Marc Nash's Blog, page 9
June 14, 2018
B1nary - Flash Fiction
p.p1 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Helvetica; color: #000000; -webkit-text-stroke: #000000} p.p2 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Helvetica; color: #000000; -webkit-text-stroke: #000000; min-height: 17.0px} span.s1 {font-kerning: none}
1’m standing with the streetlamp sp0tl1ght1ng my n1ghtly catwalk str1ptease.
Bar1ng plenty t0 h00k the j0hns, c0vered up just en0ugh t0 thr0w 0ff the c0ps.
Th0ugh they kn0w us, s1nce un1quely they are fam1l1ar with our faces.
F0r the rest, n0 k1ss1ng, n0 r1mm1ng. M0uth and backd00r rema1n 0ff l1m1ts.
Access granted s0lely t0 the pr1me 0ne 0f my zer0es.
0nly in return m1nd f0r s0me 0f th0se pr1nted 0n p0und n0tes. Preferably the 0ne with the f1gure f1ve bef0re the zer0.
Step r1ght up, d0n’t be c0c0nut shy, cum 1nt0 my 0r1f1ce.
0ur mutual l0ve c0ntract, y0ur pen1s, my h0le, ten0n and m0rt1se.
Th0ugh y0ur number 0ne is t0 be encl0sed 1n a c0nd0m at all t1me.
D0uble the length, d0uble the pleasure my guarantee, 0n my h0n0ur.
And y0urs the 1 pr0m1se t0 pay sanct10ned by Her Majesty the Queen’s f1zz0g 0n th0se there bankn0tes, c01n 0f the realm. 1llegal but tender.
Her Maj the l0ne key that turns the l0ck of my chast1ty belt, p0rtal to my vaj.
Payment up fr0nt 0r 1 dr0p d0wn the p0rtcull1s 0n y0ur ard0ur. Deflated l1b1d0 rap1d0.
0h yeah? Well 1 kn0w a1k1do. Yeah that’s right, beg0ne with y0u. Ta1l between y0ur legs. And when 1 say ta1l, 1 mean of course…
D0esn’t help bus1ness any. N0 matter h0w many n0ughts there are.
W1th0ut a 0ne bef0re them 1 bear abs0lutely n0 value.
June 3, 2018
Pestle And Mortar - Flash Fiction
p.p1 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica}
My mother was a casualty of the war they call life, or life-giving. Sapper me tore her up from inside. Bayonetted trench warfare as I emerged from gerrymandered dimensions of the tunnel complex and out over the top into the light. I detonated into the world. The medics stitched her back together down there, but she was no longer fit for active services to parturition; a pessary to prop up the collapsed sump and berm. Awarded an honourable discharge, with blood clotted me serving as the dishonourable discharge that emerged from her. She wasn’t fit for much in the way of anything. Shellshocked or gassed, it amounted to the same nullity. She regressed in her behaviour even as I advanced. She got down on the floor and played with my sister’s dolls as if they were Action Men. She pulled them out from beneath her skirt pleats like hand grenades and then flung them across the room. I knew they were representations of me and my unwitting violence heaped upon her, unfriendly fire apparently. I enlisted for a permanent tour of Freudian duty, a casualty of war in peacetime as I devoted my unconscious life to reconstructing the fragments of my cluster bomb that had blasted my mother apart.
p.p1 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; color: #000000; -webkit-text-stroke: #000000} span.s1 {font-kerning: none}
May 30, 2018
Passion Dell - Flash Fiction
p.p1 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; color: #000000; -webkit-text-stroke: #000000} span.s1 {font-kerning: none}
The seeping pillow lay spreadeagled against the headboard like a bayonet punctured sandbag. The shit stained duvet was rucked and twisted like mud churned by high explosive. The charred bed linen had been wrenched away, to expose a crater in the mattress, a spring pushing its way through the fabric like a tangle of barbed wire. Crusted sperm trails along the exposed fabric like tracer pathfinding for the marksmen to come. On the bedside table, a tumbler with dog ends like spent cartridges floating in a waterlogged trench. Discarded white lingerie lay over the table lamp, smouldering in its surrender, diffracting the mustard coloured light that drifted gauze-like across the theatre of combat. A hooded gas mask lay on the table, one of its eye holes gashed running the length of the canvas. No quarter, no deserters, no prisoners and no conscientious objectors in no man’s land tonight.
