50: Candles

I ruin everything. I’m the architect of my demise. The draftsman of my downfall. The chartered surveyor of my great undoing. The structural engineer of my self destruction. The property investment portfolio manager of my decrepitude. The Letting Agent of Keatons, Mare Street. Well, one of a team of 6. And I ruin everything, outside and inside the office. Everything I touch turns to s**t. My line manager at Keatons calls me King Merde-ass. Because m**e is french for s**t. And, she says, everything I touch turns to terrible faeces. And it’s true. The other day I touched three Greggs Yum Yums. And six and a half hours later, they were horrible sloppy s**t. I had to go back in the Greggs bag. And leave it on the church steps. Because I have no toilet. And I have no home. And no friends. On account of being the architect of my own demise. I construct grand temples of calamity from cheap shoddy materials: tin, burlap, wheatgrass… And as the walls fall in on the congregation — that pack of vacuous worshipers I call ‘self’ — I watch in blank indifference from the top of this mountain. It’s the end of my writing retreat, and I’ve not written a thing. Not even this. This is just a confessional thought to myself and hits no page, magnetises no tape, arranges no bits, darkens no fields…. so let me just say this from the outset: I hate writing. I hate writers. And their writing. And I hate words. And sentences. Words forming sentences are the worst. And I hate narrative, stories. And I hate polemics and opinion pieces. But most of all, I hate poetry: I hate the unpredictability, the fast and loose expenditure of words, as if they’re an infinite resource. I hate all the poets sitting around in their colonial phone booths, barking clever new words at each other like jackals on a steamship. Poets ruin everything: every relationship; every friendship; every event I host; every gala I attend; every car I drive. You lend your car to a poet, it’s sure to come back looking like a bloody tip inside: sweet wrappers all over the place; coffee marks on the speedometer. Just disgusting. There was that time I was at my first friend little Kelsey’s birthday party and when they had dimmed the lights and were about to bring the cake in and everyone went “ha…”, I went “haaaaaAAAAAAA….!” and ran towards the cake, blowing out all the candles, grabbing the cake and throwing it onto the floor and kicking it into the corner of the room, pulling down my shorts, sitting on it and doing a big pooh. When the lights came on and everyone looked at me and I was eventually asked to leave, I jumped on my motorbike, with buttercream squelching up my bum, and rode the hell out of there. [Been Dancing] “But so many children have been eaten,” he whimpered. Outside trees staggered back and leaves fell, drifting varied hues in the air, carrying an ominous sense that the new season would be drawn out from under rocks and start to sink its icy bite in to any bare cheeks it found exposed. “Martin, I know, but they look so happy when they are,” comforted Teresa, “it seems wrong to try and help them. Maybe it excretes a perfume or an intoxicant, an anaesthetic, I dunno … perhaps the metre long incisors feel like candy floss kisses when they pierce through the flesh and bones. You saw the video of the kid I showed you; snapped in two, yet reached up to hug the creature and got incredibly upset when it turned away to bite off her friends head before it eventually came back; she just seemed to really want its full attention. I can understand that feeling,” she remarked pointedly raising her eyebrows towards him, but Martin’s concerns were now beyond the sight of their son, who continued to bounce on the trampoline and was still staring directly at the large red eyes in the holy bush, engaging with it in a manner he’d been repeatedly told not to. You see, for Martin autumn had truly soughed, stirring up the ornamental pond-side. Unlocked, his gaze meandered graciously along through the concentrated leafy mounds piled high against the slat fence, to where rain-washed trunks in overgrown groves could conceal anything. The woods continued above as ever, an unconcerned yielder, while the undergrowth was being corralled into cosseting decay. The distant walkers light tread sounded a fracas of twigs underfoot, shocking crows into flight. Fallen foliage blanketed the net of father time who, seemingly only a vapour, carefully tended to its weave unnoticed, anticipating the perfect moment to finally draw in the years scattered return. The trampoline was still. “I guess a dog would be easier.”