Her Dementia

How cold it was. My toes clutched the edge of the shingle like the stiff hand of the dead clasps a bible in a stone grave.  A gelid wind tore a screeching euphony from the night and sent it wailing up the cathedral towers to breach my ears and torment my mind. Her face flashed definitely with the lightning, lingered momentarily in the leaden clouds then faded with storms shifting grey patterns like a portrait sinking into murky waters.

The sickness was quick and had transformed her in a matter of weeks, from a loving mother, to a twisted demon set on eradicating all her creations.  Her diminished memories and uncontrollable rage had cruelly reinvented her. Death had infused in her a horrid stare, the devil had had buried his poisoned blade deep in her mind.

Thunder shook and the roof tiles chattered like large clay teeth. I knew I had only moments left and squinting through the weather I saw movement on the stone balcony. Lighting flashed and a cruel figure descended the terrace, animated, the white gown flashing a show of her previous movements with the raw fulmination. Thick strands of wet grey hair caged her yellow eyes and I stepped blindly to the roofs edge. Another fork of lighting split the sky behind her, the blade dazzled in her hand. She stared not into my eyes, but to my left… at nothing but the darkness. As the knife rose up, her head twitched sharply and her bilious eyes caught mine. Her mouth snapped into a leer and she cried the moan of a psychotic man.

As I fell, a final bolt burst from the night sky and painted my mind white, forever.

A Deacon found the two bodies the following morning amongst a wash of torn tree limbs. The woman’s buckled shape enclosed in shallow quag of blood, the thin wedge of blade tip protruding from between her shoulder blades like a steel peak in some marbled red valley. The young man lay on his back facing the sky. Clots of black dirt cased his staring eyes. In his hand he gripped an open silver locket.

 The Flecked sepia faces of a mother and her son smiled contentedly within the sterling ovals.

Lothoria

I had been in her home for only 3 days but already restless suspicion caught hold of my conscious and begun goading my curiosity. Such a swift transition it had been. Gill’s face had the look of man who had just had his snag snatched by an Emu.

“Mate, what are ya doin? You’ve only just meet her for fucks sake”

He had a valid point. I was a lousy friend and housemate, leaving him to flip the bill for a two-bedroom joint, while I upgraded from ashtrays and slab boxes, to a single unit with ocean views up on Abattoir Heights. Her Father owned the building and all the other flats were empty save hers, filled with cold black leather couches and large paintings of bullfighters bordered with rust blown spiked iron frames. A massive bed commanded the bedroom; the heavy metal posts on each end nearly grazed the ceiling.

She had approached me in the Ginza Lion two weeks ago. I was between pints with Gill when I felt a high heel in the small of my back and I turned to face a grinning girl, her long ink black hair shot straight down her elongate neck and an angry scarlet streak ran through her fringe. A red feather in a crow’s wing.

I don’t remember exactly how it happened, but sometime in the early hours of the following morning I awoke in her bed, clamped in her thighs, fastened in her grip like a pink pickle in a bull clip. And that’s where I am… sexually and somewhat anxiously involved with Brenda Lothario.

Brenda often worked interstate. She was a sale rep for Le Gland Acier which she told me was a French bra company. I guess that explained her exotic underwear, knickers with fabricated bullet holes and sports bras with an aluminum breastplate. I guess it’s whatever boils your eggs and I couldn’t say much against anyone’s breadwinning…I hadn’t had a job since Tony Lockett had scored his 1300^th goal... and I think I’d pulled a sicky that day too.

So I was held up in her apartment with only Manolete and Ordonez for company, watching me mid veronica as I paced the living room.

The apartment was small and I had acquainted myself with all but one detail…a small cupboard in the bedroom. As I sat on the bed staring intently at the midgets door with its polished silver knob shaped in rather a phallic guise, I gave a brief thought to what Brenda had said when I first commented on her peculiar little hatch.

‘I trust you Robert with my heart, even my apartment, all ask is that you leave this little door locked…always. It holds my deepest secrets…ones that I am not ready to share with you…yet’.

She had smiled queerly as she spoke and fanned her long caked lashes at me.

‘Bugger this’ I muttered, and using some BBQ prongs I found on the deck I levered the door open. The lock made a shrill pop like a tin bean pod in hot coals and as I reached into the dark compartment my hands touched cold steel and tightly bound leather, a cold snake and manacle in waiting…

And then came the sound of a door opening, muffled. My eyes flicked to the bedroom door, then back to the crude implements of bawdy arrest buzzing in my

shaking hands.