May 22, 2018
Back In Black (It Never Went Away) - Blank Verse
p.p1 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; color: #000000; -webkit-text-stroke: #000000} span.s1 {font-kerning: none}
Chemical spaying of the black dog sniffing around my mental de-scent, Ureic spray marking my ligneous hide.Lightning volts to chase away the black cloud squatted somewhere across my pateLithium’s little local climatic murrain.Acupuncture needles don’t hurt as muchBut the vision lying on the slab like a stuck pig, Banderillas sprouting in every interstitial direction from my vegetative mire Multicoloured, chromatic, garish markers for trepanning bullish me The mounted picador pricks me, pierces me, permeates me, venesecting blood, lymph and chi flowTransfusing blood black, sable, onyx and jetBlack is the new black, same as the old blackLamentation, mourning, moldEffaced contours of female flesh behind post-nuptial veilsDeath cult zealotry over purityCimmerian, tenebrous, atramentous, places of Stygian gloomChthonic cave interiors, Lignite, bituminous coal, crude oil excreted from Gaia’s bowelsTar and pitch for when you cover up the gouging of mother Earth.Jacobean black bile melancholy Lucifer named for the light, but his visible rays only ignited by the plummet from Heaven,Burning up on reentry, fleeting friction match struck phosphorescence.Black heart black as sin, Goths just playing at itSmokey Robinson’s - Smokey really? - “The Agony and The Ecstasy”Here come the leeches…
May 17, 2018
Walking Cane And Able-Bodied - Flash Fiction
p.p1 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; color: #000000; -webkit-text-stroke: #000000} p.p2 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; color: #000000; -webkit-text-stroke: #000000; min-height: 15.0px} span.s1 {font-kerning: none}
I became tenderly acquainted with death at an early age. A very early age. Before I’d taken my first breath, my twin drew his last. Carried off by midwife pall bearers, while I was borne aloft into light, air and pain. My first wail a lamentation for us both; for my dilating and his collapsed lungs. Death engendered me, he whom I call ‘father’. My handmaiden through life, or I his. My new goon companion, the cuckoo who had usurped my bosom buddy.
A future headshrinker proffered that I had sawn my sibling off. In a fit of pique a boo hoo (who?). Fratricide in utero. I dismissed it reflexively of course, with that constriction in my throat a phantom emulation of the shared cord that had noosed him off. One into two does not go. Not when it’s indivisible flesh. Gestation’s entrailing guilt, riven at parturition, only became fully fledged that day supine on the couch. The blood they had hosed off me in the delivery suite was not that of my mother, rather that of my brother. The nurse placed heavyweight me to suckle at my mother’s breast, while she insisted deadweight Bruv be laid on the other one (how can a lightweight, or no weight, be a deadweight? Our first exposure to gravity). My mother’s body was lopsided from that day on, grief spiting gravity, so what do I know? My nativity body count lay at two. A brace of husks. Leaving me unbraced and liable to topple over at any moment. Death gave me a bony shoulder not to cry on, but to prop me up. Wearing me in a papoose. Doubling up with my brother’s shadow for a life of twofold stygian persecutions.
May 15, 2018
Writing Letters To Dead Authors
6 imaginary letters composed to 6 significant authors to me. A meditation on art and death.
May 8, 2018
Shortwave - Flash Fiction
p.p1 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 11.0px Helvetica; color: #000000; -webkit-text-stroke: #000000} p.p2 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 11.0px Helvetica; color: #000000; -webkit-text-stroke: #000000; min-height: 13.0px} span.s1 {font-kerning: none}
Over…
Over?
Over.
Over and over.
And over.
Over and out.
Maiden over bowled
Over.
It’s over.
It’s all flaming over.
Overt.
Ovary
Oh very
Oh vary
Ovarian
It’s over.
Over and out.
Over all
Overall
Overhaul
Too late in the day to turn over a new leaf.
Head over heels
Arse over tit
My oeuvre
Overrated
And undersold by my overseers
Publishers on manoeuvres
They have me over a barrel
Over-egged
Apple turnover
A leftover vestige of appetite
Comes over me
Charon row me over to the other side
Man overboard!
The struggle is over
Over and done with
Long overdue
Game over.
