David Hadley's Blog, page 205

Monday Poem: These Battered Landscapes

These Battered Landscapes

Your hands carve shapes in the frosty air
as you describe one more nightmare.
These could be your dreams blown around
like dead leaves by a harsh wind
that respects no sanctuary.

We stand on these bared hillsides
where only defeated grass grows
and look out over landscapes
battered by winds and the falling rain

looking for answers we know
cannot ever be found, and we know too
that those dreams that haunt your nights
will never let us escape from them.

One day we know we must return
to walk those empty corridors again
and open all those doors we left closed.

Tele-Apathy

[One of my all-time favourite books – see link at end]  Well, you know, or perhaps you don't. After all, at this time of day my mind-reading powers get a bit hazy... what with all the coffee I've drunk and reading some of your thoughts, especially the ones about the.... well, I don't need to tell you about that, it is your mind after all.





Even if you don't seem to spend that much time actually in there.



All rather untidy, if you don't mind me saying. All those thoughts piled up all over the place, especially the ones about the... well, you know, left where anyone strolling into you mind could see it.



Usually, people tend to keep thoughts like that somewhere down the back, out of the way, not brazenly out in the front like that.



Not that there is anything wrong with a bit of untidiness here and there. I mean, you go into some minds and they are suspiciously neat, y'know? Too neat. All the thoughts catalogued and filed away, all in their own special little places. A bit like walking into a show home, or a look through one of those house-interior magazines where they are all so neat and tidy you can't help think there is someone hiding in the next room cackling manically and whispering secrets and love songs to their favourite stabbing knife....



Anyway, where was I?



Ah, yes, those thoughts. Do me a favour before the next time you come here and put those thoughts somewhere out of the way... if only just for me.



I don't think I'll ever be able think about pickled herrings and a badminton racquet in the same way ever again.

Thursday Poem: Monuments in the Rain

Monuments in the Rain

Here is everything that stands
monuments in the cold rain
standing sentinel against hard time
and the cruel heavy weather
slowly wearing them down,
fading them in lost history
so that no-one who passes by
notices them at all.

Just another pile of heaped stones
passed by each ordinary day
with no significance to them
and nothing special about them
to make anyone glance across
to where they lie fallen
and to even wonder why
anyone ever took time
to mark that single place
in such a significant way.

Or to ever wonder about
what extraordinary event
would ever have prompted
such a powerful need for remembrance
and why no-one now passing by
can remember why it was built.

A Warm Sunny Beach

Obviously, giving the choice I would rather be somewhere else too, possibly somewhere involving nothing more taxing than a warm sunny beach, a hammock and a good book, with several dusky maidens waiting nearby, all eager to pander to my merest whim. But, however, we are stuck here so let's just get on with it and make the best of it.

After all, Rome wasn't buttered in a day and you can't make an omelette without engaging in some sort of omelette-making activity... no matter how half-arsed and desultory.

So, anyway....

Hmmm.....

Well, I suppose we could have some of the usual stuff. I'm sure that given the right circumstances and a bit of encouragement, I could come up with something about the penguins. But, If I'm honest, today I don't really feel like exploring the complexities of the various conspiracies that rule the world, despite all the evidence to the contrary.

After all, the world is not supposed to make sense and the various things that humans get up to – especially in the names of religions, politics and other irrationalites – are almost by definition bound to deny any kind of rational analysis and explanation.

So, if you could just give me a hand with this hammock, I'm sure those dusky maidens will be along any time now to lay a cool hand on our fevered brows.

The Woman in White and the Panther

The words themselves are just standing there in the desert. Describing nothing, they stand as monuments: separate, unconnected, devoid of meaning. I do not have the strength to dig them out of the wind-blown sand, to move them and make shapes out of them, shapes both pleasing and sensible.

I carve the shapes, the words, from the rocks I find as I wander the desert, leaving them where I find them. This desert - in the valley between the two hills - is now littered with the words I have carved, some almost buried by the wind-shifted sand. They stand like statues or monoliths, isolated from each other by the uneven rise and fall of the dunes at the valley sides.

Down there, on the plain, there are other carved stone words, left where I tried to arrange them, tried to find some meaning amongst them. I gave up on that a long time ago. The heat made it too hard to shift the heavy stones. The words lie where I last moved them, half-formed sentences and phrases - nothing more.

I used to want to form patterns, pleasing patterns, find meaning among these stones. But now, once they are carved, I leave them, feeling I have done enough.

The woman in white stands watching from the opposite hillside. Her dark hair and long flowing white dress fluttering like banners in the breeze. At her side, the black panther sits patiently, the pupils of its eyes slits against the bright sunlight.

I tried, once, to go to speak with the woman. As I climbed the hillside the panther stood and strained against its chain. I saw the woman's hand tighten on the lead as she held up her other hand for me to stop. I knew she meant it, and I could hear the low purring growl of the panther as its pupils widened. I paused, then turned back. At the bottom of the hill, I turned again and looked back. The panther was sitting down once more, relaxed, and the woman was watching me carefully.

Twice every day another woman - totally hairless - and naked, except for a leather collar arrives. She carries a decanter of red wine and a glass on a silver tray to the woman in white. She waits, motionless, next to the black panther as the woman in white sips the wine. Only two glasses - always just two glasses. Then the hairless woman climbs sedately back over the brow of the hill and out of sight.

[….]

[Taken from Memory Stones – a short story in How I Became the Fat Bloke and Other Stories]

A Tray of Tomato Plants

Well, there you go... or not. It is not that easy finding out that you are not really supposed to be here and especially not naked, except for your wellies and a pair of deluxe person-fondling mittens and carrying a tray of tomato plants, that – by now – should have been planted-out ages ago.

