i searched in vain for eve
amongst the crannies and crevices
in the stagnant pools
and the dust-mote air
she was always one step ahead
Showing posts with label story. Show all posts
Showing posts with label story. Show all posts
Sunday, 22 September 2024
Friday, 9 November 2018
song
These abstract black and white photos were taken on Monday night at the MAC. Unfocused and devoid of colour they seem all the more powerful for it.
Tuesday, 24 April 2018
once upon a time ...
Once upon a time there was a big man, with a big field and a shiny, new tractor to keep it all nicely mown. He had a big trailer to carry things in as well.
One day the big man put some children in the back of his trailer and took them for a lovely ride up and down in his big field. He let one of the children steer the shiny, new tractor.
The big man still lives there and he still has a big field. The children are all grown up now and the shiny new tractor has a patina of rust. It still mows the field though!
Sunday, 19 January 2014
Tales from the Apocalypse .. stop, look, listen
A big smile cracks open his face as the wind sears hot-jets steaming past.
"We're on the way, baby!"
The vintage grey Suzuki Hayabusa pans metal to the road. It smears rubber-scorched tarmac and he flies helmeted toward the city with the film safe in camera. What an affair! It's sure to make his fortune, easy as cutting open a Chinese New Year cookie.
The sun burns deep scars to the the motorway while she waits patiently for him to arrive at the very end of the road. Stretched taut and thinking of those photos, pin-cushioned. Oh yes, she's waiting! She's just waiting for you, baby.
It was a hot, torrid night, tossing and turning against the dying embers of the day. She squeezed fresh lemon into the cusp of the glass and pulled faces. He contemplated a liquid-cooled, inline-four engine with sixteen valves driven by double-overhead cams. It was a very strange mixture indeed, fuelled by lust and power and longing and a secretive oil-based recipe known only to the inner-few. It was, truly, an image to behold.
The final course was cheese, Italian and accompanied by two deep glasses of crimson wine. They gorged on salted Pecorino Romano, thin-waxed Provolone and a deliciously oozing Caciotta, saving the Grana Padano to last in contemplation of the fruit-sweet pleasures to come. She reached for the cheese-wire and drew it across the hard, thick rind. A sharp pull and it split open revealing its savoured core.
He reached out to take her hand, carelessly up-turning his glass in the process. The dying dregs spilled across the crumbed white table-cloth. Blood red stains.
"Easy, boy … there's lots of time."
Prime metal and flying! This sweet sensation of passing time, gliding hard-core past the stalled traffic and on the way. A cookie fortune hand.
They left the restaurant full, ripe and ready to the night. And then he came upon them with a mighty, mighty …
"Flash!!"
Two lovers, endless lovers captured forever in the celluloid frame of a paparazzi camera.
The crescendo builds ecstatically and she waits so patiently for him to come. One mile, half a mile, three hundred yards and there he spies the opened entrance! Home and a warmed chemical-bath awaits.
An operatic voice wails and in slow-motion he guns the Suzuki Hayabusa onward. He sees the stretched wire too late as it draws across his throat severing the flesh and tendon and bone like a knife through butter.
His severed head prescribes a parabola and in that very instance it is stop, look, listen …. to the wailing diva voice and a million taken photographs spewing back in the wind until his head bounces once, twice, three times to the feet of the lady who waits so very, very patiently at the end of the road.
"We're on the way, baby!"
The vintage grey Suzuki Hayabusa pans metal to the road. It smears rubber-scorched tarmac and he flies helmeted toward the city with the film safe in camera. What an affair! It's sure to make his fortune, easy as cutting open a Chinese New Year cookie.
The sun burns deep scars to the the motorway while she waits patiently for him to arrive at the very end of the road. Stretched taut and thinking of those photos, pin-cushioned. Oh yes, she's waiting! She's just waiting for you, baby.
It was a hot, torrid night, tossing and turning against the dying embers of the day. She squeezed fresh lemon into the cusp of the glass and pulled faces. He contemplated a liquid-cooled, inline-four engine with sixteen valves driven by double-overhead cams. It was a very strange mixture indeed, fuelled by lust and power and longing and a secretive oil-based recipe known only to the inner-few. It was, truly, an image to behold.