‘Tut, tut…tut’, her tongue clicked like a flint striking wet stone.

‘Someone’s been a wicked boy’.

A lascivious rendition of Bluebeard

                                          November 4^th 1997      

Dearest diary of mine,

 I’m having second thoughts about this Red cloak. So far it seems to have bought me nothing but distress.

The collage girls at the bus stop scream awful things at me.

“Scarlet fever beaver’ and ‘red ride’. I’m not positive, but I have a feeling they’re insinuating that my privates are infected with lust crust planted by the local boys who supposedly ride me like a bike…a red bike.

I only bought this freakin thing because it was on sale. And for its glorious warmth, being way down in the fall and all. Well, that and my uncle commented that ‘it bought out the color in my neck’, which I’m starting to think was NOT a compliment. That’s the last time we go shopping together. It’s not normal.

I’m heading off to Nan’s tomorrow afternoon and I’m thinking maybe she could use a new cloak, not that she’d even wear it. She seems forever in mid backstroke under that sea of quilts.

Oh and before it slips, I must note this: that hairy devil from the

Wood End Estate has been watching me like a dog does a cutlet, all bearded and dribbly. He’s laying fiendish plans against me…I just know it.       

Until my next entry,

                                   Jill Gentree.

10. The morning has shed its dark cloak of night…and slips into the first bright sleeves…of the morning.  As with a normal day in the city of Shangba, the communties beloved statue of Ts’ang-wang … is the first to feel the glorious warm … of the new days sun.

9. This however, is no ordinary day for the people of Shangba … and the empty streets and abundant food charts … are tell tale signs that today is … ‘Cha Zai ni de duzi’ which translates to Tea … in your stomach day. There is only one lone figure that walk the empty streets…for he is what’s known as  … ‘ the coffee pot’ or in local tongue ‘kafei hu’ …  exiled from the celebrations due to his love … of the banished bean.

7. The ancient Chinese tea ceremony comes around…but once a year … and as the townsfolk wait patiently in their huts…an excited buzz is present … Even the professional members of this humble society … take the morning off … and leave the giant containment of offices still …  and reflective of this special day.

1. Soon the modest dwelling will be empty as the celebrators gather … in the town centre to drink … at the heart of one of the world’s largest … collaborative assortments … of tea.

5. But like with any day of festivity and fun…its over…in no time. And the radiant light of the day…is replaced by the artificial glow of a now … bustling … frenetic …metropolis

                        

Dear Cordula,

These past few months have been so enchanting, so warming. I was an exiled poet, cast out of genre, disinherited by my blood and banished from a nest of brick and mortar. Then you materialized, like a warm breeze heated by the oceans of the Northeast, soft yet strong. I didn’t believe then and still don’t, that this temperate breath is to be mine and mine alone. You have braised many before me and will, I’m certain, continue to weather the storms in many a torrid heart to come. Weaving sultry patterns, seasonal shifts in your spirit move you onward in a current of lukewarm ocean patterns.

Enough of this self-pity, right now you are my Indian triggerfish of Madagascar, welcoming me into your Tropical waters, sharing your molluscs and echinoderms. My shimmering girl, I refuse to rule out the chances of never seeing you again.  When we have been apart in the early hours, I have been mournfully engaged in research. If I had a sweet potato pie, I would bet three large slices from four, that we meet again next year and probably the one after. I’ve been a fisherman for these last 20 years and for the last 10 have regarded a trend if you will…a reoccurrence. I have seen your reflection before, in the ocean, a few times in fact.

Always this time of the year, always the air inhales the chill and buffets a balmy puff in my sails.

I know we will swim concurrently once more my ocean nymph.

                                   Love and white wash,

                                                        Jack Caddis

STOPPARD DOES NOT SLIP ON PLAGIARISM

Dear Editor,

It is a fine skill indeed to write a play that, engages an audience, and upon repeated viewings, enlightens, educates and inspires also. In Tom Stoppards case (one of the audience members), he created his own intelligent literary construction with two borrowed names. Considering this, might I ask you to consider the term, ‘one mans trash is another’s treasure’? By this I am referring to Shakespeare’s characters: Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. Characters, which served a cursory duty in Shakespeare’s Hamlet, but upon executing their nominal function, were disposed of. I’m sure there could be laws created to punish those who possess the power to physically reanimate the literally dead, but what of the literary dead? In the case of Stoppard’s play Rosencrantz and Guildernstern are dead, it seems commendation, not punishment ought to be a just dessert for Stoppard textual resuscitative abilities. If William Shakespeare was himself, ‘not dead’ I’m sure he would consider Stoppard’s text a creative complement and testament to Hamlet’s inspirational qualities. Let me pose this example: If the banana is used by one individual to educate others on the unique form and colour of its peel, why should there be concern if another individual finds the unused inner working and gives a new audience a different appreciation for the fruit?