However, such is the nature of both space and time that it makes such things seem almost inevitable if you trace the sequence of cause-and-effect back far enough. Taking that as read though, it still doesn't adequately explain your presence here to the rest of the people in the supermarket, or why the necessity of carrying the seedlings in their tray makes it difficult for you to manoeuvre your shopping trolley with the ease and dexterity you would normally possess.

Still, we can only presume that we can all assume there are adequate, if not compelling, reasons for this state of affairs you find yourself in. A situation that has all the hallmarks of one of those strange dreams you have been having lately, but this time it seems to be real – or, at least as far as you can tell.

After all, when we are in the middle of them, dreams can sometimes feel so real.

However this does not feel like a dream and leaves you - without the dream logic that would solve such a conundrum in the least-likely manner – how you are going to pay for your tin of soup, three boxes of free-range eggs and a small jar of raspberry jam if you are naked and therefore have no cash or cards?

Bank Robber

Then there were the things....



You know the ones?



No, not the purple ones with the attachment used for detecting honest politicians that has a tendency to rust and seize up from disuse, but the other one.



Well, anyway, I'm sure you'd recognise one if you saw it, especially someone of your rather lax reputation in the area of experimental rudeness.



Anyway, as I wasn't saying, there should be no reason at all why we shouldn't get through this current economic downturn with the shirts more or less in the vicinity of our backs, at least - despite the somewhat disapproving tone some people adopt, blackmail does tend to provide a steady income stream.



Furthermore, unlike other slightly illegal activities there is much less of that running around with guns shouting at people business that tends to leave you with a headache... and the occasional bullet hole.



After all, there comes a point where armed bank robbery does become more trouble than it is worth, especially when the wife keeps complaining about how many stockings you keep nicking from her underwear drawer and her theory that you may be using them for more than just disguises when robbing banks.



Especially the black fishnet ones....

The Hero

He lived as though he was the star in his own life. He was the hero who managed to avoid almost certain death. He defeated the baddies in a last-ditch stand, foiled the plot and – of course – in the end he got the girl.

After that, though, he didn't know what to do. He'd assumed that he and the girl would live, if not exactly happy every after, then they would live some sort of romantic-comedy life where their foolish misunderstandings could always be resolved by a last-minute kiss in the pouring rain.

Then, maybe, as they grew older they would somehow segue into a family-based sitcom where their kids would infuriate them, but by the end of the programme everything would be resolved as they sat down together in the main room of their surprisingly spacious house for some kind of reconciliation.

Then the kids would grow up and go away, leaving him and the girl living a cantankerous old age, taking arms against a hostile, indifferent world, and often each other, but – as always - in the end with everything somehow – against the odds – coming out right.

Whatever, it was – however – his life turned out, and as long as he kept the girl by his side, he knew that – in the end – it would all turn out all right. At least, it would as long as the script was all right.

The Rucksack

Still, I thought, y'know... maybe she did have a point. There were usually a couple of points of interest with her, especially on colder days, but I would want you to think I always stared... not too much anyway.

They were magnificent though, especially in the bath when she got them all soapy and leant over your face and....

Anyway, where was I ?

Oh, yes, she had a point. After all, we had the money. No-one had come looking for it. No-one seemed to want it.

What else could we do?

There it was, thousands and thousands of pounds in fifties in thousand-pound bundles. A rucksack filed to the brim with them.

Neither of us could bring ourselves to touch them, let alone count them. It was as though while they were there in the rucksack they had nothing to do with us, that we were innocent, uninvolved... which we were of course.

But, like I said. She had a point.

Then lying there on the bed next to her in that hotel room with that bag of money on the bed between us, I got quite a point myself too.

So, it was sometime, well a couple of times later, after we'd showered together too, and after she'd done that thing with the soap and her points of considerable interest, we lay back down on the bed.

The rucksack was still there... and so was all the money it contained.

All we could do is look from the bag of money to each other and back to the money again... wondering....

Sympathy for the Devil

Well, there I was standing at the crossroads feeling at a bit of a loss, when he showed up.

I must admit I was surprised.

"Hey up," he said.

I don't know what surprised me more, the fact that he actually existed, or the fact of his broad Yorkshire accent. His red skin seemed to glow in the cold night air and there seemed to be smoke curling around his hooves.

"Can I help you?" he said in the oleaginous manner of an over-eager car salesman, which was a bit ironic considering why I was standing at the crossroads.

"I dunno," I said. "My car's buggered." I nodded towards where the car stood, bonnet up and smoke pouring from a very knackered engine.

"Ah," he said. "Actually, to be honest, our kid, I'm not that hot on mechanical things. A bit after my time, if you know what mean?"

I nodded slowly and turned to walk away.

I'd hardly gone a dozen yards before he stopped me.

"I could help in other ways, y'know... for the usual fee?"

I turned.

Not that I'd ever had much use out of my soul as far as I could see. But if he existed – and he seemed to be doing rather a good job at it – then maybe the other one would exist too. I glanced heavenward.

"Oh, don't worry about Him up there," my new best friend said strolling up to me and putting a rather warm arm around my shoulder. "He buggered off millennia ago... easily bored, that's him Once he's created something and got it working, more or less, he loses interest. Anyway, as I was saying...."

"Hang on," I said. "What's with the Yorkshire accent?"

"Well... You've heard Yorkshire called God's own county?"

"Yes?"

"It's true. Obviously, I used to work there before we... He.... Well, before our little misunderstanding, so obviously I have the accent."

"But I thought he banished you, y'know, to the other place?"

"Yes. He did. You've been to Leeds?"

"Oh, yes I have. I See... fair point."