May 5, 2018
My Top Ten Books
I took part in the Booktube "Top Ten Books" tag and in choosing my all time top ten books, i thought I'd share the results here.
April 17, 2018
Literary Versus Commercial Fiction Part 405...
Despite us being on the same page conclusion-wise, I just wanted to respond to many of the points Simin Savidge makes in his Booktube discussion video looking at the false division between literary and commercial fiction that has reared its head again during the Literary Prize listing season.
Here is Simon's original video, definitely worth taking a look at.
The first point is that there is no doubt Will Self does stir things up with his provocative statements on the future of literature, but a) I don't think he's pinning it to low sales of his own book and b) while he is what may be called a literary snob, his points about the future of the novel are more to do with technology and how we read digitally more than the descrying the dumbing down of novels. (My profile of Self & his work here). So there is undoubtedly as Simon says snobbery among some readers and that is lamentable if it is aimed at readers who are being accused of not being clever enough to 'get' certain books. But I feel there is an equal tendency for an anti-intellectual tendency, to tear down difficult or complex books as elitist, as not speaking to anyone, as if these books didn't have a right to exist. To my mind that is the same type of snobbery merely inverted.
Simon calls for all books to have an accessibility and while that's true and an end always worth pursuing, I don't agree with his assertion that it is far harder to write books simply and accessibly. How exactly are we measuring the 'hardness of writing a book'? Who can say whether a book written simply is harder or easier than a complex, experimental book? It comes down to the individual writers, some find writing easier and quicker than others irrespective of what genre they write. Besides there is little merit in judging which one has worked harder, because ultimately it's not how much work an author has put into writing their book, it's the end product and what type of read it delivers for its audience. Finally regarding Simon's accessibility point, it's true commercial books reach more people which implies they are more universal; but not all authors write for a universal audience (or any specific audience in mind at all for that matter). Such authors must be permitted to write the books they want to write, to pursue the lines of literary, fictional & stylistic inquiry of their choice and the judgement of first, editors (as to whether to publish them, because they must possess some modicum of commercial potential however small scale) and then the judgement of readers, (for even without an audience in mind, the decision to write a book assumes someone will read it) will determine some sort of external verdict on the work.
The problems arise when readers and critics with a foot in one camp or the other of commercial vs literary, or simple vs complex, start defending their corner by pulling down their opponents' tastes. We all know what we like and enjoy reading, that is we all know our reading tastes, but you have to allow other readers with different tastes. And this is why literary prizes may be more harmful than good, in that fans jump on the debates they prompt to deride something they like that is omitted, or attack something they don't like that is included. Social media fuels the fires. But the thing is, don't take it so personally, a panel of judges listing books is not a slight on your personal tastes. Being a book lover and promoting your favourite authors out of your passion for their work, is not the same as supporting a football team and wearing colours and punching the lights out, or swearing at fans of the opposite team. Or at least it shouldn't be, but we edge ever closer. (This is not a development unique to the book world, same thing in politics, music et al, this ridiculous lurch into tribalism).
Simon states that pretentious books can alienate. Of course they can, but I find many non-pretentious books can alienate me as a reader for lots of different reasons. We either like a book, or we don't. Pretentiousness may be nothing to do with it. I absolutely agree any book has to carry a reader along with it, but as I discuss in my video below, there are many different ways that different readers can be carried away by a book - again we return to tastes.
The different elements of a novel that can appeal to the reader include but not restricted to -
1) Provides escapism
2) Absolute immersion in the real world
3) The story
4) Ideas/ Themes
5) Character - the psychology
6) Character - seeing through the eyes of a different person, sometimes far removed from you the reader
7) Style
8) Language
9) Metaphors
10) Formalism/ experimentalism
11) Me personally, I like discovering new words which authors introduce me to
Of course, in all likelihood it's a few of these taken together that determine the makeup of a reader's tastes, but the point ultimately it has nothing to do with pretentiousness, worthiness or whatever else Simon lists, as these things are not to his tastes, whereas to a reader who veers towards say (2), (9) and (10), the book may never strike them as pretentious or over-worthy.
