16: Plunge

Intro ----- Two scooters move on a potholed strip of ever narrowing tarmac towards a single cat sitting on a cardboard throne like royalty, cleaning its genitals with its tongue, like royalty Lined with aerated packaging, it’s elevated seat generates an uncomfortable warmth, a stickiness that must be either surrendered to or ignored for its fundament to rest on such an important seat. The scooters are hurtling with abandon along the boundary of human civilisation, it’s farthest outpost, and Mr Julian Shalaheine, who is the aforementioned cat, is the gatekeeper to what is beyond. But I feel we’ve ploughed on too far in the story and must go back, but by going back will we ever reach this scene again, or will we find ourselves standing at some other point in time on this sphere seeing something quite different,. Let’s plunge deep and see where we float up. Tikka Max --------- The event marred what would have been a most laudable work party themed heavenly creatures 99 of the 100 strong workflows came in bumptress slivers of silk and lace ribbons and fur feather bowers and not much else the man mostly came adorned in oil flexing in tiny pious cotton panties to tease graffiti bronze bodies flashing neon teeth the ones not schlopped together in cochlear commerce that is but after hours of hobble and shiver the heat had risen and the dance floor was a float in sweat and shine the finale came when line manager tikka max came skidding onto the dance floor unused to this soft treading day he appeared to float across the room grace incarnate gliding all the way along to the floor to ceiling windows kindly held open to let the night in and a darkness out tikka the angel of intercommunications sliding to the limit of the steel trimmed balcony no grip on the slick shine and over he goes finally he has his wings together flopping in the base chill air to final splayed expulsion of life as it was wanted to be lived hand in heart pierced by picket fence propriety ever the role played so in the darkest light a thick fudging swoon compelled by a careless motion now spiraling out into the new world mingling re-socializing exchanging greetings meeting newer dead and older buried with a convivial collusion of intimacies on through the old rise and fall Golden Goose ------------ Everything is broken. The mid-century teak and grey linen divan. The Vienna twin-weight wall clock. The brass and opaline globe desk lamps. The Queen Anne walnut tea table. The Chippendale mahogany drop-front bureau. And the gilded crystal prism chandelier. And when I say broken, I don’t just mean that the upholstery has torn a little under the armrest, Or that the taper spring in the pendulum fixing has snapped, Or that the glass has chipped at the fitting, Or that the tray-top molding has splintered at one of the joints, Or that the back-panel has buckled and slipped from its frame, Or that some of the crystals have started to sag asymmetrically. No. I mean everything’s been completely broken down, into tiny, tiny pieces. Smashed to smithereens. Ground down into fine particles. Utterly pulverised. And the cyclonic winds from the hole above have whipped these sands into a shallow mound at the centre of the room. Everything that was once distinct in function, form and substance is now a compounded mass of debris. Not that I really mind. To be honest, I always despised the hotchpotch of furniture in this lobby; the mismatched periods and styles. How there would be Danish-modern teak and crushed velvet sofa, and in front of it a Victorian rosewood occasional table - stained with rings from the Turkish coffee and sticky patches from the jalebi they would serve waiting guests. And those austere Edwardian mahogany bookcases stuffed with gaudy pamphlets and brochures detailing local attractions… Everything was scattered incongruously about the room even before the strike; the latter just refined this calamity. But it’s all dust now & what am I to do but lie here, resigned and supine; flat on my back on this bed of fine debris, rhythmically fanning out my arms and legs in sweeping arcs, making a dust-angel And you, with your lens trained down, pulling up and away from me, revealing the fallout of the devastation and the shadowy patches of wallpaper where the bookcases and bureaus used to stand, The shrinking form of the dust-angel on its glistening dune of atomised antiques, and up, through the five-petaled aperture in the lobby ceiling where the chandelier used to hang, into the first floor apartment, rising up still through the cruciform hole into the second, through the three-petaled hole to the third, and through the two-petaled hole, still glowing poppy-red at its edges, into the penthouse suite, until finally emerging through the missile’s initial entry point - a neatly circular aperture rendered by the stage 1 blast of the augmenting shaped-charge warhead, with its enhanced post-entry target fragmentation. And you could continue the missile’s path upwards and backwards, to the Golden Goose drone that launched the strike… but, wait. Narrow the focus now and fall back down, retrace the course that bore through the five floors of the Reuters hotel, ripping that star into the lobby ceiling and pulverising everything below. I received the tip off. The guests were bused out to another hotel just outside of Bruges. But I stayed; behind the maple Art Deco counter. And now I’m part of the powder. And something’s making a dust angel in me. I thought I would’ve (lyrics) ----------------------------- Painful, that I understood; I disappear - but only they volunteer, involuntarily - And it seems I suggested I thought I would transform The insane pick having kids, and so the majority end up thinking darkly. Hate for me, but a kiss for you. Hate for me, yet a kiss for you? And an appointment with TV