Literal Yoga

Posted on by tuesdaylatte

And the yoga instructor says cactus arms
I look at everyone else
It is clear no one is thinking what I am thinking

In my head, my arms are turning green
Spouting giant spikes
I am at a children’s party,
Walking through
Popping all the balloons
Adults look on horrified

The yoga instructor’s voice is calm, relaxed

But I am in the ocean
Swimming with my cactus arms
Spiking fish
Deflating toddler armbands
Parents are yelling and screaming
As small children drown

I don’t find yoga relaxing

Then we’re on to cat- cow
A cat? A cow?
A cat cow? What does that even look like?
Is it a really furry cow that meows?
Or a really large cat that is particularly stupid?
Seriously what is a cat cow?
I’ve never seen one,
Does the milk taste the same?

I find yoga conceptually difficult

Then there’s downward facing dog
Why is he looking down?
Why does the dog have to be so sad?
The poor dog, in a downward spiral
Head on its paws, chastened, sad
When it should be chasing its tail
Instead its caught in an endless downward spiral
Only depression awaits it

My friend says I take yoga too literally

Then there is a rabbit and a camel
And a dolphin
A whole bloody zoo of animals
All of them captive to the human spirit
There’s one legged pigeon
Oh poor one legged pigeon
How one legged pigeon suffers
I have never done two legged pigeon

I recently went vegan
And felt I had to give up yoga

The Captive Page

Posted on by tuesdaylatte

And so there it is
A blank piece of paper
Pure and clean and expectant

Waiting

Will this be the piece of paper
where the best seller scrawls her words
Or will this simply be a list of

Groceries

A note to a lover,
a wife’s final words as she walks out the door
‘You should have washed up more often’

Arsehole

Is it to be folded, crumpled
Will it get the soft sleep of an epoch
Breaking down in the rubbish or

Recycling

The harsh teeth of the retreatment plant
Gnawed by fraught machines
Pulped, pulped again, reinvented.

Reworded

Does it still know that it was once a tree
Tall and strong and proud
Before its feckless enslavement to human thought

Scarred

By a pen across its silky surface
Marked forever
With blue and black and red ink

Humans

As the first letter forms on its bright page
Does the writer know
Is she, does she understand

Culpable

For a moment does the echo of a tree falling
Does it make her pen wobble
Does she hold firm and write on

Guilt

Do fingers of guilt
Lick the sides of her ideas
By that, is her ocean of thought

Limited

Free the page! Let it flutter in the wind. Let it fly til it finds where it wants to be. Let it be free of your words and your ideas. Unshackle it from your need to express yourself. Let it float down your manicured street. Free. Let it go.

Eaten

Posted on by tuesdaylatte

He looked at his hand. There was less of it today than there had been yesterday. He had bound the empty skin of one toe to the next one this morning, but his left hand seemed intent on disappearing. He knew what it was. All those metaphors. All those years. It was physically possible it turns out. He laughed quietly to himself as he sat in the lounge. All those doctored photos. What else could explain it.

He sat there without the TV on. In the darkness. Listening. He could hear the neighbours, not easily. Just the odd bump to break his silence. He hated the neighbours. They were from some place else. He wasn’t sure how much else, but some place else. He felt his hand contract as he sat there. Felt it shrink and shrivel as rage coursed through him. They had no right to be there, those neighbours. The people who ought to live there, ought to be from here. He wasn’t sure what that meant.

He couldn’t articulate it but he could feel something gnawing away in his fingertips, eating the ends of them. It was so visceral he looked down as if he might see a rat there chewing the end of his hand. There was no rat but still he could feel it. The erosion of his self as a physical entity.

His rage was all consuming. He sat there listening for more bumps. A car door closing in the driveway across the road. Who were they? They didn’t belong here either. They never spoke to him. He had been certain to ensure that never happened. He had thought about putting something through their letterbox to tell them to go away.

The children two houses down were particularly noisy. Bad parenting. She worked. What could one expect. He went to bed. All night, he could feel it eating at him. His arm. He couldn’t lie on it. It was so uncomfortable. He wondered if he opened his eyes his arm would be completely gone.

