Take pills and see ghosts or shoot up and take flight.
Pull here to run away or tap there to stand up and fight.
And then, found sweating I’m in a room all of a sudden,
With umpteen joysticks and numerous coloured buttons.
In the high scores top ten, a repeated name called ace.
I’m not in the top-ten, walk away and save face.
Wait! As I feel the burning, red and sore.
Game on! Goad’s the machine showing my new score.
At the slicing of the cake, Biff stealthily took shape as a hunting feline and inhaled all the helium that his lungs could muster.
Standing back, he felt repelled by the deafening scenes of frenetic gluttony. He opened his well-rested mouth to release some verbal pressure that impounded in his head.
The sound of his very first syllable caused the surrounding windows to shatter into thousands of shark-like teeth. Consequently, an almighty vacuum of air sucked him out of the house as if he were suddenly grabbed by a colossal hand. Up, up into the gaping void of turquoise sky he floated.
As he rose into the sky with his elation from escape, he could hear the sweet slow fade of lung-bursting screams; expelled from the children’s unending hellish choir in the house below him.
Wailing from their distress of flaccid balloons and exploding glass, Biff had gone too far this time; he floated higher than he had foreseen, Biff froze as hypothermia set his body.
His helium had long expired, he plummeted towards terra firma at over a hundred miles an hour and landed face up on the lawn of a children’s garden tea party. With Biff’s brains and guts having covered the sweet treats; a limp balloon remained frozen stuck to his hand, with two frosted words, Happy Birthday!
When the children screamed, Biff lay with a magnificent smile.
“I see.” Replied the Apprentice, he was unnerved.
“No, I don’t think you do see! I’m not dead yet! Get me…to…the…Hospital!” croaked the Dying Man.
His apprentice did as he was told; he hadn’t driven for a good few years, but felt the time was right to get back behind the wheel.
The Apprentice held the Dying Man upright, until he threw him into the backseat of his car, the Dying Man was now semi-conscious; with his treatment that bore resemblance to raw meat on a butcher’s slab.
The Apprentice then drove to the hospital with extreme caution. Slowly through the traffic he went, every wrong turn possible, he even began to enjoy the drive, he slipped an old John Williams Film Soundtrack tape into the cassette player for old time sake.
The Apprentice screamed, “Yeeees!” Suddenly, maniacal to the nostalgic sounds of Indiana Jones; whilst somehow, simultaneously, surprising himself at his over-reaction to joy.
He sang along, “Da dadada daa da da, dada dadaa da da da da da!” He cracked his imaginary whip out of the driver’s window and bucked his hips into the distressed driver’s seat of his knackered Ford Mondeo. The Apprentice had become somewhat hysterical; a middle-aged demon away with the fairies.
The music, so thunderous and active, so out of sync to his Mondeo’s pathetic speed that a mini epidemic of voyeurs were gathering like bacteria, and with more pace than the car itself.
Finally, two hours later they arrived at the hospital, music still blaring.
As soon as the passenger door was opened by a passing paramedic, the paramedics face rippled with distorted brass notes as she then bellowed, “He’s dead!”
As the day’s passed the result from the autopsy concluded that the Dead Man wouldn’t have died had he not spooned his own eyes out with his seat belt latch plate, and consequently stuffed them into his despairing ears; he simply lost the will to live, his illness was a mystery to all except one.
For many years after the Dead Man’s death they continued with their tempestuous relationship. To the Dead Man’s indignation his colleague had become one of the most successful entertainers on earth, and revoltingly rich.
The Apprentice was no longer the Apprentice, for he had gained worldwide fame and made an absolute killing from his live and often violent televised séances as Jenson De’ath.
I awoke in a canvas tent.
I was confused, not sure what it meant.
My feet were beyond the open zip.
Droplets of breath bombed my every touch.
I hoped I was at least in my garden,
Or even by a beautiful lake.
As I opened the tent… a tag on my toe!
“Half price?”
So up
and so down
that life just bounces
bounces
bounces
bounces
life just bounces
bounces around
As life just bounces
so death announces
stop those bounces
bouncing
bouncing
bouncing about
lie still
lie flat
and that’s that!