I was very interested to hear his experiences of being a judge for a literary prize category. But prizes do create problems. How can you judge a collection of short stories against a novel for example? Or as he says, the Women's Fiction Prize is a vital prize, yet the appearance of literary together with commercial fiction on the same broad list -which after all the only criterion is fiction written by women - to my mind makes it impossible for judges to rate the merits of one book against another because they are not trying to do the same things at all. But there again, the notion of rating any book with some sort of putative 'score' is anathema to me. Simon talking about the brief he was given, to select a book that potentially could be in the most hands of potential readers, provided a mechanism that could cut through this comparative rating problem, but makes it one particular type of prize only. Come the next year with a new judging panel, will that same brief be employed? If it is, then really the prize should make that rubric public and if it isn't, then it just makes the whole thing seem quite random from year to year; that was the year that we wanted the greatest potential accessibility for the winning title, but the following year it was some other facet...
So although I agree with Simon's conclusions, as evidenced in my video below, I'm not sure I agree with the specific points Simon made in reaching the conclusion; that none of these divisions matter, let us be all readers to all books and make our own individual choices and not rag on readers with tastes different to your own.
Here is Simon's original video, definitely worth taking a look at.
The first point is that there is no doubt Will Self does stir things up with his provocative statements on the future of literature, but a) I don't think he's pinning it to low sales of his own book and b) while he is what may be called a literary snob, his points about the future of the novel are more to do with technology and how we read digitally more than the descrying the dumbing down of novels. (My profile of Self & his work here). So there is undoubtedly as Simon says snobbery among some readers and that is lamentable if it is aimed at readers who are being accused of not being clever enough to 'get' certain books. But I feel there is an equal tendency for an anti-intellectual tendency, to tear down difficult or complex books as elitist, as not speaking to anyone, as if these books didn't have a right to exist. To my mind that is the same type of snobbery merely inverted.
Simon calls for all books to have an accessibility and while that's true and an end always worth pursuing, I don't agree with his assertion that it is far harder to write books simply and accessibly. How exactly are we measuring the 'hardness of writing a book'? Who can say whether a book written simply is harder or easier than a complex, experimental book? It comes down to the individual writers, some find writing easier and quicker than others irrespective of what genre they write. Besides there is little merit in judging which one has worked harder, because ultimately it's not how much work an author has put into writing their book, it's the end product and what type of read it delivers for its audience. Finally regarding Simon's accessibility point, it's true commercial books reach more people which implies they are more universal; but not all authors write for a universal audience (or any specific audience in mind at all for that matter). Such authors must be permitted to write the books they want to write, to pursue the lines of literary, fictional & stylistic inquiry of their choice and the judgement of first, editors (as to whether to publish them, because they must possess some modicum of commercial potential however small scale) and then the judgement of readers, (for even without an audience in mind, the decision to write a book assumes someone will read it) will determine some sort of external verdict on the work.
The problems arise when readers and critics with a foot in one camp or the other of commercial vs literary, or simple vs complex, start defending their corner by pulling down their opponents' tastes. We all know what we like and enjoy reading, that is we all know our reading tastes, but you have to allow other readers with different tastes. And this is why literary prizes may be more harmful than good, in that fans jump on the debates they prompt to deride something they like that is omitted, or attack something they don't like that is included. Social media fuels the fires. But the thing is, don't take it so personally, a panel of judges listing books is not a slight on your personal tastes. Being a book lover and promoting your favourite authors out of your passion for their work, is not the same as supporting a football team and wearing colours and punching the lights out, or swearing at fans of the opposite team. Or at least it shouldn't be, but we edge ever closer. (This is not a development unique to the book world, same thing in politics, music et al, this ridiculous lurch into tribalism).
Simon states that pretentious books can alienate. Of course they can, but I find many non-pretentious books can alienate me as a reader for lots of different reasons. We either like a book, or we don't. Pretentiousness may be nothing to do with it. I absolutely agree any book has to carry a reader along with it, but as I discuss in my video below, there are many different ways that different readers can be carried away by a book - again we return to tastes.
The different elements of a novel that can appeal to the reader include but not restricted to -
1) Provides escapism
2) Absolute immersion in the real world
3) The story
4) Ideas/ Themes
5) Character - the psychology
6) Character - seeing through the eyes of a different person, sometimes far removed from you the reader
7) Style
8) Language
9) Metaphors
10) Formalism/ experimentalism
11) Me personally, I like discovering new words which authors introduce me to
Of course, in all likelihood it's a few of these taken together that determine the makeup of a reader's tastes, but the point ultimately it has nothing to do with pretentiousness, worthiness or whatever else Simon lists, as these things are not to his tastes, whereas to a reader who veers towards say (2), (9) and (10), the book may never strike them as pretentious or over-worthy.