He swore he could feel his internal organs shrinking each time he slept. His stomach caving in. He daren’t even walk to the newsagents to get the paper anymore. There were too many people not from around here. Too many people who did not belong here. His face was worn and tired from glaring and leering at women who let their breasts hang out of their clothes. It disgusted him.

He raged in the night and still he could feel it. Travelling around his body, eating wherever and whatever it felt like. He was filled with it, with the injustice of these people filling up his world, there refusal to live by the rules that he set. Did they not know that once he had been an engineer. He woke in the morning, more tired than when he went to bed. He had breakfast, the same breakfast he had eaten for 40 years. He looked at the left arm, the hand hanging off the end.

He know longer knew how to stop it. The hatred was eating him from the inside out.

If you write a book and no one reads it, did you ever really write it?

Posted on by tuesdaylatte

If you write a book and no one reads it, did you ever really write it?

The book sat on the library shelf for a good few months after she died. I wasn’t here when the original events happened, only when the end came. I had thought to put the book in the coffin but then events intervened.

Lynette was always a little odd, but only a little, not so wildly odd that you needed to worry. I managed her in the last few years she worked here at the library. Lynette wore the same plaid skirt, same olive cardigan and green shirt almost everyday. She had the same box haircut all the time I knew her. All that ever changed was the little pin she used to keep her hair off her face. Sometimes it had a tiny enamel flower on it, sometimes a little cat, sometimes a strawberry or a heart.

Truthfully I should have made her redundant when we got computers but she was compliant, easy to manage. She had the neatest handwriting and she seemed to just be part of the library. Even if I’d have made her redundant she’d still have been here every day.

The story goes that there had been an academic here, a man. Married apparently. He used to come into the library. He was always friendly to Lynette. It was no secret she was infatuated. It wasn’t returned.

There were, apparently, a lot of girls. He had his favourites, one of whom was Jeanette. They flirted a lot, in the library. He would lean in close and she would smile up at him. There were rumours. His wife was a harridan-aren’t they always though? Jeanette was by all accounts young and attractive and now I have seen a photo of her I can see that they looked good together. Too bad for the wife.

Lynette and Jeanette were friends despite Lynette’s feelings for the man. We’ll never know what really happened. They simply disappeared one day-Jeanette and this man. Just sort of ran away together. No one was surprised. Jeanette had a cousin who thought it was out of character but no one bothered with it much. The wife pressed the police but who believes a scorned wife.

There was a lot of gossip but not much else. Lynette never mentioned it.

In any event a few months afterwards, the book turned up. In the library. On the shelf. Catalogued and all. No one thought anything of it. It was his last work before he left and ran away, a hardback version, properly bound. It was the only copy we had but we assumed somehow that there were other copies out there.

We should have offered it to his wife, but I wasn’t here then and that didn’t happen. So it sat there and the only person who ever took any notice of it was Lynette. She would take it off the shelf occasionally and look at. Just look at the cover. I once told her she should read it and that’s when it became a kind of joke-if no one reads it has it ever been written. We didn’t do it intentionally but we just kind of made sure that we didn’t ever direct anybody to the book and it just sat there. There was no title printed on the spine and everyone overlooked it.

Then Lynette died. Quite suddenly. And I thought of the book and how it had made us laugh. I thought it would be a nice gesture to place it in her coffin. She had seemed attached to it, a memory of an unrequited love. She had few friends and no family. So I took the book off the shelf.

I sat down to thumb through the pages. It occurred to me after all this time I had no idea what it was even about.

I opened it. And there, where the pages had been cut out neatly to shape a space was a pair of hands bound together, severed off at the wrists and perfectly preserved and a note, in the neatest handwriting.

‘Romance is dead.’

The train

Posted on by tuesdaylatte

One bald man gets out of his seat
So another bald man can sit down.
They don’t speak to each other.
They don’t know each other.
The do know each other.
Its like a dance.

Every day.

That is his seat,
that is the other ones seat.
They wear similar suits in dark blue.
With a light blue shirt
And a medium blue tie and brown shoes.

I plunge myself into my seat, melting.

And what was he doing there anyway?
Half naked.
In a stripped down phone booth.
Leering at every woman,
As if each one should be grateful.
With his 90s hair.

Today of all days.
They are not grateful.
They just hurry past.
He leans on a strut that once held a pane of glass.
His best days are behind him.
His best days are behind the booth.

