33: Pie

Yarrow ====== I bumped into my friend Mr Daniels in the park’s listening booths. He’d been a long time in the only one still fit for purpose. I had intended to use it myself but had found I’d left my 8 track cartridge in the pocket of my other kaftan still hanging on a peg at home. The fact that, on realising this, my squirming had been soundless meant I heard everything going on behind that battered door. “You having some tummy trouble Eugene?” I asked politely as he washed his hands upon exiting. We walked along together and found Mr Chambers on a bench reading the horoscopes in his preferred red top. “Tell me my future, Marco.” I joshed and he put down the paper and took out a long tin with some yarrow sticks inside along with what turned out to be a folded sheet of A4 patterned with some abstruse markings. “Are you sure?” he asked, “Once I begin the whole process I will not only tell you your future but have some hand in it too.” I placed the remaining scampi fries in my mouth “Go on, rather you than God.” I said He paused holding my glare for an awkward length of time until he hiccuped. “Ideas need a body to infect,” he said , “a consciousness with some attachment to different senses and instruments that are useful for articulating and indeed furthering whatever is best for it. “Think about the avatars that lead countries these days, now what has really locked into those vessels. Give me your hand.” he said, and grasping my wrist he stuck a bunch of yarrow in my palm and folded my fingers over them pressing them down until the yarrow began to snap, while a odd strained sound began to push up through his throat “Aaaahhh.” Then he began to whisper “Flames lifted by a breeze. This fire floats through, digesting the totality into itself. So easily impressions hang, as inflamed motes in air, that ignite the strip of dried thatch on landing, before bending time and fact, cutting out entireties. Ghostly things extracted from beasts for the sake of the children, stored as a concentrate in vials long forgotten in the airing cupboard. Some evaporated, their cork stoppers ill fitting or corroded to ineffectiveness; Where did they disperse to? Maybe one’s now a stain on a folded towel?  Room sweet, sighs of wind flit curtains revealing something riding on the rising air, imbued with the hell held beneath it, sliding over a roof, adrift...” He was silent. Something descended in me, a fear driven fart trumpeted out shocking the captivated audience of sparrows into the air. Marco picked up his paper again, giving it a shake to unfold the top. “I see Charlton lost again.” The Beautiful Game ================== Philip dribbles it Tony legs it Iris eyes it Lacy boots it Palmer holds it Yarner socks it Eelih fakes it Brown heads it Rob takes it Pinky nails it Stringer nets it