you can't fix it, mister cricket. it's broken and your chirping hurts my ears. but it's empty when you stop. so empty. i wish the stereo still worked.

children

such terrible things, she wept. such terrible things he did. she had the children with her she said. clean, innocuous things. yet she seemed frightened to bare them to the world, so they remained in her shadow, the shadow children. they had seen terror, smelled its rank breath on their tiny faces. but never again.
but she knew why. and the children knew because she did. because the children knew all she knew and felt long before she opened her mouth to tell them. she sometimes wondered how, but the beatings. the beatings took all wonderment out of her. so the children knew - this was the brute fact and she stopped wondering. but not before he took her tongue, teeth and eyes, which he ripped from her body and fed her one cool purple dawn. but he never struck the children. and the children knew and did nothing.
but she knew why.
the devil was in them. and she was patient.
she heard his screams as they flew at him one day. at midday. she heard the thin ripping sounds as their claws tore his skin and dug into his flesh. she heard the dull spatter of the first spurt of blood hit the wall. and she heard their chittering laughter, and it filled her with a fear as deep as her affection for them. for they were hers. they were his too, and for a moment he stood before her, his black wings covering the horizon.

birds

they neither sing
nor flutter their wings
and as she sank
into the grey of their eyes
she wondered if
they'd lost their minds.

fools only

we sold out. of course we did. we sold out long before we sat down like dogs to paw wildly at ergonomic keyboards in our first desperate attempt to sell ourselves.
later we laughed and fed our spirits to the paper shredder. we learnt to compromise.
and we know, in our gentle, emasculated hearts that all the excitement we could ever possibly want from life is to be found inside that artificially cooled cubicle.
yes, only fools want freedom.

only the trees

Before him were
only the trees and
his lunch. Wrapped tightly
in old kitchen paper.
The air was wet and heavy.
And lightning lit the sky
And threw shadows
that drew closer together
taking on a familiar shape.
And it slunk towards him.
This shadow-being.
And fell on his lap.
Its small torso against
his bony chest
like someone he once loved.
He rocked himself gently
back and forth.
And his left arm twitched
across the grass;
his hand closed around
the bundle in front of him.
And squeezed it until
the sludge oozed between his fingers
and dripped from them like love.

excerpts from bram stoker's dracula

When first the Professor's eye had lit upon him, he had been angry at his interruption at such a time, but now, as he took in his stalwart proportions and recognized the strong young manhood which seemed to emanate from him, his eyes gleamed. Without a pause he said to him as he held out his hand...

-----------


I did not see the application and told him so. For reply he reached over and took my ear in his hand and pulled it playfully, as he used long ago to do at lectures, and said, "The good husbandman tell you so then because he knows, but not till then..."


------

Poor fellow! He looked desperately sad and broken. Even his stalwart manhood seemed to have shrunk somewhat under the strain of his much-tried emotions.




perhaps bram unwittingly fancied a young stalwart manhood up his bottom.

her house

You are there. In her house. Among the wet paint smells. There is a mouth on the wall. There are eyes on the floor. They watch you. You close yours and dance as you did before. The eyes shut themselves and you become muddy impressions on their lids. The mouth opens and a tongue unrolls like a rough pink carpet. You step onto it. The tongue quivers under your feet. And disappears, taking you with it. You lose consciousness.

You wake and feel as though you are seeing the world for the first time. You see your mouth. It hangs open, as if in shock.

And you wait for her to come home.