I was very interested to hear his experiences of being a judge for a literary prize category. But prizes do create problems. How can you judge a collection of short stories against a novel for example? Or as he says, the Women's Fiction Prize is a vital prize, yet the appearance of literary together with commercial fiction on the same broad list -which after all the only criterion is fiction written by women - to my mind makes it impossible for judges to rate the merits of one book against another because they are not trying to do the same things at all. But there again, the notion of rating any book with some sort of putative 'score' is anathema to me. Simon talking about the brief he was given, to select a book that potentially could be in the most hands of potential readers, provided a mechanism that could cut through this comparative rating problem, but makes it one particular type of prize only. Come the next year with a new judging panel, will that same brief be employed? If it is, then really the prize should make that rubric public and if it isn't, then it just makes the whole thing seem quite random from year to year; that was the year that we wanted the greatest potential accessibility for the winning title, but the following year it was some other facet...
So although I agree with Simon's conclusions, as evidenced in my video below, I'm not sure I agree with the specific points Simon made in reaching the conclusion; that none of these divisions matter, let us be all readers to all books and make our own individual choices and not rag on readers with tastes different to your own.
April 14, 2018
Semiotinks - Flash Fiction
p.p1 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; color: #000000; -webkit-text-stroke: #000000} p.p2 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; color: #000000; -webkit-text-stroke: #000000; min-height: 15.0px} li.li1 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; color: #000000; -webkit-text-stroke: #000000} span.s1 {font-kerning: none} span.s2 {font: 12.0px Helvetica; color: #000000}
SynaesthesiaI want to lick you all overBe my guestI said I want to… but I can’tWhy ever not?There’s a part of you that forever remains apart from youWhat part? What are you talking about?Your shoulder blade. It’s been colonised by someone elseThe tattoo? That’s more a part of me than any other part. That… is the ultimate expression of me, who I amThat… is your signature under another artist’s workOh no no no no no. That’s all my own design. Utterly unique to me, you won’t see this in any tattooist’s window or catalogueDid you take the tattooist in a drawing?Well no. I knew what I wanted and described it to him. He sketched it out, but only to my specificationBut he still put his own vision on it. The final rendering was all his and his aloneNot a bit of it. I determined the dimensions, the colour, every nib stroke…But he is the artist that has to work with the marbleWhat marble?The marble of your body. The contour of your muscle, the grain of your skin, the flow of your veins just beneath the surface. That is the true youThe sculpted me, yes, and I worked damn hard for this. But not as hard as you’re making me work nowThat is what I want to possess in every topographical detail. But someone else has been in that quadrant before me and planted their flagI’ve had other lovers, they’ve been in every ‘quadrant’ of me before you as wellBut they have relinquished you. To me. The indelible ink has not and never willAre you seriously expecting me to have it removed? I’m telling you, that is my own stamp of who I amCogito ergo sum? Say the sum of what now? ‘I think therefore I am’. You credit that with this branding, somehow you link up your physical body with how you conceive yourself mentally? That’s about the size of it yesThat how you are in the world, how you think and feel with your physical body is insufficient, you have to exteriorise it, put the construction of your inner life on permanent displayIt’s not on permanent display. Most of the time it’s submerged beneath clothingSo what’s the point of it then?I know it’s there. Radiating like a second heartbeatPrecisely. Two hearts beating. Both of them yours. Mine would make it three and three’s a dissonant crowdIt’s not a real person!You posited it was your golem. Your spirit at largeWhat that ugly wee fellah in “Lord Of The Rings”? No… It’s only the two of us get to strip you of your raiment to reveal your skin. And you have tainted it with this… doodleDoodle?Alright, this self-rendered stigmata Stigmata? That’s proper over the top!You’re quite right of course. More like a… palimpsest. To suggest there’s something hidden underneath. When there’s actually nothing. You could have let me circumnavigate you. All of you. Through taste and smell. Mapping my version of you over time. Instead you have predetermined yourself as to what I, or any future explorer of your flesh, will discover. You have already declared your mappa incognito in the name of your own King and unfurled your standard thereWell just don’t lick that part then, unlock the unknown parts of the rest of meI can’t. When I taste I see pictures. When I smell I hear sounds. Your daub interferes with all of that. If I lick it, I would only taste the granular ink, while the picture has already been filled in for meJust turn out the lights then. We can do it in the dark!I don’t have to. The darkness of your soul eclipses all lightNo Babe, come back… It’s me wants to lick you all over…
*
GematriaMosaic Law forbids the application of ink to the skin (Leviticus 19:28). Were the Germans at Auschwitz aware of this proscription, seeing it as yet further tribulation to wreak on the prisoners if they thought they might be denied entry to heaven through an ink profaned body? More likely it was merely part of the Nazi bureaucratic system of processing humans. Inventories and job lots and serial numbers. Cattle brands for the human kine who emerged from the cattle trucks.