The final course was cheese, Italian and accompanied by two deep glasses of crimson wine. They gorged on salted Pecorino Romano, thin-waxed Provolone and a deliciously oozing Caciotta, saving the Grana Padano to last in contemplation of the fruit-sweet pleasures to come. She reached for the cheese-wire and drew it across the hard, thick rind. A sharp pull and it split open revealing its savoured core.
He reached out to take her hand, carelessly up-turning his glass in the process. The dying dregs spilled across the crumbed white table-cloth. Blood red stains.
"Easy, boy … there's lots of time."
Prime metal and flying! This sweet sensation of passing time, gliding hard-core past the stalled traffic and on the way. A cookie fortune hand.
They left the restaurant full, ripe and ready to the night. And then he came upon them with a mighty, mighty …
"Flash!!"
Two lovers, endless lovers captured forever in the celluloid frame of a paparazzi camera.
The crescendo builds ecstatically and she waits so patiently for him to come. One mile, half a mile, three hundred yards and there he spies the opened entrance! Home and a warmed chemical-bath awaits.
An operatic voice wails and in slow-motion he guns the Suzuki Hayabusa onward. He sees the stretched wire too late as it draws across his throat severing the flesh and tendon and bone like a knife through butter.
His severed head prescribes a parabola and in that very instance it is stop, look, listen …. to the wailing diva voice and a million taken photographs spewing back in the wind until his head bounces once, twice, three times to the feet of the lady who waits so very, very patiently at the end of the road.
Wednesday, 20 November 2013
The spoken word version ….
Dear Chroniclers,
if you enjoyed reading 'Circumstance', here's a link to my very first video on YouTube - a spoken word version...
http://www.youtube.com/user/electrofriedmr/videos
It will appeal to those who appreciate the true awfulness of a faux Deep Southern Americana accent!
best regards,
electrofried(mr)
if you enjoyed reading 'Circumstance', here's a link to my very first video on YouTube - a spoken word version...
http://www.youtube.com/user/electrofriedmr/videos
It will appeal to those who appreciate the true awfulness of a faux Deep Southern Americana accent!
best regards,
electrofried(mr)
Sunday, 17 November 2013
Circumstance
Darn you Skeeter boy, darn you. Skeeter, we miss you so much.
All those fancy ideas and things, don't know where they came from, Skeeter, you mad boy. Not out the mud and critter-flat grits where they buried you. Was it that bang to your head on Momma's broiling pot when you ran too fast for us to catch hold? You sure ran darn fast! Straight in the pot and we had to drag you back out the bubble-bubble water, cooked and scalded, screaming up to the light.
Maybe it's there you caught? Hunkered down in the tarpaulin, turpentine shack with your books and words and fancy thoughts. All summer laid out and kicked sore, skinned like some kid-goat flayed and bloody raw red. And Momma sure wept some tears that summer, Skeeter boy. Just the circumstance.
You read and you read and you read, like picking out the cotton. White page, black word, white page, black word. And you just kept on reading. All summer long, one big red scar from tipper-toe to tipper-toe.
Is that where it came on you, Skeeter boy? The long build rail, steaming all the way up and outta the swamp, all the way to heaven. A million, million holy words cut, dried and stacked like the 'bacca leaves, hung out to dry and smoked in some weak, watery sun only to be coughed up like a morning hair-ball plug of phlegm.
That was the plan, wasn't it Skeeter boy? Build 'em up tall, word and word and word, one after the other chasing all the way to the moon. They laughed at you, mad boy. Skeeter, boiled in Momma's pot and building a tower, one word at a time.
They laughed when you cut up the papers, squared and ready like some rebel outhouse creek-wipe, smeared and steaming. And then you began to stack 'em, layer on layer. All those words just tethered to the ground. One foot, two foot, still it kept on rising as the trees shed leaves and the sow bugs crawled into little balls beside the cold, dark bayou.
You worked it hard that winter, Skeeter boy and we watched the tower rise. Up it went, some mad-boy smokestack pile of words. Not that they made much sense for us Skeeter, no more than a Cane Ridge Revival camp-meet with hot words and spitting snake-medicine vials. You reached the top of the barn by Christmas, lagged with dead indigo, cotton and hemp to keep the cold from leaching out those letters.
