15th February

Love always reached me
in the form of an abyss
at the end of my bed

and I could feel the body next to me
pushing me to the edge of

intimacy, when I know it's all just a promise
of being held once he's used me
for target practice– my spine
nearly breaking under
his nearly-virgin hands

as he finds the parts of me
where I am less crystalised, less
silent, less a Bolshie Feminist
and more a hairless animal

with self-inflicted wounds
and a taste for fanged caresses.

Untitled [it was supposed to be a song]

You've got a tiny freckle on your arm
Beneath your wrist, it dapples pale skin.
I touched it with a naïve lover's charm
You flinched away with familiar chagrin.

Now, I know you're not one for compliments
A "thanks" and bashful smile's below you
I built not pedestals but monuments
I hoped you'd be able to climb onto.

Paperbacks lay in scores, scuffed by your gaze,
The austere piles of which still linger,
Your cigarette smoke formed your guileless haze:
Pinched between your middle and first finger.

We danced, from ruffled bedsheets to stone floors,
In arabesques of clumsy solace
Your collars, opened by your shirt's soft doors,
Bore gales till erosion made them flawless.

You've got a pretty large scar on your arm
Upon your wrist, a scratch of pale skin,
Rivulets of red and blue course on through
The crack from where those pedestals caved in.

Filial Piety

My father lived with his head in his hands. Those clumsy, boisterous fingers forced the keys of even the most fragile laptops to be as robust as a typewriter, yet tragedy softened them enough to perfectly form a cradle for his temples, hastily pushing brow to receding hairline. It was as if the very gesture begged the memory of the one instance he ever let himself remain in that position of expressive acquiescence. The morning Grandpa died, he let those eyes –that perennially tender, bloodshot gaze– sink into the contoured blackness of his palms, possessed by a sudden need for paternal comfort he had so vehemently denied when it was there for the taking.

I'll always remember my mother as a figure of activity in the small hours. The lonely orange glow of the landing light was the dawn to her, the only light by which she made the distinction between white and black in my laundry basket. All the while I feigned a motionless slumber. My lasting memory of England isn't of the dreary rolling hills, or even the melancholy fluorescence of a suburban corner shop, but of her silent crouching on the day of our departure. Paintbrush in hand, she dappled at the scratches of deep pumpkin in our living-room walls with all the meticulousness of Michelangelo and diffidence of Van Gogh. Sometimes I wonder if she'd have her head in her hands more often, too, if they weren't always holding something.

And then there's my only sister, with her Pre-Raphaelite hair and her laugh always accompanied by a reckless tilt of the head. For years I had myself believe that a laugh that juvenescent would render her immune to growing up; give her the power to transcend a world filled with inexorable occurrences: brine-soaked pillows and teary gasps, untouched dinners and text messages that knock the wind out of you. However hard I try to maintain this faith in her preservation, the innocuous pastel blemishes of last summer's memories are still tainted by the crimson in her cheeks, which somehow found its way to the edge of her knotted sleeves.

Brine

I need to stop shaking
(and and calling it the tremors of undiagnosed Anxiety)
I need lithium
I need a friend who tells me not to apologise and
Who understands, with weary acquiescence,
That showing compassion for someone like me
Is cushioning the blow
For a bird on its hundredth crash-landing.

I need to be an only child –just for a second–
So that I can tease the surface of my forearm
Without hearing guilt crack like a sledgehammer
Against the pristine sanctity of an oath "I won't
If you won't" I need to stop feeling
Sadness like a gastric band around my internal organs;
Inviting my waist to implode as each
Appetite languishes where it once waxed
Indomitable.

I need to stop shaking.


[Disclaimer: I feel the need to state that this is merely the voice of a persona –wouldn't want to arouse any unnecessary concern!]

