
I was lying down all day yesterday after I finished my short story for uni called The Death of a Clown, which I'll post after I've submitted it to the workshop. And I texted my friend - whom I've known for 13 years - and said:

"Im depressed, will you stab me with some scissors?

To which he replied, after a long joke:

"Wat type of scissors?"

It was funny, but I couldn't reply because I had nothing funny to say and I was debating whether to go out in 3 hours, since I'd been invited to see a band in town called Dirty Tricks.
I went. After deciding if I should drink or not, knowing alcohol is a depressant, I got a double whiskey and coke. Twice. Then realising I'd spent £10 on 2 drinks I thought it would be good to stop. But one of the girls had bought the wrong drink, and after tasting it, realised it was the same as mine, so I took it. I didn't get drunk. It was fun and I left early to got the train home. I didn't feel so heavy anymore. Which was weird. I didn't expect that to happen. I thought I would have been down all night and ruined it and got worse. But no. I feel fine.

I have 33 poems collected to be published into a book. I'm thinking of reaching 40-50 poems. Don't know what to call the book.

I have about 10 short stories.

ghost madness

Ghost what am I a ghost am I am I a ghost have a ghost time 13:23 sits cross-legged temperature 4 degrees windows open cold as a ghost with no clothes on naked ghost who writes to ghosts with sick guttural voice and Poseidon mouth moves earth with quick shakes then stops as if earth-shakes never took place beneath him a man without arms woman without a head or that with skin so thick and intaglio-cut with chisel like Greek statue that screams with her bathing in bleach to clean herself in ocean all of mad sorts of madness that cannot sit still and still cannot talk and still cannot talk with a mouth like a ghost who has mouth sown up and pressed fingers against and murders itself and stares and stares and then calling the doctor asks for some pills and doctor says no cannot have them and so Poseidon moves on to alcohol poisoning to get what Poseidon wants and this happens ever so slowly and no one notices but the madness which looks like boredom and distraction the madness looks like boredom like boredom on the skin pulls no bearings that can see the boredom that kills the distraction and vice versa and burns in a horrible clammy atmosphere of hands that sweat over mouths covering up horse-like teeth that eehore and moan and kick backwards against toilet doors and fuck the women who stalk man mannen stalks annen mann and man kills man to get to woman and woman kills woman to kill man and so on and so on and so on and on and on on on and then killing all mersion of misery the car ride back home destroys instinct of life from eyes that are rotten with sleeps staggers home down dark alley avoiding piss-smells and murderers and passes a tree from childhood old tree from years ago stands next to construction site and down the road moaning and growling like a raving lunatic to self says like like shit shit shit that modern life broken soul and even moving house cannot fix and doubts travelling between countries and doubts anything and the doctor says no and inside house makes tea and midnight and cannot sleep and falls to sleep like baby and wakes up every half an hour to think in mad state as room melts burns colours like burnt painting and sees rabbits snarling and eyeless girls sneak up behind him lying in bed he cannot sleep he is haunted and mannen stalk annen mann and kills self to get to sleep and wakes up after half an hour and only half an hour has passed after madness lying in bed and dead relatives such as dad walks thru door and stands there staring at me...

Painting no.5

I painted this some time ago. I used oils paints and emulsion. I stuck down two pices of newspaper of the British and American flags and the words at the bottom. I flicked green and white/cream emulsion from the wooden end of the brushes. I spent a couple of hours on this one and it's the best one out of the others. Ihung it on the wall.