Monday 26 April 2010

Constancy is a waste of time

I can't sleep anymore. It does no good. Once I slept for eight hours, no more no less. Once.

I do not know whether constancy in villain is as admirable as constancy in heroism - by mere fact of constancy being seen as virtuous.

No virtue is held in such high esteem as constancy in the political world. It is seen to prove confidence, the ability to make a decision. Constancy. But here is a world where constancy is one of the worst possible traits to have.

I give in.

Friday 23 April 2010

Words are a waste of times.

All towns have their fool,and I am this town's fool. Stripped bare and tired, tied to the cross and left there slow to hang. I am now completely and utterly naked, empty of style, loss of virtues, none of which ever existed in the first place. The first place. The first place I came to when I moved to this most exasperating of cities - this cold sweat in the night of civilisation - when I moved here I wandered along the riverbanks and swaying gently, taking my place among the concrete and the stone and the angel dust scattered calmly along the pavements, there I thought I was a new man. A new and creative spurt in the cracks - not weed, but blooming flower, creeping up between the dirt and the mud.

All this is vulgar now, and tepid. The sun ejaculates; lukewarm splashes of light spray my face and my shoulders - time heals no wounds. Wounds fester, infection spreads, caused by tired bones shuffling along the streets - reading confessionals on the spreadsheets and murdering passers by with intense grinning. There is no stone left unturned in my desire to devour the wicked and the cunts. All locked inside, stock still, riding high on ego and cucumber sandwiches. There, I said it. Fucking cucumber sandwiches. All my life, cucumber sandwiches. I hate them.

I am a fucking lunatic, lost and found - raping the flowers with a glance. It doesn't help to realise what a loony bugger I am - hitting the faces of the passers by, my fists bloody and crimson, locked in perpetual combat with my own vulgarity, my face now, pummeled by my own fists; oh how I want to! How I would writhe under the beating I would give myself! I woulds squirm and speak nightmares, terrible to stop - and terrible to continue, it is all so utterly unbearable what I have become. A burden on myself, a calm cloud in the coffee of my own stark naked youth.

If you love someone (and I don't think you do) then why don't you simply let yourself fall headlong into the dark, and cry about it now, before it has even begun? Why not say now: "It was never going to work out, I saw it in his eyes - he's a vulgarian. I can see it in the words that cascade out of his mouth, out of his pen and onto the page, he hammers the keys with such ferocity that his fingers will soon curl round and vanish into his mouth, and he shall vomit the words onto the page, and they will spatter and we shall know, once and for all, that he was a nasty piece of work." Why not stop yourself from ever fucking your life away with me, in my hole, in my place of revelry. It's me in that dark. Can't you see it? Can't you hear the clowns rolling out of the car, village idiot, teeming with ruddy life and strung up on the gibbet, awaiting the roar?

It was all there, darling. The rope was waiting in the wings, waiting for the curtain. It was all a stage, darling. They brought you here with their singing, and now you live alone; on the floor. And god forbid you should eat something. Shovel something into your mouth, darling. Cram the words back in. Live on the words.

Wednesday 21 April 2010

Short stories are a waste of time

Here is some flash fiction for you. Enjoy.

__________________________

Oh I shall die on the mountain. Solitary; strong willed. The mountain has willed it since I can remember. It is bold in my memory. It is where I shall die, on that misty field, below that black forest. That is where I will breathe my last breath, gasping silently, trying to catch one last molecule of oxygen, keep it inside and pass it around the organs, keep them stirring. Keep the heart pumping. The town is dying so slowly, choking on its own placidity. It is inactive, but restless. It itches to be free from something. No, not itches, squirms. It writhes under the weight of its own stillness. It is dying now, or is already dead. The people sleep so soundly under that distant sky. Under that damned mountain. The silent voyeur, watching the sleeping villagers, watching and crawling around beneath itself. It is a vulgar sight, that mound of earth.

It had a name, long forgotten. There are probably those that remember it, but that doesn't matter. There are other mountains in these parts, all lower, less imposing. They have their own towns; their own villages. They have their own creeps to watch, and lust after. They all have their names, the mountains and the towns, all long forgotten. Only the sleeping people dream the valley awake, with the names on their tongues, keeping the dream alive when they rise in the morning full of steam, full of vigilance, full of screams about their lives. The mountains are silent and reserved. Never speaking, never commenting, only silently watching and causing no pain. No feeling whatever. Only one of the mountains of the valley torments me, though. It is alone in that respect. I belong to the one town, the village. Whatever it is, it is my home, and I live there. I belong to the town they call Green. It was named Green after the hills and pockets of forest that bear that colour in the spring time. I am tormented by only one mountain, just as I inhabit only one town, the town of Green. Green is the smallest town of this wretched valley, but it boasts the highest mountain. In fact I would go so far as to call the other mountains (say that of Blue, or Heather, or Grey) mere shadows of my mountain, that is to say the mountain of Green. I would not call them mountains at all, but rather hills, misshapen calamities of the earth that have formed around the sudden arrival of the human race. They are afterthoughts, certainly. All my life I have lived in the terrifying shadow of one mountain. The sublime mountain of Green. Every morning I would fix my gaze on it - staring out of my window. Twenty or so years until I moved on from that place, to another valley, equally low. But that was not the last of it. These things have a way of haunting you, following you in your steps. It has never appeared in my dreams though. I rarely dream. Not like the rest of Green, or its brothers. When I do dream it is of the lesser things. Bodily functions, intakes, excretions, ejaculations and so on. Detestable stuff. The mountain haunts me in other ways, it crawls with me in the back of my head.

There is a house at the foot of the mountain, beyond the town, on the outskirts. No one lives there anymore, no one has lived there for years now. It has long lain empty, amid the trees. That is where I will spend my last night, for it is certain that I shall end at night, when no one is watching. If I were to bid this world farewell in the early afternoon or even the evening, well, that just does not seem possible. It is not as I have imagined it, or foreseen it. No, I know I will die one night, or early one morning in that filthy old house, up there on the slopes of that misty deep. No one will buy it. I am sure it must belong to someone, although they do not use it for anything, so I am sure that I will be fine to pry open those wooden doors, when the time is right.

I spent my childhood staring from my window out into the night, eyes resting on the mountain and the house - white and pure. It was not at all dilapidated then. When I was a boy I would watch Mr Williams outside that house, chopping wood. I would watch him with an old pair of binoculars my grandfather had given me. He used to watch the birds in the garden, my grandfather that is. There were many birds in our part of the country. Life all around. Spring was green back then, summer golden. Skin gleaming with oil and flesh on show, a slight zephyr bringing the scent of mountain heather rippling down the hillsides and into the nostrils. Sometimes Mr Williams would work without a shirt, causing pulses of pubescent excitement to run from my eyeballs to my groin. A passing phase, no doubt. In all my years, Mr Williams' bare chest, swinging the axe, was probably the closest I have come to finding real human love. Certainly I have loved, it is beyond doubt. But more than that man, or any man, or any woman; more than that I love that mountain. Mr Williams is now quite dead. I had visited his grave; I had attended the funeral. Perhaps not in that order. He left no widow, no children. I often think my early fantasies are all that is left of Mr Williams. The mountain remains.