Mug Shot

She'd brought him a mug of tea in bed. He'd been feeling pretty good about the world.

He'd leaned forward to adjust the plethora of pillows she'd pushed behind him, so many pillows, when one small sausage shaped pillow had fallen. He'd watched it as it fell, in slow motion, like a tree in a climate change awareness documentary.

He'd been surprised that the tiny pillow possessed the mass and velocity to knock the mug of tea over, to tip its contents onto her clock radio. He'd been surprised at the volume of the mug, there appeared to be more tea on her bedside table than could possibly have been contained by one small mug. 

Surprised or not, that's what had happened. 

He'd stared for a moment, then acted swiftly, righted the felled mug, pulled his t shirt over his head and begun soaking up the tea, all the time preparing his defence. 

Surely this was a natural disaster, an act of god?

He looked up, she was staring at him from the sliding doorway of her bedroom. A romantic crisis report was being filed, the full bench of her Court of Potential Boyfriend Suitability was being called to session.

He awaited judgement.

Parkstreet

Ko-Fi 

Detective Camembert

 

From a photograph by Kris Reichl

Directing its light into my eyes like a noir detective, the full moon is shining into my top floor apartment, glaring at me, a glowing white wheel, Detective Camembert. Demanding answers. Cold, flinty, remorseless. 

I muster enough resistance to ask what right he has to interrogate me, after all, he revolves around me, not me around him.

He accepts the truth of this, but adds that he will only be revolving around me for a little while longer. He suggests I should, perhaps, respect my elder. My brain struggles to conceive of four and a half billion years, so I ask what he wants to know.

He wants to know what I’ve been doing since he last looked in on me, a month or so ago. He wants to know if I’ve found any conciliation with my place in the universe. He seems to know that such thoughts trouble my mind.

We sit, and stare at each other icily as we drift away from each other so very slowly.

I have no answers for him.

As his light gradually eases from my eyes, I try to imagine what this wise old sleuth has seen, what he knows. I fail to comprehend such a vigil, a freezing vacuum, seeing everything, and all the time hiding his other face from us.

The full moon leaves the interview room silently, without judgement. There is nothing I can tell him.

I’m left staring out into the night, rotating, revolving, knowing that next month, the month after, every month until the moon no longer revolves around me, I will still have no answers. 

But I take comfort in knowing the good cop of the morning sun will soon be here. 

And I wonder if the moon is questioning me because he, too, is rotating, revolving, he, too, billions of years from now, will cease rotating and revolving, never knowing why. 

No wiser than me. 

Or you.

Parkstreet

Ko-Fi

Sleep Diorama

He was awake anyway, no stranger to three a.m. sleeplessness, so the knock on his door didn’t upset him. Later, he didn’t really recall finding the shoebox with four tiny yellow chicks snuggled in it, the box was just in his hands, four innocent lives, in his hands.

But he was so tired. Almost deliriously tired.

With no idea what to do, no idea what he was doing, he constructed a small compound on his bedside table. He turned the shoebox on its side to make one wall and a snug place for the chicks to hide in, with a soft hand towel to keep them warm. The lid of the box, a lamp base and the bedroom wall completed the stockade. He wanted the chicks to be safe, but he also needed to sleep. He gave them food and water, bread soaked in milk, he didn’t know why, they seemed to like it. And they seemed to like him. They chirped quietly and looked up at him with complete trust.

He would have liked them too, all fluffy and cute and wonderful, but he was so, so tired. 

They seemed to like the true crime podcast he played quietly to help him get to sleep. They left the warm shelter of the shoebox and gathered around the phone, happily muttering back to the tales of murder and bloodshed, as, for the first time in a week, their pure, innocent voices lulled him into peaceful, generous sleep.

When he awoke the chicks were gone. The shoebox was gone. No sign of them remained. 

It didn’t make sense.

He rose, made coffee, ventured out onto his balcony to sit in the sun. In his heart he hoped those baby chicks were happy, being kind to each other, eating well and living loving and peaceful lives, even if they weren’t real.

Coming back inside he noticed, then brushed away, one tiny yellow feather, shrugged, shrugged again, then headed for the shower to begin a new day. 

Parkstreet

Ko-Fi

Trump - Their King’s Touch

 

He’s a pig eyed, ham headed brute

Shoehorned into a cartoon character suit

Long phallic tie,

A compensatory lie, 

A ham fisted, 

Ham acting

King 

Of the MAGA sty.

Over seventy million Americans 

Will make their mark 

Beside his trademark, fooled twice, 

The mark of the mark, 

Blood in the water 

For this dead eyed shark.

The high priest of grievance, 

An unholy allegiance 

With the peddlers of bastardised faith,

Driving the greed machine 

Crashing through the Anthropocene,

A fossil fuelled end of days wraith

More a symptom than a man

The phlegm of the infection

Pick your forced card, 

Call it divine intervention.

And over seventy million Americans 

Will make their mark beside his name

Bluffed by his fortune

Aroused by his fame

Outsource their bullying

Let him take the blame 

Averting their eyes

From their emperor’s naked shame.

The marks and their con

The gang and their don

The red capped, red pilled 

Red white and gammon

A nation creating itself in the image of Elvis

A nation 

A casino

The wager of Job

A nation

A fiasco

The dealer is the mob

And over seventy million Americans 

Will make their mark 

Beside his trademark, 

Believing 

Their King’s touch

Will cure them 

Of what ails them.

Parkstreet

Ko-Fi

Violin Holy

From a photograph by Kris Reichl

 At four years old, he doesn't possess the words to tell himself what he is seeing. He is old enough to know that no one he knows can see what he sees. 

Sitting alone away from the fire, he watches the old man playing violin. He can see the essence of the man, the bones and heart of him. The boy's dark eyes can see the internal structure of the violin too, how the timber and shape conspire to create beautiful sound. He knows that once he gains the manual dexterity of an adult, he will be able to build the perfect violin.

That's not all he sees. As he stares at the fire, he can see his own life, to the point of his death.

For two years now, since the first time he touched a woman's belly and said, “baby”, women from all over have been brought to him to discern pregnancy. He has learned to create a performance, lay on hands and hum to himself, so everyone feels comfortable. But he can see it, feel it the first time he lays eyes on the woman. He knows that in the future he will have to hide this, and every other vision he possesses, pretend to grow out of this magic state. What is wonderful in a boy is unnerving in a man. 

He already knows that he will live a solitary life, that the only way he will be able to express the essence he sees will be through music. He will travel and play violin.

The way he plays will enchant and disturb people. His talent will be welcome, his essential truth less so. He will teach those who come to him, try to give his gift to the few who will comprehend. Eventually, he will retire to a workshop and build violins. His violins will contain everything he has seen, everything he knows.

His instruments being played around the world will, for a moment, connect people to something they yearn for.

The boy stares at the fire, then at the old man playing violin. At four years old, he already knows that the path of a holy man won't be easy, that it will take millions like him, over thousands of years, to leave behind enough beauty for everyone to begin to understand.

Parkstreet

Ko-Fi