The prohibition on marking the body in any way, stems from the human form being a gift from G-d that must not be altered in any way, shape or form, for to do so would be to criticise the perfection, genius and beneficence of G-d. Or more pertinently, to downright disobey Him and turn from his righteous way. For burial, the Jewish body must be unspoiled, well as much as death can leave a body in mint condition. Of course, these bodies were not in receipt of Jewish funeral rites.
Jewish faith works in three ways. Things are truth because it is the word of G-d. They are true because through study and exegesis they can be proven to be true through human ratiocination. And finally through the gematria, whereby the mathematical values ascribed to letters of the Hebrew alphabet provide mathematical proof by ‘adding up’ to the correct answer. But stare at them as they might, the Auschwitz inmates could not make the numbers on their wrists add up to a demonstration of G-d’s love.
*
ParadeThey met at the Edinburgh Tattoo, having unwittingly landed there during their European tour on the day of the military parade. They proceeded to compare their inks, the imagery telling its own story since the deafening beat of the military drums drowned out any verbal communication they might essay. As they discovered a myriad of mutualities expressed in pictograms, a love blossomed (perhaps already foretold by both having inked efflorescence, she lilies and orchids, he an hibiscus). As the soldiers marched past their faraway eyes, they were unable to see that most of these men too shared their predilection for marking the skin. Although formal dress uniforms did their best to cover up what was still seen as unsightly and ill-disciplined by the top brass, but which they had caved into permitting through the sheer preponderance among those queuing up for recruitment. While many of the soldiers’ designs involved skulls, the young lovers-to-be both eschewed such morbid imagery. Who wants to make love only to get an eyeful of memento mori plastered on your soul mate’s flesh? An indication that one day they will be snatched away from you.
*
Angelina Jolie’s TattooThe water buffalo pulled the harrow to prick the earth, while in its turned wake the farmer disseminated the rice seedlings. When the Khmer Rouge came, they unyoked the buffalo and attached their enemies to the harrow. They chose anyone who wore glasses, possessed books among their meagre positions hauled with them from the cities, or bore tattoos. Anything that suggested literacy which unutterably betrayed their bourgeoise nature. The buffalo stood around the fields redundant, until it too, like the bourgeois Khmer people, disappeared. The cadres said it had seized its freedom under Angkar and wandered off. We suspected they had under cover of night killed it and cut it up for a luxuriant meal denied the rest of us.
A few of us managed to escape into the borderland mountains. We formed resistance battalions, secured hold of some guns and swore an oath to free our nation benighted by the godless. Monks had not even been put into the fields to work until they dropped, they were taken away and slaughtered from the very outset. Fortunately one had made it to the mountains with us and he was versed in the knowledge of protective tattoos. He didn’t have access to ink, so he improvised using battery fluid, mixed with the sap of some mountain tree unknown to me as a species. As long as our hearts were pure, his tattoos would deflect bullets and prevent landmines from being tripped under our feet. We couldn’t read our skin’s texts, not because we were illiterates, but because they weren’t written in Khmer but in scriptural Pali. We knew we had to trigger their magic by reciting the mantras each time we went out in the field. Neither the clean skinned Khmer Rouge nor the filthy criminal Vietnamese would stand a chance in the face of the peaceful Buddha’s loving protection of us.