There is no air conditioning on this train.

He is playing a childs game
On ear phones that don’t work.
Colourful little animals jump small bridges.
Everyone can hear the arcade tinkle.
He does it deliberately.
Plays it loud.

Most days.

Plunging thumbs,
into a control panel.
It annoys everybody.
It’s a protest.
You are not allowed to watch porn on the train.

All around me the world of trains and men, I feel like a freak.

He holds his head high.
The wi-fi was a little slow this morning.
The trainers are glossy.
He really smashed that avocado
Into the whole grain toast.
A sheep in wolves clothing.

A bit yesterday.

With that beard.
More a toad resplendent in cloth.
Still a toad.
He catches himself in the window.
Looking good, looking good for a toad.

Still after all this time, I don’t belong on this train.

The Gloves

Posted on by tuesdaylatte

It was late. The train was nearly empty. She didn’t notice the woman get on. She was suddenly sitting across from her, hands folded neatly in her lap. As if she wanted her to look.

She looked. The gloves. Red leather, quilted at the wrists. The police had said to call. She should. Call. Now. Where was her phone, in her bag? But hadn’t it been a man?

She had only caught a glimpse but it had been a man. She had seen through the crack in the door, heard heavy footsteps running away. It had been a man. She was sure.

Was she? Those were the gloves. Distinctive gloves. Red leather, quilted at the wrists. She should call the police. It was not possible. She could not be that wrong. Her phone was in her bag. She just had to take it out. Call. Hesitation.

She was staring at the gloves. Drawn. Drawing in her head, the scene. A crack in the door. The red gloves, pressing hard. The victim. She thought there should have been noise, there was no noise. It all happened silently. Except for the footsteps running away, great heavy footsteps. The footsteps of a man.

The woman sat there with her gloves on. Unbothered. The last of the other passengers got off the train. She sat across from the woman, staring.

Then the woman looked up. Smiled. Those gloves. She was caught staring. She looked at the woman’s shoes. Boots, out of kilter with the rest of her clothes. She looked at the arms, muscular, then the neck, stronger than she had first thought.

Her gaze drifted. Back to those gloves. It wasn’t possible. She had just caught a glimpse, through a crack in the door. She’d heard, what had she heard? What had she thought? Those gloves, so unlikely. She should call the police.

She looked at the woman, still smiling at her. Knowing. Knowing what? It was her stop. She got up. The woman followed, stood behind her. She could feel breath on her neck, a soft leather glove on her back. Panic. It can’t have been. No.

Call the police.

Hermit

Posted on by tuesdaylatte

‘I prefer recluse, it has fewer religious connotations.’ I mutter it rather than say it.

I look at the box sets strewn about the floor. I have been here for days in silent contemplation, watching them one after the other with a kind of religious zeal.

‘Hermit,’ she says again. ‘Robed in track pants and a hoodie, on a diet of crisps and beer. It begs the question, did you find that which you seek?’

‘All life is here,’ I whisper as I look at the variety of crisps flavours I have devoured in the past week.

He is gone. Taken. I cannot cope.

‘You seek enlightenment through the electronic gods, the gods of calories and fermentation. But there is only darkness here.’

She is right. The curtains remain resolutely closed.

She walks over to the window, flings open the curtains. Light floods in. I shield my eyes.

‘Enlightenment.’ she says.

I fall sobbing to the floor.

This awful mess

Posted on by tuesdaylatte

I want the words to soothe my soul.
To make it better.
To fix it all.

I want them to say something purposeful.
Sensible.
Meaningful.

I want them to fix my turmoil and confusion.
Set it out.
In a vision.

I want them to answer the questions I ask.
Finally, definitively.
To the last.

I want them to be mine when they come out of my mouth.
Composed.
Possessed.

Not this awful mess.

Fairies in the peanut butter!

Posted on by tuesdaylatte

These fetid creatures! It isn’t how they make it out to be. All those rubbish fairy tales. Its all just propaganda! I found one asleep in the peanut butter the other day. She woke just as I was taking the lid off the jar. She didn’t look sorry. She simply dabbed some peanut butter into her mouth. You can’t eat peanut butter after something has slept in it!

