We try to talk

I hear you prepare to speak but stop, the soft click as the saliva snaps loose from the inside of your top lip and the curve of your gums.

The way your hand stands on the no-man's-land above my hips tells me you are undecided about your thought, fingers full of doubt, avoiding sex below the waist, the comfort of the chest and the honesty of the neck.

Your left foot nestles against the backs of my legs, resting softly in the gully between the both. There's no pressure though and I can feel that they aren't as warm as you'd like so what exactly are you weighing up in that baffling brain?

I open my calves a fraction, inviting in the foot...and in it comes, brushing the hair, sparsely worn by tight jeans.

You smell my neck, low, where it meets the shoulder blade. Fingers awake and crab walk a length northward, nestling over the heart.

I'm glad we had this talk.

Stuffed

My stomach can't take my tongue's desires
As I groan and pray I die
A heart that burns like a thousand fires
fueled by the 7th slice of pie

There are just days when I can't say no,
in fact I can't say much at all,
for once more into the breech I go
to answer the belly's siren call

I envy the butterless, fatless freaks
who crave only a carrot's crunch
who don't fill a tray till it bends and creaks,
before they've even started lunch

I dream of gravy, spluttering fountains
and trees of steak and cheese
where the muffins rise as high as mountains
and you can wander as you please

So fill the fridge with calories
and leave us there to dance
we'll taste the sweetest melodies
in our culinary romance

I'll swell like Violet Beauregarde
and roll from meal to meal
I'll grease my doorways thick with lard
and squeeze through like an eel

Until one day I'll hit the floor
and flounder on my back
Please come to see your friend once more
and bring some kind of snack

To some; as gods

There was a trembling among the bushes and a pink nose nudged forward.

"Come out, little one"

The eyes were added to the protruding part.

"No need to be afraid"

The youth stayed stuck in place, knees quivering under the steady gaze of the adult.

"Why are you hiding, youngster?"

" I thought I saw a god" replies the little squeak.

"Maybe you did, gods have been know to walk here. But why the fear, my young friend?"

"I am scared that I will be taken for sacrifice and I am not worthy of it"

"The very fact you say this is proof enough to me that you are more than worthy. A humble soul is all anyone asks."

"But I have sinned."

"Sin is inevitable. Repentance is where you must make a choice. Come."

So he emerged from his hiding place and whispered a prayer of hope to the skies.

Seconds later, a rushing shape burst forth and wrapped them both in thick, rough ropes. They writhed and moaned. As they were lifted up, the pain dug tightly into their flesh.

"It is the touch of god" screamed the elder. Strange skin prodded at their bodies and they thrashed in religious fevor.

They were carried off and arrived at a holy place on the back of a giant, noisy beast. The gods freed them from their rope cage and dragged the elder away.

"Take me, take me" called the little one, desperately.

"Your time will come. Prepare your body and your soul. Praise the gods in all that you do."

He kept these parting words with him over the coming months. He bowed to the gods every wish: eating all that was put in front of him and laying where he was guided each night. He lived a holy life, not completely free from fault but he had learned to accept this and embrace the penance of the gods' angry hands.

He took the wife the gods choose for him, praising their names as he mounted her, biting hard on her neck. He loved her. She was delivered by the hands of the holy; how could he not?

He never saw his children but he could sense them and he cried proud tears that they could be born in such a temple; an Eden of mud and straw.

The day they took him, he knew his blessed time had come. He rode the metal beast and his veins raced with fear and joy.

He dashed through the gaping doors of the concrete cathedral, its looming form honoring the towering height of its makers. He entered into the fierce white light. They blessed his body with each slap and he finally stood before the high priest.

"Quiet, my trembling heart. I have repented and I am ready to join the gods beyond. Anoint me, cold blade."

He spluttered rich liquid and squealed  "Hosanna" as he felt himself lifted to heaven, by the hind legs.

A 2 body problem

"Love" she says, using her dry tongue to flick the word from her mouth, "is a two body problem."
She takes a stubby point of chalk from her sagging pocket and drops to her knees.

"The pull of each body directs the other. The greater body leads but both have equal importance in the solution"
She scrawls an equation across the scraped, fading black paint of the stage floor. The wood below shows through in scratches; from dragged chair legs, the steel tips of tap dancers, the pressured pin at the base of a cello.

Each journey of chalk reverberates through the theatre and, as she shuffles along, her supporting palm and the loose ankles of her trousers scuff the numbers a little, like a sloppy left-hander. She reaches the side of the stage and then climbs down. She sits, front centre.

"Now solve it"
The dancers stare down at the floor.
"What about music?"
"It is the music, you fucking idiots"

He takes his partner by the waist and she shakes out her legs.
"Ready?"
"Yeah...wait. Who's x and who's Y?"
"It doesn't matter"
"But she.."
"It's insoluble"
"God. Typical. Think they'll sort things out?"
He shrugs and straightens out.

The Old Men and the Sea

The moon was one day on the wane and the old iron bell clanked out across the bay. The nimble breeze carried in a fresh, crisp spray that began to clean the streets of the wispy tendrils of night that still remained. Fires shook out the static, lazy air of the awakening houses and blew a rich perfume of sardines and coffee into bedrooms. While some small heads were still hiding beneath the sheets, resisting their mothers usual threats, twelve men pulled on their boots and made their way to Old Maclaurin's statue on the cliff top. They each placed a fish at its feet.