Stoppard’s Play fleshes out the inner workings of Shakespeare’s limited characters and breathes new life into their humble personalities, wets their tongues with an innocent wit and places them at the helm of a near entirely different adventure. Robin Hood, a cardinal figure in the literary world, had many adventures with his merry men, not all were crafted from the same pen. The ominous figure of Dracula, appeared count(less) times in books other than Bram Stokers’ and I’m sure the varied tales of horror and lustful blood sucking would not be consider by many, plagiaristic.

If anything, Rosencrantz and Guildernstern are dead is a reinvention for Shakespeare lovers to applaud, not condemn.  Stoppard does not hide behind changed names to fool the audience of his plays origin or influence. No, instead he appeals to the humorist, the failed philosopher and the left wing voyeur and satisfies their literary appetites, by opening all the doors that were closed.

Plagiarism is an ugly thing…like a rotten banana. 

Yours hopefully originally,

D.L BURR.

The Thinker and the Goat Farmer

The pitchfork drove itself deep in to the mass of crusted manure with next to no persuasion from my hands, forearms or shoulders which were all throbbing like deep cuts dipped in brine. The oxidized forks groaned faintly, forewarning a misfortune and the weight of the dense waste caused the prongs to arch in a casual yaw.

 “Fooken ell, ya’v dun rupshard the devuls septek tenk” Henrys words were delivered in twinned with fine webs of spit and he set to wiping prickling tears from his eyes.

I flap jacked the heavy wad of excrement to merge with the fifty preceding forkfuls in the large cart backed in the corner of the stable.

“Yud bess leve ut wulliyum…wul teke e breke n av somthun to aight… um arlf fooken sterved”. He croaked, chewing the leather neck strap of his anorak.

Henry’s filth brushed fingers make the prevalent sign of a sandwich as I consumed another caustic breath. I was unsure whether I could stomach lunch, but Henry seemed to want for a break and it was a good excuse to get away from that awful stench.

I let the pitchfork fall, its landing muted in the dusty shadows of old straw and followed Henry bent over through the shallow doorway, out from the granular air of the pen and into the lambent afternoon sun.

As we sat eating potato bread on stumps of chestnut trees long fallen, Henry told me stretched truths about rare ancient drugs and their origins.

“So teke inta eccown thuz poo-or fawks reet…they tu wante gey mussey… bute beeyun poo-or they canno,” his furry jaw pounded a thick tearing of bread and his eyes glazed vacantly as he spoke.

“bute thus patiqulair drog…they nem esceeps meh nowe…et as e redeemun valyeah.”

I found myself leaning closer to make out the words working their way out of his crumbling lips. Deciphering his wild descriptions was doubly difficult during mealtimes, like reading fine print in a pepper storm.  

“End they wud weyt undare they ruch coonts bellconey fore theym  te puss…thun they poo-or lads cud ge high us kesstruls tu, coss they puss wus stull full o tha drog”.

I nodded, smiling at Henry as first he rumbled, then convulsed with laughter, lurching a large marbled wad of bread and wine free from his throat. I watched it flop into the patchy grass, roll and gather camouflage.

The afternoon air got suddenly bitter and as I drew it in I tongued lose, some clots of dough and thought of home, the silent streets of London and the constant noise of contemplation.

 Goat bells clanged up on the hill behind the house.

I supposed the things I would write in my journal that evening.

“harr haw harrrr, bluedey brullyant”, Henry beamed and a cluster of crumbs wrestled free from his whiskers.

The ‘clak bok’ of a goat bell rang close and a robust nanny waddled to a stop beside the house and stared blankly at the two figures in grey overalls stained with dark green and brown smirch.

I looked across at a sizeable doe standing absently by the house and considered the relentless rotation of her mouth, tugging in loose needles of grass with her black lips and said to myself. “You make a fine point”.