I can’t take it anymore. I pressed her down into the peanut butter. I could see her little arms swimming in it, desperate to get out. Some people say its ok to break off their wings. But I am superstitious. I don’t like to do that. Maleficent, sometimes the propaganda works even on me.

I put the lid quickly on and binned the jar. I know that’s not right. She might not be able to get out again. Maybe one of her friends came to save her. Almost certainly one did, I heard the bin lid in the night. The next afternoon as I was making the dinner one flew above the cooker and urinated in my mash. I had to throw the mash out. I went for the spatula but I was too late. I hate to squish them, but on the other hand, the ones around here don’t even bother with a veneer of civilisation.

You used to get crickets around here at night, you’d hear them in the summer, then the fairies moved in, spit roasted the lot of them. Never thought I would feel sorry for crickets. And then there’s the constant arguments with the birds. The smaller birds don’t stand a chance, just turfed out of their nests.

I set the cat on them when they first arrived but they sorted that. They darted the cat. Sent her back into the house with a sea of tiny arrows in her fur. Cost a fortune to get them removed and now the cat is afraid of them. She won’t leave the house. I heard they spit roasted the cat down the road for Halloween. Seems impossible but I haven’t seen their cat for a while.

No one who hasn’t lived with them can possibly understand. I have anti-fairy mesh. Its like a mosquito net. Its not hugely effective. Nothing is. Imagine flies with hands and you can see the problem. We have a wildlife pond. It seems to becoming a vacation spot for them. A hundred tiny tents on our grass along with the waste products that brings. Yes that is the bit they don’t tell you about. Fairies have digestive systems! And they all need to ‘eject’ everything every time they fly. Or at least not long after take off. We keep the car in the garage now.

The noise is something else too, squeaky whiny high pitched voices or music, and yes some of them do wear bells. That is even worse. Their parties are like wind chimes on steroids. You can’t sleep through it. Yeh I know earplugs, but last time one of them came into my room, took my ear plugs out whilst I was sleeping.! They use ear plugs as bean bags. Of course they do! Did I mention they get high on sniffing nail polish. Our pond looked like a paint shop after a hurricane as well as being a watery grave for all the newts and whatever else was in the pond. And no nail polish now!

They are making our life hell. The value of our house has dropped-significantly. You have fairies, you can’t sell! You get the odd tourist who wants to see one in real life, who is convinced they are all glitter and tulle and sparkles, only to be scared senseless by their aggression and rudeness. We have had several toddlers taken from our house straight to a secure facility to recover.

The thing is I feel we should be able to live in harmony. I have read all the stories and clearly someone thought that was possible. But they look at us with scorn and anger. I read somewhere they feel sorry for us because of our size. Something that big they say can’t possible survive on this planet. I look at my once beautiful garden. I look at how many of them live here now and I wonder if they aren’t right? Perhaps our time here is done.

Just the Flowers Screaming

Posted on by tuesdaylatte

I look at them but I cannot see it.

The flowers are all withered now.
They were cut off from their life force,
And brought inside,
Placed into water and a vase.
So we could watch them die.

And they died beautifully,
For our amusement.
Sitting on the table,
Brightening everyone’s day,
With their prolonged elegant death.

We gave them just enough water
To let them bloom.
But not enough to let them live.
I tell myself it was like being in a coma
But I am not so sure.

Perhaps their wretched screams
Rended into the night,
Too high pitched for us to hear.
If so I slept through it.
And woke afresh as they struggled on.

Perhaps their quiet malice
seeped into my dreams.
Maybe their perfumed mist
Blew into my food.
Just enough to make me feel uncomfortable.

Did the great artists know of such things,
When they named their pictures of fruit and flowers,
‘Still life’
Was it there, life still,
as they stood bright on the window sill?

Life seeping away, for my amusement.
Were they weeping tears of nectar
Holding their petals high until the last.
As we pressed our noses into them and
commented frivolously on their beauty.

Maybe when I pluck them
From the vase that was their tomb,
their spores will prick my skin,
Infect it with their vengeance
Tormenting me with itches in the night.

I look at them but I cannot see it.
There is no beauty in their death.
They belonged in the earth.
There was only beauty in their life.
To pick them, put them here, it was not right.