Hebdomadal Affinity for Mellifluence

[I don't mean to sound so pretentious with my titles – I just wanted something a little more interesting than "songs that got me through the past week"]

A few days ago, the shamelessly-executed feat of egoism that was being my own publicist and sharing this blog to "the masses" led to the shocking –yet obvious– revelation that I was advertising nothing more than an archive of material, all of which had been written a matter of months ago. The curse of writers' block, in all its ambiguously-perennial glory, has been known to ail me for disconcerting periods of time, and it may well be here to stay until a seriously contrived prompt makes itself apparent and results in prolific bouts of creative writing.

So, in order to compensate for this frustrating situation, and keep my posting on this blog (somewhat) regular, I've decided to voice my preferences in areas about which I am a complete dilettante, i.e. music. Below are a handful of songs that, for the past seven days, I have either found myself repeatedly listening to, tunelessly singing, or pervading my head in the form of incessant loops and dubiously-ascribed lyrics:

1. Dead Sea by The Lumineers

I've only recently started listening to this band, but what little music of theirs I've been exposed to I thoroughly enjoy. Their songs are musically and lyrically simple, but poignant and charismatic nevertheless.

2.Can't Help Falling In Love (Elvis cover) by "Fleet Foxes"

Life is full of countless aesthetic pleasures, and the subdued timbre of indie folk music is certainly one of them. I use inverted commas for a reason: the name "Fleet Foxes" is actually the alias created by a group typically known as Fleet Foxes Sing, who have recorded wonderful covers of a number of songs. Said recordings can be found here.

3. England by The National 

To me, The National's music is synonymous with "haunting melodies with equally haunting lyrics, both of which are capable of provoking enough nostalgia to make listening to them more than once a highly masochistic venture."

4. Liarbird by The Growl

For want of a more original statement, I can only describe the singing voice of frontman Cam Avery (who also happens to be the new bassist for Tame Impala, a member of Pond, dubious acquaintance of Alexa Chung's, and general overachiever)  as being "like melted chocolate," a statement I recall reading on Tumblr some time ago. The music video is strangely entertaining too; if I'm not mistaken, the general consensus is that Nick Albrook deserves an Oscar.

5. You're The One That I Want (Grease cover) by Angus and Julia Stone

As if one cover wasn't enough, here's a song that left me rather deluded with the conviction that I had mastered the art of harmonising, or at least singing along to Angus's part. The Australian sister-brother duo hit it out of the park with their acoustic rendition of this classic musical number. I would say that this can only be expected of them, but my prejudice that a less-upbeat version of the song would be unlikely to work rendered me initially skeptical. It goes without saying that their original material is worth a listen too.

6. R U Mine? by Arctic Monkeys

It was a job of terrible indecision trying to discern which song from AM should make it to this playlist (here's a link to the full album anyway). Admittedly, the first few listens AM (or rather the song-by-song leaks) were a little disheartening, as I'm sure was the case for many loyal fans of the Northern four-piece; their sound had undergone stylistic evolution, to a degree that isn't there when you compare their previous albums with each other. They've experimented significantly genres in this album, particularly in numbers such as 'Why D'you Only Call Me When You're High?' and 'Knee Socks', both of which show strong RnB influences. Having said that, I am fully converted as a fan of this album, and for those who aren't quite so convinced, closer listening does provide the occasional, comforting reversion to their former style. The raunchy, distorted guitar part chords, as well as the lyrics and tempo, of 'R U Mine?' are a prime example of this.

The Old Man Visits Solitude - IV

The rain had stopped now, or at least to the point where it only made a sporadic splay of minuscule drops against the windowpane. With fingers shaking and warped with arthritis he opened the door, just wide enough to fit his frail, raincoat-clad body through. There was a silent fear about him as for the first time he was aware of his own dementia. Even I, for all my lack of intuition could tell that I was not wanted in seeing him out. I remained frozen by the seat as my eyes saw him to the door.

He was gone, both indefinitely and never. I clenched my temples with near-fisted hands and gritted my teeth in a bracing grimace, allowing for sharp draughts of air in surging palpitations. Absolute anger forced my eyes shut till they forged wrinkles across my face. They were the inglorious wrinkles of a man aged by his own seclusion and repression, of a man who needs the hand of another to smooth them out, just when he has warded everyone else off.

