Bartlebooth's Worries

In the fast approach to evening, the imp watches the sky change her clothes. He is concerned by the feeling that every other imp he knows has some higher purpose - some necessary goal in life that pushes them on, if not lifts them. 'The buggers!' he says half to himself and the wind. As an imp - a good trickster imp at that - he has learned his trade wading into the great roaring river of life, snatching kisses from illicit missus'; eating and drinking in the smoky confines of attic rooms; defying the gravity of walls and car engines; showering pages with cursive flair; his voice a spectrum of colours; in his heart - a tight knot of bursting joy lined with wrinkles of disappointment - he sees himself a small figure amongst the Magogs; the demons; the frost queens; the very real minotaurs; the hard working cyclopes in their forges; the nymphs at play and working hard at breaking hearts in orchards and stinking bashments.

One imp. That's all. Just a lowly imp. But he has his own purpose; his own idea of a higher purpose. And if it fails, so be it. There's still time to find another.

The Jamaican Coke Rush

We were glad to be ignored by the urchins they had crawled from their respective corners, gangster lean with the usual quota of two street girls - fatty and thinny - to be honest they were all shadows and silhouettes to me at all costs. On the corner - lit from the weak flare of tangerine streetlights, or pulling quietly on a cigarette or spliff. The beauty of outsiders. Walking towards the main roads, liquidly rolling into view, a beefcake with his top off - it was hot enough. Sometimes I wake up in the morning and I ask myself - is life worth living should I blast myself? We start laughing because the thought was simultaneous - but as he walked towards me he wasn't Matt anymore, not for the moment he was another outsider walking at me making the oldest of conflicts flutter into dark life in his chest. I, perturbed and out of sorts, Matt happy. Naturally infectious though in the night, and so I coped with my ego. I put it underfoot - the dragon under Saint George's heel - same as that old print we had at the top of the stairs - opposite the windowsill that gave me the fantods when I was a nipper because it was DEAD SPACE. The thought of it frooked me out as much as the prospect of eternal life - I dislike phantoms. And so lying awake in a kind of fearful ecstacy - now awake with a less than celestial cluster of thoughts in my head and dick in hand; sticky sheets; wet feet. Angry again, there's no escape from being churlish or stuck behind the gates at that time in the morning. A stupid, ugly cunt in the shop, face like a twine of rope, numb boyfriend - a unit - the thing Shiona taught me to slip out of before it was too late and everything became predictable. I really want her to go away.

A remarkable Jaw

Last night was strange for everybody. No-one could sleep. It was stickily humid; the sort of heat that coats bones in increasing layers of pig iron. Dry mouthed and salty tongue'd the unfortunate insomniac wrestled with his increasing tiredness whilst his brain bubbled with cyclical nonsense. Caged up in his own conciousness, the deep thick bloom of night, silently amassed with a trail of stars, offered him no rest. Raging he paced up and down the spiral stairs that lead to his room, still pulsing with heat. The silence had a superadded edge of irritation for him. Dying to embrace, to fall into the lull of sleep. Not for another hot, sticky hour.

A bad mood followed all day, until a dignified looking man with silver on his jaw walked in and nonchalantly leafed through a magazine. The expression on silverface (the name the insomniac had flown upon) was so intense that the previous night's horrors were melting away in a new sort of heat. THE HEAT OF ASBESTOS GELOS!

THE IMP

A much needed visit to Manchester to meet my wound maker / healer last week has left in its wake a strange trail. For the duration of that day, I was someone else. Someone unfamiliar to myself. Manchester does that to me. In itself it is a constantly changing city; a proper hermit crab - now with extra jewels encrusted on its shell. The changes made me weary, like I didn't belong anymore. Indeed ask a few people and they'd tell you I now class Birmingham as my home. Strange roots are planted here.

That day was as magical as I could've asked it to be. Unashamedly walking the corridors of my memory, crossing the same wooden floors I did over two decades ago. Taller now, quieter, more observant of my surroundings. More eager to project remembered conversations and meanings upon static, stuffed exotic birds: Mantiq al-tair by Farid al-din Abi, being one. Or noticing the strange colour of the muslin that housed two mummies; still excellently preserved. And of course the Lion. He hasn't changed in four years, and still gives me the fantods. And the giant Japanese Spider Crab that has always been synonymous with the museum for me. When alone, I chanced upon a diorama that drew attention to the fact that museum categorization is flawed. I was impressed. Back to late afternoon tea...and a sore throat.

Now I am sad. Going away always entails having to face the return. How much like Heyst do I wish to extricate myself from the tangle. Maybe I don't want to come back.

Artists are Dickheads

I wake up at around 5-6 o' clock every morning, partly from an excitement of something unformed and looming on the horizon, partly from pure rage at any number of petty household problems - but most of all from the Godawful cacophony of a Balsall Heath morning. It starts with a pigeon or two alighting on my chimney, some two or three feet from my skylight. The COOO COOO comes down directly on my head like a bag of hammers, I get up, grab a balloon and shove my hands out of the window and give the said airbag a royal scrape with my fingers - the resulting rubbery screech usually sees them off. More than once I've seen a startled, almightily pompous expression on their birdfaces - almost as if they're saying (in their heads) 'How dare you!' It almost makes me laugh were my eyes not so heavy and my frayed temper fraying to the point of unwinding altogether.
Then, Christ preserve the ignorant for their follies - the cats start. WOOOOOOOOW! A grey fucker with tip ex in his eye where he was probably whapped for his amorous pursuits with his tiny barbed penis. This warrants it's own sound effect - usually a giant PISSS or GEERRRROUUT OF IT! I neglect to mention there was a female involved - when isn't there? There he was wooowwwing away at this tabby atop a fence. What a touching scene - two mangy fuckers making all sorts of noise, tails swishing - he, enraged at her manifest lack of interest, she pointedly looking down at him from her queendom. Gone were the echoes of your ancestors who purred in the laps of Pharoes, or had sphinxes built in their honour. Instead the pathetic reality of two loudmouth quadrupeds at 6 in the A.M. Je suis trop exhaute!
Then, whyever not? Let your bastard dogs out. I love dogs with all my heart. It's the owners I hate, because quite simply dogs can be easily trained to behave. But no, you biscuit heads refuse to take a few simple measures and as a result off your dogs go on a two hour barking spree, peppering the silence with a wonderful array of sleep shattering WOOOOS / WUUUUUS /WEH'S! Fucking nut!