Rory McKillock quickly taught the ceremonial poem to Angus Laidlaw's son, Craig, who had taken his dead father's place in the twelve. He nodded when he had it, smiling a little, enjoying the feeling of being a novice at 67. They followed the path down the tapered side of the east cliff wall, marching down to the stony beach of the cove. Each man unravelled the thin brown rope he'd brought wrapped diagonally across his torso. They tied themselves together with a 25m spacing and slowly spread out to form a curve of twelve straight lines, around the incoming sea.

This was a local annual tradition, probably the only that was older than any of the current participants. It would survive them. Time and the tides, two things man can never stop. In the thousand years since King Canute had tried the one, both had kept on coming. The day itself bobbed like a ship at anchor, not fixed exactly to the calendar but never straying too far. They took the full or new moon closest to the Spring equinox, some time around the end of March. Here, the sun and moon locked arms as part of the endless celestial hoe-down and spun the seas in a merry dance.

Each man's job was to stand where the wave broke and move back to mark the new highpoint if a wave passed him. They covered the full curve of the beach. The cove itself was mostly made up of the soft rock cliffs, brown and craggy and full of nesting birds and loose footholds. The winds and the seas and the oh-so-subtle movement of the land would cause whole sections to tumble into the sea. The sound would echo up to the village a few times a month and everyone would hold their breath, waiting for the noise to settle. Castles made of sand, and all that.

The rope enabled them to watch how the water was shaped that day, a battling army steadily advancing its borders. With half an hour left till high-tide, they could see that it was coming furthest up just to the right of the middle of the beach's curve so the old men detached the ropes and drew tighter around the tongue tip of the longest lapping wave. They would take it in turns to place a thin cane on the highest stone that the sea kissed, allowing them enough room stand out of water's way, not wanting to interfere with its sloshing path. When the cane remained on a stone for over fifteen minutes, after the time for high-tide had passed, it was accepted as the tide-stone and the man holding the cane picked it up and dried it with a handkerchief and then placed it carefully in his pocket.

They went back up the cliff path and at the top were met by the whole village, many of whom had been watching the whole process from the beginning, smoking pipes and discussing the past and the future. Next to the statue, the caster was waiting. It was a young lad called Steven. The headmaster of the school picked a boy each year, balancing a hefty build with a character deserving of the honour. They placed the stone in his hand and then, together, recited the old poem. Then Rory nodded to Steven and he took a short run up before hurling the stone in a shallow arc, straight out into the hungry sea. A cheer went up, breaking the reverent silence, and chatter broke out as everyone bumbled back to the village. Pubs filled up and dusty bottles were pulled up from the cellars, kept aside for this day.

The stone sank in the grey water and settled on the bed. The currents dragged and fish swum by. The water rolled in a myriad of eddies and whirls, some conflicting and some combining. The stone began to creep its way back to shore.

The wind that the willows brought

Toad races around behind the stacked chairs. Heads swivel and crane, following the clattered sonic path. The cardboard car slaps against seat backs and clips the reverend’s ear as it's tugged around the corner and up the central aisle. The following line of assorted policemen and woodland creatures bump and stutter into each other like an awkward conga, which stops and starts fitfully.

Toad leaps triumphantly back up onto the stage and performs two satisfied hops. The hops are noticeably odd; his upper body barely changes position, he almost seems to tuck his legs up into a floating torso and then snap them back again. It highlights the quality of the little boy's performance, he's so other. He tilts his top hat forward and smirks, an artful dodger for a second with the jaunty angle and the flowing purple of his slightly ragged coat.

The policemen and creatures have found their way back to their positions in the two chorus lines that flank the raised platform stage. Ratty and Mole push through from the back, readying themselves to clamber up and join Toad. From the back of the hall, standing on a low bench, the teacher gestures to them to begin but before they react, all eyes snap to a crash and a shout from out in the audience.

Mole stares gormlessly as Ratty shoves past and weaves through the rows of little chairs, brushing past my lank frame, tucked up like a praying mantis. Teachers gorp at each other, hoping for something to come down the wire, a semaphore in glances, but no one can make out what has happened.

Finally a few heads pull back and I can see Ratty's delicate face paint slipping from her cheeks in chalky streams. Her hand is on her grandfather's chest and she looks at her mother in seeming slow motion as her hand comes up to cover her mouth.

I watch Toad on the stage. He stands on his spot, still twitching his shoulders in total dedication to his character. He waits for his cue.

Locking Eyes

He leans into the tops of the tap handles, resting his chin on his hands, and stares at the girl across the dark wood bar as he waits for her pint to fill. It overflows and he doesn't even notice. Her head stays down as she picks at a suede frill that hangs from her strap. Occasionally she tugs hard and he can glimpse into the bag; each time is a tantalising moment of nothing. What does he even want to see? He guesses there is a book in there. And a pair of sunglasses. And a tampon. And an untouched apple. And a small compact. And a lighter?

She doesn't want to look up at him, she's too nervous. Is he just staring at her? Why is he taking so long? She doesn't know what to do and she digs her nails tighter into the suede strand, yanking the bag back and forth. Harder and harder, it twists slightly around her and rucks up her cardigan around her shoulder. Finally, she over does it and the contents spill out; some on the floor, some on the bar.

The boy doesn't even help, he's mesmerised by her suddenly spluttered contents, it's caught him totally off guard. She scrambles her book from the floor, along with a hairbrush, a phone, her wallet and a hair-clip. She stands back up. On the bar is a lighter, a banana and some Vaseline. The pint behind the bar has over filled the drip tray and dribbles heavily onto the boy's crotch.

Their eyes meet.