Dylan Malik Orchard's Blog, page 24

Crashed America Giveaway

3/3/2015  - Sorry if you missed out but the offer has now expired. You can however buy Crashed America here. And by ‘can’ I mean ‘absolutely should’…

As we’re edging ever closer to the one year anniversary of my first Indie release (Laikanist Times) I figured now would be a good time to, erm, give away something completely different. So for the next week (until March 3rd) Crashed America is available for absolutely nothing in epub and mobi formats. Yes for the bargain basement price of £0.00 you can grab yourself your very own slice of literary history. Quite a small slice I’ll grant you but still it’s better than a kick in the teeth.

The one small caveat is that you have to sign up to my newsletter so I can sell all of your details to a Chinese supplier of, what I’m reliably informed, is the most top grade Viagra this side of the Great Wall. Or alternatively I may just send you an e-mail once a month or so reminding you that I exist and letting you know if there’s anything new going on. Like a needy ex who just can’t stop themselves from drunkenly texting at 3am talking about the good ol’ days.

In fact it will almost certainly, positively, absolutely be the latter. Trust me, I wouldn’t know how to sell your details even if I didn’t love each and every one of you (baby, we can make it work, I’ve changed etc.) Plus you can always unsubscribe the second you’ve got your grubby hands on your freebie even if it will break my heart just that little bit more.

So fill out the form below, it’ll send you an e-mail, you hit the confirmation, it sends you to a page, you download a book and we’ll say no more about it eh?

When Joe sets off for those United States of America he has a whole list of plans, dreams, schemes and delusions to be lived out against an idealised Americana backdrop. Killing Jesus isn’t exactly among them but, as ever, life does its own thing. 

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If a mobi or epub doesn’t work for you, prima donna that you are, then drop me a line via the Contact page with your preferred format and I’ll see what I can do. Be sure to sign up to the newsletter first though.

Sonic BOOM

Every now and then a song comes up on shuffle to remind me that, once upon a time, I tried my hand at making some music. An entirely amateur attempt it basically boiled down to being obsessed with fiddling on a computer for a month or so. Although in a surprising blur of productivity it did yield up some things which, for nostalgia’s sake, I’m posting today…

Unfinished Narrative

You feel yourself dying

step by step

but in the stasis

even death is life,

only death is life

a challenge to the ending

when the middle grows oblique

when the beginning is forgotten

and the story feels weak

The narative is endless though

despite what you might think

and the death that you are dying

is simply where you shrink

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Certainty (A snippet)

The looming grey of certainty

was all that could be seen

and all that it provided

was a routine made obscene

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Tamouz

One of the things that’s always struck me as, to be honest, quite funny about travel is the bizarre approaches people have to cultural their experience in the unfamiliar. I’ve seen gap year Hippies growing out their manky dreads while Buddhist monks play StarCraft opposite the residence of the Dalai Lama and I’ve seen red faced French ex-pats listening to the strains of traditional Oud music and buying up djellabas while local youths kick it to Hip Hop in their knock off Adidas. It can be hard to tell who’s desperately trying to find some cultural meaning and who’s just earnestly found some. Beyond that though there is something deeper. Not theft or appropriation, too strong an accusation on an individual level I think, but certainly some discomfort around the process of staking claims. Anyway…

—

They’d never harmed the beast or taken anything that wasn’t otherwise wasted. Tamouz was certain of that. They had no reason for guilt, no reason for shame and no reason to recoil from what they did. When they’d found it the creature had been half made and half blind, driven to agony by the infanticide it hadn’t even realised it had committed. Still leaking life though, unwitting as it drained off into dry sand. If they’d fed greedily was that a reason to look upon themselves with disdain? It wasn’t them who’d culled the infant calves after all. That was an old crime undertaken by lesser nomads. Neither Tamouz nor the others would offer any defence of that, a fact to shout out as salve for any awkward pangs of uncertainty.

They’d fed, to be sure, gorging themselves amidst the bleached bones, gulping down their fill, at first solely to survive. No sin, no fault. And if they drank on thereafter? If they stayed to gain weight and bulk out stick thin frames? So what. The corpses around them had no need for anything, carrion claimed no rights. And the creature said nothing, did nothing, saw nothing. Eyes cataracted over by mourning, whatever it dreamt of behind the milky white shroud was undisturbed by the arrival of the nomads. Perhaps, Tamouz hoped, there was even the sustenance of memories in there, better thoughts rekindled by their tired and cracked.