It didn't stop there, no Sir. On and upward as winter snow turned slush to spring and mud-baked fields turned hot summer dreams that threshed in the corn-dollied autumn days. Climbing and climbing. You disappeared from view the second year. Up to the clouds with more letters and words.
You took a C
and you took an I
and you took an R
and you took a C
and you took a U
and you danced
you danced like a crazy boy on top of the world
and you took an M
and you took an S
and your scars bubbled
in Momma's scalding pot
and still you climbed
to bring
the T
that followed on with A
and an N
and you laboured in the sweating, grey folds of a sulky drawn Confederate dawn
as you reached for the C
and ….
fell to ground clutching the last letter of your cold-blow day on earth
and we buried you
deep in the critter-flat grits
while we whistled down the wind
with cracked and broken
molasses teeth
and left you
with ….. E
alone and blowing in the bayou wind.
Darn you, Skeeter boy, darn you.
All those fancy ideas and things, don't know where they came from, Skeeter, you mad boy. Not out the mud and critter-flat grits where they buried you. Was it that bang to your head on Momma's broiling pot when you ran too fast for us to catch hold? You sure ran darn fast! Straight in the pot and we had to drag you back out the bubble-bubble water, cooked and scalded, screaming up to the light.
Maybe it's there you caught? Hunkered down in the tarpaulin, turpentine shack with your books and words and fancy thoughts. All summer laid out and kicked sore, skinned like some kid-goat flayed and bloody raw red. And Momma sure wept some tears that summer, Skeeter boy. Just the circumstance.
You read and you read and you read, like picking out the cotton. White page, black word, white page, black word. And you just kept on reading. All summer long, one big red scar from tipper-toe to tipper-toe.
Is that where it came on you, Skeeter boy? The long build rail, steaming all the way up and outta the swamp, all the way to heaven. A million, million holy words cut, dried and stacked like the 'bacca leaves, hung out to dry and smoked in some weak, watery sun only to be coughed up like a morning hair-ball plug of phlegm.
That was the plan, wasn't it Skeeter boy? Build 'em up tall, word and word and word, one after the other chasing all the way to the moon. They laughed at you, mad boy. Skeeter, boiled in Momma's pot and building a tower, one word at a time.
They laughed when you cut up the papers, squared and ready like some rebel outhouse creek-wipe, smeared and steaming. And then you began to stack 'em, layer on layer. All those words just tethered to the ground. One foot, two foot, still it kept on rising as the trees shed leaves and the sow bugs crawled into little balls beside the cold, dark bayou.
You worked it hard that winter, Skeeter boy and we watched the tower rise. Up it went, some mad-boy smokestack pile of words. Not that they made much sense for us Skeeter, no more than a Cane Ridge Revival camp-meet with hot words and spitting snake-medicine vials. You reached the top of the barn by Christmas, lagged with dead indigo, cotton and hemp to keep the cold from leaching out those letters.
It didn't stop there, no Sir. On and upward as winter snow turned slush to spring and mud-baked fields turned hot summer dreams that threshed in the corn-dollied autumn days. Climbing and climbing. You disappeared from view the second year. Up to the clouds with more letters and words.
You took a C
and you took an I
and you took an R
and you took a C
and you took a U
and you danced
you danced like a crazy boy on top of the world
and you took an M
and you took an S
and your scars bubbled
in Momma's scalding pot
and still you climbed
to bring
the T
that followed on with A
and an N
and you laboured in the sweating, grey folds of a sulky drawn Confederate dawn
as you reached for the C
and ….
fell to ground clutching the last letter of your cold-blow day on earth
and we buried you
deep in the critter-flat grits
while we whistled down the wind
with cracked and broken
molasses teeth
and left you
with ….. E
alone and blowing in the bayou wind.
Darn you, Skeeter boy, darn you.
Saturday, 19 October 2013
Season
The light comes pure through fresh-salted sky.
Two figures dance, enchanted, across the wind-whipped, sand-strand beach. They seek out private places - youthful tenderness conceals their innocent but hungry naivety.
I am boy. A rock pool, warm and welcoming. I call to you.
I am girl. I am soft seaweed, flowing through channels of spume.
Two sets of footsteps alone and entwined in the sand.
summer ...
Hot shards of light fall from the full-day sun Come watch the curious dance. The steps still entwined embrace a new pattern between. Another set of steps, then another, then another.