Wallfahrtslied

It's not fair that you make me feel this way. I cannot take it. Brave, or so I thought I was being. The great disarming effect of  a touch, that simple deception, the ego overcome to realise something missed. A powerful feeling - a dark flapping shape like a pirate flag over a dark dark wood - flashes of silver and diamonds of white, blood red gold, this old feeling groaning back into life like Lazarus; the murmur of my heart; the full pulse of blood around my heart. Swimming in dark pulsing lakes of rippling unctuousness. Putative feelings, simple moment - hard to keep unbound my fears my face flushing to the dark hue of the carpet. The high cathedral notes - the strings in the ceiling! Or a copper eye wrought of reams of copper - looking down at our place in the world. Callous universe, this. Only you make it worthwhile, somehow. You, fucker! x

Trouble; A Head

A great fire for his mane, the sun setting the sky aflame; all the clouds in silent conflagration, roaring - a Viking's eyes set my heart to soaring.  

His Royal Highness

I miss him with his uncertainty and his quick wrath. A hybrid marking of piranha and tiger's stripe, a cheeky boy with his gullivers snipped but still randy.
Baron Benson of Great Barr; Abbe Bensoni; Son of Ben. All the names I have conjured for him, but he will always be Benson. Man is Dog's idea of God. Benson is my idea of a baron, a stately pompous baron amongst dogs. In the undergrowth at Great Barr park, the sun shining through the loop of his tail...snuffling in ecstasy the hot undergrowth. Running away from collies, upsetting a gulp of Magpies. But he wouldn't dare, in the final stages of our walks, breach the gaggles of Black Necked Canadian Geese. Hundreds of the bastards - aloof: King Midas amongst them. Instead a furtive nail dipped in the deep green/brown water. I know he dislikes the water when it's deep. Happily he will wade through a stream, but as soon as the murk creeps in - the tentative suggestion of an unknown space (evidently with it's own deep scent - as his nose skims the skin of the surface) he becomes that peculiarly endearing coward that Tony, Emily and I know so well. Looking with eyes as big as the moon, his handsome brown eyes - looking up at me. A moment of atavism. My hero.
Need you now buddy. Need you like you don't even know. For affection that costs nothing, has no bounds and asks no return. You make me soft, lad.

From other times

First then, the breaking down of all you held to be true or right by yourself. The close secrets and unfolding mystery of intimacy that was latent in you. The acrid side - missing a check for an STD because of snow; waiting for an hour on a freezing night in Manchester; but it was worth it to reveal a bottle of red wine; a painting of  a cyclopean sea captain with a gold background - or to snatch a cigarette from her mouth in a comical act of bravado. No-one wants the other to die, no-one can stand the bond that makes a separation that much harder to bear when it's gone. Each of us have a way of expressing that grief - some admittedly more eloquent than others, some jealously guard those words and are dumb through choice. Those must be the most beautiful words of all. Like a quick glimpse of a dark small fish in  a pond, swift, back into its hiding place. The vanity of shyness.

Myself, I prefer to pick up the pen and feel the heat on my shoulders. Still happy and safe in foreknowledge steeped in layers of grief - cum - elation. Rebecca all the way from Korea - sorry about the one that got away - my subsequent mad dance like the time I saw a cat run over, and it danced before it lay panting and expired right in front of me. I, you, we live on. We never stay still, even in meditation or sleep. Outside I can hear a carnival, horns and drums. My eyes are bulging! My teeth stickily coated, my tongue a-drip.

For you then, anything you want. I taught myself the lessons, the turning away - the 'construct' pain as construct; and the infallible promise of a daily scream from next doors surly little boy or the cats who scream like men. All this blends together in a myriad moment of delicious heat, along with those eyes that could cut ice, but the loins that could melt icebergs! Impossible not to be humorous - the last resort surely, but the strongest. Dursn't matter. Here's at 'ee. All the things we shared. I love them and remember them not as I might; a cenotaph; a spectacular fit of puking; of unimportant memories - of something buried and gone; but as I once said : the pale blossom leaf jigging in the shade of a tomb. Distinctly dancing towards the light. Come with me.

Besos

Los jóvenes y muy hermoso como un Vikingo I sabían una vez. Pelo en el cambio de signo de perfección. Filamentos finos, pozo comportado y ajuste. Fresco e inteligente, un recordatorio que puedo sonreír la sonrisa de un hombre que no tenga nada en su mente sino buenas cosas. Incluso en tiempos de distensión, como más de una de nosotros está ahora. Los pilares de la sal temblaban anoche y genuino me perdieron para las palabras en esto, mi vida adulta estúpida. La amenaza del amor y de la locura en la bahía como perros bien preparados con las gomas suaves y los dientes agudos que esperan para rend la cortina de mi sensibilidad y equilibrio. En lugar la floración lenta de la amistad por la cual sostengo siempre más. Para perder más difícilmente a un amigo que un amante.

Su movimiento!