They’d dwelt there for years before things changed. Tamouz, once emaciated by desert drought had grown plump and happy. Feet bloodied by hot sands had healed and but for the stray doubts, easily suppressed by contentment, life had grown soft. The arrival of the calf changed that though. Circling warily it had become a novelty at first. A face soft with youth peering into Tamouz’s circle, straying only close enough to the nomad’s chatter to spook itself. A curio but no nuisance, a breed alike to the beast itself but no true kin they all agreed.

Some moved to drive it off, others to ensnare it, eyes on a maturity where it could feed them just as well as the other. Tamouz did neither, he could see more than the others, his eyes still sharp as fat as he’d grown. The calf was growing, moving ever closer and for all the docility his brethren saw there was accusation in it’s eyes. Wise to their indulgent consumption or not it sought a due they couldn’t comprehend. There was greed there too, glowing in it’s wary blue eyes, a greed for sustenance made for it’s lips, for it’s bones and stolen by usurpers. It wouldn’t leave until they drove it off, or killed it, or trapped it for their own. And perhaps it would be nothing to do that, weightless acts. The others at least talked as if it were a mere act of survival. To protect their own, to chain afresh the new source of the ambrosia of life. But Tamouz felt the guilt looming. To do more, to take more, would be to step into sin, to fight no matter the outcome would be fresh defeat.

The night the others set out to hunt he walked away. He had fed, well, the desert held no fear for him.

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Beauty is…

When I chance to think of beauty

I choose a sweaty arse

I choose some unwashed panties

a human lack of class

Because once I was a dreamer

who saw just perfect skin

and the price that we all pay for that

is an ignorant one’s sin

We make the object lovely

we make the focus fine

but it’s for no mortal form

that we weakly pine

You see beauty is transcendent

away from figure’s line

and if you do look closely

a sweaty arse

can be

divine

Featured image – Vases by Sinead O’Moore

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A Clear Human Possession

Cruelty is born in an instant

indifferent

cold

While love takes a lifetime

maturing in deep buried folds

aborted with ease

and painful in birth

the harshness consumes it

before it touches Earth

And we all are the Mothers

and Fathers

of sin

we contain all the seeds of evil within

So easily forgot

that we carry love too

not as our reward

not as our due

Just another clear part

of the human possession

owned by no civil souls

or artistic profession

And while the wait

to great adoration

to birth new love

from a fire of creation

may leave us all lost

to this life that we have

the certainty of it

defies all that is bad

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Francois

Around the world there are various enclaves of desperation. Where desperate conditions force choices on those who live there and desperate strangers seek to take advantage of that. Well, I say ‘desperate’ strangers but perhaps that’s too generous a judgement, perhaps cruel or manipulative or malicious would be better words – from the outside it’s hard to judge. And any ‘decent’ person tends to try to find grounds for moral ambiguity or understanding when it comes to things which seem wholly undeserving of it. Anyway, Morocco was far from being a hub of that exploitation but there were traces of it, same as there are in plenty of places and that’s what prompted me to write this…

The ones who wanted François to be a dream were easier. He could lead them down the easy, dusty streets where the touts, shop keepers and chancers eagerly sold background to that fantasy. Happy to ignore what they knew of François and those he walked with for a few more notes and a soft story of non-existent romance.

The ones who wanted nightmares asked for more. Their weight of expectation forcing him to pay attention as he alone fed them the stories they demanded. A matter of dark alleys and grim faces. Never his truth, though he could tell that tragically enough, but a clean version of it. A tale just sorry enough to elicit sympathy but never so serious as to crush them. Because once crushed they lost interest. After all, it was their holiday, not his life that they’d travelled for.

There were two types to seek the darkness. The first dishonest, the second cruel. Though both presented themselves with the same awkward small talk and nervous, fishing enquiries. Middle aged men for the most part. Some older, rarely younger. While the other filing ranks of bemused tourists would pass by with curt, even nervous nods and mumbled dismissals they would pause with half smiles. Eager to sink into conversation, not through boredom or vague desires to know where they were but with a true purpose. Their questions would delve deeper into him. Always polite, always restrained but also advancing beyond the boundaries of simple conversation. Beyond natural human small talk and into the mild interrogation of unspoken expectation. And they’d go on, slowly running out of things to ask until he stepped in to save them. A drink? Help finding a hotel? A tour of the town? He seldom let them flail for long, the routine was far too familiar to offer surprise now. Invariably they’d say yes, François knew his audience too well to make mistakes in his targets. He knew enough to play the game of codewords and subtle gestures. The illusory charade of seduction, finely played to indulge the illusions of truth and leave his marks, his ‘suitors’, comfortably numb to the reality of their actions even as they undertook them.