I felt an unbroken streak of some fifteen years coming to an end; my tear ducts no longer ran dry as anger, grief and remorse in its most ceaseless form flooded the entirety of my face, leaving me frozen in the most incurable, shameful of stupors. With an outlandish swell of romanticism I longed for the far-flung day that my face, without the blatant contortion of self-induced neurosis, could show the fragility of tears and the resilience of a smile all at once, just like my father had mere minutes ago.

For the past 28 years I had been living in a state of perpetual nihilism, using my Oxbridge degree as a lifelong pass to do absolutely nothing with it. I had belittled a past accomplishment whilst using it as the only thing to define myself, giving me the perfect excuse to enhance my snobbery with fancy words and become an armchair critic in the presence of others, bringing up the biggest name-drop in conversation so that they could feel my superiority for me. I was consumed with nothing but the urge to scream, but ultimately immense fear held me back, for I knew that I would either keep the scream inside of me, or hear it in perpetual ricochets around the walls in which I was to live alone.

Fragment

To be the audience to her words meant that you heard every fact she spouted as a contestable lie, and every hope as nothing short of an eventuality.

The Old Man Visits Solitude - III

“Mam always said that my dad was the old romantic of the pair of them. When they met at the dance the music turned slow all of a sudden, and just like that he insisted on spending the rest of his life with her. They were engaged and moving to Dorset before the year was through. They were lucky to get a cheap cottage that backed onto a beautiful farm, but it was also less than a mile from the coast. Everybody said, “Our John must be mad! He’s moved his life away to the coast and decided to make his living joining wood, just like he could’ve done if he’d stayed up north!”

“But Mum still loved him. And just after moving they had started a family. First born was our Maggie, she’s the bossy one, religious too. Would have become a nun if it weren’t for Pete stealing her heart!”

I felt begrudgingly obliged to feign interest in some way, though I knew that I was going to regret asking for the lengthy response that would follow.

“So you were the younger one?”

“Youngest. First was Maggie, then our Ron came along, and three years later to the day I was born.”

Something about the pattern of our dialogue made me dread the obligation to interject. What on earth was I to respond to a family chronology with? (Besides a mirthless, sarcastic grunt of course.) Thankfully, the silence was but a chance for him to take a puff of breath with what little strength his near-obsolete lungs could muster.

“Our Ron, he was ever so quick with sums and such things. He was the sort of smart Alec that all the grown ups had to laugh at, even if they got a little cross at first. I remember one day, when I was only 5 myself, he came home for tea and had the biggest grin you had ever seen on his face. We didn’t even have to ask what happened before he started off his little story. Apparently Doherty, a boy who was ever so slow but came up with the cleverest questions, asked the teacher the most difficult sum he could think of - thirty-nine times thirty-nine (remember, we didn’t have those fancy computer things that you do now!). While the teacher was still facing the wall and counting on her fingers, Ron shot his hand up and shouted the answer. Whoosh!” his left arm mimicked the movement “”One thousand, five hundred and twenty-one, Miss!” he said. It was a good ten minutes before the teacher could say if he was right or not, which of course being our Ron, he was!”

Bloody hell. It really did seem that there is an age you reach where anything goes for a story. What was it with people of his generation that compels them to let us know where the light switch was and the colour of jumper they were wearing the time aunt Mildred severed her thumb with the butter knife? The advent of the photograph must have been such a paradigm shift to these people. As was the bullet point, I’m sure.

“Our Ron,” he muttered with a sighing laugh, “he was the cleverest boy I ever knew. He was wasted in the army. Even as a boy he hated playing with toy soldiers, but played anyway because he knew I’d enjoy it. When he left for his tour, even before we received the telegram six months later, picking up a toy soldier made me think of him out there fi-- fight-- ing. Sorry”

His now pursed lips bore the beginnings of a toothless grin that quivered, and from his glazed eyes began the stream of tears; a humane mixture of grief and acquiesce that graced the sentiments of so many. These were the people who held a mature sense of acquaintance with death.

