Dylan Malik Orchard's Blog, page 27
December 3, 2014
Swarms of Light
The swarms of light came closer
before scattering apart
A small move could disperse them
a big one bury them in dirt
It wasn’t that the blows hurt
a thousand could be blanked
they just drove them to desertion
a running, desperate feint.
Their hive, you see, was lethal
with a beautiful design
and for every light that it birthed
another would resign.
And it’s not that they were conscious,
aware of all the risk
They were just sensitive to movement
to waves within the mist
The unspoken threat of darkness
amidst life without a care
was a fear they all shared
barely knowing it was there.
But please don’t think them dismal
these sparks within the night
because when the fires burnt right
they cast a blinding light.
But still that hive defined them,
lethal in design
Which made every new arrival
the end of another’s time.
December 2, 2014
Unburied Dead
He woke up with a start and flailed wildly for her, again. She wasn’t there of course, she never was. Not that that ever stopped him from checking. It was a habit that even after two years he’d failed to break.
He dragged in the air with an almost indignant gulp and waited for reality to kick into gear and take over his half-asleep mind. Before long the room was slowly coming into focus and so did he. The empty spot beside him in the bed made more obvious by the fact that even now he didn’t dare stray into it for fear of her tired elbow driving him back. Part of the routine battle they’d fought for space, blankets and legroom before inevitably drifting back towards the centre and the warmth each provided the other.
People died. That’s what he needed to remind himself. People died, she’d died. That was the unavoidable end point of life. What use was it to mourn? None really. And in better moments he could half convince himself that he’d stopped and moved on. Certainly the painful gap in his thoughts, the one she had shaped around herself in life, had been covered over. Made hard and calloused, no longer the source of agony it had been but still a ragged ridge scarring him. Never fading any further and always there when his mind strayed.
That was to be expected though, right? There would always been something left in the wake of her passing, wreckage he couldn’t hope to avoid. Wreckage he wouldn’t want to.
Perhaps if she had died properly it might have been easier though. A call he could have understood. A reluctant doctor breaking the news of a tragic loss, a policeman at the door with hollow apologies and awkward reports of a crash or mugging gone wrong. Even a long, dark struggle against a meaningless lump of cancerous flesh, consuming the woman she’d been, seemed morbidly preferable from this distance. Those at least were proper deaths. Ones he could have been told about, ones shared with doctors or nurses or family, no matter how shallow and polite their sorrow.
But she hadn’t died properly. She had died alone, inches from him. With no one to tell him about it, no darkness to endure, nothing but an odd space with something that used to be alive lying leaden and inhuman. An aneurysm. In a space he still couldn’t move her from, because she’d never died properly.
November 29, 2014
Freedom is Eternal
My attempt to re-hash something I wrote a long time ago.
Freedom is eternal.
Or so some bastard said.
I asked him for his reason,
‘well we’re not yet dead’
I pointed to our walls,
our chains,
our jobs,
our debts.
He flashed a smile and looked at me
Well we’re not yet dead.
I told him of my sorrows,
the ones I’ve loved now gone.
The ones who lost their meaning
whose suffering goes on
I told him of the others
the ones who never tried
the ones who never had a chance
the ones where beauty died
I swore and raged and ranted,
demanding to know more.
The bastard he just grinned at me
you’ve heard my words before.
I asked him for forgiveness.
I felt I needed some.
He grinned and laughed
and said my son, our death is yet to come.
November 27, 2014
Seven Seas of London
So this country is an island
this city a thousand more
this street another dozen
maybe fewer, maybe more
A thousand scowling natives
a thousand untapped mines
a thousand golden towers
a thousand untold crimes
And I’m Vasco da Gama,
sometimes Cortés on the shore
struggling to stake new claims
some are bloody, some are poor
I’m the one that watches
the steel wielding end
as all of my old temples fall
ages broken never bend
But there is no choice but sailing on
unless you stay to sink
because the seas between these islands
swallow up those
who stop
to think.
November 26, 2014
All I want is your heart baby… and maybe a retina or two.
Today’s public service announcement is brought to you by, well, ME. As someone perpetually not arsed to do the things I should be doing I’m always happy to find something completely effort free that’s also undeniably a good thing. Like signing up to give my decaying innards away upon my untimely death in a fist fight with a dozen small monkeys.
Don’t weep, wail or despair, it’ll be a noble end.Registering to give your bits over to the NHS, so they can save some poor sods life when you’ve lost yours, is the work of a few minutes. For them though it’s a whole lifetime. Simple enough right? So I’ll stop at that before I go all BBC charity appeal and start posting pictures of starving children and sick looking donkeys.
But really, sign up, don’t be a bastard. You won’t need any of it when you’re gone.
And in case you were wondering…
11. How do they know you are really dead?
November 25, 2014
Minor Flame
Nothing worse than Whitey from a different country idly writing pretentious poetry about events thousands of miles away. But hey, spirit of the season eh?
A flying fist is a fiery thing
A thousand tanks are not
A dying child makes good print
A thousand dead just rot
An explosive flash in a quiet town
is every anchor’s dream
But a minor flame
on a cold, dark night
is everybody’s shame.