Of the ones who wanted nightmares he hated the dishonest most. They were the ones who feigned concern, abusing the language of love that François had long ago judged as false. They promised his salvation, a new life made immense by potential. Their gift to him, earnestly given on the understanding that benign benefactors were never refused in their pawing advances and carefully designed moments of acted passion. A lie, of course. François’ novelty would wear thin, holidays would end, his tragedy would fade from the idyllic to the human and they would beat hasty retreats to the impenetrable citadels of Paris and Berlin, Madrid and London. There to revel in ever preserved memories of small, vital moments spent with a poisonous love in the dusty sun and streets of another land. Once he’d believed them, a mistake he’d never repeat. Instead he did business. Enough misery to fulfil them, never enough for them to know anything.

The cruel ones were easier. No false promises, no beautiful lies. All they desired was enough vulnerability to claim power, enough sorrow to know he had no escape. Nothing new for François, life had long ago taught him a role to play in that. He had perfected it in fact, over the two decades of his life. That type only had one face, one form, that of the first to use him. A German who’d needed no sham, no lie of power. He had simply towered over head, claiming the right of force. None could do that to François now, grown and hardened, they needed him to sell them control with tales of surrender and loss. That was the only difference though, a small evolution beneath the same consuming gaze. He could hate that one form easily enough. Pour bitterness and loathing on to it. A meaningless generation of bile, the act could have no revenge, it had been committed too many times.

Another bus load approached. François checked his reflection in the wing mirror of a parked moped. Ageing, quickly. But still someone’s dream, or nightmare.

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Seen From a Crowded Coffin

The face in the mirror was that of a corpse, he could see that. Healthy enough at first glance, drawn perhaps, aged to every one of its fifty years with with the slow proliferation of wrinkles spreading from a heavy brow and grey hairs dominating a jaw which had once radiated auburn. But no more indebted to death than anyone should be after five decades. He could see more though, he could see the dessication beneath the skin. There was something gone, something passed hiding beneath the living mask.

He could see it because he had caused it. Not intentionally, or at least not through any instant of action but slowly, over time. He’d committed an idle murder with idle thoughts. Stealing years away, gradually clogging vessels and raking across fresh lungs. If anyone else had seen it as he did then he may have plead manslaughter. That was true enough, in its way. To others he could claim innocence and be no more a liar than anyone. But with just his eyes to see and this reflection to judge there was no room for the technical absolution of human understanding. There was just a corpse and his long role as the attacker, the parasite stealing life from the now indifferent dead.

They’d never catch him of course. They could never find him. He’d hid as he killed. Hid in the same coffin sized trap as his victim, breathing the same air, sharing the same mask and watching the same unwitting world blindly observe the crime. And as long as he kept himself pressed up against the deceased, hidden behind the same blank face, no one would ever find out. So the only judge, the only jury he would ever stand before lay in that reflection. In those shared eyes half watching from beneath the cold dirt, half at the graveside. Worse by far than any sentence the outside world could have imposed.

Bars would have been easy, a due paid to the great abstract of Justice. But here, on the inside, there was only the call for reformation, for proof. A demand from a cadaver, echoed by his own claustrophobic morality, to prove that he had outgrown the crime of murder. Made up for the life he had taken with a well lived one of his own.

His victim stared back at him, uncaring, released from any obliged interest. He hadn’t done enough. He hadn’t done anything in fact. In his guilt he had simply tortured himself, self indulgence which when he could he tried to claim as worthy punishment. The murderer hadn’t changed, had made no grasp for redemption. He could never have redemption, that was the declaration and judgement he had passed. That was all he knew now, all he needed to. Only revenge was left open to him. A new murder, fresh blood to wash away what had previously been spilt. Another slow suffocation to kill the killer.

Eyes fixed on the face in the mirror he could see more that the rest of the world would be blind to. Hands, tightening around his throat. Fifty years and another murder under way. He knew it this time, he intended it. No absolution, but more company for the dessicated remains of his last victim. An ever more crowded coffin – an ever more peaceful one.

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The Evil ‘I’

I started writing poems

I vented all my spleen

I wrote all of my feelings

I gave you all I’d seen

I nailed down words in narrow verse,

testament to my self

I filled the screen with driven thoughts

to aid my mental health

I shared all of my heartache

I shared all of my shame

I shared and shared with nothing left

I wrote on all the same

I made myself the center

the voice that must be heard

the focal point for all your lives

in the metaphor of a bird

I gave myself psychosis

I made myself divine

I made myself the one true voice

the audience was mine

I wrote a life worth living

and one for dying too

I shared it all with others

was I supposed to listen too?

But in return you gave me nothing

a cynical, cold stare

a sigh of resignation

You said that you’d been there

You said I needed content

some message to the words

A point beyond my feelings

a reason to be heard

But I’m the endless poet

and you can’t understand

that the feelings that I put down

Are an I-I-I-I sound

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