I observe and I
Stand on edges
As I hear millions of
Meaningless words spoken
As a deterrent
for those that are needed
All Languages
Sending me
To an episode from my
Implicit memory
As I cope I smile
Then I choose not to
At precisely all the right moments
Eventually I care not
I am somewhere else
If you’re like me
You wait to be
acknowledged
Or to be completely
ignored
That is expected
If you’re like me
The here and now
Will have its time
in the future
To be useful again
And I write
Logi stood in line with the fake TV over his head. The intro music began; his heart, trying to break free from where it was lodged; decaying in his throat.
The fact that he couldn’t see or hear clearly was edging Logi ever closer to an unlikely case of spontaneous combustion.
The on-looking Snoxall pointed Logi out of the room, appearing briefly as a human signpost; he had seen enough and heard little that pleased him.
In the evening, Snoxall sat at home, as usual. He sat, hard as granite, in front of the TV, as usual. He gauged himself; spooned microwaved additives through a small entry and exit hole in his face, as usual.
And, as usual, his eyes were stinging everything like angry wasps. Snoxall was bloated; full of repeats.
Repeatedly, throughout the years, Logi’s TV had become portable. It was apparent to him that at many segments of his life, this box, lowered, over his head; a televised helmet that added doctrine to his fear.
Logi’s portable TV screen always flickered, both inside and out. The re-formed, distorted face of Snoxall morphed seamlessly into Boygall. Boygall then became Bagnall, then Logi’s own aging face.
This continued till his eyes fixed, his mind went blank. And his mind always stayed blank. Until, one moment of release allowed him, slowly, to grasp at his own personal and portable TV’s remote control; Logi could now pause anything and everything he wanted to with a…click!
When the world was freeze-framed, Logi took his TV off his head and walked serenely through the army of real life actors. Occasionally he’d walk around his statuesque foe and look into their fixed eyes (looking for life). He’d then become an extra to his own play as soon as he pressed play on his remote control. And at moments like these, Logi would be instantly forgotten. His portable TV screen faded to black…click.
Your hand is on the window, the other, the doors lock.
It’s always so cold now that warmth would result in shock.
Then distant children in the backyard, they play, they weep.
’Are they ok?’ Second thoughts; that front path need’s a sweep!
They say don’t live your life alone
It only makes you old.
Your body is a flickering flame.
In the dim light it can’t stop the cold.
You turn your head in thought; get dressed now in sepia.
Your colours have long run to the cracks in your furniture.
Suddenly the fridge say’s the garden needs a trim,
And you can’t make sense of all the labels, better off in the bin.
They say don’t live your life alone,
It only makes you old.
Your body now lives with lessening name
Don’t do as you’ll say, won’t do what it’s told.
(Man)
“You’re very tall?”
(Woman)
“Yes.”
(Man again)
“What I mean is you’re very tall for a woman!”
“Yes I know what you meant, yes suppose I am.”
(Awkward silence)
(Woman again)
“You’re quite small really…for a–“
“For a man, yes I know.”
He then shrinks to a size of which she can inhale him, and as a result, the woman grows one millimetre taller.
Every time this happens she finds her new size amusing because she never really found the time to grow-up.
Originally the man was never really into her, but now he was.
Jeff hated his hair,
It looked ridiculous,
never looked right, ever.
He had tried many styles
and many colours to suit.
One day he simply had enough,
Jeff let his real hair grow.
Finally, he braved the world,
and the world was horrified.
From the sight of his real hair,
he was stunned by laser-gun
egged and kicked,
pushed over and spat at.
And then kissed, passionately,
by a young girl dressed in red.
Jeff was then arrested
by masked men in black;
for disturbing the peace
and exposing himself in public.
If that wasn’t enough
he then found himself hair-cuffed
And led away,
quarantined as soon as thrown
into a pulsating orb.
Suddenly the town was
back on program.
As for Jeff,
He really did hate his hair.
I Eat Let.ers 