November 24, 2014
Coming soon – Space FM
Beamed down in the final seconds before the Philae lander’s batteries gave up the ghost I’m happy to present you with the cover for my upcoming short ‘Space FM’. Designed by alien lifeforms on a comet far, far away as a special favour to yours truly (friends in high places y’see?) it’s in the same vain as the Laikanist Times cover, an intentional similarity. Hopefully brings a bit of uniformity to the eclectic mess of stuff I write, with Sci Fi stuff sharing a certain something.
Anyway, here you go!
November 23, 2014
Nautical Interlude
Nothing of a literary nature to share today as editing, cover design and various fiddlings continue around the upcoming Sci-Fi short. I’ve got an international team working round the clock from Deutschland to Dallas to get things ready in time. Sort of. At any rate early December will be the time and the internet will be the place so keep your eyes on this site (or Twitter, Facebook or the mailing list).
And if you find yourself desperate, lost and alone in the meantime? Why Crashed America and Laikanist Times await and like all good books they’ll spend the evening curled up in bed with you even if no one else will.
Anyway, here’s a song I just discovered to tide you over.
November 21, 2014
London – A Study : Catford
“I looked into the darkness, my courage fuelled by the gin handed to me by the last friendly face I’d seen. She’d been an ancient, a stooped and broken woman, lurking at the roadside not as a guardian or a guide, but as a farewell. A last moment of truly human contact for those who’d chosen to walk towards their fate. Those who’d chosen to walk to Catford. A journey from which none return, at least not with the souls they’d carried when departing.“
So read the last note written by Dave Titus Carbide – a pioneer and explorer for the Metropolitan Railway group charged with surveying potential routes through the city and negotiating with the natives. Carbide was a veteran of the East India Company at it’s height. Under whose authority and whilst dressed as a Tajik horse trader he’d braved the Khyber Pass, mingled with the locals and fought the nefarious Russians in the Great Game. As well as being a large factor in irritating the Afghans to the point where they whipped out their jezail muskets and took to shooting anything with a British accent.
By comparison the Catford expedition was supposed to be semi-retirement. A quick sojourn south of the rive to a little known corner of the city, there to trade a few beads and malaria ridden blankets with the locals in return for exclusive transit rights for the company. Then home in time for tea and an illicit grope at the maid of the day. But, much to the relief of the maid and serving staff at large, it was not to be. For the darkness which dwelt in Catford – and which some say still does, was not in the habit of freeing those who stumbled in out of the light.
The next report of note to come from Catford was found tied around the neck of a blind, deaf and confused Labrador found barking wildly into the night on Camberwell Green. Locals, upon discovering the disoriented canine, were quick to grab the message and deliver it reverentially to the wisest of elders in the area – Old Charlie. Who was quick to point out, for the hundredth time, that he was only forty and his real name was Trevor. He was roundly ignored though, because people from Camberwell are odd like that. Knowing this and being resigned to his fate Old Charlie, or Middle-Aged Trevor, shushed his audience into silence and set about reading the note. Pausing only briefly to wonder why they hadn’t just read it for themselves, it being Camberwell and not some illiterate backwater like Croydon.
“I have seen the eyes and they have seen me. May the Godly quake in fear, for the Devil moves amongst us. And he’s fucking scary mate.
Our number was six when we set out from the pub and now I’m the only one left. I won’t last long, I know that, It’s already closing in on me. I don’t think It ever lost me in fact. But you might avoid my fate, please, spread my warning.
We just wanted to get home, maybe have a kebab along the way. Timur said he knew a shortcut, why we trusted him I don’t know. Perhaps it was the Bailey’s chasers, or because he was from Lewisham and who can you trust if not someone from Lewisham? But here, in the darkness, no one is safe.
He said it would only take five minutes, he said there was a twenty-four hour shop on the way, that Catford was a nice place. I’m glad now that he was the first to go. But now none of us will ever see home again. And I don’t know what I will see, what my last sight on this mortal coil will be. But I do know that It will be there, the infinite darkness – pawing me to hell.”
The unsigned letter was written in blood. Or possibly red ink. And paw-marks scuffed the words…
Things are different now, of course. Who hasn’t heard the tales of the death and glory that occurred at the battle of Catford Town Hall? Who hasn’t seen at least one of the blockbuster films following those few, those brave few who walked into the darkness and shot the shit out of it? Paving the way for the civilizing effects of the 185 bus route, Wetherspoons and Greggs the Baker? And even if the government dismissed the more outlandish tales told by returning squaddies as the effects of shell shock, occupational syphilis and weak moral fibre can anyone truly know what it was they saw out there?
The descendants of those Catfordians who survived the purge are holding their silence. Nodding mysteriously when confronted with tales of their sinister and occult past. But as any visitor, tempted by a Christmas panto, or a trip to Iceland will tell you, something unholy still looms large over the area. It’s paws extended to give the final embrace, the natives still pausing as they pass to mouth a silent ‘Meow’ to their fallen God.
Be wary – and stay on the night bus…
November 19, 2014
Towers to Wings
A wave of wings washing the city
beauty above
for below only pity
The towers we raise in pale imitation
a sorry attempt at a human migration
But the higher we rise the longer the shadows
the greyer the streets
the deeper the shallows
And when we reach those heavenly heights
We find only pigeons
ravaged with blight
Because all that’s above is the same as below
And blind to that beauty
we have only the show.