*
Blood InkMy self-styled stylus isn’t disposed with its own reservoir of ink. Instead it relies on its incised strokes to be infilled by the upsurge of blood. My improvised fountain pen spraying the gist of me. But it’s impossible to control such red ink swell. The blood blotter smear of self. So it is only once the flow has clotted and the skin cicatrised, that such graphic calligraphy can be anatomised. The straight edge of the razor makes it hard to curlicue any flesh inscription (made worse when the unhanded side has to grave the more favoured limb, ‘favoured’ in the sense of bias, not in my affections, for I don’t favour a single cell of my body). So inevitably my chirography resembles little more than cuneiform. The Rosetta Stone of me. The medium, the chalky, cracked parchment of my skin, is the message. Can’t you decipher it you illiterates? Why, it’s not as if I hide my verbiage encased behind dust jacket sleeves. Here, I’ll re-carve it. A palimpsest whose abiding runes are imperishable, but the surface scar tissue is recast once again. I aim for a blue vein, but the ink still emerges the unsparing red of the hyper-critical inner-editor. I have no words, but I do have profuse red ink flow to share with you.
SynaesthesiaI want to lick you all overBe my guestI said I want to… but I can’tWhy ever not?There’s a part of you that forever remains apart from youWhat part? What are you talking about?Your shoulder blade. It’s been colonised by someone elseThe tattoo? That’s more a part of me than any other part. That… is the ultimate expression of me, who I amThat… is your signature under another artist’s workOh no no no no no. That’s all my own design. Utterly unique to me, you won’t see this in any tattooist’s window or catalogueDid you take the tattooist in a drawing?Well no. I knew what I wanted and described it to him. He sketched it out, but only to my specificationBut he still put his own vision on it. The final rendering was all his and his aloneNot a bit of it. I determined the dimensions, the colour, every nib stroke…But he is the artist that has to work with the marbleWhat marble?The marble of your body. The contour of your muscle, the grain of your skin, the flow of your veins just beneath the surface. That is the true youThe sculpted me, yes, and I worked damn hard for this. But not as hard as you’re making me work nowThat is what I want to possess in every topographical detail. But someone else has been in that quadrant before me and planted their flagI’ve had other lovers, they’ve been in every ‘quadrant’ of me before you as wellBut they have relinquished you. To me. The indelible ink has not and never willAre you seriously expecting me to have it removed? I’m telling you, that is my own stamp of who I amCogito ergo sum? Say the sum of what now? ‘I think therefore I am’. You credit that with this branding, somehow you link up your physical body with how you conceive yourself mentally? That’s about the size of it yesThat how you are in the world, how you think and feel with your physical body is insufficient, you have to exteriorise it, put the construction of your inner life on permanent displayIt’s not on permanent display. Most of the time it’s submerged beneath clothingSo what’s the point of it then?I know it’s there. Radiating like a second heartbeatPrecisely. Two hearts beating. Both of them yours. Mine would make it three and three’s a dissonant crowdIt’s not a real person!You posited it was your golem. Your spirit at largeWhat that ugly wee fellah in “Lord Of The Rings”? No… It’s only the two of us get to strip you of your raiment to reveal your skin. And you have tainted it with this… doodleDoodle?Alright, this self-rendered stigmata Stigmata? That’s proper over the top!You’re quite right of course. More like a… palimpsest. To suggest there’s something hidden underneath. When there’s actually nothing. You could have let me circumnavigate you. All of you. Through taste and smell. Mapping my version of you over time. Instead you have predetermined yourself as to what I, or any future explorer of your flesh, will discover. You have already declared your mappa incognito in the name of your own King and unfurled your standard thereWell just don’t lick that part then, unlock the unknown parts of the rest of meI can’t. When I taste I see pictures. When I smell I hear sounds. Your daub interferes with all of that. If I lick it, I would only taste the granular ink, while the picture has already been filled in for meJust turn out the lights then. We can do it in the dark!I don’t have to. The darkness of your soul eclipses all lightNo Babe, come back… It’s me wants to lick you all over…
*
GematriaMosaic Law forbids the application of ink to the skin (Leviticus 19:28). Were the Germans at Auschwitz aware of this proscription, seeing it as yet further tribulation to wreak on the prisoners if they thought they might be denied entry to heaven through an ink profaned body? More likely it was merely part of the Nazi bureaucratic system of processing humans. Inventories and job lots and serial numbers. Cattle brands for the human kine who emerged from the cattle trucks.