They dart, this way and that, chasing in and out of the sandbanks.
I am man. A rock pool, hard and black. I crawl to you.
I am woman. Barnacled.
Five paths, criss-crossed and labyrinthine mesmerising.
autumn ...
The sky is lowing gold, sinking deep to the waves and here two sets of footsteps stand for a moment frozen in contemplation of the shoreline.
But one set returns ....
winter
I am the wave. I wash all the footsteps away .. in love.
Friday, 23 July 2010
Endless Train
Three random connections from an endless train journey.
He was American; stepped on the train. Long, lanky hair framing a middle-aged moustache. Lean and tanned, he wore a carefully pressed grey suit, a grey shirt. And why the bright orange shoes? His face was crevassed. I wished I had the courage to say, "Could I take your photograph, Sir. You look interesting".
The return journey, and I read a book that explains the spread of syphilis in Brooklyn. It's interesting. The seat in front of me is occupied by a young Indian lady. She speaks louder and louder into her mobile telephone. The language is a curious mixture of English and Indian, and the conversation becomes more heated. I lean forward and cough discretely. Later she passes by my seat pushing the drinks trolley. She apologises for speaking so loudly and I smile.
They will be lovers. In just a few moments I will hear their hushed, excited, exploratory voices. I know they will kiss and part endlessly. They will be lost in it.
This is my train journey.
He was American; stepped on the train. Long, lanky hair framing a middle-aged moustache. Lean and tanned, he wore a carefully pressed grey suit, a grey shirt. And why the bright orange shoes? His face was crevassed. I wished I had the courage to say, "Could I take your photograph, Sir. You look interesting".
The return journey, and I read a book that explains the spread of syphilis in Brooklyn. It's interesting. The seat in front of me is occupied by a young Indian lady. She speaks louder and louder into her mobile telephone. The language is a curious mixture of English and Indian, and the conversation becomes more heated. I lean forward and cough discretely. Later she passes by my seat pushing the drinks trolley. She apologises for speaking so loudly and I smile.
They will be lovers. In just a few moments I will hear their hushed, excited, exploratory voices. I know they will kiss and part endlessly. They will be lost in it.
This is my train journey.
Friday, 2 July 2010
Stories from the Apocalypse - Sand
Some people say we're all descended from story. Story is all, and all is story. I think some people just don't read so much these days, and perhaps my eyes grow. Dim.
The biting wind is endless. A long, eternal stretch where sand is withered, whitened bone-rib, riding out the storm. Swirling.
Do you see, out there in the distance? Running down the molten wave, each step bleeds a glassy stare. We cannot avoid his eye.
Crow flies and we quicken down the sand. It stands before us, the skull, rictus grinning as wind whips in and out of the deep-set sockets. Motionless, grinning. We circle the wooden stake and return to face the skull. Bowing down we take our knife and carve out the eyes. For him to see.
Time passes and the sands snake silently down. A woman approaches the stake. Gold-ringed and bronze, she bears a purple scarf. Scraping the crusted blood to kiss his eyes. In rapture. The woman takes the scarf from her shoulders and wraps it tenderly around the skull - purple binding the coronal suture. She falls to the foot of the stake.
The words fly home. Crow bound and circling the stake, they lift the condyle voice as one. And so a story is borne on the winds. Story is all, and all is story. And somehow people just don't read so much these days.
The biting wind is endless. A long, eternal stretch where sand is withered, whitened bone-rib, riding out the storm. Swirling.
Do you see, out there in the distance? Running down the molten wave, each step bleeds a glassy stare. We cannot avoid his eye.
Crow flies and we quicken down the sand. It stands before us, the skull, rictus grinning as wind whips in and out of the deep-set sockets. Motionless, grinning. We circle the wooden stake and return to face the skull. Bowing down we take our knife and carve out the eyes. For him to see.
Time passes and the sands snake silently down. A woman approaches the stake. Gold-ringed and bronze, she bears a purple scarf. Scraping the crusted blood to kiss his eyes. In rapture. The woman takes the scarf from her shoulders and wraps it tenderly around the skull - purple binding the coronal suture. She falls to the foot of the stake.
The words fly home. Crow bound and circling the stake, they lift the condyle voice as one. And so a story is borne on the winds. Story is all, and all is story. And somehow people just don't read so much these days.
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