Written words on the page. Act your shoe size not your age. Why are you looking at me, freak? Everyone must think I’m such a geek. Sitting here all alone. John Peel playing, next to the phone. Eyes catching something they cannot see. Mind flowing and nothing going. I want to be a writer, he says. You have to have talent. But I have. No you don’t. You talk to yourself. You have no friends. If you did, you’d give them the bends. Like the Radiohead play: “My baby’s got the bends” well take it away. That is no thing for a kid with to play. Lexical grammar, words messed up. The chokey bits at the bottom of a tea cup. I can write this shit without a thought. Words flow like the champagne I bought. The pain taker-awayers that come in a packet. You give it a push and it goes pop. You pop too as you pop them in. Swill them with water. Let the pains begin! No, dumbass. Motherfuck. The pain goes bye-bye, you go pop. The brain splatters upon the page. Act your shirt size not your age. Oh fuck. I’m forty-eight. You didn’t tell me, waiting at the gate. I always get the wrong one. The train at the station. My reading mum. There she was reading a book. There was the get off she was supposed to took. Isis. Si, sis. Next week: Brighton, the bright town. Seaside memories of a black gown. Sitting in front of the Oxford Don. Blink and you’ll miss it. There, it’s gone. Gone to see whom, to see what, to see her? I don’t remember. Can I confer? Paxman, taxman, humpty who. Hold on a minute, I’m married to Lou. Writing is easy. It’s all for a lark. You look into your mind and read the dark. I don’t think. My fingers do. They do it all. I type for you. You being me and being being it. The writing’s on the wall, they say. Clichés abound. They’re not actually true. The writing’s on the screen. In front of me. (And you if you read this.) But what if it’s printed. Well, then it’s on the page. Act your breast size not your age. So I’m a male. I white Caucasian not-blonde. A non-bimbo Baywatch watcher in the past. The days of bad telly in the land of multiple bacteria. Gibberish. Jobberish. What a job this would be. I write the words so that you can see. I see the sign of a pound pop up. Popping pills to stop the hurt. The pain in my shoulder, my arm, my leg. The pain in my heart, before you start, is the one that I want to take away. My heart used to be there, before a girl with a stare, on the stair, came and punctured it. Oh look at him. All up himself. Up the stairs and onto the shelf. That photo of her you still keep on display. One part of you hope that return one day, she won’t, she will, to make another kill. I am the rabbit, you are the hare, the hair, I remember the smell, the taste, the waste, oh the waste of time, of heart, don’t start. Just stop. The rot. The pain. Start again, with a new refrain. Take a new line, turn a new leaf. Think of something stupid: the Queen Mother a thief. Royalty plays about in your head. No it doesn’t. I couldn’t care less. The blue aristocracy, they make us regress. They eat our money in a caviar pool. They’ve never lived the life, you tool. The tools are my fingers. They do the work. I’m the one sitting here. Schizophrenic jerk. Clerk. Kent. Country Antrim. Isles of Scilly. Shepherd’s Bay. Think of something amazing to say. But don’t tell me just yet. Write it down. Red is the colour they will paint the town. Red in honour of your honourless blood. Noah’s Ark rode the flood. No it didn’t. It didn’t exist. My word makes more sense than the word of the Word. Capital letter. What if I call him a Turd? An Irish threesome, but God was a Jew. He knew, he knew, he knew. He kneed the feller in the balls. String him up, the soldiers obeyed the calls. The might of the crowd. The might of the maybe. The starlight glittering above the new born baby. Or so the story goes. Once upon a time, there was blasphemy. And the word made God. He really meant Dog, who still isn’t here. I’m starting to get pissed, she said. The bloody cheek. I’ll give her a bloody cheek! Just you give me my childhood memories like you said last week. You don’t even have to pay for it, bitch. Pitch it in the post, let the boat do the rest. Give it a rest, and I’ll give you a rest. That’s all I want from you now. I’ve had enough. I’m taking my bow. The war is over. You’ve won, I lost. I used to have a heart. I met you, at a very great cost. The phone bill, the presents, the post, the guilt. The amazing little memoirs packed into the silt. The silt of the sand on the beach on the sea. The sinking sun and the watching gaze. The haze of hilltops on a clear-skied night. We walk home in heaven. I ask you. You said we might. I couldn’t find a place where they sold. These things at school we weren’t told. I’m bored. I see bed. I leave alone the voices in my head. The Ayrshire, the pride, the post and the past. The written words forever will last. So Shakespeare said. So why not me. I know who I am. Did he? I know my name and how it to spell. He didn’t. Though on it did he dwell. Not. Grot. Sick. Poor Jen. Three and a half bottles of wine? I doubt it. But then I wouldn’t know. I tasted it once. I had a go. It’s rank. It smells. It rings like the bells. The New-lawn singing. The hey watcha cock! The Skinhead Hamlet. The Polonius grim. Helen of Troy. Troy’s R Us. Bed. Go. Now. Mate. Get some sleep, before it’s too late.
[7 March 2002]