The prohibition on marking the body in any way, stems from the human form being a gift from G-d that must not be altered in any way, shape or form, for to do so would be to criticise the perfection, genius and beneficence of G-d. Or more pertinently, to downright disobey Him and turn from his righteous way. For burial, the Jewish body must be unspoiled, well as much as death can leave a body in mint condition. Of course, these bodies were not in receipt of Jewish funeral rites.
Jewish faith works in three ways. Things are truth because it is the word of G-d. They are true because through study and exegesis they can be proven to be true through human ratiocination. And finally through the gematria, whereby the mathematical values ascribed to letters of the Hebrew alphabet provide mathematical proof by ‘adding up’ to the correct answer. But stare at them as they might, the Auschwitz inmates could not make the numbers on their wrists add up to a demonstration of G-d’s love.
*
ParadeThey met at the Edinburgh Tattoo, having unwittingly landed there during their European tour on the day of the military parade. They proceeded to compare their inks, the imagery telling its own story since the deafening beat of the military drums drowned out any verbal communication they might essay. As they discovered a myriad of mutualities expressed in pictograms, a love blossomed (perhaps already foretold by both having inked efflorescence, she lilies and orchids, he an hibiscus). As the soldiers marched past their faraway eyes, they were unable to see that most of these men too shared their predilection for marking the skin. Although formal dress uniforms did their best to cover up what was still seen as unsightly and ill-disciplined by the top brass, but which they had caved into permitting through the sheer preponderance among those queuing up for recruitment. While many of the soldiers’ designs involved skulls, the young lovers-to-be both eschewed such morbid imagery. Who wants to make love only to get an eyeful of memento mori plastered on your soul mate’s flesh? An indication that one day they will be snatched away from you.
*
Angelina Jolie’s TattooThe water buffalo pulled the harrow to prick the earth, while in its turned wake the farmer disseminated the rice seedlings. When the Khmer Rouge came, they unyoked the buffalo and attached their enemies to the harrow. They chose anyone who wore glasses, possessed books among their meagre positions hauled with them from the cities, or bore tattoos. Anything that suggested literacy which unutterably betrayed their bourgeoise nature. The buffalo stood around the fields redundant, until it too, like the bourgeois Khmer people, disappeared. The cadres said it had seized its freedom under Angkar and wandered off. We suspected they had under cover of night killed it and cut it up for a luxuriant meal denied the rest of us.
A few of us managed to escape into the borderland mountains. We formed resistance battalions, secured hold of some guns and swore an oath to free our nation benighted by the godless. Monks had not even been put into the fields to work until they dropped, they were taken away and slaughtered from the very outset. Fortunately one had made it to the mountains with us and he was versed in the knowledge of protective tattoos. He didn’t have access to ink, so he improvised using battery fluid, mixed with the sap of some mountain tree unknown to me as a species. As long as our hearts were pure, his tattoos would deflect bullets and prevent landmines from being tripped under our feet. We couldn’t read our skin’s texts, not because we were illiterates, but because they weren’t written in Khmer but in scriptural Pali. We knew we had to trigger their magic by reciting the mantras each time we went out in the field. Neither the clean skinned Khmer Rouge nor the filthy criminal Vietnamese would stand a chance in the face of the peaceful Buddha’s loving protection of us.
*
Blood InkMy self-styled stylus isn’t disposed with its own reservoir of ink. Instead it relies on its incised strokes to be infilled by the upsurge of blood. My improvised fountain pen spraying the gist of me. But it’s impossible to control such red ink swell. The blood blotter smear of self. So it is only once the flow has clotted and the skin cicatrised, that such graphic calligraphy can be anatomised. The straight edge of the razor makes it hard to curlicue any flesh inscription (made worse when the unhanded side has to grave the more favoured limb, ‘favoured’ in the sense of bias, not in my affections, for I don’t favour a single cell of my body). So inevitably my chirography resembles little more than cuneiform. The Rosetta Stone of me. The medium, the chalky, cracked parchment of my skin, is the message. Can’t you decipher it you illiterates? Why, it’s not as if I hide my verbiage encased behind dust jacket sleeves. Here, I’ll re-carve it. A palimpsest whose abiding runes are imperishable, but the surface scar tissue is recast once again. I aim for a blue vein, but the ink still emerges the unsparing red of the hyper-critical inner-editor. I have no words, but I do have profuse red ink flow to share with you.