It had been so long since buying a box that I couldn’t tell if I was in the habit of keeping tissues around the place so I offered him the most dismal of substitutes - a piece of kitchen towel. He graciously accepted.

“It’s an incredible thing you know,” he said, “five!”

“Sorry, ‘five’?”

His face became illumined with a slight start.

“Tom from the bookies was an old friend of my dad’s, originally an apprentice that my dad took under his wing. Though it took less than a month for Dad to realise that the boy would never be a carpenter-joiner. One day Tom walked into the atelier and Dad just stood in front of the bench and said “Young man, to be quite honest with you, if you ever make so much as one pay packet for joining wood in this country then we really have no hope against the Germans.”

“Every Sunday for three years, when the fixtures for the derby were announced, Tom would stop by our house and inform us of them, then come again at the end of the race to tell us who won. He knew that our wireless was broken, you see. We each had a lucky number. Our Ron’s was always five, ours were always prone to change but his was always five.

“Fifteen years after his death, when I had a wife and a son and that son had a brother of his own, I planted a rosebush in the garden, in Ron’s memory like. And every spring exactly five roses would blossom from that bush. Not a single bud more or less. Ever.

“But I grew up for Ron. I found a wife and had kids who have grown up themselves now. And I loved my wife, right up to the very end. I still do, because being sad won’t bring them back now will it? But remembering that you love them keeps them in a special place.”

“When did your wi--”

“Last month. The funeral was just a few days ago. I’m sorry for cutting you off there, I just can’t bear to hear a sentence like that. Not just yet anyway.” Every second word was now punctuated with a sniffle and drying of the eyes. I stood up and tensely grasped the top of my armchair, swilling my brandy a little as I did. It was a deliberate attempt to conceal from the man’s line of vision a black tie, white shirt and suit jacket that still lay draped over a wooden dining chair.

“What about your children?” I said, smiling without the show of malice that I truly felt. “They’re all grown up by now, I presume? You must be very proud of them.”

That simple link between mind and countenance, that kept the former looking so alive suddenly went, as if my question had hacked away at the tangible connection. His face fell featureless in a terrifying display of incompetence. His mouth quivered as if running through all names of the English-speaking variety.

“Their names are John ... Mark ... Sarah, I --”

Before he could continue he saw me. Head bowed down and sighing a mirthless laugh I muttered, then repeated with a near-shouting voice: “You’re wrong. You’re wrong, Dad.”

The Old Man Visits Solitude - II

There were so many days of my life where the need to be alone became near-indomitable.  It was for all these noticed flaws, so flippant of the eloquence we can all achieve with our given minds, and  that crossed my arms for me, pushed me a step or two away from a gathering, rendered my pupil in contact with an open eyelid, exercised the ill-filtered appendage called sarcasm (devoured and cultivated many years ago).

For every raconteur’s tale, for every forced reaction; the need to hide your own neurosis and feign support for the whims of others. For every silence in small-talk, every instance where the chance to say “And how are you?” was lost. For the contemptible need of others to remember the trivial in an audible train of thought that drains minutes from my patience. I was for all of these that I realised I could not be with those who I was supposed to love. Quite willingly, I had confined myself within a cage, the key to which I kept to myself whilst letting others change the outside lock.

Which is why I was surprised when I heard a knock.

The rain pelted down in rattling cascades, and squally winds added a cinematic sort of drama to what should have been a setting positively English with isolated drabness. Like any other summer evening, I lit a fire and hoped that I would one day find it cosy, or have some indomitable command over me that forced a book to open on my lap. It would preferably be a book over which my floundering intellect could flounder some more, but at least I would be able to say that I read it, should anybody ever ask.

Three infirm raps at the door that I first assumed to be the wind came to my attention. I opened the door ajar and saw, amidst an ashen waterproof hood, a shriveled face with features felled by weariness. I’m not sure if it was he who requested it or his facial expression, but for the first time in over 20 years I had a visitor in the house.